



Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive




Transcriber's Note:

   1. Page scan source:
      http://www.archive.org/details/studentlifegerm02corngoog

   2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].





                                  THE

                        STUDENT-LIFE OF GERMANY.






                                  THE



                        STUDENT-LIFE OF GERMANY:


                           BY WILLIAM HOWITT.
   AUTHOR OF "THE RURAL LIFE OF ENGLAND," "BOOK OF THE SEASONS," ETC.


               FROM THE UNPUBLISHED MS. OF DR. CORNELIUS.


                     CONTAINING NEARLY FORTY OF THE


                       MOST FAMOUS STUDENT SONGS.


[Illustration]

                                   THINK OFT, YE BRETHREN;
            THINK OF THE GLADNESS OF OUR YOUTHFUL PRIME,--
            IT COMETH NOT AGAIN,--THAT GOLDEN TIME!

                                                 The Commers Book.



                             PHILADELPHIA:
                            CAREY AND HART.
                               MDCCCXLII.






            C. Sherman &, Co. Printers, 19 St. James Street






"How shall I call thee, thou high, thou rough, thou noble, thou
barbaric, thou loveable, unharmonious, song-full, repelling, yet
refreshing life of the Burschen years? How shall I describe you, ye
golden hours, ye choral-songs of brotherly love? What tone shall
I give to you to make myself understood? What colours to thee, thou
never-comprehended chaos? I shall describe thee? Never! Thy ludicrous
outside lies open; the layman sees that; one can describe that to him;
but thy inner and lovely ore, the miner only knows who goes singing
with his brethren into the deep shaft. He brings up gold; pure, solid
gold; be it much or little, it is still of high value. But this is not
his whole booty. What he sees there, he may not describe to the layman:
it were all too strange, and too precious for his ear. There are
spirits in the deep that no other ear can comprehend; no other eye
perceive. Music floats through those halls, which to every uninitiated
ear sounds empty and unmeaning. But to him who has felt with it and
sung with it, it gives a peculiar consecration; when he, moreover,
smiles over the hole in his cap which he has brought back with him as a
symbol.

"Old Grandfather! now know I what thou undertook when thou held thy
annual, solitary, intercalary day! Thou too hadst thy companions in the
days of thy youth, and the water stood in thy gray eyelashes when thou
marked one in thy stambook as entombed."

                                  _Hauff's Rathskeller in Bremen_.






                                PREFACE.


We have had various peeps and snatches of the Student-life of Germany,
from time to time, in our periodicals, but we have nothing like a
complete, and faithful account of it. Some of those accounts too, are
by English writers, who had at best but a partial and passing view of
this singular state of existence, and could not, however much they
might have seen of it, enter into it and comprehend it with the fulness
of apprehension and feeling which a native possesses. When I,
therefore, was thrown, on my first visit to Germany, into the midst of
its students, I began to inquire for a volume written by a German,
which should lay open the whole interior of that, whose surface was so
strange and so picturesque. I was told that no such thing, of any value
or completeness existed, and that, indeed, the students themselves were
jealous of the laws and customs of their ancient Burschendom being laid
open to the public. Yet, finding myself amongst those whose knowledge
and talents most entirely qualified them for making this exposition, I
did not cease till I had prevailed on one of the most gifted to
undertake the task, assisted by the experience of friends, who, like
himself, had passed through the mysteries of this singular life. The
present volume is the result; and I present it to the public with the
confident assurance, that whatever they may think of the portraiture,
they may depend upon its faithfulness. Spite of what that young and
popular writer, Hauff, has left on record in the extract which
immediately precedes these remarks, we have now penetrated the depths
of the Burschen-life; we have traversed its chaos, which he terms a
never-comprehended one; and have made the music of its most hidden
halls, audible and intelligible to all ears. I do not hesitate for a
moment to assert, that, taken as a whole, this volume will be found to
contain more that is entirely new and curious, than any one which has
issued from the press for years. The institutions and customs which it
describes, form the most singular state of social existence to be found
in the bosom of civilized Europe; and what renders them the more
curious and worthy of investigation is, that they are no recent and
evanescent frolic of eccentricity, but are as fast rooted into the
antiquity of German mind and manners as the universities themselves.
They have been modified and softened by time and advancing refinement,
but are not a whit nearer being rooted out, apparently, than they were
three hundred years ago. This state of things is here depicted by a
German himself, who has passed through it; and with that peculiar
feeling and appreciation which a German only can possess. It is in this
light that they are to be regarded. I do not here present myself as an
advocate or a caviller at this scheme of things, but merely as a
spectator, who, beholding something strange and curious, brings it to
the observation of his countrymen, in all truthfulness and simplicity
of representation, that they may judge of it for themselves. It has
been translated under the author's own eye, as it was written, and as
he is also acquainted with the English language, it may be reasonably
presumed to give a faithful transcript of his thoughts.

The two features of this Student-life which will meet with the most
repugnance in the English mind, are the Beer-duel, and the Sword-duel.
I have no desire to defend, far less to recommend either. I am, though
no advocate of a watery suction, miscalled Temperance, neither a
violent wine-bibber, nor "a fighting character." I do not even, like
our worthy friend Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, while planning Niger
expeditions of civilization, brew XXX in London; nor, like many of my
countrymen, while attending church, or chapel in England, insist on
bombarding the Chinese because they wont be poisoned with my opium. I
merely let the worthy and learned author tell his own tale; and he, in
telling it as a German and fellow-countryman of those concerned,
assures us that these features are daily becoming more diminished by
the progress of refinement.

It is to be hoped that the publication of this volume may even hasten
this desirable end, for no people are so much alive to the opinion of
other nations as the Germans. One thing, however, as an Englishman, I
may say, which the author could not say--and that is, that when reading
of the beer and sword duels of these students, we must take into
account what are the weapons and the perils in both cases. We are not
to suppose then, that their beer is any thing like the XXX just spoken
of, or their wine like sherry or port, three-fourths brandy. No; they
who know German wine, know that it is a very gentle and innocent,
rather acidulous, and rather cooling fluid, and that their beer is far
more mighty of the hop than of the malt. It is a well-bittered and
amiable table-beer, which even Father Mathew might take as a healthy
stomachic, and which one might rather expect, in Sam Welter's phrase,
to make its swallowers "swell wisibly before our wery eyes," than grow
riotous under its influence. When to this we add, that the sword-duel
is rather a trial of skill in fencing than any thing dangerous, and
that a scratch across the cheek, or prick into a stuffed jerkin, is in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the worst of its accidents, fears on
the subject diminish at a rapid rate. If, however, any one thinks these
youths had better be at their books than crossing swords or swallowing
choppins, I assure him I am quite of the same opinion; and I here
exhort the students, as soon as they get this volume, which they
speedily will, to forsake the Hirschgasse and the Kneip, and follow the
advice, but not the _example_ of the English. Shall I advise them to
imitate the students of Cambridge? Let any one read "The Student-Life
of Cambridge" in a late number of the _Westminster Review_, and say
whether that would be reasonable. Shall I advise them to practise the
vice and the mockeries which are practised there, by those who give the
most public and prominent character to the social student-life of
England--for it is not meant to assert that the generality of the
Oxford and Cambridge students are of such a class? Why, Kneips and the
Hirschgasse are heaven and innocence to them. Shall I advise them to
quit their songs for the grossnesses sung by the wild portion of
the students at Cambridge and Oxford? No! the songs of the German
students, even when on no higher a theme than wine, and with the bold
free-sp