Four men had attacked the three Burschenschafter in a park from behind, the Thuringian police said.
Shortly after the incident, the officers arrested three suspects at the age of 17 and 20 years. Currently, it is assumed that the attack was carried out with a political motive, a police spokeswoman told Berlin weekly Junge Freiheit.
“The cowardly attack was initiated with a kick in the back of a federal brother. After that, the rest of the group also fell on our federal brothers “, the affected fraternity Germania Würzburg described the incident on their Facebook page. During the incident, the attackers succeeded in snatching their identifications too.
The attack is not the first of its kind in the university city. At the end of April, a 45-year-old member of Corps Saxonia Jena was attacked and severely injured, reported the Jenaer Nachrichten. The man had to spend several days in hospital with severe facial injuries.
Against the backdrop of the attack, Jena City Councilor Marcus Komann (SPD) said in May: “If you run around with insignia of fraternities in a city that, fortunately, is mainly left-wing, then it’s clear what you’re doing.” The CDU Jena criticised the Social Democrat Councilor for blaming the frat students for being the target of attacks.
Würzburg Germania announced after the recent attack in Jena that “with such a political support” is not surprising, that “our opponents are no longer limited to the word”. The aggressors can clearly count on the support of leftwing politicians.
The fraternities are known as Verbindungen, the umbrella term for many different kinds of such associations in German-speaking countries, including Corps, Burschenschaften, Landsmannschaften, Turnerschaften and Catholic fraternities.
Worldwide there are over 1 600 Studentenverbindungen, about a thousand in Germany, with a total of over 190 000 members. In them students spend their university years in an organised community, whose members stay connected even after graduation.
A goal of this lifelong bond [Lebensbund] is to create contacts and friendships over many generations and to facilitate networking. The Lebensbund is very important for the longevity of these networks.