Deutsche Studentenschaft

(German Student Association)

   a student-government body, formed after World War I and recognized by the Prussian Cultural Ministry on 18 September 1920, that united local councils (Allgemeiner Studentenausschuss) into one national association. Although it was originally a progressive body founded to advance curricular innovations and solidify the integration reflected in the Weimar Constitution,* the Studenten-schaft evolved a nationalistic tone reflected in the pan-German zeal of extending membership to universities* in Austria* and Czechoslovakia. The longing for national community (Volksgemeinschaft), which produced a shift to the political Right by the mid-1920s, led in 1924 to conflict between the Studentenschaft and Carl Becker,* Prussia's* Cultural Minister. After an acrimonious struggle in 1927, in which racist student leaders characterized Becker as an insidious op-ponent of student and academic freedoms, Prussia withdrew recognition from the association when it became clear that it had departed from German citizen-ship requirements by including Austrians while excluding German Jews.*

   Students of all backgrounds were consistently more open to Nazi propaganda than their elders, and national and state governments seemed powerless to deflect their drift to the radical Right. In consequence of growing control over the student councils at Germany's several universities, the Nazi Student League (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund), led by Baldur von Schirach, captured the chairmanship of the Deutsche Studentenschaft in the summer of 1931 at the Fourteenth German Students Day—eighteen months before Hitler* seized the national government. Retaining an illusion of nonpartisanship until the NSDAP was in control of the government, the Deutsche Studentenschaft was finally absorbed by the Nazi League in 1935.

   REFERENCES:Giles, Students and National Socialism; Jarausch, Students, Society, and Politics; Fritz Ringer, Decline of the German Mandarins; Steinberg, Sabers and Brown Shirts.