Burschenschaft

Abstract: This article examines the attempts by a fraternity (the Burschenschaft) to articulate a German national identity before the nation state existed.

In 1814, students at the University of Halle formed the Burschenschaft, a student fraternity that took an active role in shaping conceptions of "Germanness" that were intended to override the existing regional identities of those the students deemed "German." This association--often regarded as the first modern student movement--had the dual purpose of reforming student life and promoting German national identity before a unified German state existed.

The members of the Burschenschaft, or Burschenschafter, intended their union to encompass all university students in German-speaking lands, although it became only a nationalist fraternity with chapters at most German universities.

Burschenschaft constructions of nationhood illustrated an uneasy attempt to create an inclusive identity.

During the unrest in German universities in the post-Napoleonic period, he vilified the Burschenschaft. Any assessment of "liberal" and "conservative" at the turn of the century either in Prussia or Russia should include the conservative as well as the liberal directions in the Jakob corpus.

(98) Finally, in an anonymous 1824 pamphlet--Geist und Wesen der Burschenschaft (The Spirit and Nature of the Burschenschaft)--written at the request of the Prussian government, he exposed the "highly treasonable" nature of the Burschenschaft as part of a dangerous international conspiracy.

The venom in his 1824 pamphlet on the Burschenschaft in part reflected a fear that his careful progressivism could have been interpreted as support for revolutionary actions which he abhorred.