Freiburg Seniors' Convention

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The Freiburg Seniors' Convent is the 200-year-old amalgamation of the corps at the University of Freiburg.

history

Belonging to Habsburg Front Austria for centuries , Freiburg im Breisgau had around 8,000 inhabitants at the beginning of the 19th century. Most of the 200 students at Albert Ludwig University came from the Upper Rhine . A fifth came from "abroad", from Swabia and Switzerland . In 1812 students founded a (new) constitutional country team called Rhenania . The second, called Suevia , came into being in June 1815. The Seniors' Convent (SC), which was founded at the same time, has since been the oldest association of student corporations at Freiburg University. The importance of the SC is shown in the additional treaty that Rhenania and Suevia concluded on December 28, 1815: "If one should be close to dissolution, then he should be strongly supported by the other and serious care should be taken for its re-establishment." Helvetia , donated to Swiss students, was accepted into the SC before the end of 1815. The first Freiburg SC-Comment , which regulated “duels, penalties, shit and commerse” in 75 paragraphs, took a year of work . This common set of values ​​was adopted on January 6, 1817.

Struggles for survival

The most difficult times for the Freiburg Corps were the first 35 years (1815–1850). During this phase they had to repeatedly fight for their existence. Napoleon Bonaparte was finally defeated in 1815 and the Congress of Vienna restored the princes' old power. Citizens were denied freedoms they had longed for. Germany remained a patchwork of 41 countries.

In Jena, the country teams dissolved in 1815 . The original fraternity was born , calling for Germany's unification and democratic reforms. In 1818 the fraternity idea also reached Freiburg. At first an attempt was made to dissolve the Freiburg Corps in favor of a general fraternity. After this failed, the first “Freiburg fraternity” was established alongside the corps. For fear of political ideas, the Baden government repeatedly banned all corporations. The Freiburg University monitored all student activities as instructed. The first Freiburg fraternity had to be dissolved in 1819 after official investigations, the second in 1824 as well. All bans had less of an impact on the corps, especially since the university was able to report to the Ministry of the Interior that Rhenania and Suevia had “absolutely no political purpose”. In 1824 the Corps "Alemannia" was founded, in which part of the old fraternity lived on. When Alemannia suggested the unification of the corps in 1831, the other corps rejected the proposal; because behind it "the unfortunate idea" was seen "to establish a fraternity". Alemannia finally suspended in 1832. A corps called "Helvetia" was founded four times in Freiburg. After the University of Zurich and the University of Bern were established in Switzerland , the number of Swiss students in Friborg was so low that the fourth Helvetia had to give up for good in 1844. Rhenania and Suevia had to suspend several times from 1835 to 1850 because the number of students in Freiburg had shrunk from 600 (in 1824) to 200 (in 1846).

Among the 119 corps students in the Frankfurt National Assembly , three came from the Freiburg SC: Constantin von Waldburg-Zeil (Rhenaniae), Maximilian Werner (Sueviae) and Otto Carl Würth (Alemanniae). After the resolutions of the National Assembly had been rejected by the Prussian king and the German princes, the Baden Revolution broke out in 1849 . Prussian troops marched into Baden to suppress them. They occupied Freiburg and pursued the insurgents. Freiburg Corps students were also among the “revolutionaries”. Some have been arrested and sentenced to prison. To avoid their arrest, 29 Rhenans and Swabians fled to Switzerland, France and the USA.

Baden recognition and Wilhelmine splendor

When Baden had liberalized its association law in 1851, Rhenania and Suevia no longer had to fear prohibitions. In the same year, the Freiburg SC introduced the determination of gauges. The Freiburg SC joined the Kösener SC Association in January 1856. The corps were recognized by the university. In 1866 - the year of the German War  - the university expressly recommended that newly enrolled students become members of a corps. The corps played a leading role in the Freiburg student body. However, the number of students in Freiburg fell from 359 (1850/51) to 204 (1871). The Freiburg SC shrank from 30-40 active (1851-1858) to less than half (1871). The Freiburg corps played a major role in the creation of the Swiss student associations .

