The Student-Life of Germany

by William Howitt

We have already made ourselves acquainted with different excesses on which lie the penalties of banishment, and we will here speak of the greatest of all these excesses, at least of that, in respect to its application to members, the very greatest--the Marching Forth. As the duel is resorted to, to enforce justice from one student towards another; so it is the Marching Forth, in which the students not merely leave the bounds of order, but the university-city itself, which is regarded as the means of avenging the injured body upon the whole city, for an encroachment upon its rights. That the reader may obtain a clear notion of the Marching Forth, we will describe the one which took place amongst the students of Heidelberg, in the year 1828.

The Museum in Heidelberg, a building dedicated to social entertainment and pleasures, was built in 1827, and completed in the following year. The rules for the management of the institution, which, after careful consideration and proof, were adopted, did not in some particulars please a part of the students; others, however, found nothing to object to, and about seventy students immediately enrolled themselves as members. Instead now of leaving every one to his liberty, a part of the discontented came to the conclusion, that the museum must, so far as the university was concerned, be put altogether under the bann. As it was now found that they laboured zealously to this end, the teachers took the proper measures to prevent such a circumstance. A member of the senate, in whom the better portion of the students had always the strongest moral reliance, endeavoured by every means to make such of the students as stood high in the respect of their fellows, clearly to comprehend, that such a bann had the severest enactment of academical law against it; that it might render the Baden students unfortunate for life, if they allowed themselves to become partisans; that it might lead to the most angry contentions, if those who had already become members of the Museum, would not suffer themselves to be compelled to such an act of evacuation; and the Senate could not remain unconcerned spectators, by any means, of such disorder, not just then especially, as on the near approaching name-day of the Grand Duke, the Museum was to be solemnly and ceremoniously opened.

But the intelligence quickly spread, that the Burschenschaft, which by degrees and secretly had again sprung up, had pronounced the bann with great formality and haste, and that they were labouring with all their might to compel all other persons into the undertaking, and even to draw the natives into the matter along with them. Active measures were therefore unavoidable on the part of the Senate. It accordingly decreed, on the 13th of August, that immediately with the break of the following day, the members of the Burschenschaft should be brought to trial on account of the promulgation of the bann, and that they should be arrested in such a way, that there might be no concerted plan laid, upon what they should state in their defence, and in such a way also that no student should be absent from home.

On the 14th of August, the beadles received at a quarter to four in the morning, the order to pronounce house-arrest to some, and to remove others to the university prison, preparatory to their being called up for hearing. The trial began immediately, and would have been completed the same day, had the laws found obedience. But immediately on the sitting of the court, there arose in every street, the cry of "Bursch, come forth!" This is a call which every student must unconditionally obey, on pain of proscription. It is therefore, as a compulsion in opposition to the laws, and as the most convenient method of speedily raising a tumult, punished with the sharper expulsion.

So ran the ringleaders through the city with a loud "Bursch, come forth!" drew the students together from all quarters, and rushed with them, with great uproar, into the front of the university, where the Senate had speedily assembled, and stood in presence of the tumultuous throng at an open window. Instead of applying to the Prorector, as they should have done, had they ground of complaint, they even treated with contempt two summonses from the Senate to send deputies to explain their claims or demands, and immediately in the face of the Senate proceeded, with loud outcries, to make a desperate onset on the door of the adjoining academical buildings, with sticks and kicks, so that the upper beadle, to prevent further mischief, was obliged to liberate the incarcerated students. This being accomplished, they commenced their march forth towards Schwetzengen.

The whole city was in uproar. The shops were closed out of fear of the wild faction. Every where chaises rattled through the streets; the boot-foxes ran here and there; the inhabitants looked full of trouble out of their windows; when a student, with his sword in his hand, galloped through the streets with the fearful cry--"Bursch, come forth!" Most of the students went along with the train, only because the Comment, or Students' Code of Laws, demanded it, without well knowing for what purpose. The wild throng rushed into the houses of the dilatory, in order to rouse them out of bed. Hastily, every one packed up what was most necessary and threw it into the carriage, or buckled it upon a horse; and when no longer carriage or horse was procurable, the boot-foxes must become baggage-bearers.

