Beer & Blades

Outwardly stern and arrogant, inwardly trembling, the two lads stand face to face in a room that smells of beer, blood and disinfectant. Each is dressed in a padded leather torso jacket, but except for steel-mesh goggles and noseguard, the head is vulnerable. Now each lad lofts a yard-long rapier with blunt point but sharp edges. At the umpire's "Los!" (go), they slash away--again, again, again--steel against steel for 15 minutes. The noise, astonishingly, is deafening. When steel slashes flesh, a doctor rushes in for repairs. Everyone happily retires to toast the prize: a fine Schmiss, or scar, the old Teutonic varsity letter. Not since the 1930s has student swordplay been so fashionable in Germany. About 40% of all male students at West Germany's 18 universities now belong to 800 fraternities, including about 380 that practice the dangerous art of "the sharp weapon."

Last month 15 of West Germany's most eminent professors rose in protest. Writing to every member of the Bundestag, they urged the outlawing of an atavism that is "utterly incompatible with our contemporary conception of morals and ethics." The professors, including Nobel prizewinning Physicist Max Born, got nowhere. The Bundestag is laced with the Alte Herren (alumni) of dueling societies. Fumed one Alter Herr: "Don't talk about things you don'tunderstand."

Drunk & Livid. Born in the late 18th century, dueling fraternities were originally aimed at preventing bloodshed betweei campus brawlers armed with pikes and daggers. As it turned out, they ritualized the violence. Setting rigid patterns of drinking and dueling, they became lodges of the most socially acceptable students. Each new member, called a fox, had to prove himself in at least two duels, and later fight a dozen or so bouts as a blooded brother. Cheek scars were so prized that men with minor abrasions inflamed them with pepper or beer, or by placing a horsehair in the cut. and soberly got drunk on the theory that alcohol would make their scars more livid.

Today, the usual form of the fight is the Mensur, from the Latin for measure, in reference to the set distance between the swordsmen. Unlike a duel, the fighters are not responding to a challenge, and in fact may not even know each other. The Mensur also differs in the extensive safeguards aimed at preventing any killing. Nobody wins, nobody loses. The object is only to subdue den inner en Schweinehnnd (cowardice) by taking a slash with aplomb. Habitual flinchers are booted out of the fraternity. ''This is the way an elite has to be formed." explains one student at the University of Munich. He sees fraternities as a splendid antidote to the rootless "academic proletariat" at West German universities, "those unaffiliated students who behave like juvenile delinquents."

Out of Africa. The Schmiss mystique has survived all attempts to kill it. Hitler banned the most elite fraternities as potentially subversive. So did the Allies after World War II, but rescinded the rule under the impression that the institution had died. The Alte Herren soon reopened fraternity houses in the Student Prince tradition, paid for beer and blades, promised good jobs later, and hundreds of ill-housed students happily accepted. Today, West Germany has a whole new generation of highly placed Alte Herren.

The sight of students in the caps, ribbons and bandages of dueling fraternities sends a shiver up the spines of many Germans: the custom identifies so readily with Wehrwillen--the will to war. "These fools must be stopped," snaps one of the protesting professors. A less angry and even more telling criticism came recently from a Ghanaian student who discussed dueling on television. Pointing to his own tribal-scarred face, the Ghanaian remarked: "This isn't done in Africa any more, and frankly I can't understand why you still do it to each other in civilized Germany. It's primitive."

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