In the history of the Burschenschaft published in 1939, Georg Heer wrote that with the coming of the National Socialists to power “the goals of the German Burschenschaft had been achieved; the National Socialist German Student Union had now taken over its tasks.”Footnote ¹ Of course Heer was not free to write what he wished about the 1935 dissolution of the Burschenschaft, but his interpretation is consistent with the ideas of many historians about this important organization within the history of German nationalism. Something had gone terribly wrong with this organization, despite its clear liberal and middle-class origins.

Students prepared one of the first meetings of German nationalists from across central Europe in the Wartburg festival. In the revolution of 1830 they formed “Polenkomitees” to show their liberal connections to nationalist movements abroad, and they joined together with other middle-class liberals in a range of oppositional organizations. Burschenschaft men manned the barricades in the Revolution of 1848, and as many as 100 Burschenschaft alumni participated in the Frankfurt Parliament in 1848.Footnote ² By the Imperial period, it has been argued, late German unification and uneven German development led students to worship nationalism at the exclusion of all other values. In the 1890s the Burschenschaft passed an anti-Semitic resolution and joined the Pan-German League as a body. Konrad Jarausch explains that in this period the Burschenschaft “jettisoned the reformist and progressive aspects of its heritage.” By the Weimar Republic, the nationalism of the Burschenschaft had turned decisively to the right and to anti-Semitic. As early as 1920 Burschenschaft members voted to add a kind of Aryan paragraph to their statutes, and by 1932 the Burschenschaft as an organization allied itself with the National Socialist movement.Footnote ³

What historians have too often missed is the continuing strength of many liberal voices in the Burschenschaft in the Wilhelmine era, especially in its last decade. Like much of the rest of German society, the Burschenschaft saw a battle for ideas within its midst. While some students and alumni hoped to ally the Burschenschaft with the Pan-Germans and their radical nationalism, while others wished to see the Burschenschaft as the most dashing (and non-political) of student organizations, another important group within the Burschenschaft drew on the Burschenschaft's progressive and democratic heritage to argue for students to become active in political education and to embrace the liberal values of tolerance, equality, and reform. It is this last group that was gaining strength in the last decade before World War I. The newspaper and histories of Burschenschaft chapters from this period reveal a renewed emphasis on the equality and dignity of all students. Burschenschaft men fought for student independence from administrative interference and demanded responsible student councils, which they called student parliaments. They positioned themselves as the defender of Lehr- und Lernfreiheit (freedom to teach and learn) at universities and argued that these were the central values of the German nation. The 1912 version of the Burschenschaft Handbook concludes with the remark that the “most noble” task of all fraternities is to serve as the “custodians of academic freedom. All bureaucratic limitations [Einschnürung], any weakening of the rights of organizations or individual students must be defended against and indeed with a united front.”Footnote ⁴ Burschenschaft members called themselves the party of reform and for reform in all aspects of student life, in particular in drinking rituals, in dueling practice, in interfraternity relations, and in students' legal position.Footnote ⁵ They welcomed the enrollment of women at universities and placed new emphasis on activities such as sports, workers' courses, discussion evenings, and lending libraries.Footnote ⁶ While the Burschenschaft always claimed that it did not associate with a political party, there are implications that within student culture, the Burschenschaft was linked with liberals. A speech by Otto Riesser in 1912 described how “the founding ideas of all Burschenschaft efforts have always been liberal [freiheitlicher], and one must stay liberal. The Burschenschaft formed in opposition to prejudice and intellectual [geistige] limitations, against small-mindedness, and reactionary ideas.”Footnote ⁷ Looking back from 1928 and describing the late Wilhelmine period, Paul Weinrowsky argued, “During our period one was liberal on every point, everywhere, in every way, on all levels.”Footnote ⁸

This article contributes to debates about the political culture of the German middle classes, especially as the Burschenschaft was considered the most elite student organization for future scholars, writers, and members of the free professions. The Burschenschaft men of the Imperial period drew on the political education of their university years, as they became the lawyers, doctors, scientists, and professors of the Weimar Republic. For the Imperial period, an older historiography drew a sharp line between student supporters of liberalism and “illiberalism.” According to the preeminent scholar of student life, Konrad Jarausch, students held an “illiberal” orientation of unreflexive nationalism, cultural elitism, and hostility toward parliamentary institutions. This period, Jarausch argues, saw the movement from “left-wing” to “right-wing nationalism, and thereby transferring the allegiance of a majority of adult academic professionals from various forms of liberal to a spectrum of anti-liberal movements.” The concept of “illiberalism” was first formulated by Ralf Dahrendorf and expanded upon by Fritz Stern. Dahrendorf and Stern see illiberalism as a defensive position against the rising powers of new forces in society. According to Stern it is “a commitment in mind and policy against any further concession to democracy … [or] any concession in any realm [that] might undermine the authority, prestige, and status of the entire system,” and explains that because of the fear of challenge to their authority, “illiberal Germans heaped abuse on parliamentary institutions, on debate, compromise, tolerance, and reason.”Footnote ⁹ The interpretation of students as “illiberal” is consistent with the theory of the German Sonderweg (Special Path), in which an unpolitical German middle class, among other factors, helped to lay the groundwork for the National Socialist takeover in the 1930s. In his recent survey of the period from 1848 to 1914, Hans-Ulrich Wehler describes a university environment that became a “romping place for illiberalism, anti-Semitism, and dueling fraternities,” and emphasizes the continuities between the middle class of the Wilhelmine era and the Weimar period. He sees a German Bildungsbürgertum (educated middle-class) that from the end of the nineteenth century “to a large extent set itself against liberalism and democracy, supported the excesses of the Pan-German and the ‘Fatherland Party,’ and decisively contributed to the political-moral collapse both before and during the Nazi-regime.”Footnote ¹⁰

The idea of the Sonderweg has been increasingly called into question, however, especially in the Anglo-American historiography. Even some of the proponents of the Sonderweg argument have moderated their claims.Footnote ¹¹ New work on reform movements and the middle classes in the Wilhelmine era has emphasized the interest in change and potential for reform in a wide variety of fields from politics, education, religion, and culture to everyday life: architecture, public parks, medicine, hygiene, diet, sexuality, clothing, land ownership, and ecology. One contemporary in 1902 described reform as the “catchword of the day.”Footnote ¹² Unlike the view of the proponents of the Sonderweg, which describes a weak and unpolitical middle class, recent research on the elections of Imperial Germany shows widespread active political participation.Footnote ¹³ Work on the middle class has revealed a new understanding of the political strength of the liberal middle classes, especially in the cities.Footnote ¹⁴ Alastair Thompson's work has revised historians' understanding of the strength of Left Liberals, especially the power of their electoral campaigns. In the last decade before the outbreak of World War I, according to Karl Heinrich Pohl, “political liberalism experienced a second spring.”Footnote ¹⁵ In his study of Frankfurt liberals, Jan Palmowski emphasizes “the tenacity and success with which liberals achieved their immediate goals” and the “innovation, diversity, and importance” of liberal measures. The liberal movement in Germany could be “as pragmatic and sophisticated as any liberal movement in late nineteenth-century Europe.”Footnote ¹⁶

Although the continued importance of progressive ideas within the Burschenschaft relates closely to the larger political context of liberal trends demonstrated by recent historical scholarship, the specific context of university life and the competition posed by other groups helped to push the Burschenschaft in a liberal direction. Thus this research not only sheds light on the politics of this important organization within student life, but also on student politics as a whole. Throughout its long history, the main rival of the Burschenschaft had always been the Corps (Kösener S.C.). Part of the self-image of the Burschenschaft involved differentiating itself from this organization whose members were from wealthy and high-status families and who could use Corps contacts to move on to elite positions in the civil service.Footnote ¹⁷ In the last decade before the Great War, the Burschenschaft embraced liberal politics to highlight the differences between it and its Corps opponents. By 1902 when conflicts increasingly arose between the two organizations, one writer argued, “in its historical emergence, its development, and in its inner essence, the Burschenschaft is the carrier of the liberal thought of the German Bürgertum and deliberately and consciously opposes the Junker-feudal, conservative, or even reactionary trends, of which the student representatives are the Corps.”Footnote ¹⁸ In addition, by 1900 the Burschenschaft also faced pressure from the left, from the newly formed Free Students (Freiestudentenschaft), who claimed the democratic legacy of the Burschenschaft and put new pressure on the Burschenschaft to return to its roots. Finally, the growing strength of Catholic fraternities at universities, together with the fear of the Catholic Center Party more generally in Germany, moved the Burschenschaft organization toward a stance in which Burschenschaft members believed they could best do battle against the Catholic presence at universities and to embrace Burschenschaft historic liberal values such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the intellectual autonomy of the individual.