In order to rouse all into a necessary degree of resentment, and to keep it up, the ringleaders circulated false stories. They spread it every where that the authorities had dragged the students out of their beds in the night; that they had thrust them into a hole where none could stand upright, and where there was not a single seat to rest upon; while the fact was, that they who were said to have suffered so much maltreatment in the night, were conducted to the academical buildings in clear daylight. Yet, in the excitement of the moment, these false reports found credit, and with the "Bursch, come forth!" which raged like a running fire through the streets, they availed in a very short time, to bring the whole student host together.

They who were on horseback placed themselves at the head of the procession; rode hither and thither, in order to quicken the motions of the dilatory, and to maintain the whole train in order. A long line of carriages followed them, of every description that could be got together in the haste of the occasion. Part were chaises, in which the students rode; part were wagons, on which were hastily loaded their packages. All the students had armed themselves in haste, as well as they might, with swords, rapiers, and pistols. They who found no place in the carriages, or on horseback, went on foot, and a great swarm of boot-foxes followed who were loaded with all kinds of house-gear, as pipes, dressing-gowns, coats, and so on. A vast crowd of people, consisting of school-youths who had to thank the students to-day for a holiday, and of all kinds of people who, in a university city, draw support from the students, added themselves to the train, and increased the uproar and alarm, with curses and insults, that the students should be suffered to go away. The inhabitants of the city looked down in wonder and curiosity from their windows roused from their sleep by the noise, and gazed on the motley throng who, with shouts and singing of Burschen-songs, swept by.

At length the rear of the train disappeared through the city gate, and a strange silence reigned in the deserted town. The doors opened, and the Philistines stepped out into the streets together, to talk over the fatal story. In the mean time a professor might be seen, with serious countenance and hasty steps, hurrying through the streets, and people looked doubtfully after him, or one or another of the citizens detained him to snatch a couple of words as to what was to be done in this necessity of the Fatherland. Here and there also might be seen a solitary student who had not been able to join the train in time, now hastening towards one or other of the city gates; since every one is compelled, on pain of entire proscription, to quit the city in case of a Marching-Forth, even if he does not join the train.

When the train arrived in Schwetzengen, the discontented saw that the territory of Baden was not safe for them, and that by passing the frontier they would enjoy more freedom. Suddenly there followed them from many quarters the report "The dragoons come, to fall upon us!" and all ran with wild haste to Ketsch, a village on the Rhine, where they caused themselves to be ferried over into Rheinish Bavaria. This false report of this falling of the troopers upon them had thus arisen. Immediately on the occurrence of the excess here related, the Senate held it necessary for the protection of the city, hastily to request a hundred dragoons to be sent for from Mannheim. These hundred dragoons marched out of Mannheim, about nine miles below Ketsch, only at half-past two o'clock in the afternoon, after the students had, in fact, crossed the Rhine at Ketsch; and they never directed their march at all against the students, but rode direct to Heidelberg. As it was then there well ascertained that the Marchers-Forth had taken up their quarters for the present in Frankenthal, where part of them were lodged in the town, and part of them had encamped in the neighbourhood under tents, and that many of them had become involved in the transaction through erroneous information, a member of the Senate was requested by the Curatorium to proceed to Frankenthal, and to endeavour to bring the young men to reason. This took place on the sixteenth of August, but without success. On the contrary, the emissary of the Senate was sent back with a remonstrance, very numerously signed, which concluded with a menacing clause, and demanded that the Senate should guarantee the whole body of students against all penalties, on account of this transaction, and should cause Heidelberg, without delay, to be evacuated by the troops. It was also added, by word of mouth, that the bann pronounced on the Museum, could not be retracted.