CW: Antisemitism, misogyny, mildly gory content
Mensur. A term derived from the distance two fighters must stand at for a fair duel. Mensur. A practice in stoicism, unflinching courage, and fortitude. Mensur. The practice that changed my world. Mensur. How was a man to develop character without experiencing pain?
It lingers with you, the heat of the duel, the blood from your split lip, and the rush of adrenaline that permeates your body. Each time a razor passes over my cheek I am reminded of this youthful activity that I held so dear.
In my first days of university I was a lost youth. Purposeless. The third son of a family of lesser nobles taken by the hustle and bustle of an urban Viennese life afforded to me by land maintained by a lord even lesser than my father. I had done well in Gymnasium, exceptionally well in a manner that I find hard to believe these days. The winds of change, and my engagement to Elisabeth von Vorstadt dragged me from my opulent life to the comparatively frigid, painfully Protestant Konigsberg. My enrollment in the prestigious University of Konigsberg felt like a mistake even at the time. One of only a few Protestant Universities in Europe… I scoffed at the idea of conversion. What days! To have only the worry of my Catholic faith being corrupted or perverted in some way. The fear in my heart as I quickly began to realize Germany’s Luther was right about a great many things. Before I disavowed the Catholic crucifix and took up faith anew, was that when my downfall was spelt?
Law was the selected course of my degree. It was an easy choice. It was what my dear bride-to-be’s family wished of me, and it guaranteed to my parents that the family would, at the very least, not run out of money. As one might be able to assume, the conditions of my engagement were atypical to say the least. Prussian Junkers were prideful people, and by the year 1929, that pride had only become more intense. Without a Kaiser to direct political marriages, the families themselves got to choose suitors for their daughters, and the family I was to take a daughter from could only support such a union if their son-in-law was educated “the Prussian way”. Knowing especially that I was not to inherit the estate, my training within their own household before my academic term was far too intense for the frail urbanite I was.
One anecdote I recall with particular amusement was my fiance’s mother asking me if I had learned to ride a horse as a boy. She seemed horrified when I replied that I hadn’t. Dragging me by my pale wrist she brought me to the family stable. Oh what an estate… stables, I could hardly believe it! A beautiful white horse immediately caught my eye, a pale mane falling over its muscular neck, a creature absolutely intimidating to stand before. We saddled the creature, Schnell, it was called. My future mother-in-law ordered the stable boy to help me up and teach me to ride. I believe I set a record for the quickest time between getting on a horse and falling off. I swore after that moment I would never mount a creature like that again. Naturally, the next morning at the crack of dawn, I was again attempting to master this beast.
I cannot say that I tried particularly hard to fit into the culture of my fiance’s family in those months. I did as I was told but exercised no agency outside of that. My spare time was spent reading philosophy and psychology. Nietzsche, who my fiance’s father loved very much, and Freud, who he decried as a Jewish crank. At the very least, I was passable to them, and very luckily, my fiance was enamored with my urbanite intellectualism and gentle mannerisms. Out of spite, at one point, I did find myself explaining to her Freud’s psychosexual theory. She stared at me with crystal blue eyes, filled with a mix of awe and disgust at the psychologist’s proposal. Later she would remark to me that it was very Jewish, and that Freud was likely considering only the Jewish brain. When I told her that he had made these observations of Germanic patients, she seemed lost for a way to dismiss his ideals. As we consider child-rearing, it seems Freud’s psychosexual theory has remained at the forefront of her mind.
