Hospice (custom)
A hospice (also Hospitium ( lat. "Hospitality", "hostel"), or feast ) was in the 18th century at universities of the German-speaking usual student socializing.
Basics
Since this type of event was mostly not approved or even banned by the university authorities, the sources are thin and often contradictory. In general, hospices seem to have existed both in the form of a private invitation from a student to his fellow students, but also as an official representation event for the country team associations of students that were common in the 18th century .
One of the students was invited to the private accommodation. Here the guests were entertained by the hosts. People ate, drank and smoked, sometimes danced and often fought. The host determined what everyone had to drink. His orders had to be followed. He himself had no obligations to the guests.
According to some sources, the leader ( Praeses ) need not be identical with the host ( Hospes ). This is more likely to be assumed at official events of country teams.
When the host was in charge of the event, he wore a dressing gown as a sign of his dignity in contrast to the street clothes of his guests. The house key, which he held in his hand or had lying on the table in front of him, as can be seen from illustrations from the 18th century, served as a further badge.
Written rules of the hospice have been preserved. In 1747, for example, the work Das Hospitium or Correct Proof of All Rights and Customs Common to the Hospitio was published anonymously .
These uncontrollable private invitations were of course not welcomed by the university authorities and neighbors. Many university statutes of the 18th century prohibited them or made them subject to approval by the rector. In some places the citizens and especially the landlords were urged to keep the doors closed from nine o'clock in the evening. This should prevent unrest and noise in the narrow, walled cities. Therefore the hospices usually took place in the afternoon.
The Philistine Hospice, which was still known in Königsberg in the early 19th century, could have been a round song. At a late hour, the Philistines were probably the hosts, according to whose instructions the guests had to drink.
Individual traditions
Johann Georg Puschner, Altdorf 1725
In 1725, the Nuremberg copperplate engraver Johann Georg Puschner published several copperplate engravings about the life of students at the University of Altdorf , in which he showed typical behavior and sometimes criticized it morally. He also dedicated a sheet to the “Schmauß”, the private student invitation to food and drink. There were appropriate verses for explanation or admonition for each sheet:
- The drinking student
- When a son of the Muses tires himself studying,
- so he is allowed to go for a walk from time to time.
- He puts on his clothes and goes outside
- visits a friend and sits down for a feast.
- But he drinks sensibly and lives that way
- that he doesn't have to give up like a dog
- Then drunkards without Meuse are worse than the cattle
- and make each other hateful at every company.
These events often ended in arguments and arguments with the naked weapon that preoccupied the university judiciary.
Puschner describes such an occurrence in his copper engraving "Der Rauffende Student" from 1725, with reference to student life at the University of Altdorf .
- The scuffing student
- The feminine sex, the feasts and great drinking,
- often brings the muses-sons to quarrel u. to fight,
- A mere word causes such great misery,
- which cannot otherwise be satisfied except by blood.
- However, how easy it is that the bare blades
- the one counterpart to bring life and limb?
- If the perpetrator then escapes the worldly judgment,
- leave it, it doesn't hurt your conscience.
The punishment for the excesses usually followed immediately. As a rule, the pedell appeared and wrote the summons to the rector on the doorstep of the person concerned, for example with the words Dominus ad rectorem citatur (German: "The gentleman is quoted as the rector."). Often there was a threat of relegation , i.e. compulsory de- registration .
Dissertation de norma actionum studiosorum, Erlangen 1780
An Erlangen student (probably C. Gleiß, member of the Amicist Order ) published in 1780 under the pseudonym "Martialis Schluck von Raufenfels" the work Dissertatio de norma actionum studiosorum seu by the boys' Comment , which is contained in §§ VII to XI remarks on Hospitium made, both to drink and to the songs sung. The author distinguished between a hospitium strictus (a strict hospice) and a hospitium minus strictus (a less strict hospice). While in a strict hospice a praeses (chairman) had full authority and all participants could stop drinking indefinitely - even if their lives were at risk ( cum vitae periculo ) - in a less strict hospice they were allowed to drink at will.
Friedrich Christian Laukard, Giessen 1770s
Friedrich Christian Laukard , theology student in Gießen from 1771 to 1774, reports:
- The Kommers are allowed in Giessen; we stopped several times on the street and shouted the "Ecce quam bonum" to the great delight of the Giessen nymphs. It is easy to imagine that the Kommerse had to be very frequented at the students' daily drinking bouts: and it really was. I have often attended a hospice every day for a fortnight in succession or a commuting binge.
