German student body

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The German Student Union ( DSt ) was from 1919 to 1945 the amalgamation of the general student committees of all German universities including Danzig , Austria and the former German universities in Czechoslovakia . Originally founded as a democratic representation of interests, the DSt got into serious internal conflicts between the republican minority and the ethnic majority wing in the early 1920s . Dominated by the NS student union since 1931 , the DSt was effectively merged with it in 1936 and finally banned as a NS organization in 1945.

development

prehistory

Thousands of students pay homage to Bismarck on his 80th birthday on April 1, 1895

This first student umbrella organization on German soil was celebrated by contemporaries as the “longing made into a century of German studentism”. For although the original fraternity had already strived to unite all students into a uniform organization and there were several attempts to joint representation later on, the German student body remained fragmented into numerous competing associations and associations throughout the 19th century . However, some of these associations - above all the nationally-minded fraternities and associations of German students - often claimed to speak for the German student body as a whole, for example in the numerous Bismarck honors they initiated .

Since the 1890s the resistance of the non-corporation students to this sole representation has been stirring up. They united in free student bodies and after long disputes with associations and university authorities finally succeeded in establishing common representations in the form of the general student committees . Before the First World War, however, there was no longer any establishment of a full agency at national level .

Democratic approaches and self-help based on solidarity

After two preparatory meetings of representatives in Frankfurt in 1917 and Jena in 1918, the German student body was finally founded in July 1919 at the “First General Student Day of German Universities” in Würzburg as an umbrella organization for the local student bodies. Otto Benecke (Göttingen), who was also elected first chairman, Hermann Wandersleb (Halle / Berlin), Immanuel Birnbaum (Munich) and Arnold Bergstraesser (Heidelberg) played a leading role in the establishment of the company . The student representatives gathered in Würzburg, mostly former combatants, were not only determined to finally overcome the prewar rifts between the various student groups. B. was expressed in the equal composition of the first board - but also in the majority (still) ready to “participate in the cultural reconstruction of Germany on the basis of the new state order”.

With this in mind, in its early years, the DSt primarily advocated the social concerns of students affected by the aftermath of the war and inflation. For example, on the 4th German Student Day in Erlangen in 1921, the self-help associations that had previously been established at the local level were incorporated into the “Economic Aid of the German Student Union e. V. ”, from which the German Student Union later emerged. In its “Erlanger Program”, the DSt also propagated student work (vulgo: jobben) not only as a means of increasing livelihood, but also as a contribution to overcoming the traditional barriers between academics and workers. In the following years, the DSt played a major role in the establishment of the German National Academic Foundation in 1925, the promotion of study abroad and university sports . Initial proposals for university reform and demands for student participation in academic self-administration soon faded into the background.

Constitutional dispute and anti-republican radicalization

Just like the fraternity movement before it, the German student body was shaped by national politics. This found, for example, in § 2 letter a of the Prussian regulation on the formation of student bodies of September 18, 1920, according to which the "agreement beyond the parties to participate in the cultural and economic development of Germany" was the task of the student bodies. The regulation thus pointed beyond the tasks of the universities; on the other hand, “party political and religious purposes” were excluded. After the student self-help had been separated from the actual student self-administration at an early stage, the focus was even more clearly than before on the field of national political education. The DSt soon became involved after it was founded in severe internal struggles that led to the departure of the pragmatically oriented war generation to a permanent split in the DSt in a Republican-constitutionalist minority and ethnic majority wing. In the period that followed, the student bodies were increasingly dominated by nationalist, anti-Semitic and anti-republican forces. At the latest since the foundation of the Deutscher Hochschulring as a collection movement of the völkisch right, the " Aryan principle " also found more and more approval among the " Reich German " student bodies. The DSt only accepted Aryan organized groups at German universities abroad in Austria and Czechoslovakia as members, which was particularly vehemently propagated by the Austrian and “ Sudeten German ” representatives.

