5

a
4
“ “6

















THE COLLEGE NEWS



- GERMAN STUDENT LIFE NOW
_ MORE STAID AND ATHLETIC



Less Specialization, ial Seeks On
Education Not Learning



Although it is far from my task or

intention to tell a fairy tale, allow me to

begin with a “There was once.’ Indeed,
there was once a care-free, joyous, over-
* joyous student life in Germany. Days and
nights and whole semesters of the first aca-
demic years of a German student passed as
an endless celebration of freedom, academic
freedom, and youth. The streets of the
small old university towns. like Tubingen,
Marburg, Heidelberg and. so many others

> echaeq-and_re-echoed-the—songs—about—stu-4

dents’ glory. The little windows of the small

‘houses reflected the flames of torch-light

processions in- honor of a learned scholar’s
jubilee or of the newly-elected rector mag-
nificus. Songs of the wandering students
greeted castles and ruins on the hills and
streams. The German student could, or be-.
lieved he could, afford those splendid years
of dolce far niente. It was not necessary for
him to. follow a, strict program, outlined for
him by the faculty, and attend lectures and
seminaries, at least not in the first ones of
his’ eight to ten semesters of\study. For- to
those who became members of student cor-
porations, by their own free will or by their
father’s will, who in his university days had
been a member of-the same corporation, it
seemed of far greater importance to attend



=

all the strictly codified activities of his cor-
4 poration, which pretty well filled up his days
and part of his nights too.

, These corporations are essentially pre-war
institutions. Their history goes in many
cases back to pre-Napoleonic times, and their
rules, often to a stranger of a ridiculous
strictness. arid pedantry, are everything else
than’ modern, before all their code of be-
havior towards their fellow-students and
towns-people and their @aboraté drinking
rules. Most conspicuous among them are
the “combating and color-wearing” corpor-
tions, the. so-called “Corps,” “Lansmann-
schaften,” “Burschenschaften,” “Turner-
schaften,” etc. which enumeration, by the
Way, indicates roughly what silly people in
more than one country call social standing.
Their members. wear many-colored caps and
ribbons—of—the—same—cotors—arotnd—their
breasts. *

Bloody Duels Fought. 3
Though public opinion and the police have
tried for a long time to suppress dueling,
they still have their “mensuren,” generally
harmless, but by no means bloodless affairs.

selected members of corporations of the same
category. There is practically no danger for
the life of the combatants. They are pro-
tected by leather armors, bandages and
strong spectacles and expose only cheeks and
forehead to the long straight sword of the
opponent. The wounds” inflicted are mere
slight cuts of the more or less: pink skin,
and the whole procedure reminds the an-
thropologist more than anything else of the
initiation rites of the South Sea aborigines,



Afternoon Tea and Luncheon
-COTTAGE TEA ROOM
Montgomery Avenue
Been Mawr
Everything Dainty
and Delicious



Short Homemaking Course
for College Girls during August
at “The House in the Woods,”
Canandaigua Lake, New York.
Two-- Home... Economics... gradu-.
ates in charge. Only six girls
accepted. For further informa-
tion apply to the News office.



This fighting cial takes ‘place between

where similar cuttings occur. The object
of this fightfng is to teach the young man
anastership of his nervous system and is re-
garded as of no small educational value. Not
very much ‘of athletic skill is shown in these
affairs. Far more serious a pre-
arranged “mensuren” are due ith curyed
swordsy fought out to wash off some offense
of mostly imaginary. character, for the
“color-student” feels easily offended, at least
when intoxicated.

These “color-students” claimed to be the
to look a bit condescendingly to the other
corporations which existed besides their own
and whose members and “varieties were, up
to 1914, and now again, as innumerable as
the States within the Holy Roman Empire.

