Posted on 06/17/2011 9:05:53 AM PDT by markomalley
The arcane and secretive world of German duelling societies could be torn apart by divisions over whether to restrict membership to those of German blood and appearance.
Dating back to Napoleonic times and with a penchant for fencing with sharpened swords and colourful costumes, student duelling societies have become renowned as bastions of deeply conservative and right-wing thought.
But now divisions between liberals and conservatives within the societies have come to the fore after some members demanded the expulsion of a colleague because of his Chinese background.
Although Kai Ming Au, a member of the Mannheim fraternity, was born in Germany and had served in the army to some his lack of German blood rankled.
They cited a decision issued last year by the Deutsche Burschenschaft, the umbrella group the 100 fraternities belong to, that said members with "non-European facial and bodily characteristics" needed to be checked by a committee.
This apparent racial discrimination prompted comparisons with the infamous Nuremberg race laws of Nazi Germany when anybody deemed "non-Aryan" was excluded from public life. It also led to liberal duelling fraternities to stand up for Mr Au and defeat the conservatives who wanted him expelled in a vote at the annual Burschenschaft conference.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
This is actually pretty oddball.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_fencing
About the only way you can see this extremely stylized fencing is in the 1964 movie “Ecco” (1964) (Il mondo di notte numero 3 (original title)), when it was still illegal after WWII. Fortunately it is right at the start of this “mondo” movie, the rest of which is gross and tasteless, even if narrated by George Sanders, who lends a great deal to its grossness with witty repartee.
In the movie it shows two fencers, seated at a table and wearing their complicated protective gear, with their seconds seated behind them to hold their arms before fighting, and to stop them the instant that a halt is caused, typically if one or the other gets their face slashed.
Though the facial scars were, and still are highly prized, in one fencing school they were strictly prohibited to the point where face masks were worn, and poking, instead of slashing, was how they dueled. This school was for actors, whose career might be ruined by an unfortunate facial scar.
I don’t think I said anything that contradicts anything in your post. I agree with all your points.
IMHO...
The early founder ethnicities, English, Welsh, Scottish, German, Dutch, French, etc., are purported to be evil racists and exploiters of the “lower classes” by the politically correct. Especially if the person happens to be male. Especially if they’re old.
Any time they form an ethnic heritage group it is cast as evil. Why can they not be proud of their heritage of their ethnicity like everyone else ?
You seem well read on this subject and coming to reasonable conclusions, so hopefully this doesn’t seem like nit-picking, because it’s meant only to add to your mental picture of the physical anthropology of Europe. The Finns, genetically, are about 25% Siberian, not including the Swedes long settled there. I’m afraid I don’t have a link for you, but will search my browsing if you like, and may turn it up before you’re able to through search engines. I just came across that factoid recently, randomly.
Maybe, but there is nothing in your post which indicates that Basques, Finns, etc. differ little in anything but language from other neighboring Europeans.
Hungarians are distantly related to Finns linguistically, and also migrated from what is now Russia, but Hungarians look pretty much like their present-day Slavic or Germanic neighbors in Europe.
Like I said, I generally agree with your assessment and assertions, both for Hungarians and for Finns, though their languages are only very distantly related to each other, even if grouped together. And I had heard even that the relationship was not so much of vocabulary, as shows the relationship among Indo-European languages, but of syntactical and grammatical structure - word order in sentences, that kind of thing.
Maybe I could have worded it better: ‘of Siberian origin’, or ‘shared with autochthonous people of Siberia but not with their European neighbors’. I’m looking for the link now.
Abstract We have analysed data of three European populations speaking non-Indoeuropean languages: Hungarians, Lapps, and Finns. Principal coordinate analysis shows that Lapps are almost exactly intermediate between people located geographically near the Ural mountains and speaking Uralic languages, and central and northern Europeans. Hungarians and Finns are definitely closer to Europeans. An analysis of genetic admixture between Uralic and European ancestors shows that Lapps are slightly more than 50% European, Hungarians are 87% European, and Finns are 90% European. There is basic agreement between these conclusions and historical data on Hungary. Less is known about Finns and very little about Lapps.
It's from Cavalli-Sforza, who is someone I think that still has a good reputation, though this is from 1990, and maybe the 'less is known about Finns' has been updated since then. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2221031?dopt=Abstract
I just searched 'Siberian ancestry of Finns' in wikipedia and that's the first thing that hit. Like I said also, you might be able to find what I'm referring to (or maybe mis-referring to) faster than I can.
You are correct, but I did not address that point.
Incidentally, when you read about all the invasions of Europe by Central Asian tribal nomads over the centuries (Huns, Petchenegs, Bulgars, Magyars, etc.) you have to conclude that many people in E. Europe are descended from these invaders. Yet they look basically "European."
No, you’re right, and I didn’t mean to give that impression.
It’s been difficult finding the link, because it has been difficult separating out information from what are listed as ‘White Supremacist’ sites, though I’m sure I saw it from a mainstream source.
So far, the best I could find was from someone who’s apparently Finnish themselves:
“According to Marja-Liisa Suontaus, 25-50% of Finnish genes are Baltic, about 25% are Siberian and 25-50% are Germanic. The total amount of “Asian” influence is about 1.5%, not much different from the surroundings.”
Which with its last sentence supports what you’ve just said, while also supporting what I’d said. I’m afraid my Finnish is practically non-existent, but here’s a Finnish language site if you can make something of it:
http://jumalasuomi.tripod.com/SCANDIA.HTM#SUONTAUS
I don’t know about the Petchenegs you’ve mentioned, but the people called Huns in China with a different, but similar, name fit the general European description even there, and there’s some evidence I’ve seen linking the Bulgars’ origins to the Pamirs, the mountains of Tajikistan where an Indo-European language-group of its own is spoken, often by sandy-haired and light-eyed people whose ancestors survived in the mountains when the Mongol Horde went through the land below. Genghis Khan, for what it’s worth, was referred to as redheaded and green-eyed, in some descriptions. I think Magyars are probably comparable in this case as well to the Finns. But I know the point you’re making, and generally agree.
Meer
The Telegraph puts non-Aryan into quotes as if that was a citation. These duelling societies never used the word Aryan. They want their members to be of “German lineage”. Aryan is a word more or less made up and used by the Nazis.
I don’t agree with that but it is their good right. There are Turkish culture clubs exclusively for Turks, african clubs and so on, which are apparently all OK.
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