Chocolatists

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Riots between students and soldiers in the wake of the chocolateist riots (engraving from 1792). Caption: “The students in Jena, imbued with a true sense of honor, give the Consilium Abeundi to a strong patrol of hunters, hussars and militia with the noble intention of preventing a bloodbath. On July 17, 1792. "

The Chocolateists (also Chokoladisten or Chokoladenbrüder ) were a student movement against the dueling at the end of the 18th century. The name first appears in Jena in 1791 , when some students were dissatisfied with the obligation to be satisfied .

This association was quickly given the name Chocolateists by the other students, as they wanted to "settle all disputes over a cup of chocolate " . The expression was later occasionally carried over to all opponents of the duel by beating corporations.

Origin and development

One possible originator of the chocolateists is Heinrich Stephani , who as a private scholar accompanied a noble student to Jena and there agitated for the establishment of a court of honor that should enable disputes to be settled without a duel. He advocated this idea as a representative of a rational, Kantian philosophy under the influence of the French Revolution , which, with the elimination of the nobility, also forbade duels. Stephani stated that he had "first presented his ideas about the abolition of duels in a small group, received approval and soon found 300 followers in the student body" . This "court of honor movement" became very active in propaganda through petitions to the university authorities, the government of Saxony-Weimar and advertisements in newspapers. However, the information about their temporary influence and the number of members are viewed as controversial on the basis of Stephani's self-assessment and agitation; The indication of 300 members is clearly exaggerated given the total number of students at the time. Despite letters from the chocolatists appealing to almost all German universities to do the same, the movement did not gain any influence. Eventually there were protests by the opponents, whereupon some of the agitators of the chocolateists were expelled from the university.

The initial reaction of the student body was not negative, but the court of honor movement failed because of the very strict regulations it proposed to prevent any kind of assault between students. In every case of defamation, the elaborated statutes demanded "Atonement". Any violation should be punished with relegation and a reputation should be pronounced. This penalty should also be used for conducting duels or assaulting; the state government should be responsible for enforcing the sanctions.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , who, as Minister of State, submitted the petitions of the chocolateists to the Duke of Saxony-Weimar and prepared an expert opinion on the chocolateists, was rather hostile to the very rigid wording of the court order. He noted: "It is a maxim of government wisdom: not to treat people as they should be, but as they really are."

The downfall of the chocolateists

From 1792 the chocolatists aroused considerable displeasure in the student orders of the Constantists , as they did not shy away from dishonorable or defamatory means in their advertising for the rules of the court of honor. The betrayal of forbidden duels by the chocolate officer Polizio to the prorector Johann August Heinrich Ulrich (1746–1813), who was also an open supporter of the chocolateists, led to the expulsion of five students of the Constantists; The student body saw the perpetrators of the treason in the ranks of the court of honor movement. When the Hungarian Landsmannschaft zu Jena celebrated Franz II's coronation feast on the market square on June 10, 1792 , the call “Pereant the Chocoladists!” (Latin pereant : they may perish) rang out. Of the 600 or so students gathered, 60 to 70 moved to the Prorector's garden house to destroy it. Then they ran to Polizio's apartment, who then hid in a wardrobe, but was driven out with a saber stab and jumped out the window. On the street he was watched by the rest of the crowd, driven naked through the streets and asked to swear an oath of secrecy on his knees.

This continuing chocolateist riot led to the invasion of ducal troops on July 14, 1792 to restore order. For their part, the student body took this threat to academic freedom as a renewed opportunity to take action against the soldiers and when individual students were arrested by shouting “ Boys out! “ To attack the arrested soldiers with weapons. The clashes culminated on July 17th with an armed confrontation between soldiers and students on the Jena market square. On July 19, 1792, the crisis reached its climax, the student body left the city to move to Nohra , thus putting the citizens of Jena and the university under pressure. The duke's troops were subject to this pressure, and after negotiations with the student body, the troops withdrew from the university town with "Howling of the student body" (Fabricius).

It was not until the middle of the 19th century that the idea of ​​rejecting duels and mensur revived among the student body. The argument for this, however, was not a revolutionary-rationalist one, as with the chocolateists, but initially a moral one that grew out of Christian student circles of neo- pietism. The oldest group that permanently anchored the rejection of dueling in the student body was the Wingolf from around 1840 . Its rejection on the part of the beating corporations was expressed until the early German Empire by denouncing the first non-beating connections as "chocolatists".

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ quoted from Fabricius: The German Corps. 1926, p. 154.
  2. ↑ Anthony J. La Vopa: spruce: The Self and the calling of Philosophy, 1762-1799 . Cambridge 2001, ISBN 0-521-79145-6 , p. 252.
  3. ^ Fabricius: The German Corps. 1926, p. 152.
  4. ^ Carl Schüddekopf (ed.): A report by Goethe on the abolition of duels at the University of Jena. 1792. In: Goethe-Jahrbuch 19, Frankfurt 1898, p. 32 (digitized: archive.org )