Student company

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Student companies were companies formed by students of various types in the 19th and 20th centuries.

history

From 1703 student companies were set up as patriotic militia associations in the Holy Roman Empire . Most of the relatives were volunteers who took up arms out of patriotism .

Austria

The student companies gained importance in the Sardinian War and the German War . They played a major role in Tyrol . Among other things, they were worn by the corps at the University of Innsbruck . Especially in South Tyrol are shooting clubs like the Tyrolean shooters still firmly rooted. The Academic Legion (1848) was a prime of the German Revolution of 1848/49 . The same name gave themselves in 1918/19 front fighters at the University of Vienna and Styrian corporates in the Carinthian defensive battle .

Interwar period

The temporary volunteer organizations of the time after the First World War have nothing in common with the medical and technical student companies of the Second World War.

Wehrmacht

As a mass, the Wehrmacht consisted of drafted reservists . Students from German universities had to belong to student companies both in the war effort and in civil life. They could study normally, but were posted to the war front during the semester break.

Members of the White Rose

The 2nd student company of medical students in the "Bergmannschule" (barracks in the elementary school on Bergmannstrasse in Munich 's Westend district ) was the Wehrmacht unit in which the well-known members of the resistance group had to do their military service. A total of four such student companies were stationed in the miner's school.

Members of the 2nd student company were among others

Other company members were Josef Gieles, Raimund Samüller, Hellmut Hartret, Wolf Jaeger, Otmar Hammerstein, Xaver Kuhn (clerk of the 1st company ) and Sergeant Lermer (who procured paper, a duplicating machine, travel permits and vacation tickets for White Rose operations), the company commander in the rank of captain , senior officer Dr. Paul Buhl and Anton Wagner (who gave Schmorell a barely functioning Russian revolver for Hans Scholl, which was carried along during the nightly wall slogans of the White Rose in February 1943).

In the middle of May 1942 until the assignment to the Soviet Union for field internship at the end of July 1942, Scholl and Schmorell wrote the first White Rose leaflets. In July 1942 the student company began to move to the Eastern Front. There she had u. a. on 7 August 1942 a use in the 252nd Infantry Division in Gshatsk , at the aid station about ten kilometers behind the front. The return to Munich for the winter semester 1942/1943 took place on November 6, 1942 . In January 1943, leaflets were also anonymously circulated in the four companies of the Bergmannschule (presumably by Hans Scholl with the help of Xaver Kuhn).

On 20./21. January 1943, Willi Graf disguised a recruiting trip for the White Rose to friends in Bonn, in particular Karl Bisa, ostensibly with the planning of a fencing tournament between Bonn and Munich student companies, which was to take place in the fencing school of Meister Knapen in Munich. On February 19, 1943 , after the arrest of the Scholl siblings , Alexander Schmorell stayed away from the roll call that morning. Therefore, Company Commander Buhl started the search. However, Buhl himself protested, together with Wolf Jaeger, against the stamping of criminal offenses on posters and newspaper advertisements in the course of the Gestapo persecution , because according to the law, crimes committed by soldiers could only be punished by competent Wehrmacht agencies (military police ).

Christoph Probst, however, did not belong to the same company, but to the student company of medical students in the Air Force . This was stationed in Strasbourg in 1941/1942 , in Munich in the summer semester of 1942 and in Innsbruck from winter 1942 .

As a representative of the student body, Michael Soeder was an eyewitness to the trial of the Scholl and Christoph Probst siblings in February 1943. He later described this process under the pseudonym Achim Anderer in his autobiographical novel Die Bittere Arznei der Zeit .

literature

  • Achim Anderer: The bitter medicine of the time, part II, student company , Knoedler Verlag, Reutlingen 1971. ISBN 3-87421-019-7 .
  • Wolfgang Bugs: Aesculap company. The student companies of the Wehrmacht 1939–1945 , Biblio-Verlag. ISBN 3-7648-2442-5 .
  • Anneliese Knoop-Graf, Inge Jens (ed.): Willi Graf. Letters and notes , Fischer, Frankfurt / M. 1994. p. 282, ISBN 3-596-12367-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rudolf Granichstaedten-Czerva : Andreas Hofer and the Innsbruck academics. , accessed August 19, 2014
  2. ↑ The verdict was clear from the start. Interview by Sabine Pamperrien with Michael Soeder in netzeitung.de on February 3, 2005.