An acknowledgement of the ideological complexity of Burschenschaft members' views and one that takes into consideration the contradictions within these students' liberal ideas can give us a more precise and nuanced understanding of their politics than the older historiography on student life. These older accounts often focused on the high points of student anti-Semitism and radical nationalism and as a result, described a Wilhelmine student milieu that was uniformly conservative, elitist, radically nationalist, and anti-Semitic.Footnote ¹⁹ I follow recent research in describing the contradictions, even paradoxes within the ideas of nineteenth-century German liberals. In his book on the Kulturkampf, Michael Gross, for example, has shown persuasively how liberal demands for the legal protection of individual freedoms and for the rule of law, as well as liberals' belief in progress and a glorification of individual development “free from any restriction” could also be combined with a virulent anti-Catholicism and with assumptions that the educated should play a greater role in governance than the average person. In this way, Gross describes as core parts of liberals' politics the intolerance and elitism that has often been associated with “illiberalism.”Footnote ²⁰

Other new works also increasingly call into question the interpretative framework that posited a sharp division between “illiberalism” and “liberalism” as broad ideological orientations. In his work on the radical right, Geoff Eley highlighted the liberal vocabulary that members of the nationalist right relied upon.Footnote ²¹ The works of Kevin Repp and Edward Ross Dickinson have demonstrated the contradictory ways that trends and ideas of the Wilhelmine era could provide a foundation for both National Socialist racial policies and the democratic and progressive policies of the 1920s and 1930s. Repp describes how progressive, democratic, and humanist ideals often mixed with eugenics and cultural despair within the reform milieu of the Wilhelmine period.Footnote ²² Dickinson notes how sex reformers embraced progressive political and ethical aims, but on the basis of “racially biologistic” and “evolutionary-eugenic ideas.”Footnote ²³ Eric Kurlander goes further and finds “extraordinary exclusionary views towards racial or religious others” among those favored progressive economic and social policies.Footnote ²⁴ This article will demonstrate that within the Burschenschaft, it was possible to find such a mix of voices: from the völkisch ideologue Friedrich Lange to the pacifist Hans Wehberg. Some individuals even held within themselves ideas that could be called “liberal” and “illiberal.” For example, Heinz Potthoff, a member of Rhenania-Munich, was a representative to Pan-German meetings in 1898, called for close relations with the more radical Austrian Burschenschaft, and demanded a hard stance against the Polish “enemy.” At the same time, in other articles, he called for Burschenschaft members to deepen their embrace of equality and reform. Potthoff was later elected a representative to the Reichstag for the Left Liberals (Freisinnige Vereinigung) for the period from 1901 to 1905. In 1930 he became a member of the Social Democratic Party.Footnote ²⁵

* * *

Much of the research for this article draws from the pages of the Burschenschaftliche Blätter, a rich source that has not been systematically mined by any recent historian.Footnote ²⁶ For the period examined in this article, Hugo Böttger served as editor and also wrote many of the leading articles. A National Liberal representative to the Reichstag from Hanover, he helped to reorient the Burschenschaftliche Blätter toward policies that would be consistent with his party. At the same time, the editors of the Burschenschaftliche Blätter made the attempt to reflect the views of the membership as much as possible in the pages of its newspaper. As one author wrote in 1896, “in the Burschenschaftliche Blätter it is imperative to consider all matters from the Burschenschaft perspective [vom burschenschaftlichen Standpunkt].”Footnote ²⁷ Much of what was printed was verbatim speeches from Burschenschaft gatherings. In addition, the Burschenschaftliche Blätter printed letters from readers who disagreed with previous articles. At certain points, the editors of the Burschenschaftliche Blätter noted that they would not print any additional letters on a certain question, which also suggests that they printed most of what they received. The newspaper was archived within Burschenschaft fraternity houses and past issues were a basis on which the pledges were educated. Each Burschenschaft pledge sat through hours of instruction from the “Burschenschaft” perspective. By 1900 the student would have had a range of different student organizations from which to choose, and those students who strongly objected to the liberal direction of much of the Burschenschaft political education at the turn of the century could have chosen membership in other groups.

Furthermore, political perspectives played a central role in the fiercely fought battles for rank and prestige within the Burschenschaft. The number and quality of articles published in the Burschenschaftliche Blätter could also raise the status of a chapter, as could positions within Burschenschaft leadership. Over time, a number of “cartels” emerged, based in part on political views. Status within the Burschenschaft was measured not only by the size and the historical importance of each Burschenschaft chapter, but by the chapter's success in forming alliances with others.Footnote ²⁸ While the overwhelming majority of the maneuvering at the annual meeting involved non-political issues, especially conflicts between chapters, debates about the student duel (Mensur), and Burschenschaft regulations, the cartels, in part, seemed to be based on ideological affinities. Alumni encouraged chapters to select one person who could particularly focus on matters of concern to the German Burschenschaft as a whole. Chapters were to make it a practice to propose a motion at every annual Burschenschaft meeting and then work with friendly chapters to ensure that the motion had support.Footnote ²⁹ One author even argued, “The reputation of the Burschenschaft is based to a large extent on the behavior of its representatives at the annual meeting.” The importance of forming alliances, in part based on political perspectives, the status that a chapter could gain from publishing in the Burschenschaft newspaper, and the significance of proposing successful resolutions at the Burschenschaft annual meeting all point to the importance of politics within the Burschenschaft, at least for determining the status of a chapter in relation to the others. Woe to the Burschenschaft chapter without alliances. In 1908, the Burschenschaft Alemannia in Freiburg bemoaned its plight: “we found ourselves in our Jubilaum year alone without a close connection to any other Burschenschaft.”Footnote ³⁰

The Burschenschaft in the Early Nineteenth Century and the Turn to Anti-Semitism

The Burschenschaft initially emerged as a reform organization and emphasized ethics, religion, and a moral life as a means to strengthen the German nation. Freedom emerged as a central concept of the Burschenschaft—freedom in the double sense of inner freedom (the free development of the moral personality) and outer freedom (civil rights and constitutional government). They drew on Enlightenment ideas about the natural equality of all men to create new organizations with equality among all members. Early Burschenschaft members also particularly emphasized the role of friendship and a democratic acceptance of all virtuous men without regard to social, economic, or religious background. These were the ideals of democracy, tolerance, and equality brought into the most intimate of spheres. In their view, it was the power of these friendship ties, formed without affectation and with full openness, that gave Burschenschaft men the strength to take on tasks for the German nation as a whole. Through their organizations they were engaged in “cultivating a new complete and pure humanity.”Footnote ³¹ In this way they distanced themselves from what they saw as the empty formality and the brutal hierarchies of traditional student societies. Rather than the strict rules and focus on outer appearance of a traditional understanding of student honor, the Burschenschaft emphasized a subjective individual determination of what was right and wrong in determining a student's honor. They also drew together nationalism and a form of Protestantism with roots in pietism. By demanding the highest standards of morality, especially sexual morality, and calling for the control of all instinctual drives, they also stamped bourgeois norms on student life. Furthermore, unlike traditional student culture, they demanded that their members focus on their studies and integrate intellectual interests with sociability and patriotism. Burschenschaft members particularly distinguished themselves from other fraternities by their willingness to engage in political education and with a political stance that was Protestant, liberal, and German nationalist. They stood against absolutism and against the remnants of feudalism that remained within the German states. Thus they were one of the first nationalist organizations that crossed German-speaking central Europe and exposed large numbers of young people to ideals of the Enlightenment.Footnote ³²

The first Burschenschaft chapter emerged in Jena, where at the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, five fraternities under the leadership of the Vandalia and Thuringia decided to dissolve on May 29, 1815, and then form on June 12, 1815, as one fraternity with the name of Burschenschaft. Between 1815 and 1817 new Burschenschaft chapters sprang up throughout German-speaking Europe, and many universities saw a battle for influence within the student body between Burschenschaft and Corps chapters.Footnote ³³ On October 19, 1817, in the Burschenschaft's most famous gathering, the Wartburg festival, chapters from across Germany celebrated the 300th anniversary of Martin Luther's posting of the Ninety-five Theses and the fourth anniversary of students' participation in the victory over Napoleon at the “Battle of Nations.” On October 18, 1818, students came together to form a national Burschenschaft organization with chapters across German-speaking Europe; their membership reached 3,000 students, around one-third of all students in the German Confederation or approximately forty percent of students without Austrian students.Footnote ³⁴