Carl Heinrich Becker , the father of the above-mentioned regulation, commented in 1926: "The impression given abroad, which was very undesirable, was that a one-sided selection principle among Germans living abroad had been carried out solely on the basis of the racial standpoint." General political mandate, as it was later to accompany history in the Federal Republic of Germany in parts, which the student bodies were in a sense in the cradle. CH Becker had seen the problem and stated in a contribution to the justification of the regulation of 1920: “The organs of the student body are formed for student purposes and objectives, they represent the students not as citizens, but as academic citizens and can therefore be in students do not take majority decisions but in political matters ... In any case, no one wants to forbid the student to express his political opinion, only the future board of the student body does not have a mandate from its voters to comment in the political daily struggle. ”CH Becker had just as little with this defensive and foreboding opinion Success as in the arguments over the Aryan question.

With the decree of September 23, 1927, the Prussian government tried to rectify the situation. This regulation referred to the student body as a “constitutional member of the university”, which lives on in the currently customary characterization as a “member body”, and determined the Aryan question: “The student body consists of the German and foreign German students enrolled at the university ... The student body can unite with such organizations that exist at other German universities, provided that these organizations include all Reich and foreign German students ... “The dispute ended, of course, with the fact that in the strike vote at the Prussian universities on November 30, 1927, almost all student bodies adopted the new student body law rejected (with the exception of the theological-phil. Academy Braunsberg). C. H. Becker then dissolved the student bodies in Prussia, so that initially there were no longer any student bodies at the Prussian universities.

National Socialist Conquest and Harmonization

Flyer of the German Student Union, which was distributed for book burning in 1933 .

As a result, the DSt temporarily lost its importance and at the same time became increasingly dependent (above all financial) on the influential corporation associations ; a counter-foundation called the Deutscher Studenten-Verband (D.St.V.) , initiated in 1928 by republican, left-wing and Jewish groups, found little support at the universities.

A relative decline in voter participation in the local student committees - from an average of 80% previously to below 50% in 1929 - also favored their subsequent conquest by the NS-Studentenbund (NSDStB), which took place at the Graz Student Day in 1931 - in part against bitter resistance of the old corporation associations (see: University Political Working Group of Student Associations ) - finally took over the leadership in the DSt. At the Königsberg Student Day the following year, the delegates appeared in the uniforms of the various NSDAP branches; the factual self- alignment of the DSt was completed.

The law on the formation of student bodies at the scientific universities of April 22, 1933 reintroduced the student bodies nationwide and was able to build on the existing tendencies. With the obligation to "people, state and university" in § 2, it laid down the student bodies in a typical National Socialist sense, for example on the idea of ​​racial struggle, and brought the principle of leadership . In May 1933, the German student body organized public book burning in Berlin and 21 other cities. In the twelve sentences of the student body "against the un-German spirit", which were posted as part of this campaign from April 13, 1933, it was said: "Our most dangerous adversary is the Jew and he who is a slave to him." These activities led to a temporary stabilization and revaluation of the DSt. As a result, however, the constant power struggles with the Nazi student union increased, especially over responsibility for the issue of comradeship and the political education of students. The center of DSt policy in 1933/34 was the establishment of the "Kameradschaftshaus" as the center of a new way of life for students. This concept failed in November 1934, when Hitler made it clear at an internal meeting that he fundamentally opposed the barracking of students in comradeship houses. A few days later, Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust entrusted the Nazi student union with "leading and directing the entire student education". Thus the political disempowerment of the DSt was accomplished. In the following years it no longer played a decisive role in student policy. Finally, in 1936, the DSt and the NS student union were merged under a uniform " Reichsstudentenführung ".

Thereafter, the DSt continued to exist formally as an independent body (to which all registered German and “Aryan” students automatically belonged as contributors); In fact, however, it lost all leeway to the NSDStB. By 1938, from the Reich level to the individual student bodies, there was an extensive personal union in the management positions of the DSt and NSDStB.

