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Self-confident: These Freiburg students had themselves photographed in 1912 with the colors of their Jewish connections and with fencing wounds
Photo:
Jewish Museum Berlin, inv. No.
FOT 88/1/18
The association that twelve medical students founded in Breslau on October 23, 1886, appeared at first sight to be a student association like hundreds of others.
The founders declared themselves to be a couleur association, so they applied colors.
The name of their association was also determined geographically, as was the custom among fraternity students: based on the name of the Wroclaw University, the young men named their association »Viadrina«.
On her coat of arms was the slogan "Viadrina be it Panier", underneath, well educated, the Latin slogan "Nemo me impune lacessit" ("Nobody irritates me with impunity").
What was unusual, however, was the motif that was also emblazoned on the coat of arms: Germania could be seen in the middle, next to three interlinked rings and crossed swords.
Anyone who knew how to read the symbolism saw in the rings an allusion to the ring parable in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's drama "Nathan the Wise": In it the enlightening author emphasized the equality of the three great world religions - this was what the hopes of the Jewish Germans were, at last, fully tied to to be integrated into society.
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