Part 36 (1/2)
But the intelligence quickly spread, that the Burschenschaft, which by degrees and secretly had again sprung up, had p.r.o.nounced the bann with great formality and haste, and that they were labouring with all their might to compel all other persons into the undertaking, and even to draw the natives into the matter along with them. Active measures were therefore unavoidable on the part of the Senate. It accordingly decreed, on the 13th of August, that immediately with the break of the following day, the members of the Burschenschaft should be brought to trial on account of the promulgation of the bann, and that they should be arrested in such a way, that there might be no concerted plan laid, upon what they should state in their defence, and in such a way also that no student should be absent from home.
On the 14th of August, the beadles received at a quarter to four in the morning, the order to p.r.o.nounce house-arrest to some, and to remove others to the university prison, preparatory to their being called up for hearing. The trial began immediately, and would have been completed the same day, had the laws found obedience. But immediately on the sitting of the court, there arose in every street, the cry of ”Bursch, come forth!” This is a call which every student must unconditionally obey, on pain of proscription. It is therefore, as a compulsion in opposition to the laws, and as the most convenient method of speedily raising a tumult, punished with the sharper expulsion.
So ran the ringleaders through the city with a loud ”Bursch, come forth!” drew the students together from all quarters, and rushed with them, with great uproar, into the front of the university, where the Senate had speedily a.s.sembled, and stood in presence of the tumultuous throng at an open window. Instead of applying to the Prorector, as they should have done, had they ground of complaint, they even treated with contempt two summonses from the Senate to send deputies to explain their claims or demands, and immediately in the face of the Senate proceeded, with loud outcries, to make a desperate onset on the door of the adjoining academical buildings, with sticks and kicks, so that the upper beadle, to prevent further mischief, was obliged to liberate the incarcerated students. This being accomplished, they commenced their march forth towards Schwetzengen.
The whole city was in uproar. The shops were closed out of fear of the wild faction. Every where chaises rattled through the streets; the boot-foxes ran here and there; the inhabitants looked full of trouble out of their windows; when a student, with his sword in his hand, galloped through the streets with the fearful cry--”Bursch, come forth!” Most of the students went along with the train, only because the Comment, or Students' Code of Laws, demanded it, without well knowing for what purpose. The wild throng rushed into the houses of the dilatory, in order to rouse them out of bed. Hastily, every one packed up what was most necessary and threw it into the carriage, or buckled it upon a horse; and when no longer carriage or horse was procurable, the boot-foxes must become baggage-bearers.
In order to rouse all into a necessary degree of resentment, and to keep it up, the ringleaders circulated false stories. They spread it every where that the authorities had dragged the students out of their beds in the night; that they had thrust them into a hole where none could stand upright, and where there was not a single seat to rest upon; while the fact was, that they who were said to have suffered so much maltreatment in the night, were conducted to the academical buildings in clear daylight. Yet, in the excitement of the moment, these false reports found credit, and with the ”Bursch, come forth!”
which raged like a running fire through the streets, they availed in a very short time, to bring the whole student host together.
They who were on horseback placed themselves at the head of the procession; rode hither and thither, in order to quicken the motions of the dilatory, and to maintain the whole train in order. A long line of carriages followed them, of every description that could be got together in the haste of the occasion. Part were chaises, in which the students rode; part were wagons, on which were hastily loaded their packages. All the students had armed themselves in haste, as well as they might, with swords, rapiers, and pistols. They who found no place in the carriages, or on horseback, went on foot, and a great swarm of boot-foxes followed who were loaded with all kinds of house-gear, as pipes, dressing-gowns, coats, and so on. A vast crowd of people, consisting of school-youths who had to thank the students to-day for a holiday, and of all kinds of people who, in a university city, draw support from the students, added themselves to the train, and increased the uproar and alarm, with curses and insults, that the students should be suffered to go away. The inhabitants of the city looked down in wonder and curiosity from their windows roused from their sleep by the noise, and gazed on the motley throng who, with shouts and singing of Burschen-songs, swept by.
At length the rear of the train disappeared through the city gate, and a strange silence reigned in the deserted town. The doors opened, and the Philistines stepped out into the streets together, to talk over the fatal story. In the mean time a professor might be seen, with serious countenance and hasty steps, hurrying through the streets, and people looked doubtfully after him, or one or another of the citizens detained him to s.n.a.t.c.h a couple of words as to what was to be done in this necessity of the Fatherland. Here and there also might be seen a solitary student who had not been able to join the train in time, now hastening towards one or other of the city gates; since every one is compelled, on pain of entire proscription, to quit the city in case of a Marching-Forth, even if he does not join the train.
