Association of German Students Kiel

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Association of German Students in Kiel

coat of arms Circle
Coat of arms VDSt Kiel restored.jpg {{{ZirkelAltText}}}
Basic data
University / s: Christian Albrechts University in Kiel
Founding: June 3, 1881
Place of foundation: Kiel
Corporation association : Association of German Student Associations
Color status : colorful
Colours: Black-white-red (colored)
Type of Confederation: Men's association
Position to the scale : Not striking
Motto: With God for people and country
Website: vdst-kiel.org

The Association of German Students (VDSt) Kiel is a June 3, 1881 the University of Kiel , founded fraternity .

history

After the establishment of the first committees for the dissemination of the anti-Semite petition in Berlin and Leipzig in 1880, the theology student Johannes Jacobsen in Kiel was committed to setting up a comparable committee. The initiative fell on fertile ground and more than 80 of the 300 or so Kiel students signed the petition. Similar to the committees at the large Prussian universities, however, the desire arose to continue political work institutionally. First attempts to found an association failed due to resistance from the rectorate of the university. Only after Wilhelm Möller took over the rectorate , the Association of German Students Kiel was officially founded in June 1881 with 32 members. The VDSt Kiel was one of the founding members of the Kyffhäuser Association of German Students' Associations, which was founded in August 1881.

Initially conceived as a purely political association, the VDSt Kiel was also open to members of student associations. In the first semesters in particular, however, the lack of internal consolidation with regard to a political striving for nationalism, social justice and Christianity became apparent. Despite the large fluctuation of members and the provincial location, the VDSt Kiel achieved an important position locally in the 1880s, not least due to its extensive program of lectures and its strong public relations work. After the first generations had finished their studies and the influx from other universities decreased, the association fell into a crisis in the early 1890s and was suspended between 1895 and 1898. After that, the VDSt Kiel developed into a community with a large number of members, which has been around since the end By the 1880s it had increasingly taken on the structural forms of a closed student union.

According to the statutes of the association, the VDSt Kiel remained a non-color corporation, scales were not fought, but the association granted satisfaction on sabers. In terms of content, the VDSt Kiel followed the efforts of its umbrella organization. The association, which is mostly supported by Protestant theology students, saw itself as a political pillar of the Hohenzollern Empire, pushed the policy of social equilibrium in favor of the workers while at the same time rejecting social democracy and represented a German-Christian orientation in connection with a strong anti-Jewish character.

In the 20th century, the VDSt Kiel could no longer build on its initially strong political position within the student body, but developed into one of the largest connections in Kiel by the First World War. In 1913 a house of his own in the Düsternbrook district was acquired.

After the end of the First World War, the North Schleswig question became a central issue in Schleswig-Holstein. The VDSt Kiel, which has had numerous members from North Schleswig since the beginning of its activity and campaigned for the enforcement of German interests in the border area, found a new field of activity in the course of the referendum in Schleswig. With public rallies and marches, the Kiel VDSter took part in the propaganda campaigns and at the same time agitated in the newly founded border country associations. Overall, border issues became the dominant issue in the early 1920s. The protagonists included the Kiel VDSter Johannes Schmidt-Wodder , who sat as a representative of the German ethnic group in the Danish Folketing , and Otto Scheel , who had held the chair for Schleswig-Holstein regional history at Kiel University since 1924. Active life was based on the one hand on the traditions of liaison and on the other hand on national political thinking.

In the second half of the twenties, the student members of the VDSt Kiel became increasingly radicalized. An amalgamation with National Socialist circles led to an increasingly tense relationship with the old gentlemen in the late phase of the Weimar Republic. The initiative for the introduction of a leader principle at the connection level, as discussed in the Kyffhäuser Association in the early 1930s, was first implemented in Kiel. After the National Socialists came to power, the VDSt Kiel increasingly approached the National Socialist German Student Union and from 1933 formed the comradeship " Otto Weddigen " together with the friends ATV Ditmarsia Kiel and ASV Albingia . Formally, this ended the existence of the VDSt Kiel.

In 1951 the VDSt Kiel could be re-established. A reorientation of the association with regard to its content work was necessary due to the experiences of the National Socialist terror and the Second World War. None of the members who joined the Kiel VDSt after 1934 returned to the association on a permanent basis. The work of the people, especially in relation to North Schleswig, remained a central topic, but the main work now became the question of German unity. In 1956 the suspended VDSt zu Greifswald was officially merged with the VDSt Kiel. From that time on, the old rulers of Greifswald supported the young Kiel association, which moved into its home in the Seeburg on the fjord in 1952. Dealing with the questions of the division of Germany and the Soviet system became the main concern of the Kiel VDSter. With the merger to form VDSt Kiel-Greifswald, the sailing tradition from Greifswald also came to the Kieler Verein, which had a rowing department in the pre-war period.

A return to the old tradition of the VDSt Kiel was no longer conceivable in the Federal Republic. So the traditional area was limited to corporate customs. In terms of content, the association was still based on those values ​​that were unencumbered, such as the striving for cohesion of a German cultural nation and overcoming social grievances. The political education work was done more and more internally. The VDSt Kiel never gave up the goal of uniting Germany, not least because of its close relationship with Greifswald. When the border to the GDR opened in 1989, the Kiel VDSt used its contacts and thus created the basis for the re-establishment of the VDSt zu Greifswald in the summer of 1990.

Members

literature

  • Paul Ilgen: History of the Association of German Students in Kiel from its founding to the winter of 1883 , Kiel 1891.
  • Willy Danielsen: History of the VDSt Kiel . In: Kiel-Greifswalder Nachrichten 1 (1956).
  • Marc Zirlewagen : The Kyffhäuser Association of the Associations of German Students in the Weimar Republic , Cologne 1999.
  • Christopher Skibbe: The Association of German Students Kiel 1881-1938 (previously unpublished) .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ EH Eberhard: Handbook of the student liaison system. Leipzig, 1924/25, p. 75.