The Student Life of Germany Part 40

What we have now been saying may convince us how beneficial is the influence of the student-life on that which follows. n.o.bler principles of action awake in the breast of the academician, and are nourished; that here and there starts up amongst them something perverse, is not denied; but the kernel is good, it germinates, it grows into a tree, and bears excellent fruit, which the quondam Bursch and his cotemporaries are destined to enjoy.

CHAPTER XXV.

A REVIEW OF THE POLITICAL ASPECT OF STUDENT LIFE.

If we have hitherto regarded the life and pursuits of the university in an isolated manner, and entirely on its own account, yet it can by no means have escaped the reader that this life does not stand so completely sundered from the general stream of events, but that the mind and spirit of the university life is determined by the spirit of the times, and that, on the other hand, it operates again powerfully on the developement of the inst.i.tutions and condition of the times. This must have become sufficiently clear to us in noticing the earlier Burschenschaft, and to increase and complete that conviction, we have only to take a hasty review of what has been now written, and to add a few other remarks.

The universities reflect the spirit of the times: its progress, its weakness, its strength, are all imaged forth again in the science of the age; and the schools are therefore exposed to the changes and revolutions of the times, but are not unconditionally subjected to them. They have strengthened that spirit of the time and of the people in their exhaustion, by their inquiries and results; and not less through teaching and the invisible power with which they have elevated and enn.o.bled the minds of the youth. They have enriched the sciences, and adorned public affairs with beauty and wisdom. They have in part laid the foundations of the intellectual greatness and high accomplishment of Germany; in part strengthened and guaranteed them; and are the pillars of the fairest and most unrivalled glory which our country in the most recent times, and before the eyes of all Europe, has achieved. The university is the central point and the heart of science. From all sides stream to it the spirits which are athirst for knowledge; and as they are enn.o.bled, again from that central point disperse themselves through all the members of Germany, diffusing through them fresh nourishment and a splendid growth. The teachers and accomplishers of the people go forth out of them. The battles of the church were fought out in the university; and if, as it happened in the contest of the Reformation, the faith of the Princess was forced upon the High-school by the hand of power, yet the teachers and scholars of the university seldom bowed before it. The teachers abandoned a place, which would lay their consciences in chains, and sacrificing office and income, sought an asylum in foreign lands. They often found a refuge in another university which held the same faith as themselves; they carried with them the troop of their scholars, who, as their faithful bodyguard, attended them; and there fought anew and victoriously for the success of the good cause.

The Professors of the High-schools have pre-eminently cooperated in working out the const.i.tution of the German States, and many excellent men amongst them have contended for the freedom of the people, and have boldly stood forward against every usurpation of despotism. We need only give one example, and that of the most recent date; we need only call to the reader's mind the Seven Professors of Gottengen, who opposed themselves to the arbitrary violation of the const.i.tution of the state with all their power, and on that account in the most unprincipled manner were ejected from their professorships. This scandalous, and in Germany till then, unheard-of example of despotism, notoriously threatened the destruction of the Georgia-Augusta, and for a long time annihilated its prosperity; but other states, by their reception and establishment of these professors, have shown that they approved of their proceeding, and the exiled professors were every where received by the German students with the testimonies of the deepest veneration. If the Bundestag did not condemn the King of Hanover as guilty, yet the judgments are well known, which many German universities at its desire gave in, and in which they expressed in the most strong and unqualified language their sense of the injustice of the deed. We call to mind that the tyrant called on the King of Wirtemberg to punish the audacity of the professors of Tubingen who had sent in such a judgment, according to the enormity of their crime,--an audacity which in Hanover would be expiated in chains; but the n.o.ble monarch answered that in his land the freedom of teaching was a sacred possession, which he would never infringe; but, for the rest, he observed sarcastically, he left it to the High Court of Justice at Celle to p.r.o.nounce sentence on the guilt or innocence of his faithful professors.

