ABSTRACT
OFFICIALLY, the German youth movement was born in the late hours of the evening of 4 November 1901 in a back room of the Ratskeller in Steglitz, a suburb of Berlin. Its roots can, however, be traced back for at least one hundred years, to the period of ‘Storm and Stress,’ the Burschenschaft, and above all to German romanticism. One was a literary revolt against the repression of individual emotions and the canons of classicism, the other a movement of patriotic students who disliked both Prussian autocracy and the French Revolution. Heir to so old a tradition, the youth movement of 1901 cannot be understood without reference both to its historical roots and to the spirit of the age that engendered it.
