ABSTRACT
In order to describe students' secessions from eighteenth-century German universities as a specific form of symbolic and spatial protest, this chapter focuses on those core areas of eighteenth-century academic life. It discusses the typical and different motives, patterns, and implications of students' protests and secessions at German universities in the eighteenth century. During the Middle Ages, especially in times of crisis, it was not uncommon that an entire university and its members left their host town and settled somewhere else. The reasons for such moves included threats of plague and epidemics, as well as conflicts between the universities' members and local or academic authorities. Most eighteenth-century students' secessions followed a specific pattern. Following quarrels between students and other distinguished social groups within the university town, most frequently the young scholars turned to the academic authorities to reach a solution and resolve the conflict in favour of the university's members.
