Dueling Students: Conflict, Masculinity, and Politics in German Universities, 1890-1914 (review)

Since the publication of Hans-Ulrich Wehler's seminal study almost forty years ago (Das deutsche Kaiserreich, 1871-1918 [Göttingen, 1973]), the German Empire has become one of the best researched periods in German history. Generations of historians have sunk their teeth into all aspects of politics, economics, social, and cultural life. Wehler's provocative portrait of an authoritarian society governed by the old elite and a bourgeoisie that did not live up to the liberal ideal soon found its critics. Among others, Thomas Nipperdey and David Blackbourn stressed the liberal potential of that society and challenged the Sonderweg thesis central to much of the previous scholarship. In more recent years, a great number of studies on the urban middle classes have confirmed the “revisionist” view. Especially those monographs that undertook the laborious effort to compare Germany to Britain or France cast doubt on the alleged illiberalism of German society between, say, 1848 and 1914.

Lisa Fetheringill Zwicker's book on Wilhelmine student culture (which expands upon her dissertation) is fully supportive of the “revisionist” trend. Strongly influenced by Margaret Anderson's work on electoral and political culture in Imperial Germany, she questions older notions of students' overall illiberalism and antisemitism. Instead, she argues in favor of a more nuanced picture that takes into account counterweights and countertrends. In her account, German students were quite a diverse group, both socially and politically. Apart from fraternities that still dominated student life at universities, students belonged to a myriad of other associations, like debating clubs, choirs, and gymnastic groups. From the turn of the century, liberal voices got stronger, as students learned to “practice democracy” (Anderson) on their own. They still dueled—not only with swords, but also, increasingly, with words and ideas. Even party politics were no longer taboo. On the eve of World War I, German students “were ‘dueling' to proclaim themselves the best representatives of the values associated with democracy: tolerance, equality, and freedom . . .” (206).

Zwicker thus takes a strong stance against older scholarship that stressed the growing conservatism of German students. Instead of depicting them as an elite-to-be that moved more and more to the Right and eventually fell prey to the Nazi appeal, they are presented as an altogether promising section of German society: accepting women in their ranks, rejecting antisemitism, tolerating Catholics, and entering the political arena in defense of democratic values that they had enshrined in their own separate culture at universities. Even if there were, as Nipperdey put it, “shadowlines” (Schattenlinien) in this bright picture, they were not dark enough to cloud it altogether. Limits to democratic ideas and practices, as Zwicker points out with reference to the Anglo-American world, could be observed in other countries, too.

The general argument is convincing and well made. It is supported by evidence based mainly on the students' own communication networks (newspapers and other publications) and supplemented by memoirs and university records. Furthermore, it accords with recent scholarship on Bürgertum, antisemitism, and students, in particular. Sonja Levsen's recent monograph (Elite, Männlichkeit und Krieg: Tübinger und Cambridger Studenten 1900-1929 [Göttingen, 2006]), as well as Miriam Rürup's book on Jewish fraternities (Ehrensache: Jüdische Studentenverbindungen an deutschen Universitäten, 1886-1937 [Göttingen, 2008]), made similar arguments. Till van Rahden's Juden und andere Breslauer (Göttingen, 2000) testified to the high level of social integration that Jewish Germans enjoyed around 1900, and drew attention to other conflicts, like the one between Protestants and Catholics, that could, at times, be far more prominent than antisemitism.

The latter argument is confirmed by Zwicker's study. Although students generally shared the “social” antisemitism of their times, they rejected its most extreme and racist forms. The most prestigious corporations (Corps), for example, never issued regulations that excluded Jews from membership. Those that did introduce such rules often forgot...