Karzer

A Karzer was a designated lock-up or detention room to incarcerate students as a punishment, within the jurisdiction of some institutions of learning in Germany and German-language universities abroad.

[1] Karzers existed both at universities and at gymnasiums (similar to a grammar school) in Germany until the beginning of the 20th century.

At the end of the 19th century, as the students in the cell became responsible for their own food and drink and the receiving of visitors became permitted, the "punishment" would often turn into a social occasion with excessive consumption of alcohol.

Karzers have been preserved at the universities of Heidelberg,[3] Jena, Bonn[4],Marburg, Freiburg, Tübingen, Freiberg, [5] Greifswald, Göttingen,[6] Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Erlangen, and at Tartu, Estonia.

[7] At the start of World War I, Canadian philosophy student Winthrop Pickard Bell, who was attending Göttingen to study under Edmund Husserl, was detained for several months as potential belligerant.