If the universities in such a manner grapple mightily with the circ.u.mstances of the times, so are they, on the other hand, influenced by them. They receive from the times the impressions, the tendency, the frivolity as well as the earnestness, and distinguish themselves only from the other circles of society in this, that in them the good and the evil of the times more rapidly unfold themselves and take a determinate form. The moral effeminacy of the nation at the time of the French domination, operated on the ign.o.ble natures amongst the youth, scattering and dissolving; while it spurred on the n.o.bler to those Verbindungs out of which, at a later period, went forth hosts to do battle for the liberation of the nation from a foreign yoke. After the rising of the nation and its consequence--victory over the foe,--as all hearts felt themselves elevated, all exertions felt themselves refined, the new form of the time stood forth in the yet pure aims of the Burschenschaft, which at the time when the Tugend-bund extended itself, const.i.tuted, on its first appearance, a continuation of the brotherhood-in-arms, the Waffengenossenschaft, which with the student youth returning from the war, had this object,--to purify academical life from its dross, and to present it as an image of the union and enn.o.bling of all the German races. Hereupon followed the period of undeceiving, of counteraction, of degeneracy, which run into so unrestrained a career, that to the wise and prudent, the beautiful time of enthusiasm, appeared as the dream and frenzy of good-natured fools.

As the youth would not abandon the objects of their endeavours, whether rational or chimerical, but, on the contrary, held them equally fast as something great and n.o.ble, a portion of them fell a secure prey to the unquiet, the revolutionists and political intriguers, who abused their inexperience, and poisoned their n.o.ble endeavours by infusing a resistance to public order. The teachers of the universities were blamed by many, as though they were chargeable with being concerned in these aberrations of the youth, or, at least, were so far culpable that they had not prevented them.

So far as a direct partic.i.p.ation of the teachers in these political disturbances is concerned, we may be well a.s.sured that, if only a single professor had at any time been an accomplice, or indeed only a concealer and protector, of the guilty, the exact, the strict, and in many places for years protracted inquiries, would to a certainty have come upon the trace of their crimes, and the guilty would have been conducted from the professorial chair to the dungeon. There remains only the question, whether they, though taking no part in the views and proceedings of the young people, were yet aware of them, and took no steps to prevent them. But were the youths who fell under the power of the law, the only ones who trod the same dangerous path? Were there not amongst the others, some, perhaps even as many, who, through the warnings and exhortations, or through the moral influence of distinguished teachers; and, in short, through the better spirit which every well conducted university developes amongst the n.o.bler part of the youth, were preserved from that mischief? But, so far as the actually implicated students were concerned, the professors were in the same case with the Boards, expressly organized for the watching over the youth, and the matter was quite unknown to them, since the youths who were mutually pledged to that object, concealed it from the eyes of the professors just as scrupulously as from those of the university Commission of inquiry, and the Boards of police. But to the liberation of Germany from the dominion of Napoleon, the High-schools contributed no little. Joyfully their scholars gave themselves up to death, and scholars and teachers roused the nations to bravery through inspiriting songs; of which the names of Arndt, Schenkendorf, Korner, Hauff, Follen, Voss, s...o...b..rg, Scharnhorst, and Haupt, stand as glorious testimonies.

Yet once more the youth wandered from their laudable endeavours in the years 1830-33, and one portion of them although a small one, suffered themselves to become the work-tools of political fanaticism. The revolution in Poland, and the unhappy fate of that country, had made a vivid impression on their minds. Demagogic agitators again were busy in secret; private Verbindungs were formed; the catastrophe of the French Revolution of July occurred, and flung the firebrand into the powder magazine. People thought they must follow the example of France, and began loudly, with writing and by speech, to attack the governments and to abuse the princes. But the youth who attached themselves to these agitators, were no longer the old Burschenschaft, who steadfast to their one idea,--"One Fatherland, which should declare itself the worthy antagonist of the arch-enemy France; one church, and freedom,"

fought out this with word and deed: no, the modern Burschenschaft, an abused work-tool of a greater party, had sworn death to the hereditary princes, and did not shrink, as a means of achieving such an object, to offer the hand even to the old enemy, to France itself. They would dare the highest extremes; and, allured by the apparent quietness of the government, the a.s.sembly at Hambach, which has become so widely celebrated, was held in 1833, where the French colours, and the tri-colour of the Burschenschaft, fluttered from the same staff. There, death to the princes was sworn, and within a short time revolutionary movements broke out in all parts of Germany. A number of the academic youth plunged themselves into misfortune through the attempt at Frankfort, since the governments now found it necessary to exercise stringent measures with all their power, and all partisans of such demagogue Verbindungs were quickly either arrested, or, having been timely warned, fled.

