I spent a year in the company of a dueling Verein in Munich a few decades ago and was startled to be at parties where every fourth male had a a scar.
There was what looked like a swimming pool in the basement that was in fact a sort of dug-out that made room for the swords in air (otherwise they would hit the ceiling), and the library was chock-full of material from the Third Reich - not that it was utilized, but it was part of the historical dressing.
Beyond the links everyone else posted, I happen to have run across this[0] post on Travel.SE today and found it quite entertaining to read about how people from (some) fraternities / corps are still dueling each other on a regular basis to this day.
Isn't any organization that has been around for a long time and hasn't sufficiently updated its moral positions considered to be such?
This label could mean anything in a range all the way from "old boys club vibes" or "somewhat antifeminist" to "holds beliefs of objective racial superiority". It is a bit of a broad brush...
Generally true if he had said just “right” or “conservative.” But doesn’t far-right specifically mean fascist? (Like how far left is code for communist.)
I have a few friends who were in a corps and as far as i can tell the general political standing wouldn't be that much out of place in the Kaiserzeit. Definitive not fascist, but very much "classist" and racist in a way that want to believe that non-white people are not LESS capable, but that they (the white guys in the corps) are just MORE capable. I think the word "aristocratic" would describe their mindset best.
I am fairly rightist myself and the few Burschenschaften I got acquainted with feel right-wing to me. The last one I visited (which was in Vienna some 15 years) ago, I was told by multiple members during the drinking part of the evening that it is just a matter of time before the Austro-Hungarian empire gets reconstituted, because Slavs failed at ruling themselves.
Heh, Austria is somewhat richer (due to having escaped Communism), but as far as corruption in politics goes, a Balkan country.
The corps are/were old-right, i.e. linked to or emulating the feudal aristocracy. They are necessarily anti-feminist as they're male-only; there is no direct female equivalent that I'm aware of. In particular, I do not believe it would be permitted for a woman to recieve a duelling scar, or for any man to participate in such a duel. I think you would be very hard pressed to find one on the face of someone not ethnically German, either.
They were banned by Hitler as part of the general totalitarianism against non-Party organisations.