With the murder of the Russian diplomat August von Kotzebue by the Jena student Karl Sand in March 1819, Klemens von Metternich took the opportunity to suppress the Burschenschaft, and for the next few decades the Burschenschaft went underground. This period radicalized many Burschenschaft chapters, although the period is also characterized by splits in the Burschenschaft movement. The 1830s saw an embrace of an internationalism and liberalism that emphasized a common international enemy of conservatism, absolutism, and political repression. A minority of Burschenschaft men was active in the “Germanen” party that sought revolution, and the radicals in the Burschenschaft identified with revolutionary actions in Greece in 1821 and in Poland in 1831. In fact three Burschenschaft men from Tübingen died in the fighting in Greece. Several hundred Burschenschaft men attended the Hambach Festival, where they expressed support for the radical and democratic goals of many of the speakers. It was also at the Hambach festival that the black-red-gold colors of the German Burschenschaft were adopted as the colors of the German national movement. The radicals in the Burschenschaft made their revolutionary rhetoric real in their participation in the Frankfurter Wachensturm on April 3, 1833, in which they tried to overthrown the German Confederation, which in turn led to another crackdown on the Burschenschaft. Although probably only twenty students took part in the plot, judicial records suggest that 1,800 people were involved in the trials that followed, of them 1,200 Burschenschaft students or alumni. Despite the continued repression, Burschenschaft students took part in the “Progress Movement” of the 1840s, which focused in particular on the democratization and modernization of university life. Students demanded the end of the duel, the reform of student ritual drinking practices, and the equality of all students. The 1848 Revolution could be seen as another high point of Burschenschaft activism in which students manned the barricades, and many Burschenschaft alumni participated in the Frankfurt parliament. In the wake of the failure of the Frankfurt parliament, however, much of the energy of Burschenschaft reformers was spent, and the period after the 1850s saw a focus on internal matters and less political activism than in the earlier period. The history of the Burschenschaft in the early nineteenth century, though, was important for students at the end of the century as a model. The cultivation of nationalism in the Burschenschaft prepared the way, or so their narrative maintained, for the political German state of 1871.Footnote ³⁵ Students saw themselves following in the footsteps of the Burschenschaft in their commitment to sacrifice for the good of the nation. The Burschenschaften themselves, as well as such diverse groups as the Free Students and the nationalist Union of German Students, would later see themselves as heirs to the Burschenschaft legacy.Footnote ³⁶

By the Wilhelmine era the Burschenschaft's long-desired goal of German unification had been achieved, and increasingly the Burschenschaft became only one among many different student organizations—swimming in a sea of Corps and Turnerschaften and Landsmannschaften and the increasingly powerful Free Student movement.Footnote ³⁷ As opposed to the early nineteenth century when one-third of all students joined the Burschenschaft, by 1902 at most universities, less than seven percent of students joined the Burschenschaft.Footnote ³⁸ How were they to play the role that history had created for them? How were they to provide the leadership that the nation demanded of them? In the 1880s and 1890s some Burschenschaft members turned to anti-Semitism, which in the minds of some presented the possibility of addressing the social question and bringing together the nation around new values. The founding of the Union of German Students (Verein deutscher Studenten) in 1881 with the aim of spreading anti-Semitism throughout the student body put pressure on all student organizations to embrace some form of anti-Semitism. This ugly chapter in the history of the Burschenschaft has been comprehensively described by Norbert Kampe and will not be discussed here, but it is important to note that in the history of the official newspaper of the Burschenschaft, the Burschenschaftliche Blätter, no issue was more controversial than the federation's stand on anti-Semitism. From 1892 when the issue first surfaced to 1897 when the editors finally declared a halt to the discussion, the newspaper printed hundreds of letters representing the diverse perspectives of the members and alumni of the organization. Since many of these letters were anonymous, students could display the full range of prejudices against Jews.Footnote ³⁹

The new willingness to embrace anti-Semitism should not be separated from the larger mobilization around anti-Semitism that was occurring across German society. Most significantly the Conservative Party incorporated an anti-Semitic plank into its platform. The election of 1893 would see a high point of anti-Semitic political parties' electoral success.Footnote ⁴⁰ The new openness to anti-Semitism seemed to be welling up from below, and the many letters published in the Burschenschaftliche Blätter suggest that the Burschenschaft leadership had tried to shut down discussion on this question, but was unsuccessful. The tilt toward anti-Semitism also related to the decision to take a much more decisive political stance on a range of issues relating to German nationalism. On September 15, 1893, the Burschenschaftliche Blätter announced a “new course” that was heavily influenced by the debates about anti-Semitism and by the ideas of alumnus Friedrich Lange, author of Pure Germandom: Foundation of a National Worldview (Reines Deutschtum. Grundzüge einer nationalen Weltanschauung). This work brought together many of the concerns of Conservatives and anti-Semites about Social Democracy, Germans abroad, the Slavic threat, new literary developments, and foreign influences on German culture and German speech. Both contemporary students and later historians saw this “new course” as a new more open embrace of politics. In Dietrich Heither's history of the Burschenschaft, he sees 1893 as its turning point.Footnote ⁴¹

Historians who have discussed this conflict have rightly emphasized the final anti-Semitic resolution passed by the Burschenschaft in 1896. Voting twenty-seven to twelve at their Eisenach meeting, Burschenschaft representatives resolved that they “now have no Jewish members and do not plan to have any in the future.” Historians have further highlighted the number of liberal-minded alumni who resigned their membership in the organization to protest this resolution.Footnote ⁴² A survey of the Burschenschaftliche Blätter, however, has turned up surprising findings on the aftermath of the resolution in the Burschenschaft. A split was threatened even within the Burschenschaft itself. Opponents of the resolution called anti-Semitism “a poison,” “a travesty against the history of the Burschenschaft,” a violation of the idea of the Burschenschaft, especially the equality of all students. It was a “passing fad,” a “children's disease,” the “downfall of the German Burschenschaft.” A law student from Königsberg wrote that linking the Burschenschaft with anti-Semitism (and with the anti-Semitic parties) would be “terrorism of the worst kind.” It was claimed that anti-Semites were notorious for their brutishness and that the embrace of anti-Semitism would result in the “self-destruction” of the Burschenschaft. Letter writers argued that it was a shame to nurse prejudices. “An Alumnus” wrote that it should be remembered that Jesus himself was Jewish. Furthermore, students and alumni expressed outrage that the noble history of the Burschenschaft could be associated with the likes of Hermann Ahlwardt, Otto Böckel, or Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg. The student Hans Wagner argued that it was in the best interest of the fatherland to take advantage of the strength of all Germans, be they by birth Poles, Frenchmen, or Jews.Footnote ⁴³

Despite some of the vulgar rhetoric used in the debate, the Burschenschaft as a whole refused wholeheartedly to embrace racist anti-Semitism. In 1896 at the Burschenschaft annual meeting, the Jena chapter tried to strengthen the anti-Semitic stand of the Burschenschaft and proposed the following resolution: “The Burschenschaft believes in the German Volkstum [Die Burschenschaft steht auf dem Standpunkt des deutschen Volksthums], as a result only students of German origin will find acceptance in our organization. Note: Jewish citizens are not to be considered German.” Students did not pass this racist anti-Semitic resolution in favor of what they considered a more moderate resolution that they “now have no Jewish members and do not plan to have any in the future.” A 1912 account described Jena's more radical resolution as “extremely regrettable” and claims “oil was thrown into the fire unnecessarily.” The narrative also noted that several Burschenschaft chapters declared the earlier resolution, that they expected no Jews to join the Burschenschaft, to be “non-binding.”Footnote ⁴⁴

