Germany and the Germans from an American Point of View

by Price Collier

I am not yet old enough to envy youth, nor sourly sophisticated enough to deal sarcastically or even lightly with their worship and their creeds, that once I shared, and with which lately I have been, under the most hospitable circumstances, invited to renew my acquaintance at the Commers and the Mensur.

One may be no longer a constant worshipper at the shrine of blue eyes, pink cheeks, flaxen hair, and the enshrouding mystery of skirts, which make for curiosity and reverence in youth; one may have learned, however, the far more valuable lesson that the best women are so much nobler than the best men, that the best men may still kneel to the best women; just as the worst women surpass the worst men in consciencelessness, brutal selfishness, disloyalty, and degradation. The female bandit in society, or frankly on the war-path outside, takes her weapons from an armory of foulness and cruelty unknown to men; just as the heroines and angels among women fortify themselves in sanctuaries to which few, if any, men have the key.

One returns, therefore, to the playground of one’s youth with not less but with more sympathy and understanding. Far from being “brutalizing guilds,” far from being mere unions for swilling and slashing, the German corps, by their codes, and discipline, and standards of manners and honor, are, from the chivalrous point of view, the leaven of German student life. In these days many of them have club-houses of their own, where they take their meals in some cases and where they meet for their beer-drinking ceremonies.

There is of course a wide range of expenditure by students at the German universities, whether they are members of the corps or not. At one of the smaller universities in a country town like Marburg, for example, a poor student, with a little tutoring and the system of frei Tisch - money left for the purpose of giving a free midday meal to poor students - may scrape along with an expenditure of as little as twenty dollars a month. A member of a good corps at this same university is well content with, and can do himself well on, seventy dollars a month. I have seen numbers of students’ rooms, with bed, writing-table, and simple furniture, perhaps with a balcony where for many months in the year one may write and read, which rent for sixty dollars a year. One may say roughly that at the universities outside the large towns, and not including the fashionable universities, such as Bonn or Heidelberg, the student gets on comfortably with fifty dollars a month. They have their coffee and rolls in the morning, their midday meal which they take together at a restaurant, and their supper of cold meats, preserves, cheese, and beer where they will. For seventy-five cents a day a student can feed himself.

The hours are Aristotelian, for it was Aristotle in his “Economics,” and not a nursery rhymer, who wrote: “It is likewise well to rise before daybreak, for this contributes to health, wealth, and wisdom.” “Early to bed and early to rise” is a classic.

At Bonn, a member of one of the three more fashionable corps spends far more than these sums, and his habits may be less Spartan. The ridiculous expenditure of some of our mamma-bred undergraduates, who go to college primarily to cultivate social relations, are unknown anywhere in Germany, for a student would make himself unpopularly conspicuous by extravagance. Two to three thousand dollars a year, even at Bonn, as a member of the best corps, would be amply sufficient and is considered an extravagant expenditure.

When the Earl of Essex was sent to Cambridge in Queen Elizabeth’s time, he was provided with a deal table covered with baize, a truckle-bed, half a dozen chairs, and a wash-hand basin. The cost of all this was about $25. When students from all over Europe tramped to Paris to hear Abelard lecture, they begged their way. They were given special licenses as scholars to beg. Learning then, as it is still in Germany, alone of all the nations, was considered to be a pious profession deserving well of the world. We do not even know the names of our scholars in America. How many Americans have heard of Gibbs, the authority on the fundamental laws regulating the trend of transformation in chemical and physical processes, or of Hill and his theory of the moon, or of Hale who explains the mystery of sun spots and measures the magnetic forces that play around the sun? How many Frenchmen know Pierron’s translation of Aeschylus, or Patin’s studies in Greek tragedies, or Charles Maguin, or Maurice Croiset, or Paul Magou or Leconte de Lisle? while in England the mass of the people not only do not know the names of their scholars, but distrust all mental processes that are super-canine.

The origin of the Landmannschaften, Burschenschaften, and the Corps among the students dates back to the days when the students aligned themselves with more rigidity than now, according to the various German states from which they came. The names of the corps still bear this suggestion, though nowadays the alignment is rather social than geographical. The Burschenschaften societies of students had their origin in political opposition to this separation of the students into communities from the various states. The originators of the Burschenschaften movement, for example, were eleven students at Jena. Sobriety and chastity were conditions of entrance, and “Honor, Liberty, Fatherland” were their watchwords. It was deemed a point of honor that a member breaking his vows should confess and retire from the society.

The societies of the Burschenschaften are still considered to have a political complexion and the corps proper have no dealings with them.

In any given semester the number of students in one of these corps varies from as few as ten, to as many as twenty-five, depending, much as do our Greek-letter societies and college clubs, upon the number of available men coming up to the university. Certain corps are composed almost exclusively of noblemen, but none is distinctly a rich man’s club.