It may well be supposed that from this time forward, a much stricter eye was kept upon every sort of Verbindung of the students. No Landsmannschaft dare lift its head, and the academical liberty was in many particulars restricted. Another injurious effect also became apparent. Many states, more particularly Prussia and Russia, forbade their subjects to frequent any but their own universities, and no university felt the loss occasioned by this order more than Heidelberg, where the attendance of Prussian subjects has only again been recently permitted.

Yet, after all, only a small portion of the student youth, suffered themselves to be carried away by these imprudences; and what might be the reacting effect of these lamentable occurrences, the reflection of the students on themselves and on their calling, on what became them and was for their real advantage, further strengthened and quickened by the seriousness with which the governments pursued the guilty, produced in them a greater exactness, and gave thereby a higher moral firmness to the academical life, so that far from being represented as a sink of wickedness, as some people believe it, it may much more justly be regarded now as a fruitful, purified, well-drained, and well-sown, field. The channels, constructed to lay dry the boggy places, are cleared; the unsound spots are probed and made good; and if the watchful superintendence of circ.u.mspect and well-disposed Boards, and the professional faithfulness of the majority of the academical teachers continue what they are, this corn-field of our future will yet bear continually more beautiful and affluent harvests.

CHAPTER XXVI.

A PARTING GLANCE AT OTHER UNIVERSITIES: GERMAN AND FOREIGN.

We have in conclusion, only to say a few words of comparison between the university of Heidelberg and the other German universities; and between these generally and those of other countries.

In the description of a German university, we have always had that of Heidelberg in our eye, touching only occasionally one or another of the other German universities. The inst.i.tutions of these are essentially alike, yet each one has its own peculiarities; and this is not to be wondered at, when one reflects how many influences determine the course of the developement of a High-school. It shapes itself on the circ.u.mstances of the times, according to the will of the Princes under whose protection it stands; according to surrounding causes, in respect to nature and art; and more than all, according to the spirit and character of the teachers. To take a comparative review of these peculiarities of the other universities of Germany would be highly interesting; but when we reflect that in such a course all alleged influences must be carefully weighed; and, in fact, that not merely the present but all the past fortunes of the High-schools must be brought under the eye, it will at once be seen that so wide a scope of observation does not belong to this work. We can as little go into the narrative of the foreign universities; because personal inspection is wanting to us, and because we can give little faith to the statements of foreigners--statements which often contradict each other, and for the most part are as little worthy of credence, as those fabulous accounts of German universities which have been circulated abroad The last few years have brought us intelligence of the English universities, which represents them as the nurseries of all that is mischievous and corrupt, and which paints them in colours as repellant as, at the same time, have been daubed over the caricatures of German universities there. The false representations which foreigners, who, in fact, have lived for some years at a German High-school, have made of the diligence and moral condition of the same, warn us not to p.r.o.nounce a similar opinion on academical inst.i.tutions which we have not seen with our own eyes. We will only here devote a few lines to some advantages which our inst.i.tutions appear to us to possess over those of England.

The great wheel of the mechanism of a German university is, next to the payment for the lectures, the division of the teachers into ordinary and extraordinary professors, and private teachers. Through the income appointed by the government, the professor is not dependent on his hearers, and is not tempted to care more for his income than for science. The first duty of a professor is towards science; not towards the students. That is the principle of all genuine university professors; and in this exactly differs the university essentially from the Gymnasium. The state must secure a moderate income to the professor, independent of the number of his hearers; since a lecture which has only seven or eight attendants may be of incalculable benefit to science; as for instance, those on the higher a.n.a.lysis, or the higher philology. A great mathematician ought not, in order to acquire emolument merely, waste his time in teaching the inferior branches of his science. But on the other hand, the state is not bound to give to every individual a scientific education gratuitously, and to its own ruin; and it would be unjust to extract money from the pockets of all citizens for the benefit of only a very small number. A suitable and secure income, which furnishes a professor with what is necessary and with leisure; and paid lectures, which in proportion to his success shall better his condition,--these, in this respect, const.i.tute the true means; since a professor should never forget the higher interests of science, nor in the brilliant l.u.s.tre of a transcendent genius content himself with only a certain degree of success, and only a moderate number of hearers. There is also this advantage to be added, that the students frequent with more zeal and perseverance the lectures for which they pay.

What happens in these respects in France is exactly the contrary. In the French faculties of language and science, the doors are thrown open, and every man can enter without paying. This at the first view appears excellent, and worthy of a great nation. But what is really the consequence? That an audience is like the pit of a theatre; one goes in, and then goes out again, in the midst of the lecture; another comes once, and then comes no more if the professor does not tickle his ear.