The issue of anti-Semitism is significant in understanding the mix of different ideological orientations among Burschenschaft members, and it can serve as a test of the Burschenschaft men's belief in equality and tolerance. The passing of this resolution shows the relative strength of conservatives and anti-Semites in the Burschenschaft of the mid 1890s in comparison to the progressives and liberals. At the same time, if the anti-Semites had hoped to use hate against Jews as a means to unify the members of their organization, they did not succeed. The issue of Jews and anti-Semitism for the most part disappears from the pages of the Burschenschaftliche Blätter. Like the members of so many other institutions within “polite society” in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe and the west, they would exclude Jews, but after the debate had concluded, they would avoid any vulgar discussion of anti-Semitism.Footnote ⁴⁵ The anti-Semitic resolutions mark the university milieu as more anti-Semitic than other parts of German life; at the same time the disappearance of the issue of anti-Semitism from most official student publications suggests that students moved on and focused on some of the other conflicts or interests that did not relate to Jews. This lack of discussion of Jews and anti-Semitism in the period after the 1890s also calls into question historiography that emphasizes the centrality of anti-Semitism within German student life of the Imperial period.Footnote ⁴⁶ Because of the National Socialist period, the issue of anti-Semitism looms larger for historians than it did for those who lived in the Wilhelmine era. Marion Kaplan has recently argued a “picture in which anti-Semitic rhetoric, publications, and organizations drown out the daily, lived experiences of German Jews, [is] a picture that would have been unrecognizable to Jewish contemporaries.” Oded Heilbron has also persuasively argued that anti-Semitism must be considered in light of the myriad of other confessional, social, regional, and economic conflicts of the Imperial period.Footnote ⁴⁷

In the immediate aftermath of the anti-Semitism debate, however, it seemed that the Burschenschaft moved generally to the right. An article in the Corps newspaper sketched out some of the main differences between the Burschenschaft of 1895 and the Burschenschaft of the past. By this point the Burschenschaft had become more like other fraternities and focused on its own activities and the duel. The Corps paper also traced a political change from “earlier democratic-tinged Liberalism to monarchical-Conservative views.” Articles called for the Corps and the Burschenschaft to work more closely together. In 1897 one author in the Burschenschaft newspaper wrote, “one can certainly be liberal-minded without associating oneself with the liberal parties. The times are past that Burschenschaft members are the unconditional devotees of the liberal parties.” Georg Winter wrote in the paper that inside the Burschenschaft it was always possible to find many different political perspectives, “but just now in the Burschenschaft the liberals are increasingly pushed into the background.”Footnote ⁴⁸

At the organization's annual meeting in 1896, members voted to join the following groups as a body: the Colonial Society, the German Union for North Schleswig, and the Society for the Eastern Marches; as early as 1893 the Burschenschaft had joined the School Union, and in 1897 the Burschenschaft became a member of the Pan-German League. Every year members contributed 2,000 marks toward these organizations.Footnote ⁴⁹ At a time when the membership in these groups was not large, the decision of the Burschenschaft to take such a step was of dramatic import. Historians have often pointed to this decision as another sign of the Burschenschaft's decisive turn from the liberalism of the mid-nineteenth century to “illiberalism.”Footnote ⁵⁰ A survey of the newspaper in the years after this decision reveals some articles that praised the activities of the Pan-German League and others that embraced a militant ideology.Footnote ⁵¹ In 1898, for example, the Burschenschaftliche Blätter published an article critical of the peace movement with the claims that a long period of peace would make the nation effeminate and lead to cultural stagnation. Germans should not fear the war that must come; instead they should “educate a generation of men that will not melt into tears with the noise of swords and the thunder of cannon, but [will join the battle] with a jubilant and dedicated enthusiasm from young hearts.”Footnote ⁵²

Swing Back

In 1903, the Burschenschaftliche Blätter began its first issue of the year with the claim, “We Burschenschaft as a whole are determined to give up the course that we had been following in the last decade; as a result, happily, we need peer neither to the left nor to the right to copy what other [student] federations are doing [a clear reference to the Free Students' liberal and the Union's Conservative perspective]. Nothing was more wrong-headed or more purposeless than that!”Footnote ⁵³ By the early twentieth century, the attraction of anti-Semitism and the radical form of nationalism of the Pan-Germans had lost some of its power among many Burschenschaft leaders and members. The tawdry political tactics of anti-Semitic politicians had become clearer than they had been in the heady 1890s, and the excitement created by radical nationalist agitation may well have begun to seem stale. By 1903 the numbers of Pan-German members were down to 19,000, while members of other mass organizations were in the hundreds of thousands. In the 1903 election every candidate with close connections to the Pan-Germans lost. According to many Left Liberals and National Liberals, the ideas of Pan-German leader Ernst Haase “were a threat to a well-conceived foreign policy.” After 1900 when Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow publicly associated the Pan-Germans with beer hall politics [Bierbankpolitik], “‘Pan-German’ became a formula word to connote any crazy scheme in foreign policy.” In 1902, Theodore Mommsen called the Pan-Germans “national fools.”Footnote ⁵⁴ Burschenschaft leaders took pride in their claims that they were open to all German nationalists and that they required no specific ideological orientation from their members. While the radical nationalist could find his place within the Burschenschaft, the editorial line of Burschenschaft publications returned to traditional preoccupations, especially a focus on reform. As we will see, the rise of the liberal Free Students put pressure on the Burschenschaft to emphasize its traditional values of equality and reform, along with nationalism. The new focus on the history of the Burschenschaft, with articles in every issue of its newspaper about the activities of Burschenschaft chapters of the past, Wilhelmine Burschenschaft men would have gained a new appreciation of the liberal, democratic, and progressive values of their predecessors.

The rapid growth of student enrollments in the late Wilhelmine era brought new groups to the university and may have made the message of the equality and dignity of all students particularly important for an organization such as the Burschenschaft with ambitions to lead the student body as a whole. University enrollments grew from 28,567 in 1895 to 60,225 in 1914, with many of these new students coming from families outside the traditional elites. A reform of 1900 allowed the university matriculation of students from Oberrealschulen and Realgymnasien, institutions with a focus on math, science, and modern languages instead of Greek and Latin. By 1902, twenty-six percent of students came from the “old middle class” of artisans (Handwerker) and tradesmen (Geschäftsleute), and another twenty-five percent came from the “new middle class” of middle-level civil servants, teachers without an academic degree, and other white-collar workers (Angestellte). These students were, in the words of one historian, “on the way up.”Footnote ⁵⁵

Articles embracing the traditional liberal views of the Burschenschaft also increasingly appeared in the paper. At the same time, it is important to remember that the statutes themselves obligated the Burschenschaft as an organization to avoid any direct political commitment.Footnote ⁵⁶ A reviewer in the Burschenschaft newspaper of Georg Meyer's Parliamentary Suffrage defended German universal suffrage and disagreed with Meyer, who favored property requirements for voting similar to the English system. Instead, Burschenschaft authors suggested that the progressive legislation that had been enacted in Germany would not have been approved without universal suffrage, and as a result, universal suffrage must stay.Footnote ⁵⁷ Editors also discussed the reform of suffrage laws in Prussia and Mecklenburg, where the three-class voting system allowed those who paid the top third of the tax receipts disproportionate voting influence. This author described the debate as a battle between “Liberals who want to move Germany into the future against the hard-nosed resistance of the Conservatives.” This author argued that students were not paying enough attention to these reforms that would create a constitution and a suffrage system that “could open the door [for Germany to deal with] modern challenges and modern developments.” Such articles put Burschenschaft newspaper writers in line with some of the views of Left Liberals who called for electoral changes that would make Germany more democratic.Footnote ⁵⁸

Not only liberal voices made their claims with increasing strength in Burschenschaft publications, but also those who favored a democratic engagement with political education. Historians have often described students as having an attitude of “disdain” toward politics, or with an orientation of “apolitical nationalism and instinctive conservatism.”Footnote ⁵⁹ In contrast, the publications of the Burschenschaft encouraged students to prepare for their civic duty. One article noted, “If suffrage is the citizen's most important right, then it is the citizen's most important duty to exercise this right.”Footnote ⁶⁰ By 1914 the editor of the Burschenschaftliche Blätter argued that at the same time as the alumnus received his band signifying his graduate status, he should also join a political party. In another article that year, it was recommended that students consider a career in politics and work for one of the political parties. From there, it was suggested, it would be easy to transition into writing about politics as a journalist.Footnote ⁶¹

A new engagement with Burschenschaft history is consistent with the liberal direction of the Burschenschaft after the turn of the century. In 1909 the leadership of the Burschenschaft decided to create an organization for the research and dissemination of Burschenschaft history, and they dedicated 4,000 marks per year to support its work. Leading the Burschenschaft Historical Commission were the influential historians Friedrich Meinecke, Erich Marcks, and Karl Lamprecht. In almost every issue of the newspaper, editors discussed and analyzed sections of the Burschenschaft history. Burschenschaft members and other interested parties could also purchase a wide range of titles from a series called the Burschenschaft Library. It was not possible to hide the clear liberal orientation of the early Burschenschaft, and while many of the treatments of the Burschenschaft chapters stuck primarily to a description of events without normative judgments during the period chapters were forced underground and during the revolutions of 1830 or 1848, it was also possible to note a new appreciation for the accomplishments of the liberal men of the past. Publications on figures such as Fritz Reuter, Karl Mathy, and Carl Schurz were common.Footnote ⁶² In a long piece on the Frankfurt Parliament in the Burschenschaft Handbook, editor Hugo Böttger noted many positive achievements and concluded that too many have forgotten what had actually occurred; they have “overestimated the role of men of state and underestimated the role of the people's movement.” In a review of Friedrich Meinecke's Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat, another Buschenschaft writer described the “men of the Paulskirche [Frankfurt Parliament] as the real originators [Begründer] of German unity.”Footnote ⁶³

