ABSTRACT
Professors and students have always played an important part in shaping political opinion in Germany. Students from different parts of Germany were organised into Landsmannschaften according to their place of origin, and these corps were constantly brawling with one another, which, to use the term current at the time, was put down to their ‘nationalism’. On 23 March 1819 August von Kotzebue was murdered by Karl Sand, a Protestant theological student. This was one of the most sensational crimes of the day and had dire consequences for German liberalism. In many places students took part in the disorders, although in Heidelberg, under the leadership of Professor Thibaut, they defended the Jews. At the University of Jena, the prime aims of the majority were to purge student life of abuses and, in general, to support national and liberal principles. At Giessen, on the other hand, a movement had been evolving since 1814 which was patently charged with political radicalism.
