GERMAN FEELS AT HOME IN RITES FOR RIZAL

By Gabriel Cardinoza
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:40:00 12/31/2008

DAGUPAN CITY – At first glance, retired German police officer Manfred Ollik looks every bit a foreign guest every time the city government commemorates the death anniversary of national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, on Dec. 30.

Everyone's eyes are focused on him, wondering what a barong Tagalog- clad, English-speaking Caucasian is doing in an activity that honors the Filipino national hero.

But as everyone gets settled for the ceremonies at the city plaza here, Ollik blends into the huge crowd of city officials and employees, teachers, students, Free Mason and Knights of Rizal members and others who have come to honor Rizal.

"I no longer feel a stranger, even if I'm the only foreigner sitting there. I now know all the people here," said Ollik, who idolizes Rizal, perhaps even more than any ordinary Filipino does.

Ollik, a retired police colonel and instructor at the Police Academy in Wiesbaden, Germany, decided to live with his family in a coastal village in this Pangasinan city after his retirement in the late 1980s. He is from Kassel in Germany.

He has been attending the Rizal Day celebration here without fail in the last 10 years.

He said he came to know about Rizal in Germany after he married his wife, Ma. Alda Manipon, a nurse from Urdaneta City whom he met in Wiesbaden. He was then vice president of the German-Philippine Association of Europe.

"Every year, we celebrate Rizal Day in Germany twice – on his birthday (on June 19) and on the day he was shot in Bagumbayan (now Luneta Park in Manila)," Ollik said.

"Our association was often asked by the Philippine Embassy to prepare for the celebration. Our president then would tell me to do this and that," he said.

The celebrations were always held at the Rizal Park in Wilhelmsfeld, a city near Heidelberg, where Rizal attended a clinic for eye diseases in 1886.

"Rizal is considered a national hero in Germany with the way we are celebrating and honoring him," he said. "Our celebrations are always very serious and solemn, sometimes even more serious than the celebrations here."

Ollik said the park was built in Wilhelmsfeld because it was where the house of Protestant Pastor Karl Ullmer was located. Rizal lived with Ullmer's family during his three-month study in Heidelberg. Rizal's bronze statue in the park was created by Filipino professor Anastacio Caedo.

"Wilhelmsfeld is now also called `Noli Village,'" he said. "This is because it was there where Rizal finished his novel, `Noli Me Tangere.'"

It was also where Rizal wrote his famous poem, "A las Flores de Heidelberg," in April 1886.

In 1983, Ollik was conferred the Order of the Knights of Rizal by the Philippine Embassy in Germany because of his contribution to the Filipino community in that country.

Aside from helping organize Rizal Day celebrations and other Filipino community activities, Ollik said he also wrote articles in Philippine Times, a Filipino community newspaper in Germany, about German laws, culture and "about many other things that Filipinos in Germany had to know."

Like many Germans, Ollik said he liked Rizal because he was a person "who was 100 percent right during his time."

He said he had repeatedly read the German translations of the "Noli" and "El Filibusterismo" as well as Rizal's poems and other writings.

Ollik said he particularly liked Rizal's advocacy for nonviolence in the Filipinos' fight for freedom from Spain at that time.

"He liked to unite the Philippines and set it free. But not in (the) way Filipino [revolutionaries] had wanted. He liked to do it in a peaceful manner," Ollik said.

"You know that Germany was united in peaceful manner. Not by guns, not by war because we are all Germans. We tore down the Berlin Wall without firing a shot," he said.

Ollik lamented the fact that Filipinos today tend to be regionalistic. "Everybody here wants to separate. Everybody here wants to build an autonomous region. Everybody here wants to speak his own language. Germans speak German. Filipinos should speak Tagalog," he said.

Ollik also said he was sad that many Filipino students do not take Rizal's teachings seriously.

"I once asked a student here about Rizal and I was disappointed that she did not even read Rizal's `My Last Farewell,'" he said. "She could not answer basic questions about Rizal," he added.

Given the current Philippine political situation that Olik said remains characterized by disunity, Rizal remains relevant.