In the winter semester of 1881/82, the students wearing colors left; the association began to develop into a special student fraternity. The following winter semester (1882/83) saw the drafting of procedural rules and the appointment of an honorary council. The association opened that semester with a public meeting, at which the director of the Leipzig Statistical Bureau, Dr. Hasse, gave the lecture “Colonization, an Education of the German People.” Since then, Leipzig has held public lecture evenings on a regular basis; there, lecturers and other well-known personalities speak about issues that concern the life of the nation.
The Reading Hall that had been carried in that successful [student election] attempt during the summer of 1881 was conquered again in the elections of November 12, 1882, and, with the exception of the winter semester of 1889/90 – one of the Leipzig association’s slackest semesters – has always remained in the hands of candidates nominated or approved by the V. D. St.
Even if the non-exclusive corporative principle – according to which the association operated during its founding semester* – has been replaced by a policy that precludes membership in other organizations, the association still regards public representation as its primary task, and awakening and reinforcing the national consciousness of the entire student body continues to be the its major goal. Consequently, during the association’s first decade, it held almost regular celebrations of its first and last Kommerse each semester; these took place in large halls and drew numerous participants from the professorial staff and the student body. Granted, not all of these evenings were as significant as the opening Kommers of the 1884 summer semester, which saw Prof. Luthardt deliver the lecture “What is the Association’s Attitude toward Christianity?” in the Red Hall of the Crystal Palace. Still, they were more than just celebratory occasions for association members – they were meant to have an impact on a broader circle. Above all, the Kyffhäuser Association used the celebration of national days of remembrance to spread enthusiasm for the great days of German history and to cultivate that tradition among the entire German student body. This was a task in which the V. D. St. Leipzig also showed an active interest. The annual Reich Kommers, the Bismarck and Moltke Kommerse, and the Kaiser’s birthday celebrations were devoted to this purpose. On January 18, 1882, the Reich Kommers had been chaired by fellow association member and law student M. U. Rosenhagen. The following year, it was held again at the suggestion of the V. D. St., organized as an event for the entire student body, and chaired by the president of the university; the dueling fraternities, who were jealous of the leading position of the V. D. St., declined to participate but remained the exception in this. At this Kommers, and at the third Founder’s Day, which took place shortly thereafter on February 10, 1883, the speeches of the Alsatian theology student Schweitzer from Heiligenstein in Alsace were the center of interest, both on account of the enthusiasm with which they were presented and the origins of the speaker, the co-founder and former chairman of the Alsatian fraternity Vogesina in Strasbourg. At the Leipzig students’ Reich Kommers of January 19, 1885, which was chaired once again by the president of the university, the V. D. St. introduced one of its members, the law student Raeck, as the evening’s only student speaker. The fellow association member and law student Röhr was the chairman of the committee responsible for Bismarck’s 70th birthday celebration, and the two speakers were chosen from the ranks of the V. D. St. After the Reich Kommers of 1886, it was suggested that a permanent committee of the student body be formed. The only group to materialize, however, was a committee of representatives chaired by the V. D. St. During the next two years, the Reich Kommerse followed the usual format. But the V. D. St. also played a prominent and motivational role on other days of national remembrance or when tribute was paid to German leaders, for example, at the Luther celebration in Erfurt and on the Wartburg (where it represented the Leipzig student body) during the summer semester of 1883, or at the annual Sedan Day celebration in Leipzig, where it carried the university flag as the sole representative of the student body in 1884 and 1885. In the winter semester of 1884/85, the association honored composer Anton Bruckner on the occasion of a performance of one of his symphonies at the New Theater by presenting him with a laurel wreath. At the laying of the foundation stone of the Supreme Court of the German Reich on October 31, 1888, the V. D. St. once again carried the university flag. On March 22, 1887, the 90th birthday of Kaiser Wilhelm I, the chairman of the V. D. St., Richard Heinze, went to Berlin as the sole representative of the Leipzig student body. Thus, looking back on the history of the student body, one could describe the golden age experienced by this student association during the 1880s as rare – rarer still since this golden age occurred during the first years of the association’s existence. Here, it is also easy to recognize that this association breathed youthfulness, and that its birth resulted from enthusiasm not reflection.
* Meaning that members of the association could also belong to fraternities or other student groups – trans.
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