Dissolution and succession

After the end of the war, the German student body was banned as a Nazi organization by the Control Council Act No. 2 in 1945 and their property was confiscated. When - in turn democratic - successor organization was created for the Federal Republic in 1949 in Marburg of the Association of German student bodies . In Austria, the Austrian Students' Union was established by federal law in 1950 . However, neither organization was nor is not a legal successor to the DSt.

Structure and organization

Organizational structure of the German student body (around 1927)
Central Association Offices of the German Student Union (around 1927)
Selected AStA election results from 1920/21

Membership and organs

Members of the German student body were not the individual students or the various (corporation) associations, but the local student bodies , which in turn were represented by their general student committees.

From a geographical point of view, the individual student bodies were initially grouped into eight, later ten districts, which met several times a year to form district assemblies and each elected a district leader and a deputy. Certain association tasks could be assigned to the individual circles by the student day or the board of the DSt for permanent execution.

Every year in July, the representatives of all student bodies meet for the "German Student Day ". As the highest organ of the DSt, it determined the basic lines of the association's policy and elected the board of directors and the heads of the central association offices. Between the student days, the “Main Committee of the German Student Union” - consisting of the district leaders and three “elders” elected by the Student Day - exercised its powers and advised the board and the individual offices in their work.

The board of directors of the German Student Union consisted of the chairman and two deputies or assessors. Until the main committee was formed, the district leaders were also part of the board.

The DSt maintained various offices and departments for special tasks, e.g. B. Foreign Office, Office for Political Education, News Office, University Archives , Office for Physical Exercise, Specialist Office, Central Transport Office, Department for Social Work, Department for University Reform, Department for War Participant Issues. The “Economic Aid of the German Student Union” had a special position, although it performed the tasks of a DSt office, but was organized as an independent association (see graphic).

The headquarters and most of the offices were initially located in Göttingen (Jüdenstrasse 21), later in Berlin (Großbeerenstrasse 93).

"Parties" within the German student body

Although only the individual student bodies were entitled to vote in the organs of the DSt, the various student associations played a major role in it from the start. However, it is difficult to make generalized statements about the political balance of power within the German student body. Although the Würzburger Studententag of 1919 had already "made the general equal and direct proportional representation into law", there were hardly any supra-regional organizations or lists in the local AStA elections. Rather, the local connections and associations came together, depending on current interests, to form electoral alliances that were difficult to compare and varied (see graphic).

All that can be said is that the explicitly “party-political university groups” that emerged for the first time after 1918 - from social democracy to the university groups of the DNVP - played only a marginal role overall. Party politics was widely regarded as "unacademic". Only the “ Republican Student Cartel ” formed in 1922 by the university groups of the Weimar coalition parties represented, at least for a time, noteworthy opposition to the growing national majority.

On the other hand, the inter- corporative amalgamations of traditional student associations were more successful, above all the “ Allgemeine Deutsche Waffenring ” of the beating corporations, which officially rejected any party politics , but at the same time gave massive support to the nationalist movement . Due to their coordinated appearance, the weapons associations were able to provide the executive board of the DSt for years (see below). The Catholic associations also represented a significant number in terms of numbers, but differed in their political orientation: While the Unitas association was considered close to the center and friendly to the republic and the KV occupied a moderate right-wing middle position, the color-bearing CV in particular tended, not least thanks to its Austrian Members partly clearly to the right.

By far the most influential grouping was the " Deutsche Hochschulring " (DHR) until around 1926/27 , to which almost all nationally-minded corporation associations and a large part of the free student body belonged. He considered himself a collective movement of all patriotic -minded people rejected officially any party politics, and at the same time represented a first socially-inspired, but later increasingly racist and anti-Semitic charged ethnic nationalism . The DHR was involved in practically all anti-republic and anti-Semitic actions at German universities during the 1920s (e.g. against Theodor Lessing in Hanover) and is therefore rightly regarded as a pioneer of National Socialist ideology in the student body. Consequently, it quickly lost its importance with the emergence of the NSDStB.

