Lowry spent six weeks in Germany learning German in September/October 1928 at a Weber's English College. ( Bowker Pursued By Furies Pg. 79-80). Lowry met Paul Fitte at the college who he later shared a room with at Cambridge University.
Many of the German references in Lowry's work stem from this visit. Lowry told Clemens ten Holder in a letter dated 23/4/1951; ".....that was the only class I took with Herr Schmidhus, who mostly dealt with advanced students, but then that was almost the only thing I learned at all in Bonn, outside the bar of the Hotel Rheinischer Hof." (Collected Letters Vol 2 Pg. 373). In the same letter to ten Holder, Lowry says that he saw the Murnau film Sonnenaufgang (Sunrise) in Bonn.
Dana asks the German sailor Popplereuter says in Ultramarine; "You were in Bonn? (Pg. 87) and later Popplereuter says "Vor dem Krieg. I go to Bonn Universität as a student. I belong to a good corps, too" (Pg. 88).
Lowry refers to the city in the poem 'In the Oxaca Train' 1937; " From wooled thoughts of Bonn or of Bootle." (Collected Poetry Pg. 104).
Lowry mentions the "Bonn-Doumerghue business" in his unpublished book La Mordida which perhaps refers to some business with regard to meeting Paul Fitte in Bonn (Malcolm Lowry's "La Mordida" Pg. 340)
