Academic choral society

The term Academic Choral Society is not only a generic term for choral societies with exclusively student members (comparable to the workers choral societies ), but was also a widespread name of this type of choral society in the 19th century.

However, these were seldom choirs established by the universities , but rather voluntary choral societies organized exclusively by students, some of which nevertheless achieved a high musical reputation. Other common names were Akademische Liedertafel (e.g. the Akademische Liedertafel in Berlin , founded in 1856) and the student choir (e.g. the student choir of Georgia Augusta in Göttingen , founded in 1860).

Many of the Academic Choral Societies founded before the First World War are now organized in the form of a student union , provided they are still musically active . The academic choirs are thus a prime example of the development of student associations in the context of the corporatization of universities in the 19th century.

history

Founding background of the first student choirs

Membership card of the Academic Choral Society Munich

Although the first purely student choral societies came into being as early as the 1820s, they did not experience their real start-up boom until around 1860. Until then, the students were almost exclusively involved in civic choral societies. In the 1850s, however, stimulated by the (but ultimately failed) progress movement at the universities, the students looked for other forms of association than in a student union . The establishment of our own student choirs (as well as at the same time as the labor movement ) was particularly stimulated by the already widespread use of the singing movement in the bourgeois world and the national feeling associated with the singing movement, recognizable by the singing literature that was widespread at the time. The first facilitated the integration of a sufficient number of qualified singers, the second in turn promoted acceptance in the audience.

This movement experienced a significant upswing from the 1860s, which can be seen not only in the absolute number of academic choral societies, but also in the fact that they often had the most members among all student associations at their universities. So were z. For example, between 1860 and 1865 in Göttingen ( student choir of Georgia Augusta ) and in Munich ( Akademischer Gesangverein AGV Munich ) up to 10% of all enrolled students were also members of these clubs, in Munich the rate even reached almost 20% for a short time.

From association to connection

From the founding of the empire in 1871, the originally purely association-like, intercorporate choirs solidified , in which, on the one hand, they included purely social (i.e. non-musical) events and activities in their internal work in addition to musical activities. Gradually, many associations began to forbid their own members from simultaneously becoming a member of another student association on site. Usually - if this had not already happened earlier - one selected one's own circle or one's own colors , which one usually did not wear as a ribbon and hat - as is otherwise usual with the student associations - but only in the form of club ribbons or lobes . The - as far as known - first Academic Choral Society, which also wore its colors as a band, was Leopoldina Breslau in 1877.

Another step away from a pure association towards a student union was that the academic choral societies gave their outgoing members the official dignity of an " old man " in order to be able to continue to be in contact with them. The old gentlemen, in turn, formed their own associations, so that the Academic Choral Societies around 1880/1890 largely had the structural and organizational form of a student association. Another typical feature of the development from association to association is the fact that the student choirs that emerged in the last 20 years of the 19th century were no longer founded as associations, but as associations.

Formation and development of the associations

Around the middle of the 1870s, like the cartels of other associations, the first rapprochements, mergers and "support agreements" between individual choral societies from different universities, such as B. between the Akademische Liedertafel Berlin and the Akademisches Gesangverein AGV Munich in 1867, which became the nucleus of the "Kartellverband Deutscher Studentengesangvereine", which has been called the Sondershäuser Association since 1897 .

However , there was no amalgamation of all student choirs to form an umbrella organization, although there were efforts in this direction. In 1896, on the occasion of the 35th foundation festival of the Erato singers in Dresden, a meeting of representatives took place in which more than 25 associations took part and in which the "German Academic Singers' Association (DASB)" was founded, to which the member associations of the "Kartellverband Deutscher Studentengesangvereine “But did not want to simply join. But also within the DASB there were different directions, which in 1901 led to multiple entries and exits of connections of the DASB after differences over the determination mensur. After settling these differences, the association was reorganized in the same year, now called the “Chargierten-Convent, Association of Color-Carrying Academic Choral Societies”, or from 1902 “Chargierten-Convent, Association of color-bearing singers” (today German singers ).

One reason why it was never possible to bring the student associations with a musical principle together in one association must be seen in the fact that they were originally very similar to the civic associations and that - also due to different situations at the individual universities - the Approach of the individual choral societies to the "classical liaison system" proceeded very differently. This can be seen, among other things, from the fact that only about half of the student choirs (from around 1890) gradually decided to practice the mensur as a connection, i.e. student fencing. The pioneer of this development was the Pauliner AGV in Jena, which was the first academic choral society to introduce the so-called conference censorship in 1880. This development into striking / colored and non-striking / non-colored connections was one of the most important reasons why it was not possible to establish a representation of interests for all academic choral societies in the long term.

The (measure-) striking and colored singing associations, which today without exception bear the name Sängerschaft , are today in the German Singers' Association and in the "Weimar Interest Group of German Singers ", the non-colored, mostly with the name ("Academic-Musical" or " Academic-musical connection ”) in the special houses association.

Current situation

The maintenance of classical concert and oratorio literature by choirs in the field of universities and technical colleges is now usually taken over by the university choirs, i.e. university-owned institutions under the direction of a conductor appointed and paid by the university. Student choirs as non-university institutions today either belong to a musical student association or, due to their thematic focus, only serve a marginal area of the choral world (e.g. as a jazz choir or gospel choir ). According to the current state of knowledge, free student choirs with classical concert and oratorio repertoire, i.e. the original “academic choirs”, are no longer available.

Likewise, the name “Academic Choral Society” has de facto disappeared in Germany. Today only the Academic Choral Society AGV Munich, founded in 1861, still bears this name. As a student union, it belongs to the Sondershäuser Association.

Parallels and differences to other academic associations

The academic gymnastics clubs were also subject to a development very similar to that of the academic choral societies. Here, too, the corporatization can be traced back to a consolidation of the union through the inclusion of characteristics typical of the association.

However, this is different with the Academic Orchestra Associations. They also emerged at the end of the 19th century as inter-corporate associations, but did not change their structure like the academic gymnastics and choral associations, but remained in this looser organizational structure (compared to student associations). In November 1912 there was an attempt to form a “cartel of academic orchestral associations”, which ultimately failed to have any effect and probably fell asleep in the 1920s. If they still exist as independent organizations at the universities (and are not university-owned institutions), they are usually still organized as free associations today. This is likely due to the fact that the number of students playing an orchestral instrument was never large enough to prevent them from joining any other student association. Furthermore, it can be assumed that the specific type of rehearsal work of an orchestra left less scope for additional social activities among the members or restricted the number of possible members to such an extent that there were never enough interested parties for a "life of connections in the narrower sense". At least that explains why pure “orchestral connections” are still not detectable today. On the other hand, the Academic Choral Society AGV Munich and the StMV Blue Singers Göttingen (both in the Sondershäuser Association) maintain their own symphony orchestras, whose members do not have to be members of the association.

literature

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