Other articles in the Burschenschaftliche Blätter also suggest a new focus on reform and openness to progressive ideas. Editors of the Burschenschaftliche Blätter strongly praised Friedrich Naumann's Democracy and Empire. Although they suggested that Naumann's vision would not be realized in the immediate future, “no book is so suitable and ideal as an introduction to the politics of today and [no book] shows so plainly our mission for today.”Footnote ⁶⁴ The chronicler of the Burschenschaft Germania in Jena, one of Germany's oldest Burschenschaft chapters, described how in the period after 1904 members abandoned their Kneipe (ritual beer-drinking) on Mondays, limited the regulations around the Komment (rules of the fraternity), played guitar, studied more diligently and attended lectures enthusiastically, did not contract as many debts, and had better relationships with other Burschenschaft chapters.Footnote ⁶⁵

By the last decade before the outbreak of war, Burschenschaft members described themselves as the party of reform and called for reforms in all areas of life. They praised steps toward the creation of general student councils at universities. At Berlin the Franconia led the organizational efforts for a student council that would bring together all students.Footnote ⁶⁶ Even the temperance movement reached the Burschenschaft.Footnote ⁶⁷ Some Burschenschaft leaders were also interested in reforming the regulations around honor courts and even legalizing the student duel.Footnote ⁶⁸ By the end of the nineteenth century students had created their own form of dueling as a sport, the Regulation Duels (Bestimmungsmensuren), which took place without a specific cause or challenge. Fraternity men believed that these Bestimmungsmensuren or Mensuren provided important training in courage, strength, and character.Footnote ⁶⁹ Although fencing was practiced openly at all German universities, this student duel (Mensur) was technically illegal. By 1911, men such as Heinrich Dietz called for the full legalization of the student duel.Footnote ⁷⁰ By the eve of World War I, some Burschenschaft leaders were increasingly trying to associate the Mensur with other sports, especially as sports became more and more popular at universities. In a circular letter to all chapters in 1911, members of the Green-White-Red cartel encouraged all chapters to contact politicians and the press and campaign for a change in the laws that would follow Austria's model. In Austria participation in a Mensur was not subject to the legal restrictions on the duel, as long as the appropriate precautions were taken and rules were followed. In a move that shows the clear embrace of the rule of law, they explained, “what has almost everywhere been tacitly tolerated must now be raised into law.” The Mensur, they argued, “must be declared to be exempt from punishment, a position that almost all teachers of criminal law hold.” Another author argued, “False ideas about the purpose of our Mensur dominate among an unfortunately large group of academics. All liberal men who call on German youth and the academic youth to practice sports should also call for the preservation of the Mensur.”Footnote ⁷¹

Burschenschaft chapters also played a role in the movement to improve the legal status of students. Despite the many freedoms within student life, rectors strictly controlled the civil rights of students, most importantly the right to assemble and freedom of speech. In Strasbourg, the rector even forbade students from assembling to discuss proposed reforms in student financial assistance. In particular after the passage of the new law regulating associations after 1908, the restrictions on students stood in sharp relief.Footnote ⁷² Burschenschaft members criticized decisions of university authorities to restrict students' right to assembly as “arbitrary and purposeless.”Footnote ⁷³ Another Burschenschaft member wrote, “The existing disciplinary statutes are not consistent with today's world [heutigen Zeitverhältnissen] and have limited academic freedom.” Instead legal regulations for students should fit “a modern sense of justice.” Students were too often treated like children by authorities who wanted to bully them and control their organizations.Footnote ⁷⁴ In an article on Friedrich Naumann's ideas, one author particularly emphasized the importance of protecting all Germans' civil rights, including the freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion.Footnote ⁷⁵ In the history of their chapter, the members of the Berlin Burschenschaft Allemannia claimed that they took a leading role in the battle against the Minister of Culture when he tried to limit students' rights to associate and assemble.Footnote ⁷⁶ Burschenschaft members in Berlin criticized Rector Adolf Wagner's decision to dissolve the Sozial-Wissenschaftlichen Verein and his defense of his position in the Kreuzzeitung. This organization, which provided a forum for the discussion of political, economic, and social questions, seemed objectionable in the eyes of some because it allowed Social Democratic students to present their views. In the Burschenschaft defense of the organization, they argued that much could be learned when individuals from all perspectives from the far right to the far left have a chance to debate. Such evidence must call into question the view that students were “illiberal” and “heaped abuse on parliamentary institutions, on debate, compromise, tolerance, and reason.”Footnote ⁷⁷

In a no-less-controversial issue than the admission of women to universities, the Burschenschaft also took a progressive position. As early as 1896 an article appeared in the newspaper that suggested, “Within certain limits, we must be sympathetic to the women's movement in the name of honor and freedom.”Footnote ⁷⁸ In 1898 one author recommended the plays of Henrik Ibsen as a means “to understand the woman question in light of modern literature.”Footnote ⁷⁹ The editors of the Burschenschaftliche Blätter approached the question from a practical perspective: it was important that middle-class single women find a respectable way to make a living.Footnote ⁸⁰ Burschenschaft authors criticized those who had “an old-fashioned idea of the woman's calling: cooking soup, knitting socks, wiping children's noses—anything else is objectionable [alles andere ist von Übel].”Footnote ⁸¹ In October 1903 they praised the decision of Bavaria to follow Baden and to allow women to matriculate at universities. They further noted that the seven women who began their studies had passed their exams with good grades; they called for the building of College Preparatory schools for girls in Bavaria, and they predicted that “in the long term, no state can avoid implementing this reform, which over the course of time has proven necessary.”Footnote ⁸²

Articles in the Burschenschaftliche Blätter embraced many of the reform and modern trends of the turn of the century. Burschenschaft authors praised the achievements of modern art and literature.Footnote ⁸³ A number of articles described the ideas of Alfred Damaschke in favor of land reform in mostly positive terms.Footnote ⁸⁴ They also lauded a lecture by the Berlin Economist Gustav Schmoller and defended him against criticism in the Conservative press. In one discussion of his writings, they concluded, “science and technology have created a new and infinitely better and more beautiful home for mankind, and now it is the task of political reform, morality, humanity, and justice to bring about a new order with a fair distribution of resources for all classes.”Footnote ⁸⁵ A new engagement with the social question and a new focus on workers' courses and reading rooms were part of the new Burschenschaft after 1899. Consistent with a centrist political perspective, the Burschenschaft newspaper also published a series of articles extolling the virtues of the scientist, entrepreneur, and social reformer Ernst Abbé. A leader of the Progressive Party in Jena, he rose from lowly origins to become the owner of Jena Optics Manufactory. He then funded a private foundation with the aim of bringing the social policies that he had embraced, including an eight-hour day, profit sharing, and limiting executives' salaries to no more than ten times the lowest-paid worker to workplaces across Germany. In his own factory, he dedicated surplus profits to the city and to Jena University to be used for free education. Abbé, Burschenschaft writers editorialized, provided a model for the new industrial entrepreneur. Rather than the utopian vision of the Social Democrats, Abbé presented a model for social reform that could work in practice.Footnote ⁸⁶