The successful Franco-German War and the establishment of the German Empire brought positive changes for Freiburg. For the first time, students from all parts of the German Empire flocked to the university, which was previously hardly noticed because of its peripheral location . The number of students grew from 212 (in 1871) to over 3,000 (in 1914). At the same time, the proportion of non-bathers rose from 14% to 80% (in 1914). Since the Rhenanen and the Swabians continued to come mainly from the Grand Duchy of Baden (and the rest of southern Germany), corps students from other corps did not feel at home in the Freiburg SC - for reasons of dialect alone. Inactive foreign corps were therefore the godfathers of the Corps Hasso-Borussia . Immediately after the foundation was accepted in 1876, the Freiburger SC received significant new impulses. A new SC comment was created and the art of fencing improved significantly. In 1886, the Freiburg SC had 86 active members, making up almost 9% of the Freiburg student body. In 1913, the SC summoned a private lecturer to appear in person before the SC jury. The university then suspended the three SC corps. Only after the SC had agreed to change its comment so that members of the faculty were no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the SC, did the university lift the suspension. 131 Freiburg Corps students were killed in the First World War.

Weimar Republic

Active members of the SC zu Freiburg (1930)

After the First World War , the Freiburg SC was reinforced by new corps. Since the realm of Alsace-Lorraine was lost and the Kaiser Wilhelm University closed, the Strasbourg corps looked for a new home. Alsatia was reciprocated in the Freiburg SC in 1919 . It still suspended in 1919 and reconstituted in 1920 as Corps Palaio-Alsatia in Frankfurt am Main. Palatia Strasbourg moved to Freiburg via Marburg and was accepted into the Freiburg SC in 1920. When the forestry department of the TH Karlsruhe was relocated to Freiburg in 1920, the Hubertia forestry connection (1868) also moved. Converted to Corps Hubertia Freiburg on November 27th , she was admitted to the Freiburg SC in 1921 as the fifth member. Rhenania and Suevia hoped that Hubertia would strengthen the Baden element in the SC.

The Freiburg Corps students found it difficult to reorient themselves after the war. Most of them came from social classes that had significantly supported the German Empire and rejected the Weimar Republic . The Freiburg Corps discussed the apolitical principle of education. In 1920 the SC wrote a memorandum with motions to the Kösener Congress in 1921. In particular, participation in university politics was called for. The oKC 1921 generally advocated “education to become an active citizen”; the Freiburg proposals were perceived as a "straitjacket" and not accepted. The lost war, the democratic republic and the German inflation from 1914 to 1923 had put an end to the luxurious lifestyle of the imperial era. Less affluent students also became active in the corps. Particularly in the southwest of the Reich, some corps were so popular that they imposed a freeze on admission. The Freiburg SC grew in 1925 to 97 active and 148 inactive. By 1930 it reached a numerical high and thus a second heyday. Towards the end of the Weimar Republic, the Freiburg Corps (still) opposed the emergence of National Socialism. In a promemoria written in 1932, the Freiburger SC warned the Kösener Congress against the intrusion of political tendencies into the corps.

Rejection by the National Socialists and own failure

The forward of the SPD called the corps students a "nursery school of reaction"; it wants to breed a mandarin caste. The National Socialists also viewed the Corps as a backward-looking, bourgeois-elitist institution. Since they stood in the way of the ideal of a national community, they had to give way. This was done by withdrawing their supporters, which forced them to dissolve themselves. Viktor Lutze therefore forbade all SA members from joining corps at the same time. Some corps students in the SA then returned their tapes. After the Kösener, the majority of the Freiburg Corps also chose to dissolve themselves in October 1935. The attempt to continue as a “connection in the Freiburg weapon ring” failed after a short time; for all studying NSDAP members were banned from membership in student associations in May 1936. Therefore these "connections in the FWR" had to be dissolved. How the Freiburg (and all other) corps dealt with corps student principles until their dissolution can be seen as the real problem from today's perspective; because corps principles were violated in three ways:

  1. In the summer semester of 1933, the Freiburger SC decided to join the National Socialist German Student Union. The active ones were obliged to join the Sturmabteilung (SA). The SC put itself in the service of the National Socialist movement and gave up the old principle of political neutrality.
  2. By order of the National Socialists, the Kösener demanded that his corps introduce the so-called Führer principle (by the end of July 1933). All the Freiburg corps complied. The "leader" of the corps, who determined his successor, took the place of the senior . That meant the corps boys were disempowered . The CC could no longer choose and decide, but was only allowed to advise the leader of the corps. The corps' democratic youth principle was thereby obsolete.
  3. The crucial point was the implementation of the Aryan paragraph . Max Blunck and his successor Werner Heringhaus demanded that all corps exclude Jewish members and those who were married to Jewish women. After the Kösener had already decided in 1920 not to accept any more Jews, the demand only posed a problem for some old gentlemen's associations. Given the choice of either expelling or suspending affected corps brothers, the majority of the corps opted for a continuation without "Jewish" and "Jewish infamous" old men. Only five out of 104 corps refused to expel corps brothers in principle. The Freiburg corps, which had decided to continue their corps, went different ways. The elderly gentlemen concerned were either asked to resign (by majority vote of the members) or asked to “voluntarily” resign. This faithless approach touched the core of corporate student values. A number of unaffected corps brothers put down the tape in protest.