When the train arrived in Schwetzengen, the discontented saw that the territory of Baden was not safe for them, and that by pa.s.sing the frontier they would enjoy more freedom. Suddenly there followed them from many quarters the report ”The dragoons come, to fall upon us!” and all ran with wild haste to Ketsch, a village on the Rhine, where they caused themselves to be ferried over into Rheinish Bavaria. This false report of this falling of the troopers upon them had thus arisen.
Immediately on the occurrence of the excess here related, the Senate held it necessary for the protection of the city, hastily to request a hundred dragoons to be sent for from Mannheim. These hundred dragoons marched out of Mannheim, about nine miles below Ketsch, only at half-past two o'clock in the afternoon, after the students had, in fact, crossed the Rhine at Ketsch; and they never directed their march at all against the students, but rode direct to Heidelberg. As it was then there well ascertained that the Marchers-Forth had taken up their quarters for the present in Frankenthal, where part of them were lodged in the town, and part of them had encamped in the neighbourhood under tents, and that many of them had become involved in the transaction through erroneous information, a member of the Senate was requested by the Curatorium to proceed to Frankenthal, and to endeavour to bring the young men to reason. This took place on the sixteenth of August, but without success. On the contrary, the emissary of the Senate was sent back with a remonstrance, very numerously signed, which concluded with a menacing clause, and demanded that the Senate should guarantee the whole body of students against all penalties, on account of this transaction, and should cause Heidelberg, without delay, to be evacuated by the troops. It was also added, by word of mouth, that the bann p.r.o.nounced on the Museum, could not be retracted.
A similar endeavour, made through the university Amtmann, on the eighteenth of August, received as little attention, although the Museum, in many points, had yielded to their demands, and thereupon was immediately relieved from the proscription. The resentment against the Senate continued unabated; and therefore, on the evening of the eighteenth, in all haste, the academy was declared to be under the bann; this, however, was not done through the voting of individuals, but effected by the dreaded ringleaders p.r.o.nouncing the bann, demanding then the others to accede to it, though many were opposed to it; and thus the resolution was pa.s.sed in a painful silence, since individuals saw dangers on all sides of them if they refused. Yet in that night, and in the course of the next day, numbers quitted Frankenthal, and returned towards Heidelberg. Here, when they came to understand exactly the real circ.u.mstances of the case, there was regret and general discontent. A great number of the most n.o.ble young men loudly declared the bann to be dishonourable, to be null and void, because brought about by deception; to be contrary to all custom and precedent, and thereupon came some of the most artful proceedings to be talked of: for example, that in the remonstrance sent to the Senate, there were forged names of students who were absent at the time, and that the menacing clause had been surrept.i.tiously introduced. In fact, the natives of Baden had had no part in the declaration of the bann.
On the twentieth of August the cla.s.ses again were opened, while the trials were still proceeding. The ringleaders were punished with expulsion; others were banished for a certain term; and a greater number imprisoned for a longer or shorter period. The attention of the court was turned by these events afresh on the still continuance of the Burschenschaft, and it was pursued with yet greater severity of proscription than before. But the Studentschaft had so far achieved its original object, that its demands on the Museum were for the most part conceded.
Such Marchings-Forth are of rare occurrence, yet this is not the only one that has taken place in Heidelberg. Many years before this, occurred a something similar one, on account of contentions with the military, which then lay in Heidelberg.
A student, as he went past the watch-house, forgot to take the pipe from his mouth. He came into contention thereupon with the soldier on guard, who called an officer, by whom the student was very much insulted. This gave occasion to a Marching-Forth, which, however, proceeded no further than to Neuenheim, about a mile from the city, whence the students at once returned, all their demands being complied with; which, were, that a full amnesty should be guaranteed for all that was past, and that the soldiers should be removed. Moreover, the military were obliged to post themselves on the bridge, the officer at their head, and so present arms while the students marched past again into the city in triumph, and with music playing before them.
Where soldiers and students are brought together in one city, collisions are inevitable; at least in the smaller cities, where both cannot be sufficiently mixed and lost in the great ma.s.s of the people.
Many contentions have heretofore arisen out of such collocation; and thus occurred also the Marching-Forth from Giessen in the year 1819.