Although liberal ideas increasingly appeared in its newspaper, at the same time, the Burschenschaft did not as wholeheartedly identify with the liberal ideas in the late Wilhelmine era as they did in the mid-nineteenth century. The official line of the Burschenschaft continued to hold that they should prepare for a future in which they would be active in politics, but at the university, they should not directly involve themselves with politics. In fact Burschenschaft statutes required students to avoid active political participation while they were students. The Burschenschaft's aim of providing political education but not embracing a specific political party, meant space in their publications for diverse voices such as the Pan-Germanist Friedrich Lange, the later German National People's Party member (DNVP) Otto von Pfister, National Liberals Walter Ferdinand Lohmann, and Hugo Böttger, Liberal Union (Demokratischen Vereinigung) member Rudolf Ernst Breitscheid, and even pacifists such as Arnold Werner Freymuth.Footnote ⁸⁷ At times these different factions also came into conflict. In the issue of the reform of student disciplinary regulations, it is possible to see clearly some of the tensions and conflicts within the Burschenschaft itself. In 1911 the Free Students spearheaded a movement to protect student rights in disciplinary matters. The records from the Burschenschaft annual meetings suggest that those Burschenschaft chapters in larger universities were more eager to join this movement than Burschenschaft men from the smaller universities. Burschenschaft representatives in Berlin circulated a letter in which they condemned existing regulations: “on the one side, the administration has all the power and the other the student is powerless.” Other students, however, expressed concerns about the impact of political agitation on students and wanted to preserve the specific student traditions at each university, as opposed to creating new regulations that would apply at all institutions.Footnote ⁸⁸

Also, after reviewing a debate about the politics of students in the Prussian State House, writers in the Burschenschaftliche Blätter emphasized the political diversity within student life. Even though one newspaper described the Corps as Conservative, the Burschenschaft as National Liberal, the Turner and Landsmannschaften and one part of the Free Students as Progressive, and the rest of the Free Students as Social Democratic, Burschenschaft writers claimed that the Burschenschaft followed no political line. Many issues left students cold, but there was more interest for colonial matters, military issues, the social question, and the danger of the Catholic Center Party. Although in a 1914 speech Heinz Potthoff claimed that within the Burschenschaft there were “Conservatives and radicals, absolutists, and democrats,” others argued that students as a whole and Burschenschaft members in particular could not be identified with the Conservative Party, and especially “the Conservatives' pronounced politics of privilege had only a small circle of adherents among German students.”Footnote ⁸⁹

The Reichstag election of 1907 with the alliance of the Conservatives, National Liberals, and Left Liberals against the Socialists and the Catholic Center provided the best opportunity for the Burschenschaft to embrace a political cause directly. Burschenschaft members could argue that they were not associating with a specific political party. Instead they were defending the German nation against the dangers of the Red and Black international: “from time immemorial, this had been the fighting position [Kampfstellung] of the Burschenschaft.”Footnote ⁹⁰ Despite the requirement that Burschenschaft chapters avoid engagement directly with politics, some Burschenschaft chapters did provide electoral assistance for the Bülow coalition. In Kiel students publicly announced that they would assist in all the detailed work that the party might assign. Burschenschaft chapters in universities such as Königsberg, Berlin, Leipzig, and Erlangen later also decided to join election efforts.Footnote ⁹¹ Twenty Burschenschaft men from Jena were sent to Eisenach to assist with Gustav Stresemann's National Liberal candidacy. Some students used horse-pulled wagons, some trains, and some even cars to reach voters. This district, which had long been held by Social Democrats, went to Stresemann. According to the Germania's chapter history, the Jena Burschenschaft members were particularly pleased with “their victory” and celebrated for three days.Footnote ⁹² For the 1912 elections, the members of the Berlin Franconia were happy to help by taking workers to the polls. A 1936 account of the Bubenreuther chapter in Erlangen described how members served as Helferdienst in the last elections of the Empire and explains that they focused their efforts in particular against the Center Party, the Social Democrats, and the anti-Semites. In addition to this concrete assistance, articles in the Burschenschaftliche Blätter described the links between the goals of the Bülow block and the Burschenschaft.Footnote ⁹³ After the 1909 elections in Baden, editors called for more Burschenschaft men to take part in politics, especially with the aim of battling the Center and the Social Democrats. This active role of the Burschenschaft in the elections of 1907 and 1912 calls into question the arguments that students felt “disdain” for politics.Footnote ⁹⁴

Liberal ideas within the Burschenschaft were often promoted at the same time as Burschenschaft men emphasized their anti-Catholicism. One Burschenschaft writer argued that they were “for freedom to learn and freedom to teach and were ready to fight all that challenged freedom at universities, especially the Catholic fraternities.”Footnote ⁹⁵ In another article, the author claimed that Catholic students had only one choice: “to act in a way that is not scholarly or to violate the requirements of the Church.”Footnote ⁹⁶ In an article on the annual Catholic Days, a Burschenschaft member commented satirically that “we do not need universities anymore. To discuss the result of research would be unnecessary; we can just wait to hear what Catholic authorities tell us to believe.”Footnote ⁹⁷

Despite the strong rhetoric against Catholics, approximately ten percent of Burschenschaft members were Catholic. Since one was listed as “Catholic” merely for having been born and baptized in a Catholic family, it is possible that many of these students did not practice their faith.Footnote ⁹⁸ Even if there were some Catholic Burschenschaft members, public speeches also reveal some of the Burschenschaft hostility to the Catholic Center Party. At an assembly of 1,000 Burschenschaft actives and alumni and 800 guests in Berlin at the Zoological Gardens on January 12, 1907, speakers called on the audience to join the battle against Red and Black: German Catholics must choose between their nation and Rome, “for it is not possible to serve Rome and the German people.”Footnote ⁹⁹ One Burschenschaft member argued that Germany was faced with numerous enemies, but “above them all was the Vatican and its servants.”Footnote ¹⁰⁰ The Burschenschaft, according to one of its members, was “openly hated by the Ultramontanes, but they consider this fact a badge of honor. It does nothing to injure them.”Footnote ¹⁰¹ One article from 1904 described the Catholic fraternities as “reviving the spirit of the Middle Ages” and as a result must be fought by the Burschenschaft, the “leaders of the people who will guide Germany to intellectual freedom.”Footnote ¹⁰² At times the Burschenschaft and the members of Catholic fraternities came to blows, for example, over a series of two days at the Burschenschaft Stammlokal in Munich in 1910.Footnote ¹⁰³

The 1908 speech of Professor L. R. Goetz provides the clearest example of the new strength of liberal voices in the Burschenschaft and the way that these voices were combined with anti-Catholicism. He told an assembled crowd in Düsseldorf, “[Catholic] Center or liberalism, this is the decisive question that we must ask ourselves.” To Goetz the answer was simple and clear: “modern culture is a direct result of the liberal principles of freedom and independence of the individual as well as of the entire civil society [bürgerlichstaatlichen Gesellschaft].” Goetz emphasized liberals' embrace of tolerance as a principle—all citizens should have equal rights under the law. These were principles, according to Goetz, that all members of the Center opposed and all liberals agreed upon—be they Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ This explicit discussion of the unity of all liberals—including Jews—provides another clear contrast with the anti-Semitism of the 1890s and links the Burschenschaft of this period to the liberal Burschenschaft of the earlier period.

The Burschenschaft and the Free Students

An understanding of the relations between Burschenschaft members and students in other organizations reveals not only aspects of the Burschenschaft's politics, but also sheds light on changes in the student milieu. The growth of the liberal Free Students and the pressure it placed on the Burschenschaft signal significant ideological shifts within student subculture. In 1895 at Berlin University, the rector asked “non-affiliated” students [those not members of fraternities or associations] to organize and to create a new student council that would represent all students. After this encouragement from university authorities, the movement quickly developed its own momentum and Free Student leaders across Germany began to challenge the domination of the fraternities and to demand that university authorities grant them new rights. Such recognition allowed Free Student representatives symbolically important roles in student councils, on university committees, and in parades and other holiday celebrations. By the turn of the century many university administrators had accepted the Free Students' “right of representation” and thus the Free Students became the official voice of all students not in a fraternity.

Free Students' emphasis on students' equality, on each individual's unique intellectual development, on academic freedom, and on university reform mirrored many of the traditional values of the Burschenschaft. A Jena student by the name of R. Däumler commented that the Free Students “filled circles of academic youth with a part of the Burschenschaft worldview that otherwise would never be touched by it.” As a result, according to Däumler, the Burschenschaft should be pleased by the growth of the Free Students, and “they should be able to go a good bit of way together.”Footnote ¹⁰⁵ At the same time, the clearly held ideology of Free Student leaders of opposition to all hierarchy and privilege, embrace of democratic structures and institutions, and the protection of civil rights, especially freedom of speech, put pressure on the Burschenschaft to fight for its age-old ideals.

