Heidelberg was full of students, and our ambition was to get to know some of them, but we did not know how to set about doing this. We were too shy to take any steps, and every day we settled we would take a step, but the day passed, and nothing had been done. We confided our hesitations to a lady—a kind, motherly lady who kept a _Wirtshaus_, and she said that the matter was simple. What she did I do not know, but that very day we received a visit from the representatives of a _Burschenschaft_ called the _Franconia_, who asked us to visit their clubhouse with a view to our being received as guests. We went there the next morning, and the conditions under which we could be either _Konkneipante_ or _Kneipgäste_ of the Germania were read out to us.
A _Konkneipant_ was a kind of unofficial member, a _Kneipgas_ was simply a guest with certain obligations. The former, the _Konkneipant_, seemed to be liable to many alarming possibilities and conditions, and he had to be prepared to fight duels, even if he did not do so, so we chose the latter status, and were enrolled as _Kneipgäste_.
We attended a _Kneipe_ that night, I think. All the rules of the _Bierkomment_, which I have already described, obtained. You sat at a table, and endless mugs of beer were brought in, and toasts were drunk, according to ritual, but the evening was enlivened by the singing of songs in chorus. Someone accompanied the songs, everyone had a song-book, and the entertainment led off with Goethe’s song, “Ergo Bibamus”; after that a song was sung about every quarter of an hour: “Der Mai ist gekommen,” “Es hatten drei Gesellen ein fein Collegium,” or “Es zogen drei Burschen wohl über den Rhein.”
The entertainment went on till about one in the morning. There was an official _Kneipe_ three nights a week (_offiziell_), and an unofficial _Kneipe_ (_offizieuse_) on the other nights. Besides this, the members of the _Burschenschaft_ met in the morning for _Frühschoppen_ in the castle gardens, or elsewhere, and in the afternoon went expeditions together. In the morning they had fencing lessons. They never went to lectures. When they wanted to work they went for a term to another university, and did nothing but work there. One morning Hubert and I attended a lecture on _Philosophie_, that is to say, history, and curiously enough the lecture was about England. The lecturer went through the gifts which different nations had bequeathed to the world as a legacy; how Greece had given the arts to the world, and the Romans had given it law; England’s gift to the world, he said, was _Freedom_, and as he said the word _Freiheit_, his voice rang, and we felt all of a tremble.