Latest / The History of Germany: Kingdoms, War, and Rebuilding Europe — Fexingo History / The Burschenschaften: Student Revolutionaries Who Forged German Nationalism
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about how Germany was remade after Napoleon — the Congress of Vienna, the German Confederation, Metternich's heavy hand. But I want to zoom in on something we haven't touched: the students who basically invented modern German nationalism. I'm talking about the Burschenschaften. Luna: Wait, Burschenschaften — those are the fraternities, right? But not like modern frat parties. Lucas: Exactly. These were politically radical student societies that started forming at German universities right after the Napoleonic Wars. The first one was founded at the University of Jena in 1815. And their big moment came in October 1817, when about 500 students from across the German states gathered at Wartburg Castle — the same castle where Martin Luther had hidden after the Diet of Worms. Lucas: They called it the Wartburg Festival, and it was part celebration of the anniversary of the Reformation and part protest against the conservative order. They marched with torches, sang patriotic songs, and then — this is the part that gets remembered — they burned books. But not just any books. They burned symbols of the old regime: a corporal's stick, a Prussian military code, and works by authors they saw as reactionary, like August von Kotzebue. Luna: They burned books? That sounds more like 1933 than 1817. Lucas: It's an uncomfortable parallel, for sure. But the context is different. The Burschenschaften were liberals and nationalists. They wanted a unified German nation, a constitution, freedom of the press. They saw the old order — the dozens of petty principalities, the Austrian-led Confederation — as a prison. Their motto was 'Ehre, Freiheit, Vaterland' — honor, freedom, fatherland. And their colors were black, red, and gold, which came from the uniforms of the Lützow Free Corps, a volunteer unit in the Napoleonic Wars. Those colors later became the flag of the German Republic. Luna: So that's where the black, red, and gold comes from. I always wondered. Lucas: Right. So the Wartburg Festival was a huge statement. But it also alarmed the authorities. Metternich saw these student activists as a direct threat to the conservative order. And then, in 1819, things got much more serious. A theology student named Karl Ludwig Sand — he was a member of the Burschenschaft at Jena — assassinated August von Kotzebue. Kotzebue was a popular playwright and a Russian diplomat who had been mocking the nationalist movement in his writings. Sand stabbed him to death in his own home. Luna: That's pretty extreme. Was he caught? Lucas: He didn't try to run. He stabbed himself after the murder, but survived, was arrested, and later executed. And Sand became a martyr for the nationalist cause. But the assassination had the opposite effect politically. Metternich used it as a pretext to crack down hard. In August 1819, the Carlsbad Decrees were issued. They dissolved the Burschenschaften, placed universities under strict surveillance, and introduced press censorship across the German Confederation. Anyone suspected of liberal or nationalist activity could be fired from their academic post. Luna: So the students' own violence killed their movement. Lucas: In the short term, yes. The Burschenschaften went underground, but they didn't disappear. They kept meeting secretly. And their ideas — national unity, constitutional government, civil liberties — didn't die either. They resurfaced in the 1830s and 1840s, culminating in the revolutions of 1848, which we covered in the Frankfurt Parliament episode. But there's a darker side too. Some Burschenschaften started embracing a more ethnic, völkisch nationalism — the idea that Germanness was about blood and soil, not just citizenship. That strain later fed into the far right. Luna: It's like two different Germanys in one movement. Lucas: Exactly. The liberal, democratic vision and the exclusionary, ethnic one. Both have roots in those student societies. And the symbols they chose — the black, red, and gold — became the flag of the Weimar Republic and then the modern Federal Republic. But the Burschenschaften themselves? They still exist. Today, many German fraternities — some of them called Burschenschaften — are quite conservative, some even far-right. They still use the old colors and sing the old songs. It's a direct lineage from those students at Jena in 1815. Luna: That's fascinating and a little unsettling. Lucas: It is. But to understand modern Germany, you have to understand how nationalism was born — not in a parliament or on a battlefield, but in a torch-lit castle courtyard, with young people shouting for freedom and burning books. The Burschenschaften are a reminder that political movements are shaped by passion, idealism, and sometimes violence. And their legacy is still with us, in the flag that flies over the Reichstag today.