In order to gain possession of the corp houses, the National Socialists set a deadline for the AH associations in 1937/38 to set up so-called "comradeship houses". In the event that the deadline expired, they threatened to expropriate the corp houses. The old men of the (disbanded) corps then formed or supported SC comradeships . A special feature of Freiburg was that even after the dissolution of the Corps in 1935/36 and even during the war (in violation of a Fiihrer ban) the fighting continued - in secret and with great precautionary measures (often in the Black Forest). The “Schwabenland” (Suevia) comradeship alone fought an unbelievable 233 lengths up to November 1944 . All activities ended with Operation Tigerfish on November 27, 1944, in which 2,797 Freiburg residents were killed, 9,600 people injured and many corporation houses (including the corp houses of Rhenania and Hasso-Borussia) were destroyed.

Rejection as coming to terms with the past

In the post-war period in Germany, professors from Freiburg took the view that the restoration of the “old corporations” represented a “danger to the university”. The Senate decided to admit only those student communities that renounce “antiquated life” and want to be “modern”. The guidelines for student communities adopted by the university in February 1950 forbade identification marks and the wearing of couleur in public. The term "corps" should be banned forever. The Freiburg Corps reconstituted between 1949 and 1952 under very difficult circumstances. With the housing shortage, the corp houses that were preserved were either occupied or rented. In 1950, Rhenania and Hubertia formed an interest group for the reconstitution of the Freiburg Seniors' Convention. They first waited for the re-establishment of the Kösener SC Association (on May 19, 1951 on the Godesburg ). The Freiburg SC was re-established on June 23, 1951 by four corps. At that time, the SC had 53 active and 26 inactive. The following year, Palatia Strasbourg also reconstituted, which in May 1952 merged with Guestphalia Jena to form the Corps Palatia-Guestphalia . The SC now consisted of five corps again. The Freiburg University, which examined the "worthiness" of all corporations, still did not think about approving "old corporations" like the corps. A legal dispute began against the corresponding guidelines of the university - in particular against the ban on wearing public colors - which, after three instances, reached the Federal Constitutional Court . It ended after 14 years before the Constitutional Court could rule; because in 1964 the university passed new guidelines that made it possible to recognize striking corporations and to wear ribbons in public. After that, the SC was allowed to fencing again and (outside the university) to wear color. The popularity of the SC was astonishing: in 1960 the five Freiburg Corps had 87 active and 253 inactive. The Freiburger SC experienced its third heyday.

Rejection by the 68ers

As a result of the 1968 movement , the Freiburg Corps lost ground. Their previously good reputation in the student body declined. They became the target of student attacks (when they appeared in color). As in the time of National Socialism , the corps withdrew "into their towers" - on their houses. The withdrawal from the alma mater resulted in massive problems with the next generation. The sharp decline in membership led to discussions about corporate student principles. The scaling principle in particular was called into question. Despite the departure of four green corps from the KSCV, the corps of the Freiburger SC remained in three compulsory games. It is noteworthy that the Freiburg Corps even helped each other: When Suevia was fighting for its continued existence in 1982, three Huberts (Haas, Hartung and Weitbrecht) recorded a second tape in the 1982/83 winter semester. From the mid-1980s, the membership of the Freiburg Corps increased again. In the 2014 winter semester, one SC corps said they no longer had to adhere to the common rules. The SC imposed a disrepute - with all unpleasant consequences for the corps concerned. The case shows that the Freiburg SC still stands together after two centuries and practices its comment.

