George Mosse, writing in The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity, finds the European dueling tradition of the late 19th century on a continuum with the chivalric duels of the late middle ages. The duel was a way, tout court, for men to assert their masculinity, by displaying their honor and courage in a public forum. It was a tradition amongst all European aristocracies.

Now in the late 19th century, the aristocracy is declining relative to the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie is eager to define their own social status against the aristocrats. Dueling becomes a way for the socially up-and-coming male to prove himself: "The duel strengthened the feeling of autonomy, of personality, but also of class and caste; as such it became in the nineteenth century part of the life of officers and students, politicians and businessmen, as well as Jews, who used it to disprove their unmanly, cowardly stereotype." (Mosse, 19) New customs of dueling developed according to the character of each region. Thus in Central Europe (Germany, Austria), Jews were gradually excluded. Not so in France.

So the fraternity dueling of 19th century Germany is part of a general resurgence of the duel taking place across all of Europe. In the German university, bourgeois and aristocrats freely mixed and compared manhoods as elsewhere, but with a martial twist particular to Germany: "The officer corps was more than just a military institution; students in Germany became officers in the reserves, which gave them social status for the rest of their lives, a status that was confirmed by the marks of the duel, which scarred their faces for all to see. Elite student fraternities made dueling compulsory-it became almost a sport-partly because under the spell of aristocratic custom members sought to increase their status, partly because it cemented their camaraderie and, not least, because it made them in an elite in comparison to their fellow students." (Mosse, 20) Participation in duels, then, was a way for the German university-fraternity-military elite to mark themselves off as a class apart and above average Germans.

There is much more to Mosse's discussion. I have done my best to paraphrase.

It's worth mentioning from my point of view that the martially-tinged glorification of violence we see in the 19th century German student duel is on its own continuum of violence in German history. It's no coincidence that the student duel became popular in a society drunk on victory over France in 1871, a society that more and more worshiped military manhood under Kaiser Wilhelm II and finally gave rise to the Big H.

19th Century European sword duelling fell into three significant groupings:

1. The small-sword, a system that had been dominated by French theorists for over 100 years. Small swords were the weapons of the aristocracy, and as such were falling out of fashion in post-revolutionary France. Small sword duels could be quite deadly, which was another factor in their decline - 19th Century duelling was evolving toward a less murderous aesthetic, and by late century, only 2% of sword duels would result in fatalities.

2. The épée de terrain, or duelling sword, a modernization of the small sword. No longer worn as a fashion statement, the sword could evolve in a more practical, martial direction, and gained a larger guard and longer blade. With the trend toward less deadly encounters, the styles and techniques of the "sword" were diverging from those of the small sword system from which it derived. This divergence from long-established French theory allowed Italian fencing masters to attempt to reclaim their perceived birthright to the science of fencing, which had been lost to the French in the late 17th Century.

3. The broadsword or sabre, the sword of the military classes. Military fencing science was rather crude before the 19th Century, due to the weight of the weapons and the nature of battlefield encounters. (Napoleon's rather significant contribution to military sword combat was nothing more than to admonish his cavalry to charge with their points.) But in the early to mid-19th Century there was a renewed interest in how fencing science could potentially improve the art of the broadsword, and the resurgent Italian school, eager to make its mark, took up the challenge.

(Incidentally, these three lineages can be more or less directly traced to the three modern fencing weapons, the foil, epee, and sabre. That is simply because fencing formulated its basic rule structures at the end of the 19th Century when Pierre de Coubertin was founding the Olympic movement, at a time when these trends were still fresh.)

Anyway, back to the sabre. Italian masters like Radaelli created new systems of broadsword fencing that became extremely popular. They lightened the weapons somewhat to make them capable of more sophisticated actions than the heavy cavalry swords that preceded them, and they devised duelling protocols that conformed to the 19th Century aesthetic of being dangerous but not-too-deadly. And it turns out that light sabres were fantastically well-suited for that. Their light weight made them less likely to sever bodies into irrecoverable bits, but they nevertheless drew fantastic amounts of blood. Perfect for a culture that wanted its satisfaction without death, if it could be helped! The fact that sabre fencing was full of dynamic, Italianate flourishes also helped to "market" these new systems to a world that was tired of the small sword and its rigid, academic approach to sword fighting.

