Comradeship (student organization)

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Comradeships were the standardized form of organization aimed at by National Socialism and in some cases also implemented by students at German universities. You should the dissolved fraternities replace.

overview

The term was originally based on anti-corporate ideas from the youth movement and was first taken up in 1933 by the then Nazi leader of the German Student Union (DSt), Gerhard Krüger . The National Socialist German Student Union (NSDStB) under Oskar Stäbel also endorsed this concept, but with the primary goal of training student NS functionaries in these houses. An initially forced accommodation of all first and second semesters in so-called "Wohnkameradschaften" was rejected after internal conflicts, the NSDStB asserted itself against the student body. The originally planned extension to all (male) students was never implemented; in large cities the proportion of camaraderie was lower than in small university towns. In the summer of 1938, 22% of male students were members of a comradeship. In Berlin the proportion was significantly lower at 13%.

students life

In addition to the above-mentioned residential comradeships, the NSDStB also set up its own comradeship houses (parent houses) in the university towns, in which the members lived like in barracks. The leader principle prevailed in all comradeships ; the comradeship leader was responsible for the unconditional implementation of party orders.

Everyday life in the comradeships - apart from attending university events - was determined by National Socialist training courses and military sports exercises . There was also a military-style daily and weekly schedule.

In principle, only male students lived in the comradeships, although women were not excluded from studying. The setting of general maximum student numbers in accordance with the law against overcrowding in German schools and universities was repealed in 1935. The number of students had fallen more than expected due to the accelerated armament of the Wehrmacht and fell to significantly fewer than the 15,000 targeted. In 1934 10,538 men and 1,503 women enrolled and there was a shortage of young academics. From 1938 onwards, women were even promoted to study. The proportion of women in the total number of students rose proportionally and in absolute terms during the war years and reached a level never before reached with almost 25,000 and almost 50% women in 1943. In some cases women were even in the majority in science subjects.

The working group of National Socialist female students in the NSDStB also used the comradeship houses for their training courses. Student life after 1933 was subject to considerable changes. First of all, the high school graduates were obliged to do a six-month labor service. With the reintroduction of compulsory military service (1935), the young men joined the armed forces. All students were obliged to participate in compulsory sport, the women in women's service. Further obligations came about with the so-called harvest services or factory services. The increasing commitment to activities of the student union had a negative impact on academic performance. In addition, there were delays and impairments in completing school and studies, especially as the war progressed, up to and including the termination of all university operations in the late phase of the war, for example in the bombing of Freiburg in November 1944 .

Michael Grüttner differentiates between resistance and dissent, individual and ideological at the universities during the Nazi era. For many students it was less about resistance than about dissent - the preservation of traditional student freedom. Furthermore, from 1939 the number of active National Socialists decreased significantly due to their mostly voluntary commitment to war. The NSDStB then had considerable difficulties in filling management positions, the comradeships increasingly developed a life of their own based on traditional student customs under the influence of the corporate old men. The medical profession played an important role, about half of the enrolled students in Berlin. Because of their privileged position - they were paid like officer candidates and were subordinate to the Wehrmacht - they were less dependent on the comradeships. In the further course of the war, many male students were posted soldiers who were granted free semesters and examination semesters during military service. Besides the women, there were also many foreigners and wounded among the students.

Fellowships versus student associations

The comradeships saw themselves as the contemporary form of organization of the student body and thus stood in contrast to the traditional student associations , which in turn were organized in numerous umbrella organizations. While at the political level from 1933 to around 1936 the student associations discussed how the individual connections would implement the instructions of the National Socialist rulers for the purpose of harmonization , the members of the comradeships put pressure "from the street". In addition to jostling and brawls, there were soon street battles between fraternity students and members of the National Socialist comradeship, such as the so-called Göttingen riots . As early as 1933, the German student body, led by Gerhard Krüger, called for the students to be completely broken down into groups at the student day in Aachen. The fraternity houses should be recognized as comradeship houses for political good behavior.

In 1934, Andreas Feickert, as "Reichsführer" of the German Student Union (DSt), tried to enforce a compulsory camaraderie for all male students in the Reich. Every (male) student who starts his studies in WS 34/35 or is in the 2nd semester should be obliged to live in a recognized comradeship house for the next two semesters. First-year students should become compulsory members of the comradeships. NSDStB leader Derichsweiler warned that this would benefit the corporation students. The Erlangen student union leader Julius Doerfler , at that time still Bubenreuther , campaigned against the decree. After protests from all associations, the order was overridden, Hitler justified this on November 11, 1934 because of "dangers of homosexuality". Max Blunck , who was appointed "Leader of German Corps Students" by the General Committee of the Association of Old Corps Students (VAC) in Bad Kösen in June 1933, made a similar statement . "The Corps Comradeship House means living together for the first and second semesters under the leadership of the senior, in a simple and somewhat military, but absolutely hygienic (!) Form." The corporations that should make their liaison houses available to the student body or the NSDStB , were reluctant or reluctant to comply. The existing connections were required to submit their members to a military daily routine and to send them to training and military exercises.