The attendants listen with distracted attention, and in general you see more amateurs than students. The professor who does not lose a _sous_, let him do his work as ill as possible, either neglects it, and expends little trouble or talent on his lectures, or loving fame, anxious for his reputation, and yet despairing to win a serious audience, labours at least to a.s.semble a numerous one. In this case there is an end to science; for in order to make it attractive, he must sink himself to the level of his hearers.

There lies in this great number of attendants an almost magnetic influence, which bows to its yoke even the strongest minds; and he who would be an earnest and admirable professor for attentive students, becomes for frivolous, airy, and superficial hearers, light and superficial himself. In fine, what remains to the mult.i.tude of that instruction to which they have given a gratuitous attendance?--a confused impression, just about as profitable as that which an interesting drama in the theatre would have left behind.

But is this to be compared for a moment with the persevering zeal of fifty or a hundred hearers even, who have paid beforehand for the lectures; who follow their progression obstinately, in order to sift them, and to give themselves an account of them, without which they have thrown away both their time and money. Thus excellent is the arrangement that the student shall pay something, and at the same time the state shall guarantee to the distinguished and learned men who are chosen as professors, a secure and fitting support.

The three degrees of teachers at the High-schools of Germany are in the happiest manner divided from each other, and yet bound together. The foundation, the root of the professorship, the inexhaustible and everspringing nursery of the German university, are the young doctors, to whom it is allowed, under certain conditions, and with the permission of the faculties, to deliver public lectures. Every able young man may thus arrive at the higher offices of teaching, but none without raising, at least good expectations. He is tried, but without entering into any actual engagement with him; without any thing being promised to him, or given him. If he does not by correspondent results, realize the hopes which have been entertained of him; if he fails to attract hearers, and to do honour to the faculty which admitted him; it is seen that a vain antic.i.p.ation has been attached to him, and he is not raised to the rank of extraordinary professor. He himself, after some years, withdraws himself from the hopeless pursuit, which brings him few hearers and little profit, and betakes himself to some other career. On the contrary, if he fulfil the hopes raised by him; if he gather numerous hearers, and write works which excite attention; he is then declared Extraordinary professor, a t.i.tle which is irrevocable, and which gives him a small fixed salary, which, with the income derived from his hearers, encourages him, and supports him in his career. If he maintain this happy progress, if he prove himself an able man, the state, in order to retain him, increases by degrees his income, and finally names him Ordinary professor.

This distinguished t.i.tle is never given on account of hopes: which may be found false by experience, but on account of tried effects, of distinguished talents, and established reputation. It is very rare that this t.i.tle is received before a certain age; and there is not a professor in Germany, who is not a man of a reputation more or less distinguished, since this position is entirely the reward of his talents. Great and successful results, be they in writing or lecturing, these in Germany nominate the Ordinary professor, and an unlimited choice is afforded in the mult.i.tude of young teachers. Talent, with the aid of time and perseverance, wins the prize, and that is the genuine and proper contest. As age and time dull the zeal and diminish ability, and the professor now grown old, neglects or does not advance with the advances of science; an innovator in his youth, does he now become a loiterer, what is to be done? His hearers, ever attracted by the spirit of the time, desert his lectures; and seek those of an Extraordinary professor, or perhaps those of a private teacher--young and zealous, and often to excess, fond of innovation and bold inquiry; and the university suffers not through the retreat of those, who formerly served it faithfully and well. This happy mechanism rests on the distinction into extraordinary and ordinary professors, and private teachers; which in France correspond with the t.i.tulaires, adjoints, and agreges.

Let us now only reflect how different altogether is the practice in France. A man is put in the list of compet.i.tors for a few weeks, amongst such young people as frequently have not written two lines; have taught scarcely a single year; and now, after giving in some stated proof, are often in their twenty-fifth year endowed with an irrevocable t.i.tle, which may be held till their seventieth year without doing any thing; which, from the first day of their nomination to the end of their life, draws the same salary, whether they have many hearers or few; whether they distinguish themselves or not; whether they thenceforward live in ignorance, or become celebrated men!