The National Socialist German Student Union (NSDStB), founded in 1926, initially suffered from general party skepticism among the student body. While its ethnic-anti-Semitic ideology already met with broad approval in the student body, the anti-bourgeois and anti-corporate rhetoric of the early NSDStB leadership met with rejection. It was only under Baldur von Schirach that the NSDStB achieved increasingly spectacular electoral successes from 1928 onwards, which culminated in the conquest of several district leaders in 1930/31 and finally the DSt board of directors.

Chairman of the German Student Union

Term of office Surname corporation
1919/20 Otto Benecke Association of German Student Associations , VDSt Göttingen
1920/21 Peter van Aubel Catholic Free Association Cologne
1921/22 Franz Holzwarth Goettingen
1922/23 Fritz Hilgenstock Hannoversche Burschenschaft Arminia
1923/24 Arthur Fritsch KDStV Winfridia Breslau
1924-1926 Hellmut Bauer Fraternity of Teutonia in Kiel
1926/27 Günter Thon Arminia Brno fraternity
1927-1929 Walter Schmadel Fraternity Danubia Munich
1929/30 Erich Hoffmann Corps Austria Frankfurt am Main
1930/31 Hans-Heinrich Schulz Corps Hildeso-Guestphalia Göttingen
1931 Walter Lienau Corps Isaria
1931-33 Gerhard Kruger Fraternity Arminia Greifswald in the General German Burschenbund
1933/34 Oskar Stäbel Country team Suevia Karlsruhe
July 1934 to February 1936 Andreas Feickert ./.
from February 1936 Gustav Adolf Scheel , Reich student leader VDSt Heidelberg

Student days of the German Student Union

Student day year city meaning
1st student day July 1919 Wurzburg Foundation of the DSt
extraordinary student day May 1920 Dresden Student law and membership issue
3rd (2nd ordinary) student day July 1920 Goettingen Collection of the völkisch wing in the Deutsches Hochschulring , Göttingen emergency constitution
4th (3rd top) student day July 1921 gain Foundation of the Economic Aid of the German Student Union e. V. (later Studentenwerk ), Erlanger program
ao student day May 1922 Honnef Collection of the minority loyal to the republic
5th (4th top) student day July 1922 Wurzburg Choice of a völkisch object
6th (5th top) student day July 1923 Wurzburg Victory of the nationalist direction
7th student day July / August 1924 innsbruck
8th student day July / August 1925 Berlin deputy Chairman Ulrich Kersten
9th student day July / August 1926 Bonn
10th student day July 1927 Wurzburg
11th student day July / August 1928 Danzig Foundation of the Langemarck donation to expand the German military cemetery in Langemarck . Schmadel and Kersten at the conference of the Confédération internationale des étudiants in Paris, Langemarck visit by representatives of the DSt.
12th student day July 1929 Hanover
13th student day July 1930 Wroclaw
14th student day July 1931 Graz Election of the first National Socialist DSt chairman
15th student day 14.-16. July 1932 Koenigsberg i. Pr. After the leader principle had been introduced, the German Burschenschaft , the German Landsmannschaft , the German Singers and the Wingolfsbund withdrew their representatives from the German student body. The Kösener SC association had not participated. The representative convention tried to fill in the gaps.
16th student day July / August 1933 Monschau
? Student day June 1938 Heidelberg
? Student day May 1939 Wurzburg 20th anniversary of the foundation of the DSt
? Student day August 1941 Käsmark , Slovakia

