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Jena Students League 1816 (Germany)

Jenaer Burschenschaft

1:1 image by Andy Weir

Jenaer Burschenschaft

See also:

Origins of the Colours of the Flag (Germany)
German Confederation 1815-1866 (Germany)
City of Jena (Thuringia, Germany)
Students' Associations (Burschenschaften/Studentenverbindungen, Germany)

Jenaer Burschenschaft

During the 1813 war against Napoleon there was a free corps called Lützowsche Jäger (Lützow's Rifles), soldiers - especially students - which became pioneers of the national movement. They wore black tunics with red facings. From these colours the first flag of the student movement Jenaer Burschenschaft after the war was inspired: Gules, a fess Sable, an oak branch Or i.e. red with a black stripe and a yellow oak branch. However black-red-gold would not only stay as colours of a student movement, they were to become the German national colours.
Source: Hattenhauer 1984.
Carsten Linke, 24 May 1996

I have found a nice flag link. Surfing for some facts about the German black-red-gold I passed the website of the German student league. There is an audio document with the story of Dr. Otto Costabell who saved the historic Wartburg student fraternity flag (the model for b-r-g) from destruction by the national-socialists and how this flag survived the later GDR-regime.
The pages of this ws don't have direct links, so you have to click yourself through: on the HP click "Dokumentationen" and then "Otto Costabell rettet die Fahne der Urburschenschaft vor den Nationalsozialisten", then you can choose the kind of audio player. (Direct link here)
Martin Karner, 9 Apr 2004