Gendarme affair

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The Göttingen gendarme affair was a clash between Göttingen students and the gendarmerie of the Kingdom of Westphalia on August 17, 1809, with considerable consequences for the Göttingen student body as well as the Georg August University itself.

Preliminary remarks

In 1809 and during the entire French period in the Electorate of Hanover (1807-1813), the Georg-August University was under King Jérôme Bonaparte and thus the Ministry of Education of the Kingdom of Westphalia in Kassel. After the death of the general director of public education Johannes von Müller in May 1809, the Göttingen professor State Councilor Justus Christoph Leist became his successor. The country teams , in which the students in Göttingen, as at other universities, were traditionally organized, had been in a phase of reorganization and recovery since March 1808 due to the decreasing pressure of the academic authorities to persecute the Baltic student associations . The Landsmannschaft of the Guestphalen, the Hanoverians (united with the Rhinelanders), the Vandals (pronounced Mecklenburg) and the Ruthenians (German-Balts united with the Landsmannschaft Pomerania) had a new SC- at the beginning of 1809 in the Göttingen Senior Citizens' Convent. Comment given, the "General Comment of the Göttingen Burschenschaft". This had reached Johannes von Müller as far as Kassel, who pointed out the developments to the Göttingen prorector Johann Gottfried Eichhorn on February 16, 1809 and urged the university authorities to exercise strict supervision. Professor Christoph Meiners regularly reported informally to Müller from Göttingen, particularly on the subject of the country teams , and also on the pro-rector Eichhorn, whose son Franz was a member of the Vandals. Accordingly, von Müller and, in the summer of 1809, his successor, Leist, increased the pressure of persecution. In the summer of 1809, the students, who had previously not only been subject to their own academic jurisdiction by the university court with the pedals as investigative and enforcement bodies, were now also persecuted by the much more rigid normal gendarmerie of the kingdom. In addition, with his edict of July 22, 1809, Leist prohibited not only the massively fashionable wearing of all kinds of color , but in particular the wearing of student hats in the colors of the respective association, but also the wearing of mustaches , possession of weapons and public tobacco smoking . At that time, tobacco was mostly smoked with clay or porcelain pipes. The latter were often adorned with the coat of arms of the association and the names of the members of the Landsmannschaft, which, even then, fell into the hands of the academic authorities, served as evidence and are therefore still important sources for student historians today. In the summer of 1809, the Göttingen students initially made fun of Leist's orders.

Gendarme affair

The gendarme affair was triggered by an actually harmless incident, a joint ride out of the city by members of the Hannovera. The gendarmes attacked because the students allegedly did not evade them while riding. A crowd of people consisting of Göttingen citizens and other students emerged, who were ridden together by other rushing gendarmes on horseback with bare sabers and broken up with saber blows.

Ulrich's Garden (1801)

On the evening of the same day the excited students gathered at the Ulrich, a popular restaurant near the Albanikirche , about where the Göttingen city hall is today. At this meeting, the student body decided to demand satisfaction from the government in Kassel . She was also encouraged in this request by the academic senate of the university. This satisfaction was not granted if one of the gendarmes was subsequently transferred as a punishment. Rather, the Hannoversche Landsmannschaft was officially dissolved on September 9, 1809 by the government in Kassel. However, it persisted in secret.

The student body has now discredited the university for a period of two years . The students mutually pledged to leave the university in the form of a boycott and not to return for the following winter semester. This was done by entering the name of the so-called "Disreputable Lists of 1809" in columns under one of the five country teams that existed in the summer of 1809. Of the 615 Georgia-Augusta students in the 1809 summer semester, 418 signed these disreputable lists. From this, however, the conclusion cannot be drawn that they had just as many members, but rather signed not only the inner circle but also the Renoncen and, from the point of view of connectivity, other sympathizers of the respective country teams, including so-called "savages" or "camels" like the unorganized students were called at the time. Heinrich Rudolf Brinkmann (1789–1878) , a student and later professor at Kiel University, describes the events of 1809 as a contemporary witness .

