Dueling scar

[2] Foreign tourists visiting Germany in the late 19th century were shocked to see the students, generally with their Studentcorps, at major German universities such as Heidelberg, Bonn, or Jena with facial scars – some older, some more recent, and some still wrapped in bandages.

The culture of dueling scars was mainly common in Germany and Austria, to a lesser extent some Central European countries and briefly at places such as Oxford, and some other elite universities.

In 1874, William Osler, then a medical student on a visit to Berlin, described "one hopeful young Spanish American of my acquaintance who has one half of his face – they are usually on the left half – laid out in the most irregular manner, the cicatrices running in all directions, enclosing areas of all shapes, the relics of fourteen duels.

The hurts, save when inflicted in the nose, lip, or ear, are not even necessarily painful, and unless the injured man indulges too freely in drink, causing them to swell and get red, very bad scars can be avoided.

The swords used are so razor-like that they cut without bruising so that the lips of the wounds can be closely pressed, leaving no great disfigurement, such, for example, as is brought about by the loss of an ear.

Roughly 300 fencing fraternities (Studentenverbindungen) still exist today and most of them are grouped into umbrella organizations such as the Corps, Landsmannschaft or the Deutsche Burschenschaft [de] (DB) in the Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and several other European nations.