German reading society
The Teutsche Lesegesellschaft (Teutsche Reading Society for the Achievement of Patriotic Scientific Purposes - Teutonia, Giessen ) was a pre- fraternity founded on November 17, 1814 by 70 Giessen students under the influence of Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker and Ernst Moritz Arndt under the direction of August Adolf Follen .
Short Story
August Adolf Follen and his brother Karl (called Follenius) subsequently led this relationship with a strongly German-national, unified and Christian orientation. The members wore the " old German costume " (black, buttoned skirt, shirt collar falling over it, black, cross-decorated velvet beret, dagger) with a blue scarf and were named after it by their opponents, the country-based student corps, also the "blacks". After differences of opinion, including over the duel question, the Teutsche Lesegesellschaft split in 1815. In the same year it was banned by the university authorities, which had become suspicious.
From this society were founded
- 1815 the Germania ( Germanenbund ) ( Gießener Schwarze ) - until 1816, and
- 1816 the Christian-German fraternity (" Ehrenspiegelburschenschaft "; Ehrenspiegel was the name for the constitution of the fraternity) - formally until 1817, de facto until 1818/19.
These followed with the participation of numerous members
- 1818 the Allgemeine Burschenschaft Germania - dissolved on November 3rd, 1819, and
- On May 17, 1821 a new Germania was formed under union with a Constantia (1820) , which was dissolved in 1823, but continued to exist as an arms association in various forms until 1837.
The activists of these various groups systematically worked towards an armed popular uprising against the Holy Alliance and tried to mobilize other groups of the population such as the rural population, for example by distributing the question and answer booklet .
The revolutionary cycle of poems Großer Lied by the Follen brothers, from which excerpts were sung at events in the Odenwald, for example, was also used as propaganda material :
- Brothers, it can't go like that
- Let us stand together
- Don't tolerate it anymore!
- Freedom, your tree rots away
- Everyone on the beggar's stick
- Bites the hunger grave soon,
- People into the gun!
- Brothers in peasant clothes,
- Shake hands!
- All of Germany's distress calls,
- All the Lord's commandments:
- Kill your plagues,
- Save the country!
The General Fraternity of Germania, in which the last blacks from Giessen were accommodated, was dissolved after the Karlsbad resolutions in 1819. Many of the revolutionary young people were arrested, some escaped and joined freedom movements in other countries such as Greece. Some perished.
Known members
- Christian Bansa (1791–1862), liberal Hessian politician, member of the 2nd Chamber of the Estates of the Grand Duchy of Hesse and Minister of State in Hesse-Homburg
- Friedrich Christian Diez (1794–1876), Romanist
- August Adolf Follen (1794–1855), writer and publisher
- Karl Follen (1796–1840), writer
- Christian Sartorius (1796–1872), writer and sugar manufacturer
- Georg Thudichum (1794–1873), philologist and theologian, director of the high school in Büdingen, member of the Second Chamber of the Estates of the Grand Duchy of Hesse
- Ludwig Thudichum (1798–1863), member of the Hessian state parliament
- Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker (1784–1868), classical philologist
Membership directory :
- Paul Wentzcke : Fraternity lists. Second volume: Hans Schneider and Georg Lehnert: Gießen - The Gießener Burschenschaft 1814 to 1936. Görlitz 1942, A. Teutsche Lesegesellschaft (Teutonia).
literature
- Hans-Georg Balder: The German fraternities. Their representation in individual chronicles. Hilden 2005, pp. 160-161.
- Paul Wentzcke : Fraternity lists. Second volume: Hans Schneider and Georg Lehnert: Gießen - Die Gießener Burschenschaft 1814 to 1936. Görlitz 1942, pp. 25–39.
- Jürgen Setter: Brief history of connections in Gießen , Verlag Friesland, Sande , 1983, p. 30ff