The banned Hanoverians turned in large numbers to Heidelberg in the winter semester of 1809/10 and founded the Corps Hannovera Heidelberg as an independent branch corps in the Heidelberg Senior Citizens' Convent , which was one of five corps to sign the Heidelberg SC Comment of June 1, 1810 after all, it existed there with the Hanoverian colors red-blue until 1812.

As a result, Georgia-Augusta had a significant drop in the number of students on the enrollment list in the winter semester 1809/1810 due to the prolongation of the gendarme affair. The number fell from 615 in the summer semester 1809 to 453 in the following winter semester. Taking into account the 170 new matriculations in the winter semester, a total of 283 students from the summer semester remained despite the disreputation. Leist proclaimed this to be a success in the press on September 11, 1809 and hoped to have banned the country teams from Göttingen. The prorectorate of the lawyer Gustav Hugo, who is known to be strict and hostile to the country team, in the academic year 1809/10 contributed to the fact that the disreputation was respected. Only under his more liberal successor as Vice Rector Thomas Christian Tychsen in the winter semester of 1810/11 did the life of the compatriots in Göttingen slowly revive.

literature

  • Heinrich Rudolph Brinkmann : Fragments, concerning the University of Göttingen . In: Kieler contributions: ed. from e. Gesellschaft Kieler Professoren, Volume 1, Schleswig 1820, p. 221 ff. (P. 266 ff.) (Retrieved from Google Books on April 23, 2012)
  • Brüning , Quaet-Faslem , Nicol: History of the Corps Bremensia 1812-1912 , Göttingen 1914
  • Wilhelm Schack-Steffenhagen: The Convente of the Curonia at the universities of Germany 1801-1831. In: Festschrift der Curonia. Bonn 1958, p. 139 ff.
  • Franz Stadtmüller : History of the Corps Hildeso-Guestphalia zu Göttingen , Göttingen 1954
  • Franz Stadtmüller: History of the Corps Hannovera zu Göttingen 1809-1959 , Göttingen 1963, p. 27 ff.
  • Hanna Feesche, Robert Mueller-Stahl: A ride with consequences. The Göttingen Gendarme Affair (1809). In: Franz Walter / Teresa Nentwig (eds.): The offended Gänseliesel - 250 years of scandal stories in Göttingen , V&R Academic, Göttingen 2016, pp. 40–47

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter Richter: The vandal connection to Rostock 1750-1824. In: Einst und Jetzt Volume 21 (1976), pp. 15-55.
  2. ^ Reprinted by Götz von Selle in: "Göttinger Universitätstaschenbuch für 1929"
  3. ↑ Otto Deneke: Old Göttinger Landsmannschaften. Göttingen 1937, p. 55 ff.
  4. ↑ Otto Deneke: Franz Eichhorn the Vandal. Goettingen 1931.
  5. ↑ Excerpts from Otto Deneke: Alte Göttinger Landsmannschaften. Göttingen 1937, p. 57 ff.
  6. ↑ See Harald Seewann : Pipe bowl of the Vandalia Göttingen 1811-1813. In: Einst und Jetzt Volume 31 (1986), pp. 209-211.
  7. ↑ Brinkmann, Bruchstücke (lit.): "When great unrest took place in Göttingen because of the poor people ..."
  8. ↑ see Brinkmann, Bruchteile (lit.); Copies from the Ernst Reinecke estate in the archive of the Corps Hannovera Göttingen.
  9. ↑ Fragments, concerning the University of Göttingen (lit.); on HR Brinkmann himself: Johannes Tütken: Privatdozenten im Schatten der Georgia-Augusta , Volume 2, 2005, p. 474 ff.
  10. ^ Friedrich Saalfeld: History of the University of Göttingen in the period from 1788 to 1820 , p. 32
  11. ↑ Stadtmüller (1963), p. 39; Götz von Selle: The register of the Georg-August-Universität zu Göttingen 1734-1837 . Hildesheim, Leipzig 1937
  12. ↑ Stadtmüller (1963), p. 39
  13. ↑ Stadtmüller (1963), p. 51 f.