The Student-Life of Germany

by William Howitt

"How is it, friends, that we feel ourselves too effeminate to contend for this loftiest laurel of courage and obedience? Certainly the nobler, the more honourable, in every accomplishment the more advanced, a man, a union, a people,--there for ever is and was the more rarely to be found the duel. What, then, must be thought of men to whom the duel is become a chief business of life? of youths called hereafter to become the leaders and the lights of your people? How, ye jurists! ye who hereafter will nicely weigh in the balance the right--will sharply reprove insolent opposition to the law--and would rather suffer shame and death than perpetrate the smallest injustice,--will you open the way through audacious contempt of the laws?

"Medical men! called to wound that they may heal, not to destroy, will you commit that double crime against the state?

"And could a philosopher--a theologist, so grossly deride the Divine Teacher's word--'Do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who despitefully use you?'

"And, noble friends! can true honour prevail, where drinking, quarrelling, and insult give the shameful occasions for the duel? True honour! where he who refuses to fight a duel is exposed in rude verses in public places, and is even maltreated with vulgar violence? True honour! where in aggravation of disobedience, dishonourable lies are also added? I glow with shame to the very depths of my mind, that any amongst us, however few in number, could be so mean as to deny the deed, could harden themselves shamelessly to make the denial a point of honour! Oh! hideous spectre of honour, without the courage of truth and of obedience! The courage of truth and obedience is the highest honour; and he who binds himself to a union pledged to lies and to disobedience, he has from the beginning no conception of honour; unfit for a priest, unfit for a judge, unfit for a physician!

"O my friends, I see you burn with a noble indignation; you are all on fire for honour, for the highest honour of manhood. Up then! there is a vast, a boundless field of laurels for you, for us all, to contend for. Shame to ignorance! shame to immorality! shame to the rude might of arms, without knowledge, without morals, without obedience! shame to obedience towards unions in things which God and the king forbid! In knowledge, in morals, in obedience, in glowing love to King and Fatherland--in them let every individual endeavour to outstrip another, every union the other, our university all others. I call you, my friends, to such a noble contest; and to it call you your honour, the fame of our university, the fame of the Fatherland, and of our King!"

These abuses, which we have just now alluded to, that is, the passion for the duel, and the strong drinking, are the causes which make the Verbindungs, which are known under the name of Landsmannschafts and Chores, odious. In fact, if one puts these dark adjuncts out of mind, then the student life, and in particular the Chore life, has only a cheerful aspect. The close incorporation of students into unions, which have regular meetings in some particular place, from which every uninvited disturber of order is banished; meetings for social entertainment and exhilaration; for practice in bodily exercises, as in fencing and gymnastics; these could only serve to a more speedy accomplishment of active and intellectual men, and would be certainly approved of by all reasonable persons. These dark adjuncts have brought the Chore life into great unpopularity, and have induced many governments to prohibit the Chores themselves, as the vehicles which contain and maintain these pernicious practices. Yet it must be remembered that practices so deeply rooted are not to be expelled by force, but only through the advancing march of humane knowledge; and it must be further acknowledged, that the Chores by the maintainance of order in these things themselves, only prevent a greater outburst of the wild Burschen-spirit. The governments have made use of the Chores frequently in order to bring the student youth to a quicker adoption of resolutions which would be for the good of the university, or of the state; and this continues to be the case in those states where they are yet allowed.

Let us imagine the Chores purified from their dross; they would then represent unions which had their own constitutions, and where those in reality who distinguished themselves most in outer life, would take the first places. Let it not be believed that in such a case the proper acknowledgment would be denied to him who, unincumbered with social life, devoted himself exclusively to knowledge. This happens by no means to those who belong to the present Chores under their present circumstances. That the student jealously watches over his honour; that he easily imagines this honour affected, grounds itself on the equal standing which he gives to every one of his fellow-members. He makes this sufficiently obvious himself, in that he will not permit the usual duel between the Student and the Philistine. We cannot blame this strict vigilance over the Burschen honour; but the means resorted to, to restore wounded honour, are truly foolish, and worthy of punishment. If we imagine the duel superseded by the sentence of a court of honour, which condemned the guilty to beg pardon, or some other proportionate punishment, there would be nothing further to be desired.

But the reasons which the government assigned for the proscription of the Burschenschaft were totally different. They were determined to this prohibition by this principle; that the student who is at the High-school in order further to develope his intellectual faculties, and to arrive at a scientific and political freedom in his views--that he, the scholar, is not called to step forth here already as a teacher of the people; that he is not called upon to overturn the constitutions of states, before he has yet learned properly to analyse their nice and elaborate construction; since it is a true assertion, that it is much more easy to pull down than to build up; and it was a piece of presumption in the youth to attempt to hurl down by violence a fabric, which the best and wisest of the people had with their best strength erected.

In Heidelberg, since the Marching-Forth of 1828, the Burschenschaft, as its especial promoter, was anew strictly proscribed, but the Landsmannschafts were sanctioned; and from each new-springing Verbindung the word of honour was taken, by the academical board, that it was no Burschenschaft. After some years, however, these Landsmannschafts were forbidden also.

So far as the Burschenschaft was a union which, on account of its ideal object, claimed prerogatives beyond the other Verbindungs, in so far by that prohibition is its return to the High-school made impossible. But so far as the Burschenschaft spirit is a real constitutional spirit, we may in Heidelberg assert with pride, that it never was abandoned by the young burgers of our High-school, and that all our present existing Verbindungs are animated by this same noble feeling. This constitutional mind has already displayed itself prominently on so many occasions, that it is not necessary to bring evidences of it. We may simply allude in confirmation, to the interest which the students have always manifested in the proceedings of the Landtag, and to the testimonies of acknowledgment which they have always given to those teachers who have there exerted themselves for the good of the people, and for the maintenance of constitutional freedom. We may notice the sympathy with the unhappy state of Poland, which the students publicly, by word and deed, expressed to the Polish officers who passed through the city. Hence, because these unions do not assume as their object the preparation for the realization of some certain idea, but merely a pleasant social life during the university years, it does not follow that the hearts of these young do not beat warmly for knowledge, for right and freedom, and that no individual amongst them pursues this noble aim, nor does it follow that these unions set themselves in opposition to such more ideal aims as may already be begun there to be pursued.