Students at an elite German university fraternity regularly greeted each other with the words “Heil Hitler” and used the word “Jew” as a pejorative, according to one of its former members in explosive revelations published this week by the German newsmagazine Spiegel.
The fraternity in question — Normannia — has been under German police investigation following an outrage at a party held by its Heidelberg University members at their mansion on Aug. 29, 2020. A 25-year-old student in attendance who spoke about his Jewish ancestry was berated with antisemitic abuse, whipped with belts and pelted with metal coins by several assailants.
On Monday, the Heidelberg public prosecutor announced that the investigation into the attack would now be concluded by the middle of March — another delay following a promise at the beginning of this year that a conclusion would be reached by the middle of February.
News of the latest delay coincided with the Spiegel exposé of the antisemitism and glorification of Germany’s Nazi past that prevailed at the Normannia fraternity.
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One if its former members, Karl Stockmann, told the magazine that he had spent two years with the fraternity before quitting in August 2019, spending long periods living at its Heidelberg mansion. He confessed that he had been “repulsed” by the behavior of fellow-members of the fraternity, citing as an example their habit of drinking heavily while listening to recordings of Hitler’s speeches.
“Almost every day, somebody greeted me with ‘Heil Hitler,'” Stockmann revealed.
Stockmann stressed that the attack on the Jewish student at the fraternity party could not be regarded as an isolated incident.
“When I was at Normannia, the word ‘Jew’ was considered a common swear word in the mansion, comparable to ‘asshole’ or ‘motherf*****,'” he said.
Another commonly-heard slogan was, “We are Hitler’s people, then and now,” Stockmann said.
While Normannia nationally suspended its Heidelberg University chapter following the attack at the party, insisting that “antisemitism is incompatible with the fraternity idea,” Stockmann pointed out that the fraternity was a component of the right-wing nationalist Deutsche Burschenschaft (DB). Founded in the nineteenth century, the DB’s slogan is “Honor, Freedom, Fatherland.”
Stockmann said that most members of the fraternity “feel they are part of an elite where lifelong loyalty is considered a virtue.”
“In university towns like Heidelberg, they live in fancy villas for little rent,” he noted. “[After graduation] the networks of their alumni offer them career opportunities.”
Stockmann, who is now 19-years-old, said he was inducted into the fraternity in 2017 as a junior member through his involvement with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party’s youth wing. He said that he had decided to leave Normannia in Jan. 2019, after he was injured and then prosecuted for taking part in an attack on a left-wing youth center in the city of Mannheim.
“After that, I started to think,” Stockmann said. “I didn’t feel like messing up my life. I’m still young, after all.”
Nine men and one woman are currently being investigated for their roles in the attack at the fraternity party. Another witness to the assault on the Jewish student is due to give evidence to investigators in Heidelberg this week — the official reason for the further delay in bringing the case to a conclusion.
ShareComprehensive23 on February 27th, 2021 at 14:56 UTC »
When I was a student in Berlin I couldn't afford an apartment. Me being naive, I saw a free room for just 190€ and I went there for an interview. During the interview I was asked if I did my military service before I was a student (it was a duty back then, you had to either do this or work in a hospital for 9 months).
I was in the military so I said yes, but was confused while it even mattered. When I got the room I was told, once a month I have to join a gathering of their members which was fine to me.
At the gathering it was all just drinking loads of beer, singing some old university songs and the like which is fine. The more time passed in the evening, the more Anti-Jewish jokes were made. The songs they sang from their books were replaced with hate speech towards Jews. I was really shocked what was going on here.
I lived with 2 other roommates One was a young guy like me who later joined their Group. The other was a man in his 40s who is the public speaker for the biggest Right-Wing News paper in Germany, which I never even heard of before.
Regularly, once a week, there were guests from elsewhere coming from other parts of Germany and Austria who slept in the free room (the room which was used for Gatherings). They came to hold speeches about different topics all leading towards giving the listener a negative image of non-Germans. Still I thought it was all odd but I didn't think much of it.
Eventually after joining their monthly gatherings for 3 times, I really couldn't stand it anymore and came up with excuses for the next 2 times why I cant be there.
Their members are in all parts of society, high level Police officials, Lawyers, Military Officers, working for the local government and many more fields.
Them having those background allowed them to do a background check on me and they found out that I am just half German. After living there for 5 months I was asked to move out.
There are many more things during that time that happened which for privacy reasons I wont talk about, but scared me for my personal safety, as in being threatened by them and the like.
Before all this I never imagined that such things still exist in Germany and it changed my view dramatically.
PS: When I saw the Ad for a free room and while living there the first 3 months, I had no idea what kind of group that is. Even the last 3 months I lived there I didn't fully grasp what was going on there, I was just a young student who wished to focus on his education.
Edit:
For you guys who send me a private message and call me dumb... First of I was just a young guy from a poor family who was desperately in need to have a place to live at, second of all when I moved there I never even heard what these kind of student associatons are nor have they mentioned anything, I just got a very tiny room <6m² for which the price sound reasonable and I was happy to finally have a shelter.
Dont think about from your 30+ years old perspective, try to see it from the perspective of a very young person who is about to run out of money having no shelter, who is naive not expecting that such kind of groups exist.
Rayman1203 on February 27th, 2021 at 13:58 UTC »
For Context:
You have to keep in mind that in Germany, fraternities played a big part in the establishment of a German national Identity in the years before German Unification and a lot of those fraternities hold on to nationalistic tendencies (By no means as much as the fraternity, the article is about). But well fraternities in Germany aren't the same as in the US.
Edit: I mean the before the Unification under Bismarck. Burschenschaften played a big role in the 1800s
HammerTh_1701 on February 27th, 2021 at 09:54 UTC »
This is why basically no sane person is a member of a fraternity in Germany, most of them are just hate groups at this point. There are plenty of other student organisations but fraternities are almost nonexistent for normal students.