Well, obviously a bright kid, but: When he got his Abitur (final exam at the Gymnasium), he had already the German equivalent of a 2-year US college education behind him. Nobody in his/her right mind would compare a US high-school graduate with an Abiturient. There is a two-year difference. The US public school system goes for only 12 years, and starts one year earlier than the German one.

The doctrine of the person of Christ is argued with greatest fullness, and he [John of Damascus] evinces no little ingenuity and dialectic skill in treating of the personal unity in Christ's twofold nature (which he conceived as enhypostasis, not anhypostasis, of the human nature in the Logos), […]

[…]one crosses over the Grand Place, on which stands the Cathedral, to the Mozart Place, so called from a statue of the celebrated composer, of whom the Salzburgians are so proud, and thence past the Government Palace to the Cajetan gate, and along the river to the new bridge.

Towards the following morning, the thermometer fell to 5°; and at daylight, there was not an atom of water to be seen in any direction.