Göttingen is the university city where Morten Schwarzkopf studies medicine and belongs to a student fraternity, a place of learning and youthful political affiliation that stands beyond the summer world of the coast. Though the novel shows it chiefly through what Morten tells Tony, Göttingen gives his courtship both an imagined future and a practical obstacle: he hopes to return there, qualify as a doctor, and later plead his case with her father, but his own father ends the seaside relationship by ordering him back to the university at once.

A University City Beyond the Seaside

Morten arrives at the Schwarzkopfs’ porch with a book in hand, introduced by his father as a medical student spending his vacation with the family. His studies place him in Göttingen, while the holiday brings him into the orbit of Tony and her brother Tom. The contrast between the university city and the coast is central to their brief intimacy: the young people meet during a bounded vacation, with Morten’s return to study already approaching.

Their walks take them through the spa gardens and across the Leuchtenfeld flats, along the shore toward the Temple of the Sea, and by boat across the Trave to Priwall. In this setting, Göttingen is not a directly depicted urban backdrop; it is the destination that will draw Morten away from these shared excursions. The geography of the romance is therefore divided between a present holiday on the coast and a future elsewhere that the couple can only anticipate.

Study, Fraternity, and Political Conviction

Morten’s connection to Göttingen is more than academic. He confides that he keeps a complete skeleton in his room there, the human bones held together with wire and dressed in an old police uniform. He also shows Tony the end of a narrow, brightly striped ribbon, explaining that it identifies him as a member of a fraternity in Göttingen. He has a cap in the same colors, but says he does not dare wear it while on vacation; the skeleton, in his absence, wears the cap with the uniform. He asks Tony to keep this affiliation secret from his father, whose discovery of it, he fears, would be disastrous.

The fraternity disclosure sits alongside Morten’s political arguments. He denounces inherited privilege and calls for freedom, equal treatment under the law, and a nobility of merit rather than a hereditary one. He also objects to restrictions on university life and the press, describing how authorities suppress ideas that challenge the established order. His student identity thus links the private secret of the ribbon and cap to a wider reformist outlook. Göttingen is the location of that affiliation, while Morten’s vacation reveals it to Tony as a source of trust and shared confidences.

A Return Deferred into Promise

As their vacation nears its end, Morten reminds Tony that she will soon return to town and that his own holiday will be over in two weeks. He will go back to Göttingen, he says, become a doctor, and then plead their cause with her father, however difficult that might be. He asks her not to forget their afternoon on the beach or to pay attention to Herr Grünlich in the meantime. His plan makes education a route toward adult standing and a hoped-for future with Tony, but it depends on time, achievement, and the approval of her family.

That future collapses when Morten’s father learns of the relationship. Addressing him as foolish and childish, the harbour pilot orders him to return to Göttingen the next morning and declares the matter finished. Morten answers that he and Tony have behaved foolishly, while his mother begins to protest and then falls silent, her expression marking the collapse of a hopeful dream. The command turns the return that Morten had presented as a later step toward becoming a doctor into an immediate separation imposed by parental authority.

Narrative Significance

Göttingen remains a destination rather than a fully rendered setting. The novel associates it with formal study, medical ambition, student solidarity, and political ideas, but its importance to the romance lies in absence: Morten’s room, skeleton, and fraternity are known through his disclosures, while the city itself stays beyond the coastal scenes. This partial visibility makes the place carry his imagined independence without granting him control over the present.

The city also marks the difference between Morten’s hopes and the constraints surrounding Tony’s marriage prospects. He imagines that medical qualification will enable him to approach her father on better terms; the order to leave at once shows how little authority that future promise has against his father’s command. Göttingen therefore holds both the promise of Morten’s education and the enforced distance that ends his brief courtship with Tony.