ON a fountain in a small park in the hamlet of Wilhelmsfeld in the city of Heidelberg, Germany is a life-size statue of Dr. Jose Rizal, the Philippine’s national hero whose martyrdom on December 30, 1986 was recalled anew by the whole nation ysterday.

“This is how deeply the Germans love your national hero,” said Professor Manfred Ollik, a retired colonel of the German Police Academy who lives with a Filipino wife and a grown-up son in Bonuan Gueset Centro in Dagupan City.

Between sips of hot coffee at Dunkin Donut, overlooking the intersection of A.B. Fernandez Avenue and Arellano Street in Dagupan, Ollik told this writer that Dr. Rizal left many indelible marks in his country, especially in the picturesque city of Heidelberg where he completed the last draft of his controversial novel Noli Me Tangere.

The statue in the park named after Rizal himself was created by Filipino professor Anastacio Caedo, said Ollik, a known follower of the Filipino hero, who is himself a Knight Commander of Rizal in his country.

Ollik, who is in Germany half of the year each year, is perhaps the most ubiquitous among all his countrymen living in Dagupan City and the province of Pangasinan.

As long as he is in the Philippines, he attends every Rizal Day celebration at the Dagupan City Plaza. And he does it without waiting someone to extend the invitation.

One-time professor in Criminology of the Dagupan-based Lyceum-Northwetern University, Ollik said there were many articles written about Rizal’s sojourn in Heidelberg, which till today is Germany’s great intellectual center.

A Rizalist whom put to heart the hero’s teachings, Ollik is a regular member of Dagupan Breakfast Club and once adviser to the Dagupan City Peace and Order Council during the time of former Dagupan City Mayor Benjamin Lim.

Ollik cited one article written by Dr. Cecilio Lopez, professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Oriental Studies of the University of the Philippines, that tagged Rizal as the one initiated the first cultural relations between the Philippines and Germany through his association with many German scholars.

German records obtained by Ollik show that Rizal arrived in Heidelberg on February 7, 1886 and booked in a pension, a four-story building at Kalstrrese 16 around 300 meters from the University of Heidelberg.

He stayed in the pension from February 3-17, which was not far from the eye clinic of Dr. Otto Becker, with whom Rizal worked from February to August 1886.

The building where Becker’s eye clinic once stood is now decorated with a golden plague in its front wall in the first floor which bears the name of Rizal, said Ollik.

There was no record whether Rizal was a student at the University of Heidelberg. In the absence of his official papers, probably he was not a student but only an observer in classes in optic surgery.

Another building just across the Ludwigsplatz 12 Grabengasse, where Rizal moved on February 18 till June 1886, bears a marker that showed Rizal lived there too.

Documents secured by Ollik in Germany showed that it was in that building where Rizal wrote his nostalgic poe “A ls Flores de Heidelberg”, one of his best poems.

Accounts of Rizal’s sojourn in Germany showed that he was associated with Protestant Pastor Karl Ullmer who had a son named Fritz who became Rizal’s companion in many outings.

Ollik said that when Rizal was executed in Bagumbayan, Pastor Ullmer wrote a translation of the hero’s “Last Farewell”. On the other hand, Fritz wrote a short biography of Rizal in German which appeared in the Ethnographic Journal in Lipzig in 1897.

Ollok said that while in Leipzig, Rizal translated Friedrich Schiller’s “William Tell” in Tagalog, which his compatriots in Spain asked him to do.

From Leipzig, Rizal went to Berlin on October 30, 1896. It was in a pension house which he rented where he wrote the final chapter of his novel Noli Me Tangere, including 15 interesting letters to his friend Ferdinand Blumentritt.

It was in Berlin too where, in a small printing shop, Rizal published the first 2,000 copies of the Noli.