The new systems of Italian sabre fencing spread rapidly. Westward they ran into some resistance against the French systems that were well-entrenched, but eastward they were enthusiastically embraced. Sabres had originated in eastern Europe, which had adapted them from the curved swords of the Turks whom they had been fighting for centuries, and so they struck a cultural chord that led to an embrace of the new Italian arts. Schools were set up in the major centres of Austria-Hungary, and by the late 19th Century some of the most famous Italian masters (such as Luigi Barbasetti, a student of Radaelli, and Italo Santelli) were actually based out of Vienna and Budapest. Budapest became the center of the world for sabre fencing - until 1964, the Hungarians won every Olympic sabre team title, except 2 that were taken by the Italians. Their 1964 loss ended a 40 year streak where they were undefeated in every match they fought.

But back to the 19th Century... Meanwhile, you had the rising power of Prussia, and the wars of German unification, which created a fashion for the military arts in the regions of the German confederation. Duelling experienced a resurgence in German territories in the early 19th Century, a side-effect of the Napoleonic wars, which was renewed in the years after 1871 when there were no wars to occupy the military classes. German student societies already had a tradition of "academic fencing" (mensur) but they had aristocratic roots and followed the French small sword systems, adapted to a local sword variant called a Pariser. As the ranks of students became filled with veterans, student duelling became reinvigorated. So altogether, the tradition of the mensur, the nationalistic politics of unification, the fashion for military arts, the number of veterans in these societies, the vogue for duelling, and the success of the Italian sabre all combined to drive academic fencing away from the traditional but deadly small sword systems and toward the flashy new sabre systems.

Early sabre mensurs made much use of real sabres, and there was a mix of antagonistic (resolving a dispute) duels and non-antagonistic (test of character) "encounters". But the universal evolutionary trend away from deadly encounters and run-ins with the law eventually lead to the extinction of the proper duel, and its replacement with a formal, non-antagonistic encounter using the schläger, a sabre-like weapon that was specifically developed for delivering shallow but very bloody facial wounds. (One exception was at Jena, where the small sword persisted because the theological school there would not admit students with facial scars.)

Now, about that facial scarring. Facial scars in duels correlate with the use of edged weapons. Small swords (and épées) tend to leave small prick-wounds, and the face is bony and doesn't make a great target for thrusts. Facial scars were common in 16th and 17th Century duelling with edged rapiers, both for intimidation and shaming, and also because scalp wounds bled like crazy and could terminate a duel by effectively blinding the opponent. But they fell away in the 18th Century with the dominance of the small sword.

With the rise in popularity of slashing duelling swords in the mid-19th Century, facial scars became more common once again, but rather than being seen as shameful (ie. a sign that you had been humiliated in a duel), they were taken as a sign of courage and manliness (ie. a sign that you were the sort of man that did not shirk from a challenge). This was a consequence of how the perception of duelling itself had shifted in the intervening centuries: from a formalization of the vendetta to a ritual that proved one valued one's principles above one's life. The facial scar, or schmiss, thus became a very visible badge of honour and social status. And where else in 19th Century Europe could you acquire such social status so quickly?

Needless to say, that made them insanely fashionable (have you noticed how much of this story is based on fashion?), and the mensur evolved into an elaborately constructed scarification ritual. The protective gear they wear is quite remarkable, protecting the eyes and nose with steel covers, and covering the neck, body, and arm with heavy padding and leather, backed by even stronger materials, even including mail. It was all designed for the specific purpose of getting slashed in the face, and only the face (in fact, the left cheek took most of the blows). Late 19th Century academic fencers collected scars like stamps. Foreigners and members of marginalized groups would seek scars to give them credibility within elite German circles, and the scars were even faked (well, self-administered) by people who didn't want to duel.

Selected Refs:

The Duel in European History, Honour and the Reign of Aristocracy, V. G. Kiernan

The Secret History of the Sword, Adventures in Ancient Martial Arts, Christoph Amberger

The Duel, Robert Baldrick

By the Sword, Richard Cohen