Blackwell Reference Online

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Europe has a long tradition of student activism and protest activity. Student movements in Europe have been formative in the development of significant political reforms and social change in a wide range of European national and transnational environments over two centuries. While student resistance and agitation can be traced as far back as the idea of formal education itself, European student movements in the modern conception have their origins in the early nineteenth-century German Burschen-schaften , or student groups, first formed at the University of Jena in 1815. The students organized around a nationalist platform and urged for the unification of German states. The Jena group inspired students at universities all over Germany to form their own Burschenschaften , and by 1818 the Allgemeine Deutsche Burschen-schaften (ADB) or All German Burschenschaften, consisting of student representatives from different German universities, was born. The ADB called for solidarity among students to uphold an explicitly political agenda and emphasized the role of German students as the future political leaders. However, recognizing the political power that the students were beginning to amass, leaders of the German states met in 1819 to draft the Carlsbad decrees, which demanded the immediate outlaw of Burschenschaften and the expulsion of dissident students. German students continued ... log in or subscribe to read full text