Studenten organisieren. Kollektive Mobilisierungen und die Herausbildung einer sozialen Gruppe (Deutschland und Frankreich, 1880-1914) ; Organizing students. Collective mobilizations and the formation of a social group (Germany and France, 1880-1914) ; Organiser les étudiants. Mobilisations collectives et formation d'un groupe social (Allemagne et France, 1880-1914)

Abstract

This thesis aims to understand how, from individuals linked through bureaucratic enrolment at a higher learning institution, students were able to become in France and in Germany, a social group, whose members are bound together by organizations seeking to defend their specific interests and needs. The end of the 1870s and the beginning of the 1880s mark a decisive change in both countries, as public authorities – from the universities as well as from the political powers – increasingly authorize and accept the existence of student organizations. This change is traced over the long term, through the study of political repression of the student movements and of the transformation of the relation between students and the nation-state (in construction) since the beginning of the 19th century.These student organizations are socialization bodies. For their members, it is as much a matter of acquiring practical political competences as it is of completing their university curricula thanks to conferences or working groups or of strengthening their masculine bodies through physical activities. A competitive struggle begins between student organizations around a num-ber of issues between the 1870s and until First World War, the period that is more specifically analysed in this thesis: student representation; relationship with public authorities; integration into the university urban space; integration into the local and national elite society; obtaining material and intellectual benefits for the members; developing common sociability forms. Through this competition students contribute to the formation of a social space of their own, and that we have named student organization space.Through the analysis of this social space and through a constant interest in the relation-ship of students to politics and the nation-state, it is possible to understand how the place and the role of students in university and society was transformed at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century and, therefore, how they could form a social ...