Strength

The Freiburger SC experienced its heyday in the 1880s, in the interwar period and before the 1968 movement .

year corps Active Inactive
1858 2 40 ?
1871 3 20th ?
1886 4th 86 ?
1925 5 97 148
1951 5 53 26th
1960 5 87 253
2016 5 36 85

Today's SC

Freiburg Senior Citizens' Convention (1952)

In summer 2016, of the 85 inactive people, only 23 were on site. As of November 2017, the Freiburg SC will provide the suburb of the Kösener Seniors Convents Association for the seventh time.

literature

  • Wolfgang Büdingen: The Freiburg Seniors' Convention in the Events of Time and Student Life at the Alberto-Ludoviciana . Frankfurt am Main 1931.
  • Freiburg. SC comment from 1818 , in: 14 of the oldest SC comments before 1820 . Then and now. Yearbook of the Association for Corporate Student History Research , special issue 1967, pp. 146–166.
  • Sebastian Kurtenacker: The heyday of the corporation: From the beginnings (1812) to the self-alignment (1931) , in: Bernd Martin (Ed.): 550 Years Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg , Volume 3, From the Baden State University to the University of the 21st Century Century . Freiburg, Munich 2007, p. 113 ff.
  • Martin Dossmann : The SC zu Freiburg - (I) overview and bibliography . Einst und Jetzt, Vol. 62 (2017), pp. 95-108.
  • Martin Dossmann: The SC zu Freiburg - (II) The history of the Seniors' Convention in Freiburg and its corps . Einst und Jetzt, Vol. 63 (2018), pp. 327-382.
  • Martin Dossmann: Freiburg's beauty laughs at us again ... - The student associations in Freiburg im Breisgau , WJK-Verlag, Hilden 2017, ISBN 978-3-944052-99-1 .

Web links

Commons : Freiburg Seniors' Convention  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ In July 1815 the Grand Duchy of Baden joined the German Confederation .
  2. ↑ In the summer semester of 1964, the new rector, the priest and CVer Bernhard Panzram , presented the new Senate guidelines to the corporations and asked them to be signed. As the successor rector, the fraternity member Hans-Heinrich Jescheck spoke in July 1964 to the seniors of the Freiburg corporations about the Senate resolutions. With two exceptions, the fraternities signed the policy. The corporations were then recognized by the university.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Freiburg. SC comment from 1818 , in: 14 of the oldest SC comments before 1820 . Once and Now , special issue 1967, pp. 146–166.
  2. ↑ Martin Dossmann, 200 Years of the Freiburg Senior Citizens' Convention , CORPS Magazin 2/2017, p. 16.
  3. ↑ Paul Gerhardt Gladen : Rhenania Freiburg , in: The Kösener and Weinheimer Corps. Their representation in individual chronicles . WJK-Verlag, Hilden 2007, ISBN 978-3-933892-24-9 , pp. 135-136
  4. ↑ a b Paul Gerhardt Gladen: Suevia Freiburg , in: The Kösener and Weinheimer Corps. Their representation in individual chronicles . WJK-Verlag, Hilden 2007, pp. 159–160
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i M. Dossmann: 200 years Freiburg Senior Citizens' Convention (2017)
  6. ^ Robert Develey : The Zofingia Freiburg im Breisgau 1821-1823. A contribution to the problem of Swiss student associations at German universities . In: Einst und Jetzt , Vol. 22, 1977, pp. 157-178; Adolf Steiner: Stories about flags, bows and cantus beaters [song book] from Helvetic connections in Freiburg im Breisgau and Eichstätt . In: Einst und Jetzt , Vol. 45, 2000, pp. 39-50; Adolf Steiner: Looking back on 100 years of history of Alt-Helvetia Freiburg i. Br. In: Einst und Jetzt , Vol. 46, 2001, pp. 301–328.
  7. ↑ Hans Wilhelm Weber: The founding of the Corps Hasso-Borussia on June 12, 1876 and its donors , in: Corps Hasso-Borussia - 100-year foundation festival . Internal Festschrift 1976, pp. 3–7.
  8. ↑ Deutsche Korpszeitung 30, p. 285
  9. ↑ Barbara Schumacher: The connection system: From the corporations to the comradeship houses , in: Bernd Martin (Hrsg.): 550 years Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg , Vol. 3, From the Baden state university to the university of the 21st century . Freiburg / Munich 2007. p. 391 ff.
  10. ↑ Leo Alexander Ricker: From the time of comradeships , in: Einst und Jetzt special edition 1960, p. 47 ff.
  11. ^ Leo Alexander Ricker: Freiburg scales in the National Socialist prohibition period . In: Einst und Jetzt Vol. 10, 1965, pp. 70–82.
  12. ↑ Dieter Oberndörfer: 1968/69 in Freiburg: On Prehistory and History , in: Bernd Martin (Ed.): 550 Years Albert Ludwig University Freiburg , Volume 3, From the Baden State University to the University of the 21st Century . Freiburg / Munich 2007, p. 655 ff.
  13. ↑ Kösener reports from the summer semester 2016.