It was a pleasant couple months regardless of my complaints and lack of character. I was well taken care of and Elisabeth, who now holds my surname, zu Baden—the zu reclaimed for me in Germany—was, and remains to be, perhaps the best woman I could have been engaged to. The two of us truly fell in love over the course of our time together. Always, my eyes lingered on her lips. Her dark hair found itself frequently tangled in my soft hands. We acted in manners that were indecent, animalistic, a snapshot of what was to come, this Prussian infection. My romantic Austrian heart and her Germanic passion… even now, even with all that has happened, we seek comfort in one another. Undyingly devoted to one another, though forces would prove to try and get between that. My last night at her family home before my first day at university we slept in the same bed. Her curled up in my arms, her dark hair loosely flowing over the mattress, the peaceful expression on her face, the light freckling I could only notice if I squinted in the dark that hid this moment. It is her that likely prevented me from certain suicide.
I shall now attempt to set the scene of my first day at university: It was summer time, warm, but cooler than I was used to in my comparatively southern homeland. I was not, as many of my peers were, abuzz with excitement. The air was permeated, rather, by a painful indifference. I could not even feel sick as I stepped before the regal facade of the University of Konigsberg. It was like walking into a Hohenzollern palace, that first day at University, but with the opulence of my fatherland, it failed to make any impression on me. The world felt grayed and out of focus. I didn’t want to become a lawyer, I was filling an obligation to my parents. This profound emptiness, melancholia, some could call it, is the only thing I remember from that first day.
Other than my first meeting with August von Demmin.
He was quite opposite to me. A definite Junker. The pinnacle of the masculine ideal. If one had read Zeising’s work, “The New Theory of Proportions” he would only have to look at August von Demmin to understand the principle Zeising was attempting to convey. A face that would have been perfectly symmetrical were it not for the scarring that split his pale pink lip in two or the one running down his pronounced cheekbone. August was a name derived from the Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar, and with his large eyes and Roman nose, his appearance was certainly reminiscent of him. His body, with apparent musculature even underneath his collared shirt and tight waistcoat, looked as if sculpted by the artists of the renaissance. His thick Kaiser mustache pulled his appearance away from this Roman illusion, however, and emphasized his Prussian-ness.
For his perfections, there were imperfections. At the time I deemed his smites to be the greatest ones, though quickly I came around on that. He had a sharp snaggled canine that often drew my attention when his mouth opened. He spoke with a mild lisp that somehow failed to take the sharpness out of his words. He refused to wear a blazer or sports coat, opting instead to only wear his waistcoat, except on particularly cold days, I would find out, then he would wear furs or an old Prussian greatcoat. He was a year my senior, and had already studied a year at the university, but had switched his course of study from Military Sciences to Law. He had sat next to me in my first lecture of the day.
I was startled. I was very much the studious type and he seemed not to be. When his cold gray eyes first laid on me I could swear I saw in him a Prussian general, in the long retired pickelhaube hat with an Iron Cross brazen across his chest… but he was just a 20-year-old in a tight waistcoat with a kaiser mustache. If I’d realized that sooner, perhaps I’d be in a better place now. He made conversation with me:
“What is your name?” His voice was as cold as those steely eyes.
“Friedrich Baden,” I replied tensely.
“August von Demmin. From where do you hail?”
“Vienna,” my responses were meek, too short. I had no doubt made a poor impression on him. “And where from are you?”
“Demmin,” he laughed, dispelling the tension in the air, “Pomerania. My brother owns an estate outside Demmin Pomerania.”
“So you also failed to be born first?”
“My greatest mistake in life,” the amusement in his voice set me at ease. In that moment, I believe he took a liking to me. The funny little Austrian he had happened to sit next to on his first day in law. It was just the next day, after all, he asked me if I wished to learn to fence. I was without fraternity in this unfamiliar environment, he claimed if I dueled him it would fix that.
Mensur. At the time, I viewed the tradition as barbaric. It was not foreign to me, it was popular in my homeland of Austria but hardly as much so as it was among the Junkers. I knew he participated frequently from the smites on his face. It took a while of his pestering for me to succumb to at the very least learning more about these duels. Many insults to my masculinity were spat at me by him and his friends, completely deservedly. The Viennese culture in the 1920s hadn’t exactly instilled in me a masculine nature. More masculine than the Berliner but far too sensitive and feminine to truly be considered a man. I was not a man who was quick to anger, however, thus I was not so easily swayed into defending my honor. It was only when they sent something truly scandalous—which I will not disclose here—to my dear fiance that they had finally gone too far. I challenged August von Demmin to a Mensur duel.