The military having in the most unallowable manner acted towards the students, and one of the students coming to a quarrel with an officer, was extremely insulted by him. There appeared in consequence of this a ministerial rescript, in which it was ordered that the military in future should only be called out against the students by a requisition from the Senate, and that all acts of illegality already alleged against the military on the part of the students should be strictly investigated, and every just satisfaction made to them. There immediately appeared a judgment on the part of the military college, by which the officer who had insulted the student was condemned to fourteen days' close arrest, which was immediately to take place; and was, moreover, required, in the presence of the rector of the university and of the colonel of the officer, to beg pardon of the student. The aforesaid ministerial rescription was now made known to the students by four deputies of the Senate, who waited on them in the place of their retreat; whereupon they immediately resolved to return to Giessen, and to restore every thing to its old course and order.
To give yet another example of a Marching-Forth, we may take the disturbance in Gottingen in the year 1818. Contentions arose between the then students and the members of some of the trade guilds; amongst others, with that of the butchers' guild. The house of a butcher who had especially insulted the students was very much damaged, and the windows of another house beaten in. A commission was despatched by the government to Gottingen to inquire into and quell the disturbance. The means, however, which were adopted in order to bring the incensed student youth again within the bounds of order, were not the most fitting; and the calling in of the military only made the matter worse.
The students refused to succ.u.mb to a strange power. They boldly attacked the hussars; these drew their swords, and in the skirmish many students were dangerously wounded. About eight hundred of the students now marched out to Witzenhausen. They sent by the hands of four deputies, a memorial to the Senate, who delivered it and returned. In this doc.u.ment they complained, that one of their fellow-students had been maltreated by a butcher, and that the butcher had not been visited with the punishment due to his offence; that the sending of a royal commission altered the condition of their rights; that the authority of the same had been so far illegal that the reigning prince had not yet confirmed it; and finally, that the people had been attacked by the military in time of peace, whereby many had been wounded.
The ministry, thereupon, issued a rescript, which commanded the whole body of students to return, and if they refused obedience, threatened them with the loss of every claim to future employment by the state, as well as of all stipends that they might enjoy.
After an absence of more than eight days, the greater part of the students, who had scattered themselves through the country, returned, exerting, however, on their side a right of retaliation, by declaring the university to be for two and a half years under the bann to all foreigners. The foreigners immediately took their departure, and only about six hundred students were left in Gottingen,--about half of the number who had studied in it before those disturbances took place.
In Witzenhausen the people had fleeced the students of nearly all their cash. All necessaries of life, during their abode there, were raised to a monstrous price, and the burgers of that place charged them individually for a week's lodging as much as a louis-d'or. Therefore now, to quit Gottingen, they were obliged to dispose of every thing that they could possibly spare.
Many natives also, spite of the menaces of the ministers, quitted the cities; and Gottingen, in fact, presented a melancholy aspect. The departure of the foreigners was injurious to the city, in two respects; many workmen depended on them for subsistence, and besides this, they left many debts behind them. It was natural, in these circ.u.mstances, that many workmen too should quit the place, since their means of livelihood had failed, and thus the emptiness of Gottingen became still more apparent.
The sentence of the ministry upon these disturbances condemned one student to entire expulsion; many to the Consilium abeundi, or confinement in the university prison; and the master butcher also was punished with eight days' imprisonment, with bread and water. There was a further commission appointed for the trial of the originators of the bann, and these also were punished.
Thus peace and order were again restored; and in order to maintain these, precautionary measures were adopted; namely, every one studying in Gottingen, and every fresh comer, must sign a declaration, that he would take no part in the carrying into effect the bann p.r.o.nounced against the university; and that he would never, either by word or deed, allow it to be supposed that he acknowledged that bann as actually existing. Spite of all these regulations, it was a very long time before Gottingen was able to regain its former state of prosperity.
These Marchings-Forth may serve to show how jealously the students defend their privileges, not only against individuals, but even against the state. The student avenges himself upon any one by whom he is unjustly attacked. A ludicrous story connected with these practices occurs to our recollection, which happened very shortly after the tragic act of Sand.
An actor, who played heroic characters in the theatre at Darmstadt, was at the supper-table in the inn there, and gave a loose very freely and sourly to his remarks upon students and universities. A student from Heidelberg, who was present, and had in his possession a letter to deliver to this very actor, determined to punish him a little for his observations, and therefore on this evening did not present him the letter. In the morning he went to the dwelling of the actor, caused his room to be shown to him, and finding him alone, inquired with a dark countenance--”Are you the Herr Court-actor F----r?” ”Yes.”--”Are you really the Herr Court-actor F----r?”--he reiterated sternly.
”Yes!”--”Now!” cried the student, with a loud voice, and thrusting his hand into his bosom. The poor hero, who imagined he had got a dagger there, darted at full speed away. The student laughing called him back.