In 1934 Rudolf Hess dissolved the NSDStB, which had been v. Schirach and the highest SA leadership was under in its old form. Gerhard Wagner took over the reorganization of the NSDStB.

Conflicts

The very different tradition, the academic self-image and social-elitist traits of the student associations were incompatible with the egalitarianism of National Socialism . As early as 1934, some connections could not withstand the increasing pressure of conformity and the Aryan paragraph . The last connections broke up in 1938. In the eyes of the Nazi leadership, the corps in particular stood for a backward-looking, bourgeois-elitist reaction based on the traditions of the empire. Hans Heinrich Lammers , head of the Reich Chancellery and himself a liaison student , founded the short-lived community of student associations . Already excluded in 1935, the Kösener Seniors Convent Association dissolved in September 1935. The Association of Old Corps Students was wound up in 1938; the old gentlemen's associations - the owners and sponsors of the fraternity houses - were mostly retained. Many old rulers sought to join a comradeship or founded one. Not a few old men sympathized with the Nazi regime; particularly pronounced in the Corps differentiation of student organizations but was incompatible with the egalitarianism of National Socialism and the DC circuit policies of the regime. At a ten-year celebration of the NSDStB in Munich, Rudolf Hess declared in 1936 that the old connections would have to disappear. Those who prefer to join a corporation stamp themselves “a German of low rank”. The Reichsstudentenführer Gustav Adolf Scheel announced the end of the traditional student connections at the ten-year celebration of the NSDStB at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn .

Ideal

The main focus of the disputes was:

  • Democracy : Despite the more conservative orientation, kept their convents democratic independence of their decisions in the compounds. That contradicted the Führer principle .
  • Life covenant : The principle contradicted the compulsory membership of students and the required exclusion of Jewish and " Jewish infamous " old men
  • Honor : The age-old tradition that every student has to uphold their own dignity and respect that of each other, contradicted Völkisch nationalism .

Material

Many old men from suspended connections became members of the fellowship. Corporation houses were claimed or made available as comradeship houses. In order to secure the material basis of the comradeships, old gentlemen of the connections were asked to join the NS-Studentenkampfhilfe (from 1938: National Socialist Altherrenbund ) and to support the comradeships. Elderly gentlemen's associations that refused or were not wanted, like the Catholic old-gentlemen's associations, were dissolved from 1938 onwards. So-called SC comradeships emerged at universities with a senior citizens' convention .

fracture

The Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung wrote on January 18, 1938 that 80 percent of the first semesters were already in the comradeships and that it was only a matter of time before the last free student had disappeared from the university forever. The establishment of the new old manors in the comradeships had brought movement into the old academics and provoked a fierce struggle within the old man's associations. Those who still have the hope of a revival of the corporations have been mistaken and have thus also judged themselves.

Further statements by the NSDAP leaders confirm the final break between National Socialism and corporation students, including Adolf Hitler himself in a closed speech to party officials on July 15, 1935.

As a result, some of the comradeships that had emerged from corporations dissolved. After an academic celebration for 3 years of the 3rd Reich in the Erlangen Redoutensaal in 1936, at which the corporate members of the NSDStB had left the hall, Doerfler, as Derichsweiler's representative, declared that the NSDStB would in future exclude every member of the corporation, as well as the SA and NSDAP. In 1936, at a ten-year celebration of the NSDStB in Munich, Rudolf Hess declared that the old connections would have to disappear. Those who prefer to join a corporation stamp themselves “a German of low rank”. Similarly, Reichsstudentenführer Gustav Adolf Scheel announced the end of traditional student associations at the ten-year celebration of the NSDStB at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn .

While the comradeships were initially seen as a compulsory organization for the entire male student body, in 1938 the theologian decree issued by the Nazi head of government for political education Gerhard Mähner . Theology students are no longer allowed to join the comradeships of the NSDStB. In the philistine society of the Bubenruthia this arrangement was perceived as discrimination. The comradeship therefore applied to the Gaustudentenführung to be dissolved.