There’s no winning in Mensur, and as such, there is also no losing. The very act of standing one’s ground is honorable. There was only one way I could have embarrassed myself in that duel, to let my Viennese feet waltz away from the blade that should have punished me. I am almost ashamed to put to word that disgraceful duel. I was shoved back towards August as I attempted to flee but rather than getting mad, he gave me a crooked smile, his snaggletooth catching on his lip.
“You keep your feet planted,” he said, laying aside his schläger and slipping up his eye-guard. “It is the mark of a man, the ability to stand one’s ground. Parry with your blade.” He grabbed my hands, with my sword in them and adjusted them more firmly around the handle. He leaned his face gently against the blade as his eyes met mine. “You’re aiming here.”
This enraged me, his taunt. I must’ve gone red because he laughed as he turned to grab his weapon, how badly I wished to slice him from behind as he had his back to me. I waited for us to be at the appropriate distance, and for him to call the duel before making the first motion to strike. He parried with ease and not long after, I felt a searing pain in my cheek as hot liquid dripped down.
It is easy to look at smites others have sustained and think it did not hurt much. The scars are brutal but until you’ve felt the heat burn your face, until the blood, the insane amount of blood drenches you. You really don’t expect how much blood it is. The shock of the moment leaves you only feeling warm and ready to strike back. He parried. The duel was called to an end as blood ran down my neck from a long incision that ran from the corner of my eye to the edge of my lip. And as the fighting ended, the pain burned hotter like the fires of hell. Tears welled in my eyes, which I attempted to blink away before removing the eye guard. There were cheers around us, I thought for him until one boy shook my hand, his face was about as scarred as August’s.
And then I felt warm for a different reason. I was among brothers.
The surgeon wished to patch up my face immediately but I insisted on wiping away some of the blood with my handkerchief first. I would mail this to my fiance to commemorate my first duel. Sanitized and bandaged, the wound was left otherwise to sit. To allow a wound like that to seal cleanly would erase one’s glory. After that I was a member of the fraternity Germania, even as an Austrian.
I sent to my fiance a letter that night, one that would prove to be quite problematic in the near future:
I write to you having just joined the fraternity Germania after a duel of vengeance with August von Demmin, and I have sustained my first smite. It is a simple mark, not too long, on the cheek. I am no longer afraid of trivial things like injury and scarring, I hope your father appreciates that.
Do you recall when your mother made me ride that horse in the stable? How almost instantly I fell off and swore I would never ride again? Where did that end me up, considering cavalry for the Prussian army? (At the suggestion of your father). I believe something similar will happen here. Already I have come around on the idea of Mensur, I imagine I will be partaking in many duels in the future, hopefully many against von Demmin. He is in this case the beast I will tame. I hope only to inflict some brutal mark upon him, then he would respect me eternally.
I have little more to write about, I’m afraid. I could write at length about the hours I have spent pouring over law books and policy and procedure and all of this nonsense employed by bureaucrats to complicate the process of law. But that is not what matters. The rule of law does not matter in our modern times. Why have I chosen to pursue a dead industry when day by day this nation seems to be sliding further into anarchy?
No. All that matters at the moment is the blood soaked bandage on my face, August von Demmin’s blood on my blade, and the blood I send to you to keep. Remember always how I bled for you today, dear heart.
I shall see you this weekend.
The bloodlust I displayed for von Demmin in this letter was not meant to be serious. It was a jest of sorts. It was out of honor that I wished to scar him. Out of honor I wished to make us equals, to tame this beast. It was out of honor to this very day. It is out of honor and respect for the man von Demmin was that I keep in my apartment the blade that took his life.