Hannoversche Landsmannschaft, Göttingen 1770s
The specialty of Göttingen is that the internal handling of the Landsmannschaft with the event called Schmaus there during Laukhard's time for the period 1777–79 can also be derived from the convent protocols of the Hanoverian Landsmannschaft that have been preserved . The workings of a feast were then certainly the subject of co in the rooms of Chargierten held conventions of country teams. The secretary FE von Stoltzenberg noted:
“A suggestion was made as to whether the adjudicators should not pay special attention to the members of their adjudicator at feasts, that if someone should have had too much to drink, they should bring him home; But they didn't want to reflect on that. "
The Landsmannschaft, led by a senior as the first charged, gave the Landsmannschaft members who left at the end of a semester a farewell feast, to which the respective senior was entitled to “ask two guests for himself” at the expense of the Landsmannschaft's common fund to the other existing country teams. Another protocol reports on the diplomacy in dealing with these student associations among themselves:
"The Hamburg team gave a feast to which our senior citizens were invited. But because they were hesitant to attend other people's feasts before the ranking dispute between our and the Curian compatriot was decided; so they stayed away from this feast. Thereupon our senior von Alten suggested to the Curian senior von Buddenbrock for comparison that one should let the rank be bypassed in the case of strange feasts and excerpts, or that he should have that country team whose senior would be the oldest in office ”
The Kurlanders, who traditionally compete with each other, did not reach an understanding with the Hanoverians, so it was decided that the seniors would no longer take part in foreign feasts as seniors and, accordingly, the seniors of foreign country teams would no longer be invited to the feasts of their own country team. So they made do with the fact that the representatives of other country teams were not invited in their capacity and function, but as "foreign guests". With a few exceptions, all members of the host country team took part. The table arrangement played a large formal role, which suggests that formal processes were also adhered to:
“The supplement Nro. 1 shows the routing at the table. The senior and sub-seniors of the foreign country teams were placed as other foreign guests. "
and also gave cause for influencing its own members:
“Also remembered d. Mr. v. Marenholz said that anyone who would be prevented from taking part in the feast of the Hanoverian Landsmannschaft should report such a place in good time to avoid the disorder that would necessarily arise from it with regard to the places. "
The Hannoversche Landsmannschaft passed the cost of the feast on to its members. In 1778 the allocation for a feast was 4 Reichstaler per capita and was collected in two installments from the Landsmannschaft's fund due to the size of the amount. Members who failed to pay their fees were initially fined. These fines were stipulated in the constitution cited so far, but which has not been handed down, but is probably quite detailed (e.g. the absence of meetings according to Art. V § 9 p. 57) and began at around 6 Mariengroschen . The reception fee for accepting new members was 4 Reichstaler and 16 Groschen and the regular monthly fee for members in 1778 was 12 Mariengroschen per month for comparison. In the worst case, breaches of duty were punished with exclusion.
Koenigsberg, 1850s
In Königsberg , the hospice revived in the late 1850s with meetings in apartments. Such celebrations were called Buderucken or Budengemütlichkeit . Each participant had to contribute to the entertainment while the host offered his guests coffee, punch or beer. Arthur Kittel , a member of the Germania Königsberg fraternity , reports that the local students had coffee with cake and sweet schnapps, half a liter at 60 pfennigs. The outsiders, on the other hand, organized a meal when the "Provinzialfraß" (food from the parents' goods) had arrived. He himself once received ten roast ducks and a few pounds of butter, of which only three remained after the meal.
What parental provisions came from the provincial estates in Königsberg was fraternally shared as "provincial food" - probably already at the hospices.
Songs
The mood at a “feast” or “hospitium” is expressed by a student song handed down from the 18th century , which is still sung in pubs today. It is believed to have originated from a round song , the verses of which were originally improvised:
One of the oldest and most beautiful songs is Ça, ça feasted :
- Ça, ça feasted, let's not be crazy!
- Those who don't stay at home stay at home.
- Refrain: Edite, bibite collegiales, post multa saecula pocula nulla.
- (freely translated: "Eat and drink, fellow students, in the distant future there will be no more feasts!")
- The professor is not reading a college today,
- So it's better to have a drink.
- refrain
- Drink as you please until you lick your fingers afterwards.
- Then we all really enjoyed it.
- refrain
- Up, brothers! Raise Bacchus to the throne
- And sit down, we're already drinking.
- refrain
Later the most popular stanzas were standardized and printed in the Kommers books .
literature
- Wilhelm Fabricius : The German Corps. 2nd Edition. Frankfurt am Main 1926.
- Arthur Kittel : From the Königsberg student life 1858–1863 . Gräfe and Unzer, Koenigsberg 1920.
- John Koch : The History of the Corps Baltia . Koenigsberg 1906.
- Robert Paschke : The custom of the 18th century hospice - a forerunner of the student pub comment. In: then and now. (Yearbook of the Association for Corporate Student History Research), Volume 7, 1962, p. 131 ff.
- Emil Popp: On the history of the Königsberg student body from 1900 to 1945 . Würzburg 1955. (New edition at WJK, Hilden 2004)
- Siegfried Schindelmeiser: The Albertina and its students 1544 to WS 1850/51 and the history of the Corps Baltia II zu Königsberg i. Pr. New edition of all eight issues in two volumes, edited by R. Döhler and G. v. Klitzing, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-00-028704-6 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Fabricius, Deutsche Corps, p. 107 ff.
- ↑ Koch, p. 15.
- ↑ Schindelmeiser, Volume 1, p. 136.
- ↑ Hans Peter Hümmer : The "Burschen-Comment" of Martialis Schluck von Raufenfels. The Latin version from 1780 and the first German translation from 1798. In: Einst und Jetzt. Yearbook 2007 of the Association for Corps Student History Research. Neustadt an der Aisch 2007, p. 28ff.
- ↑ Ecce quam bonum et quam iucundum habitare fratres in unum - See how fine and how lovely it is when brothers are together in harmony (Psalm 133)
- ↑ Transcription printed by Otto Deneke: Alte Göttinger Landsmannschaften - documents for their earliest history (1737-1813). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 1937, pp. 26–46.
- ↑ Protocol of the Hanoverian Landsmannschaft from December 20, 1777, there No. 3
- ↑ Deneke, Landsmannschaften (1937). P. 30.
- ↑ Deneke: Landsmannschaften (1937). P. 33.
- ↑ Deneke: Landsmannschaften (1937). P. 35.
- ↑ Popp, p. 81.
- ↑ Koch, p. 16.
- ↑ quoted in Popp, p. 62.
- ^ First published in the oldest student song book by Christian Wilhelm Kindleben , Halle an der Saale 1781.