title: [Eventful life stories. Members of student fraternities persecuted in Silesia in the early 19th century].
abstract: This study supplemented by three charts and a list of biographies, is, for the first time, encompassing their life-data, their resumés and even their professional careers as well as political commitments shown by more than 200 Silesian students. They, at the University of Breslau, but also at other German universities, had joined the student fraternities in the 20-ies and early 30-ies of the 19th century and, in consequence, were persecuted by state authorities, notably in Prussia and, in the majority of cases, had been sentenced to prison terms of varying degrees. The first demagogic persecution, which happened in the first half of the twenties, culminating in 1822 in the Breslau Arminen Trail and ending up with the staging of the Youth-Association-Trail in 1826, had implicated about 100 Silesians, with a smaller portion of them - apart from teh three Youth-Association Silesians who were sentenced to five years imprisonment in a fortress - getting away with a relatively short "political fortress imprisonment". Later a considerable part of them made a career in the prussian judicial authority, in the institutions of higher learning, as parish priests, physicians and scientists, whereas any political engagement remained a rare exception. Out of the 137 Silesian members of the student fraternities affected by the second wave of persecution, the overwhelming majority of them being Protestants and originating partly from the middle classes, mostly artisans, and from intellectual background, with about a hundred of them being given essentially higher sentences ranging from six years up to capital punishment and, in the event of reprieves, they had to serve their sentences between six months and four-to-six years in a fortress. The majority of them made a medium-level professional career, never exceeding the medium ranks, as judicial officers, lawyers in state or communal services, parish priests, teachers or physicians. However, from this group of persecuted persons, a far greater number became active in politics, especially during the 1848/49 revolution in their capacities as Deputies in the German National parliament, or in the Prussian Constitutional Assembly. But they became even active as leading figures on the level of local and regional societies. While conservative executive personalities emerged only rarely from the group of persecuted Silesian student fraternities - the highest office attainable was head of a county administration - a greater number of proponents and elites emerged from these circles in favour of liberalism and, even far more, in favour of the German Democracy. In isolated instances, the socialist movement obtained its protagonists from Silesian fraternities. A biographical study has confirmed the finding that in the first half of the 19th century student fraternities were a political institution which since 1848 had been at the service of the political parties in Germany with a view to recruiting from them their supporters and their party executives.
authors.forename: Walter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Schmidt
mesh_terms: D001680:Biographies as Topic; D005858:Germany; D049672:History, 19th Century; D011329:Prisoners / Q000266:history*; D012952:Societies / Q000266:history*; D013334:Students / Q000266:history*; D014495:Universities / Q000266:history*