In the period after the founding of the Free Students, it is also possible to note an increased emphasis on the equality of all students. One Burschenschaft member stressed the importance of the “the acknowledgement of each individual as having equal rights, consistent with true Christianity in which we are all equal.” Elsewhere they wrote that they had always held the equality of all students as a fundamental principle of the Burschenschaft.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ In Böttger's 1912 Handbook for the German Burschenschaft, the historical goal of the Burschenschaft was described as “fighting for the equal rights of all students.” One particularly progressive author, Alfred Wirth, wrote in the newspaper, “the Burschenschaft was born from the people; it is not the child of a certain or a privileged class, and as a result, the members must be upstanding men, who of their own free will, work with and for the people.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷

The Burschenschaft editors often praised the Free Student movement. In 1903, Hugo Böttger argued for a positive relationship with the Free Students and that the “wish for recognition” that the Free Student organizations represented “must be granted without delay.”Footnote ¹⁰⁸ In 1907 editors claimed that the Burschenschaft must have understanding for all efforts to battle the “caste spirit and the unjust privileges of one section of the student body over the others.”Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Organizations with a similar political perspective to the Free Students such as the Akademiker Bund and the Freibund were also described in positive terms. Hugo Böttger praised the ideas of the Akademiker Bund, which included parity between the technical colleges and the universities, reform of the disciplinary regulations for students, and political education for students. The Akademiker Bund also discussed modernizing the way lectures at universities were presented (Modernisierung des Vorlesungswesen), the reorganizing of financial aid, the founding of student councils and dormitories, and legally recognizing the Mensur (student duel with swords). Böttger noted that this new organization must “at least merit the friendly attention of educated and academic circles.”Footnote ¹¹⁰

By 1910 the founding of the Freibund had created increased pressure on the Burschenschaft from the left. This organization aimed to draw together all those students who favored progressive policies; for example, they advocated barring the student duel, reforming the student disciplinary process, and democratizing university life. The Freibund grew very quickly and in academic year 1911 to 1912 had local groups in Berlin, Göttingen, Leipzig, Marburg, Munich, Bonn, and Freiburg and a budget of more than 7,000 marks, half of which they spent on newspapers and pamphlets.Footnote ¹¹¹ Certainly the Burschenschaft would disagree with the Freibund members' views on the duel, but some members also pointed to similarities; one author described the program of the Freibund as “the program the Burschenschaft has followed for more than 100 years.” Members of the Freibund demonstrated for suffrage reform on the streets wearing the colors of the German nation and the Burschenschaft with the aim (in the view of one Burschenschaft member) to “document that they are the successors to these men who, decorated with these colors, fought and sacrificed for political progress and for the strengthening [Erstärkung] of the Fatherland.”Footnote ¹¹² Sources also suggest that the Burschenschaft and the Freibund competed to be seen as the sharpest enemy of the Catholic Center Party. One student noted in the Burschenschaftliche Blätter that it had been members of the Burschenschaft who had been chosen to speak on a panel organized by the Bismarckbund, a group with the aim of “fighting the power of the Center.” The fact that a Burschenschaft member was selected, “can be seen as proof that the Burschenschaft members have just as much understanding for political questions as the Freibund members do.” The formulation of this comment suggests that it was the Freibund's standard to which the Burschenschaft aspired.Footnote ¹¹³

In response to the threat of the Free Students from the left and their focus on politics and political discussions, the Burschenschaft increasingly stepped up activities involved with political education. They organized lending libraries to give students more resources for the study of politics. In part to emulate the Free Students, they increasingly encouraged their chapters to organize debate and discussion evenings and brought in outsiders to help their members inform themselves about politics in greater depth.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Herbert d'Oleir of Arminia-Marburg particularly recommended that students themselves take the sides of specific political parties in their debates. On some controversial issues, the Left Liberals and Conservatives could debate. For the Jesuit laws or school issues, the most dynamic debates could result between students representing the views of the Center and the National Liberals. These debates should then be combined with lecture evenings on various topics, “from the functioning of a mine, to Germans in Bohemia, to women's rights in Australia.” D'Oleir argued that national politics and party politics should play a large role in the Burschenschaft through systematic and in-depth education of all members.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Although some Burschenschaft members did not appreciate the political evenings,Footnote ¹¹⁶ an 1898 account of the Brunsviga chapter in Göttingen describes that by the 1890s political education became as important as dueling practice. The debate and lecture evenings there were greeted with “great excitement,” and the most diverse topics of general interest were discussed, contemporary events as well as from the history of the Burschenschaft. In a history of the liberal Burschenschaft in Freiburg, it was argued that the goal of the Burschenschaft was “circulation of political knowledge among members.”Footnote ¹¹⁷ Hans Leonhardt suggested that the Burschenschaft implement a systematic overview of German politics for pledges, including one semester of lectures on foreign politics, a second on internal politics, and a third on party politics. Each student should become accustomed to reading the newspaper every day in order to orient and inform himself.Footnote ¹¹⁸ By 1909 Ernst Schumann would argue “whoever is only interested in dueling, drinking, and fraternity brotherhood should naturally keep his distance from the Burschenschaft.”Footnote ¹¹⁹

Although the Burschenschaft was following some aspects of the Free Student program, they also stepped up their criticism of this organization. After 1907, the Free Student claim of leadership of the non-incorporated student body increasingly came into conflict with the interests of fraternities. Conflicts over the Free Students' “representation principle,” or right to represent all students occurred across German universities, but especially in Münster, Halle, Breslau, Kiel, Berlin, Rostock, and Marburg.Footnote ¹²⁰ By 1908 one member of the Burschenschaft would write that the Free Students did not want to “stand alongside the fraternities, but over them.” The Free Students increasingly attacked the fraternities directly and according to Burschenschaft editors “made a series of arguments to try to prove that our fraternities have little right to exist.” It was the Free Students, Burschenschaft men claimed, that increased the conflict (Zerrissenheit) and class divisions within the student body in a way that was “neither patriotic nor Christian.” In a sign that the Burschenschaft beliefs in equality and tolerance did not extend to foreign students, as they did not for devout Catholics, Burschenschaft members expressed concern about the assistance given to them by the Free Students. The Russian engineers trained in Germany would provide competition for German industry; “as long as we have not completed our own house, we should not supply our building materials to foreigners.”Footnote ¹²¹

At their origins in the early nineteenth century, the leaders of the Burschenschaft saw themselves as uniting and leading the student body. They particularly resented that the Free Students increasingly tried to claim this role for themselves. Even worse, in the view of many Burschenschaft students, was the exaggerated praise of the Free Students in many Left Liberal newspapers. Allegedly the new movements toward reform in the Burschenschaft were totally ignored by these newspapers, and papers such as the Berliner Tageblatt repeatedly described the Burschenschaft as a shadow of its old self, while the Free Students were claimed to have a mass following and leadership role within the student body. While every little flaw or misstep of the Burschenschaft was reported in detail, the Free Students were “praised to the heavens.”Footnote ¹²² One Burschenschaft author even reported that as he considered joining the Burschenschaft, he received a letter from a friend who warned him that in fraternities he “must see the greatest reactionary force”; they were the “spawn of hell.” The author continued that in “their blind fanaticism,” the Free Students attacked fraternities in a hateful way and without proof of their accusations.Footnote ¹²³

Although the most thorough recent treatment of the Free Students emphasizes their role as a minority within the larger student political culture, it seemed the Burschenschaft did see the Free Students as a threat. In an article about Leipzig, the Burschenschaft editors noted that the newspaper of the Free Students of Leipzig, Jena, and Cothen appeared weekly, and Leipzig was “flooded with this paper.” Messenger boys delivered it in front of the university, and it was possible to find it all over the university: “Everywhere you can get it for free.” What was worst of all is that the editors of this Free Student newspaper took a very aggressive line against the fraternities. A similar situation in Strasbourg with a constant presence of multicolored flyers led one Burschenschaft member to report that they would ignore the agitation of the Free Students; “it is only unfortunate that as a result of this behavior the Burschenschaft is forced to be untrue to one of its founding principles: cooperation with the entire student body in matters relating to students.”Footnote ¹²⁴

Völkisch Voices within the Burschenschaft

For those students who cared most passionately about politics and embraced a Conservative or anti-Semitic perspective, they were, in general, more likely to find comrades who shared their worldview in the Union of German Students (Vereine deutscher Studenten) or in the Corps. Students made decisions about which fraternity they would join on the basis of a number of factors, only one of which was their own political perspective. Many students joined the fraternities of their fathers, other relatives, or school friends. Also, as has been emphasized, officially the Burschenschaft did not follow any specific political set of ideas. It is also possible to find within the Burschenschaft and within the leadership of the organization a number of students who combined democratic views with racism, hoped to move the Burschenschaft in an apolitical or Conservative direction, as well as those who embraced Pan-German, racist, and radical nationalist views. It is indicative of the political divisions in the Burschenschaft that some were concerned about the increasing role of politics in the Burschenschaft and warned of the danger that the organization might even be split apart.Footnote ¹²⁵

