The system of student life in Germany with its duelling, its associations into Korps, its festivals, and its rabid tenacity to tradition, has frequently been pronounced ridiculous by European and American writers, though it does not appear that those who laugh at it have entered into Korps life themselves, even when they have resided during a considerable time at a German University. There is, however, much to be said in favour of its existence in the only country where it has taken root as a permanent institution; and since it is necessary to follow Greif’s history from the time when he was still a student, some explanation of a matter generally little understood may not be out of place at this point.
Every one knows that a German University has no resemblance, even in principle, with what English-speaking people generally understand by the word University. The students do not live in communities, nor in any set of buildings appropriated for their dwelling. The University, so far as its habitation is concerned, means only the lecture-rooms. Instructors and pupils live where they please and as they please, according to their individual fortune or pleasure. The students are differently situated from other members of society in one respect. They are not amenable to the police for any ordinary offence, but in such cases are brought before the University authorities, and are liable to be confined in the University prison, attending the lectures belonging to their course, during the period of their detention, for which purpose they are let out and shut up again at stated hours. This corresponds to some extent with the English system of ‘gating.’
A very large body of young men, of various ages, find themselves almost entirely their own masters, at an age when the English undergraduate is bound to be at home at twelve o’clock, to attend chapel and hall dinners, besides fulfilling the obligations imposed by a regular course of study. They live in lodgings, free of any supervision whatever, they eat where and when they please, if they do not choose to hear lectures there is no one to oblige them to do so, for they are supposed to possess enough common sense to know that the loss is theirs if they fail at their examinations. It is natural that under these circumstances they should form associations among themselves. In every University there will be a certain number of students from each of the country’s principal provinces. Fellow-countrymen will generally be drawn together when they are forced to live under similar conditions in one place. To this instinct may be traced the origin of Korps, and, generally, of all associations that wear colours, except the so-called Teutonia, which is probably the oldest of all, and which was originally a political institution having for its object the promotion of liberal ideas together with the unity of Germany. There are Korps of the same name, but the two are always quite distinct and their colours are generally different.