Among , them are Christian fraternities, sing-

zations, groups of the youth movement as
the: “Wandervogel” (migrating birds) and
the big mass of the non-corporated students,
all of them much more in contact with real
life of the day and less tended to exercise
that fine but dangerous art in which so many
Germans are masters, i. ¢., of denying reality
somehow and speaking about “Realpolitik”
at the same time. Most of these corpora-
tions have,survived the war-time or have
been refounded since. *° Their number and
variety has even increased since the war.
Politics have entered the halls of every “al-
ma mater” where they were forbidden before,
and every party of some importance has its
student groups. ‘

corporation life, which the non-corporated
wandering and climbing in the mountains,
the student went as a rule over.to another
university. Here he sat down to real work
in seminaries, laboratories, infirmaries, and
his more or less modestly furnished room.
As an “elder semester” he had to specialize
his work and now became a real pupil of
which, though far

pass his examinations,
%

very core of Germangstudenthood and liked

ring” societies; scientific and—athletice- -organi-

After three or four semesters of this gay'

student mostly used for a general study, for |:

his’ professor before whom™~he~ intended to-

less in number than in American universities,
were by no means easy. .The curve of mid-
night oil consumption rose tremendously.
Sometimes, mostly among the ‘law students,
the aid of a Coach was needed in order to
help the candidate through,

’ War Ends Gaiety.

The war and its revolutionary ‘sequel put
an end to this rather care-free e€xistence.
The larger part of the: students returning
to the universities after the war service, »
in order to finish or begin ‘their studies, had
soon to learn that their parents could no
longer send the monthly allowance on which
to live. Fortunes and incomes were wiped
out by the depreciation of the mark. Need
rand even hunger showed their hideous faces
and forced many a gifted young ma‘ to give
up his academic plans. Those who stayed

to do it mostly by the work of their hands,
for there was a large over-supply of brain-
workers and in post-war Germany niental
work was badly paid. These hard necessi-
ties brought forth the werking studéht;~a
type long familiar in the Anglo-Saxon coun-
tries but unheard of in Germany, as in most
of the other Continental cquntries.

Rapidly founded organizations, often help-
ed by foreign funds, furnished employment
for students on the farms during the harvest
season, in factories and coal and potash
mines. Finally in the summer semester of
1922, 42 per cent. of the university students,
62 per cent. of those studying at technical
colleges and 88 per cent.’of the future min-
| ing engineers had become working students.



‘ Self-help organizations in nearly all univer-
sity towns, with the Wirtschaftshilfe (Stu-~
dents’ Co-operative Economic, Association)
as their centre, opened: dining-rooms, work-
shops, sale-roors, loan banks and tried their
best to bring the working student through
these years of hardship, It is only too obvi-
ous that very often their help must fall short
in face of all the prevailing distress.

As _ the gloomy picture of these times has

PAGE 6



i CONTINUED ON

-





—















Fashion is an
art—one of the
fine arts —to
be cultivated
among other
higher-expres--
sions of beauty

A. t each model an












The House of Youth
a the a gly of youth and Legg
cine. ROCKS and ENSEMBLE SUITS

charm that son “beautiful
oo lovely colors still more aeeeaating

of

orig fal fables



‘Sola with
thig_ label &
he



W sit e us
-for informa-
tion where
~———~they may



everywhere



24 West 3578

‘SCHULMAN & ‘HAUPTMAN

be obtained

Se, Naw see









This little folder has been
distributed on the campus.
It tells you how low the
rates really are.

' If your home town is not
included-in the list, see the
front pages of the igs cuit
directory. .

“The Long Distance Oper

. ator will give you rates f

shown there:





















Take a weekly trip home... over the telephone



“What an A ge!" ” Says Grandmother

sonal method of ki
, with home will bring fay wee happi-

‘deals one of the
| dey evesy week ef jour lings he

-s







dent granddaughter, as she laughs
into . telephone tran§nitter.
Long Distance Telephoning to
Mother and Dad and the other peo-
ple at home is becoming a custom—
almost a part of the college curricu-
lum — with American College
Women.
The weekly chats made possible
by the Long Distance Telephone
are brightening the scholastic lives

‘of thousands 7 girls away at col-

lege and bringing untold pleasure
to their relatives “back home.”

This newer, faster, far more per-
eeping in touch

“ALL THE Rica” replies her stu-
|
|

ness ‘to you and yours, too. Put it | |





-had-to-work—their-own-way—through-and_had___.