Rewording

In the Lingua Tertii Imperii , the centuries-old terms of corporations have also been changed. The old gentlemen kept the name. The comparison is thanks to the Breslau corps student Heinrich Zimmermann (1954). In Corpshaus the Corps Silesia to Wroclaw camaraderie Yorck whose old boys stem from the old boys' machinations of the Corps Silesia and was 1937-1945 Corps Borussia Breslau was.

Old name New name
Corps , fraternity , etc. Camaraderie
Corporation house Comradeship House
pub Comradeship room
Constitution Comradeship Rules
Corps / boys Comrades, "men"
foxes Young comrades
Senior Comradeship leader
Consenior Fencer
Sub-senior , secretary Comradeship
Fox major Educator
Singewart
During the war: field postman
Corps / boys convention Comrades' roll call
Inactive Old comrade
AHV chairman Old men leader
Passenger Guest mate
Friendly covenant Axis companionship

Continuity issues

When during the Second World War the surveillance of the universities by the party apparatus, as simply the presence of the fanatical National Socialists, who mostly did voluntary military service, waned, in some places the customs and traditions of the traditional student fraternity revived. The Fiihrer principle was secretly replaced by the Convention principle, color was worn, and scales fought. The camaraderie was soon dismissed by the National Socialist German Lecturer Association as "imitations of bad corporations". Many connections today see the comradeships as a disguised continuation of their alliances. After the war, some associations accepted members of the comradeship as old men in their old men 's association, especially if they had fought gauges despite the bans. Others have distanced themselves from the members who became active in the comradeships.

See also

literature

  • Friedhelm Golücke : The comradeship system in Würzburg from 1936 to 1945. In: Student body and corporations at the University of Würzburg. ed. for the 400th anniversary of the Alma Julia-Maximiliana from the Institute for Higher Education at the University of Würzburg. Commission publisher Ulrich Becker, Würzburg 1982.
  • Michael Grüttner : Students in the Third Reich . Paderborn 1995, ISBN 3-506-77492-1 .
  • Georg Meyer-Erlach : The student comradeships . The Convent 1954, p. 19.
  • Bernhard Grün: From decline to a new beginning. The Academic Choral Society Würzburg and the comradeship "Florian Geyer" in National Socialism . SH-Verlag, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-89498-089-3 .
  • Sven Waskönig: The everyday life of the Berlin fraternity students in the Third Reich using the example of the Kösener Corps at the Friedrich Wilhelms University. In: Christoph Jahr (Hrsg.): The Berlin University in the Nazi era. Volume I: Structures and People . Franz Steiner Verlag , 2005, ISBN 3-515-08657-9 , pp. 159-178.
  • Holger Zinn: The student comradeship system in the Third Reich with special consideration of the associations of DL and VC. (= Historia Academica - Student History Association of the Coburg Convent. Volume 40). Würzburg 2001, ISBN 3-930877-35-X .
  • Günter W. Zwanzig: The Göttingen Corporations between 1933 and 1950 . In: then and now. 47 (2002), pp. 263-279.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Claudia Huerkamp : Bildungsbürgerinnen - women in studies and academic professions 1900–1945 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1996, ISBN 3-525-35675-7 .
  2. ^ Karin Fontaine: National Socialist Activists (1933-1945). Housewives, mothers, professionals, academics. This is how they saw themselves and their role in the millennium. Königshausen & Neumann, 2003.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h Michael Grüttner, Heinz-Elmar Tenorth: History of the University of Unter den Linden. Volume 2: The Berlin University between the World Wars 1918–1945 . Akademie Verlag, 2012.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Hümmer, Hans Peter : "Ewigkeit sworn Eyden" - 200 years Corps Onoldia . Erlangen 1998, ISBN 3-00-003028-X .
  5. ^ Michael Grüttner: Students in the Third Reich . Paderborn 1995, p. 321 f.
  6. ^ Robert B. Heimann: The comradeship Carl von Clausewitz . In: Corps newspaper of the Marcomannia Breslau. No. 109 (2009)
  7. ^ A b c The Reichsstudentenführer later decreed corporation-like changes in young boys, lads and old boys as well as the Burschenring; see Erich Bauer (1956)
  8. ↑ Manuel Weskamp, ​​Peter-Philipp Schmitt: In opposition with band and racket. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Society, May 29, 2013. (online)
  9. ↑ Michael Grüttner: The corporations and the National Socialism. In: Harm-Hinrich Brandt , Matthias Stickler (eds.): " Der Burschen Herrlichkeit". Past and present of student corporation . Würzburg 1998, p. 142.