See also

literature

  • The first year of the German Student Union , self-published by the DSt, Göttingen 1921.
  • The German student body in their becoming, wanting and working , self-published by the DSt, Tetschen o. J. (around 1927)
  • Immanuel Birnbaum : The emergence of student self-government in Germany 1918/1919 , in: Festschrift for Hermann Wandersleb on his 75th birthday, Bonn 1970, pp. 37–48.
  • Anselm Faust: The "conquest" of the German student body by the National Socialist German Student Union (NSDStB) 1926–1933 . Einst und Jetzt , Vol. 20 (1975), p. 49 ff.
  • Ernst Rudolf Huber : The student body in the German university constitution , in ders .: German constitutional history, vol. 6, p. 1002-1022.
  • Konrad Jarausch : Deutsche Studenten 1800–1970 , Frankfurt 1984. ISBN 3-518-11258-9 , pp. 117–162.
  • Ulrich Kersten: The German student body . Handbuch des Deutschen Corpsstudenten, 3rd edition, Verlag der Deutschen Corpszeitung, Frankfurt am Main 1930, pp. 125-139.
  • Harald Lönnecker : "Role model ... for the coming Reich". The German Student Union (DSt) 1918–1933 , in: GDS Archive for University and Student History, Vol. 7, Cologne 2004, pp. 37–53. Online version
  • Thomas Nipperdey : The German student body in the first years of the Weimar Republic , in: Wilhelm Zilius / Adolf Grimme ( eds .): Kulturverwaltung der Zwanziger Jahre, Stuttgart 1961, pp. 19–48.
  • Friedrich Schulze, Paul Ssymank : The German student body from the oldest times to the present , 4th edition Munich 1932 (reprint 1991), ISBN 3-923621-90-6 , p. 484 ff.
  • Jürgen Schwarz: Students in the Weimar Republic. The German student body in the period from 1918 to 1923 and their position on politics , Berlin 1971. ISBN 3-428-02363-3 .
  • Hellmut Volkmann: The development of the German student body since 1919 . Leipzig 1925 (therein the statutes).
  • Holger Zinn: Student self-government in Germany until 1945 , in: Matthias Steinbach , Stefan Gerber (eds.): “Classic University” and “Academic Province”. Studies at the University of Jena from the middle of the 19th century to the thirties of the 20th century, Jena 2005, pp. 439–473.
  • Holger Zinn: Founding of the German Student Union . Studenten-Kurier, born in 2009, issue 2, p. 5 f.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Werner Thieme , German University Law. 1956, p. 331 ff.
  2. ^ Ordinance on the formation of student bodies at universities and technical colleges of September 19, 1920 (ZBlPrUV p. 8) Digital copy of the library for research on the history of education
  3. ↑ Erich Wende , Basics of Prussian University Law. 1930, p. 187.
  4. ↑ Erich Wende: Basics of Prussian University Law. 1930, pp. 178, 186.
  5. ↑ See the pending questions of Prussian student law. Letter from the Prussian Minister of Education, Dr. Becker to the student bodies of the Prussian universities and technical colleges of November 24, 1926. Printed by Wolfgang Kalischer: The university and its student bodies. Universitas magistrorum et scholarium. 1967, p. 168 ff.
  6. ↑ Niedersächsische Hochschulzeitung, Volume 3, No. 2 of May 13, 1920, pp. 1 ff .; Printed by Wolfgang Kalischer: The university and its student bodies. Universitas magistrorum et scholarium. 1967, p. 126 ff.
  7. ↑ (ZBlPrUV 1927, p. 325)
  8. ^ Voting results with Wolfgang Kalischer: The university and its student bodies. Universitas magistrorum et scholarium. 1967, p. 168 ff.
  9. ↑ (RGBl. I p. 215)
  10. ↑ (Clause 4; on the Führer principle further: Guidelines for the standardization of the university administration of April 1, 1935. Printed in: Die Deutsche Hochschulverwaltung, vol. 1, p. 34 ff.)
  11. ↑ Michael Grüttner : Students in the Third Reich, Paderborn 1995, p. 270 f.
  12. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: Schleyer: a German story , CH Beck, 2004, p. 98
  13. ↑ Kersten was a member of the Corps Silesia Breslau
  14. ↑ probably on the initiative of Kersten
  15. ^ Siegfried Schindelmeiser: The history of the Corps Baltia II zu Königsberg i. Pr. , Vol. 2. Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-00-028704-6 , pp. 401-403.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on October 28, 2005 .