In the last part of the Wilhelmine era, Burschenschaft editors also published articles written by Pan-German leaders, covering Pan-German events, or informed by a radical nationalist perspective. In 1909 the Breslau chapter reported that it had attended many meetings and lectures of the Pan-German League, and that its activities had garnered considerable support among Burschenschaft members there. A 1905 review of Pan-German leader Ernst Haase's political handbook suggested that it made many stimulating points and should be recommended to all those who were interested in politics. The Burschenschaft printed a speech from the 1905 annual meeting of the Pan-Germans in Worms where race theorist Ludwig Kuhlenbeck described the achievements of the Middle Ages, the Early Modern period, and the Modern period as due to the Aryan race. He condemned the deep class divisions in Germany, but did not expect much change from laws because “law, morals, and constitutions are much more a product of race than the reverse.”Footnote ¹²⁶ In 1906, a Dr. Kleinschmidt wrote an article from an anti-Semitic perspective critical of the number of Jewish students studying in Germany.Footnote ¹²⁷ As late as 1912, long after the move away from the Pan-Germans and anti-Semitism, and as the Pan-Germans had lost favor within the middle class more generally, the Burschenschaft newspaper still printed excerpts from its meetings. They introduced their discussion of the Pan-German annual meeting by remarking, “without declaring oneself agreed with all the resolutions and suggestions of the Pan-Germans, either from the outset or afterward, one must be pleased at the many fresh initiatives and the extent of national power and grandeur that the League displays under its strong leadership.” The editors of the Burschenschaftliche Blätter felt it necessary to include a long description of many of the speeches at the meeting, including those that focused on Russian students at German universities, German colonies, Germans in the United States, the international position of Germany, and the military budget. Then at the end of the article they included a racist call to control marriages between blacks and whites, in part because “the entire life of the black person revolves around the exercise of sexual drives.”Footnote ¹²⁸ In another article in 1914 Hans Lange described the conflict between Germandom and Slavs as based less on political or geographic conditions, but much more from “the vast antagonism between the races.”Footnote ¹²⁹

Some aspects of Burschenschaft corporate culture contradicted progressive and democratic values. Most Burschenschaft chapters met weekly for drinking rituals in which the members would be forced to obey the orders of the leaders and various penalties would apply for refusing to comply. During the pledge semester, students could be forced to take part in humiliating activities and follow the commands of the Burschenschaft leaders to the letter. The exclusion of women from the bonds of life-long brotherhood and the intense passion of the ties between the members had the potential to create a world where masculine power and strength was prized above all else, and women were seen not only as different, but as inferior. The pride and selectivity of Burschenschaft chapters carried with it the possibility of class-arrogance and snobbery. Many fraternity men contracted exorbitant debts; spent their time dueling, drinking, and whoring; and ignored their studies, all in emulation of the traditional aristocratic lifestyle. Finally, the student duel with swords, a ritual in which only those deemed “able to give satisfaction” could participate, could buttress anti-democratic elitism and shape a mentality in which the strong dominated the weak. It is what some have perceived as “illiberal” corporate culture, the anti-Semitic resolutions, and the political statements of some students that have helped to convince historians of students' decisive turn from the liberalism of the early and mid-nineteenth century.Footnote ¹³⁰

There are ways, however, in which the ritual life of the Burschenschaft and other fraternities could be combined with a democratic or progressive worldview. The annual meetings of the Burschenschaft followed parliamentary procedure; representatives of each fraternity had voting rights, and the results were published in the Burschenschaft newspaper. Once students left the period as pledges and became full members, they had equal voting rights within their fraternity. In the weekly meetings, procedure was followed exactly, and fraternity men were to rely on past precedent. Judging by the emphasis on reform within the Burschenschaft, the problem of the lazy and immoral student was still significant; at the same time the situation seemed to be changing. Friedrich Paulsen, a historian of the universities, would write that “the type of fraternity student who spends his time carousing, dueling, and making debts will, at no distant time, continue his existence only in the Fliegende Blätter.” While the student duel with swords (Mensur) could be barbaric and brutal, it also left all men equal. As a sport, it leveled differences of birth and wealth within the university, theoretically putting all who participated upon an equal footing.Footnote ¹³¹ Finally, the most glaring faults of fraternity life—the elitism and arrogance—also appeared all too often in other organizations of liberals and of the middle classes.

Nationalism was at the center of the Burschenschaft values. In the view of Corps newspaper editors, the leaders of the Burschenschaft went so far as to claim, “if it had not been for the German Burschenschaft, there would be no German Reich.” The strong historical emphasis on nationalism within the Burschenschaft did create openings for the most radical of German nationalists. Even up to 1914, it is possible to find their views within the pages of the Burschenschaft newspaper. Because of their historical role and self-proclaimed position on the vanguard of German nationalism, Burschenschaft men also saw themselves as a protector of German interests. Like the National Liberals, and by the last decade before the war some Left Liberals, most Burschenschaft members would have believed in the historical import of imperialist aims for Germany. Perhaps most clearly and prominently, Burschenschaft men unconditionally supported the cultivation of German nationalism abroad and the building of a larger German fleet.Footnote ¹³² Germany apparently also needed a place in the sun, and it was only because Germany came late to imperialism that it did not possess a world-wide empire like England's. Other peoples, they argued, should share in the blessings of German culture. Articles in the newspaper also called on the German government to continue to defend German interest in the Polish east. The editor of the Burschenschaftliche Blätter attended meetings of the Society for the Eastern Marches (Ostmarkverein), an organization that called for aggressive actions to Germanize the Polish east. In the romantic tradition of German student nationalism, Burschenschaft leaders glorified the sturdy humble German Volk, the brilliance of German literature, the strength of German industry, the prowess of the German military, and Germany's bright future. Would any reader of the Burschenschaftliche Blätter need to wonder if Germany were superior to all its rivals?Footnote ¹³³

At the same time, most articles in Burschenschaft publications avoided the extreme rhetoric of the Pan-Germans. Many of the articles on national questions provided historical overviews and tried to take what would have been perceived at the time as a scholarly tone. Of the nationalist pressure groups, the one that had the closest ties to the Burschenschaft was the German School Union (Deutscher Schulverein), which was founded by Austrian Burschenschaft alumni. It emerged from nationalist conflicts in Austria where it already had 120,000 members in 1887 and drew together German nationalists from across the political spectrum. The group supported the founding of German schools and libraries.Footnote ¹³⁴ An article on the importance of the German fleet begins with the claim that all sectors of German society from the conservatives to “deep in the ranks of the Social Democrats” agreed “our position in the world absolutely requires an increased maritime protection.” Although colonies brought nationalist glory and a German place in the sun, articles focused on the details of the economic problems that the colonies faced and the recommendations that might help to make them profitable. In discussing the challenge to Britain that a navy fleet produced, one article noted as of 1912 while Britain spent 16.75 marks per capita on its fleet, Germany spent only 3.5 marks. In an attempt to distance the legitimate demands of responsible men from those of reckless radical nationalists, the editor of the Burschenschaftliche Blätter ended one article on the navy with the following plea: that “the decision to build a larger fleet be made with diligence and peace of mind, without Hurrahstimmung, without rowdy provocation of other nations, without extravagance.” What was at stake was not “delusions of a medieval or Napoleonic Empire,” but simply the “welfare of our land, the auspicious social and economic development of Germany.”Footnote ¹³⁵ The history of Bonn-Alemannia, one of the strongest Burschenschaft chapters, also provides suggestive evidence about the rise and fall of the Pan-German influence in the Burschenschaft. As founding members of the Red Cartel, by 1914 the dominant cartel in the Burschenschaft, they could shape Burschenschaft policies as a whole. While the Reds focused on reform, political education, and patriotic activities, their main challengers, the Whites, concentrated on dueling and student pageantry.Footnote ¹³⁶ The contentious confessional relations in Bonn and the many battles with members of Catholic organizations may also have led to a political orientation that emphasized liberal values of academic freedom and individual autonomy. Writing in 1925, the chronicler of the liberal Alemannia from Bonn noted that few members of the Burschenschaft had been involved with the Pan-Germans. They claimed that most who joined the Pan-Germans were “officers and merchants.” Finally and most dramatically, they noted that while the ideas of the Pan-Germans did impact their chapter during the 1890s, after 1901/1902 “no traces of the influence of the Pan-Germans remained.”Footnote ¹³⁷