Another great disadvantage in France is, that in this country the different faculties of which a German university is composed, are separated from each other, scattered about, and in this isolation are as it were, lost. Here are faculties of science, in which lectures upon chemistry, physics, and natural history, are held, without a medicinal faculty at their side, which might thence derive benefit; there--faculties of law, and of theology, without history, literature, and philosophy. So are there perhaps twenty miserable faculties scattered over the whole surface of France, and nowhere a genuine home for science. Thence comes it, that in France study is for the most part so unphilosophically pursued; although able professional men are accomplished in jurisprudence and medicine, the studies which are there the most in esteem.

We leave it to the English reader, who is better acquainted with the universities of his native land, than we are--to decide, how far the deficiencies here attributed to the French universities also affect those of Britain. Oxford and Cambridge, the two most ancient universities of England, have remained true to the old inst.i.tutions, to the old mode of living altogether in colleges, which the German public has long abandoned as not answering the purpose. They have a greater self-dependence and independence than the German ones, which are submitted to the superintendence of the state. Yet the German inst.i.tutions in this respect reap many advantages, so long as the government is no despotism. Through such high-standing Boards, boards which respect the interests and claims of all parties, and administer to them all justice with strict impartiality, the chairs of science are preserved from incapacity; the meritorious are made known and elevated; obstructions are removed; help is duly administered, morals are protected, defects are remedied, better and more effectually than can be done by a corporation alone, and without such a well-disposed and wise superintendence of their interests; and which places the university in a condition to exercise a fresher and more unimpaired strength in the great pursuit of science and of accomplishment, and with more decisive effect; and to remain mistress of the great movement of inquiry and of knowledge.

That the advantages of the German High-schools are, however, acknowledged in England, is proved by the foundation of the liberal University in London in the year 1825, wherein they have sought to combine many of the German plans, whose value was recognised, with the old English ones. But yet more than by this fact, is paid the tribute of recognition of the excellence of the German High-schools, by the great number of young men who, not alone from the European countries, but from distant regions of the earth, hasten to place themselves at the feet of their teachers.

No country has so many and such excellent universities as Germany,--and the proofs of their advantages exist in the great number of ill.u.s.trious learned men and authors, which quench their thirst of knowledge at these immortal wells of science; men, whose creations daily more and more receive abroad their just recognition, and in no country more than in England.

THE

GENERAL BEER-COMMENT OF HEIDELBERG.

Many a one is a more true Diogenes, not when he is in the tub, but when the tub is in him.

t.i.tULUS I.

DIVISION OF THE STUDENTS AS IT REGARDS THE BEER COMMENT.

-- 1. All Students are divided into Cra.s.s Foxes (or Fat Foxes), Brand Foxes, and Beer-Burschen.

2. Every student, during the first course of his academical career, is a Fat Fox.

3. He becomes a Brand-Fox when he is burnt at one of the regular kneips of the respective Ch.o.r.es, with the proper solemnities; yet this shall not occur before the Farewell Commers of his first, nor later than four weeks after the entrance Commers of his second, semester.

4. The Brand-Fox becomes a Beer-Bursch, if he be _pawked_ in (initiated), at the end of his second course, but after the Farewell Commers, or at the commencement of his third course; this, however, shall only be done in beer.

5. Comes one here who has already studied two semesters at another known university, he must at the commencement of his third semester be here _pawked_ in, or otherwise, till he be pawked in, he can only, as it regards the Beer-companies, be considered as a Brander.

6. Every one who has studied three semesters at another known university, has on that account the rights of a Beer-bursch.

7. A Fox who is the Ch.o.r.e-bursch of an existing verbindung or union, has the rights of a Beer-bursch, yet must he suffer himself to be _pawked_ in as a Beer-bursch.

8. The following is the mode of pawking in. At one of the appointed kneips of the respective Ch.o.r.e, the in-pawking Beer-bursch drinks to the in-to-be-pawked at least half a choppin of beer, after the singing of every strophe of a song then sung, and the in-to-be-pawked must _a tempo_ drink as much. Moreover, it is well understood that the in-to-be-pawked pays for the beer of the in-pawker which is thus drunk.

t.i.tULUS II.

OF THE FORE AND AFTER DRINKING.

-- 9. From the Foxes, whether Cra.s.s or Brand Foxes, the Beer-bursch is not bound to take a beer challenge; yet can the Brand-fox _nachsturzen_ (that is, command the person who is going to drink before him, to drink twice the quant.i.ty that he proposes). Amongst themselves the Foxes have equal rights.