The Student-Life of Germany

by William Howitt

A similar endeavour, made through the university Amtmann, on the eighteenth of August, received as little attention, although the Museum, in many points, had yielded to their demands, and thereupon was immediately relieved from the proscription. The resentment against the Senate continued unabated; and therefore, on the evening of the eighteenth, in all haste, the academy was declared to be under the bann; this, however, was not done through the voting of individuals, but effected by the dreaded ringleaders pronouncing the bann, demanding then the others to accede to it, though many were opposed to it; and thus the resolution was passed in a painful silence, since individuals saw dangers on all sides of them if they refused. Yet in that night, and in the course of the next day, numbers quitted Frankenthal, and returned towards Heidelberg. Here, when they came to understand exactly the real circumstances of the case, there was regret and general discontent. A great number of the most noble young men loudly declared the bann to be dishonourable, to be null and void, because brought about by deception; to be contrary to all custom and precedent, and thereupon came some of the most artful proceedings to be talked of: for example, that in the remonstrance sent to the Senate, there were forged names of students who were absent at the time, and that the menacing clause had been surreptitiously introduced. In fact, the natives of Baden had had no part in the declaration of the bann.

On the twentieth of August the classes again were opened, while the trials were still proceeding. The ringleaders were punished with expulsion; others were banished for a certain term; and a greater number imprisoned for a longer or shorter period. The attention of the court was turned by these events afresh on the still continuance of the Burschenschaft, and it was pursued with yet greater severity of proscription than before. But the Studentschaft had so far achieved its original object, that its demands on the Museum were for the most part conceded.

Such Marchings-Forth are of rare occurrence, yet this is not the only one that has taken place in Heidelberg. Many years before this, occurred a something similar one, on account of contentions with the military, which then lay in Heidelberg.

A student, as he went past the watch-house, forgot to take the pipe from his mouth. He came into contention thereupon with the soldier on guard, who called an officer, by whom the student was very much insulted. This gave occasion to a Marching-Forth, which, however, proceeded no further than to Neuenheim, about a mile from the city, whence the students at once returned, all their demands being complied with; which, were, that a full amnesty should be guaranteed for all that was past, and that the soldiers should be removed. Moreover, the military were obliged to post themselves on the bridge, the officer at their head, and so present arms while the students marched past again into the city in triumph, and with music playing before them.

Where soldiers and students are brought together in one city, collisions are inevitable; at least in the smaller cities, where both cannot be sufficiently mixed and lost in the great mass of the people. Many contentions have heretofore arisen out of such collocation; and thus occurred also the Marching-Forth from Giessen in the year 1819. The military having in the most unallowable manner acted towards the students, and one of the students coming to a quarrel with an officer, was extremely insulted by him. There appeared in consequence of this a ministerial rescript, in which it was ordered that the military in future should only be called out against the students by a requisition from the Senate, and that all acts of illegality already alleged against the military on the part of the students should be strictly investigated, and every just satisfaction made to them. There immediately appeared a judgment on the part of the military college, by which the officer who had insulted the student was condemned to fourteen days' close arrest, which was immediately to take place; and was, moreover, required, in the presence of the rector of the university and of the colonel of the officer, to beg pardon of the student. The aforesaid ministerial rescription was now made known to the students by four deputies of the Senate, who waited on them in the place of their retreat; whereupon they immediately resolved to return to Giessen, and to restore every thing to its old course and order.

To give yet another example of a Marching-Forth, we may take the disturbance in Göttingen in the year 1818. Contentions arose between the then students and the members of some of the trade guilds; amongst others, with that of the butchers' guild. The house of a butcher who had especially insulted the students was very much damaged, and the windows of another house beaten in. A commission was despatched by the government to Göttingen to inquire into and quell the disturbance. The means, however, which were adopted in order to bring the incensed student youth again within the bounds of order, were not the most fitting; and the calling in of the military only made the matter worse. The students refused to succumb to a strange power. They boldly attacked the hussars; these drew their swords, and in the skirmish many students were dangerously wounded. About eight hundred of the students now marched out to Witzenhausen. They sent by the hands of four deputies, a memorial to the Senate, who delivered it and returned. In this document they complained, that one of their fellow-students had been maltreated by a butcher, and that the butcher had not been visited with the punishment due to his offence; that the sending of a royal commission altered the condition of their rights; that the authority of the same had been so far illegal that the reigning prince had not yet confirmed it; and finally, that the people had been attacked by the military in time of peace, whereby many had been wounded.

The ministry, thereupon, issued a rescript, which commanded the whole body of students to return, and if they refused obedience, threatened them with the loss of every claim to future employment by the state, as well as of all stipends that they might enjoy.

After an absence of more than eight days, the greater part of the students, who had scattered themselves through the country, returned, exerting, however, on their side a right of retaliation, by declaring the university to be for two and a half years under the bann to all foreigners. The foreigners immediately took their departure, and only about six hundred students were left in Göttingen,--about half of the number who had studied in it before those disturbances took place.

In Witzenhausen the people had fleeced the students of nearly all their cash. All necessaries of life, during their abode there, were raised to a monstrous price, and the burgers of that place charged them individually for a week's lodging as much as a louis-d'or. Therefore now, to quit Göttingen, they were obliged to dispose of every thing that they could possibly spare.

Many natives also, spite of the menaces of the ministers, quitted the cities; and Göttingen, in fact, presented a melancholy aspect. The departure of the foreigners was injurious to the city, in two respects; many workmen depended on them for subsistence, and besides this, they left many debts behind them. It was natural, in these circumstances, that many workmen too should quit the place, since their means of livelihood had failed, and thus the emptiness of Göttingen became still more apparent.