There Are Fraternities in Germany and They Are Exactly as Weird and Creepy As You Would Expect

Rob Fox11 years ago

Alina Braun is a college student from Germany who travelled to Washington D.C. to experience college life in the U.S. at American University. In a special report for the blog on radio station WTOP 103.5 FM’s website, Braun wrote about her experiences at an American college, specifically about her impressions of Greek Life. It’s a somewhat interesting read, if only to see what a foreign girl thinks of American fraternities. She does a good job of portraying the positive aspects of fraternities as well as being honest enough to admit that we like to get hammered…excessively. I assume Braun had such a positive experience with fraternities at least in part because none of the drunk fraternity guys she met were wearing a Rowdy Gentleman “Back to Back World War Champs” shirt or tank and shouting “MY GRANDPA KILLED YOUR GRANDPA YA KRAUT HOOKER!” Opportunity missed, gentlemen.

The most interesting part of the article, though, is not Braun’s thoughts on American fraternities, but rather the comparison she makes between American and German fraternities. Yeah, German fraternities. Apparently those exist, and apparently the Germans made their fraternities as creepy as their movies, their sex lives, and everything else that country does.

This is Braun’s rundown on German fraternities:

In Germany, we also have fraternities and a few sororities. However, they are not that important in our culture and student life. They are mostly small groups connected by a special interest in music, politics, etc…in Germany there are 1,000 fraternities and sororities with only 22,000 student members.

Oh, so these are more like clubs. There aren’t any nationally organized “houses” and there are probably no rituals. Right?

Furthermore, there are some so-called beating fraternities in Germany

Beating fraternities? Is this like hazing or a German college sex club? This is Germany we’re talking about. These people can’t get their rocks off without AT LEAST having something painfully clamped to their nipples. Pain turns them on. I’m surprised there weren’t more mass breakouts at stalags and concentration camps during World War II, what with the guards masturbating all the time.

Members learn fencing and have to participate in traditional fencing competitions sometimes without wearing helmets. Thus, these members often have scars on their foreheads as a sign of their membership. This tradition goes back to the middle ages and still continues today. Until the 1930s, scars on members’ faces were considered a status symbol.

They’re hazed…with fencing? That’s the most European hazing I could have possibly imagined.

However, the most prominent critique regarding fraternities in Germany is that some of them have Nazi-ideological tendencies.

Well that seemed unavoidable. You get more than twenty German men together and let them hold meetings it’s pretty inevitable that eventually they’re going to start veering back to Nazi. Freakin’ Germans.

Last year, there was a big scandal in a fraternity in Cologne. Members wanted to exclude one of their fraternity brothers because his parents were from China. Furthermore, at the annual meeting of the “German Fraternity,” a member requested that only students of German descent should be allowed to join. Luckily, many members voted against that request.

That paragraph alone would convince me to move out of Germany if I was of Chinese decent. You don’t know how powerful those members are going to be in twenty years. Hey Germany, I have news for you, being of German heritage isn’t that great. I should know, I’m half German. You’re just a bunch of fucking white people. Line up a German, a Russian, a French guy, a Dutch guy, a Brit, and a Norwegian and I couldn’t tell the difference. If being German made you superior you’d be the ones cranking out “Back to Back World War Champs” t-shirts…probably at slave labor camps.

Oh Germany, will you ever not be creepy?

[Source]