Berlin Student Riots Blamed on Hitlerites and Socialists

The student riots yesterday on the campus of the University of Berlin, in which a number of Jewish students were injured, are being variously ascribed to a pre-conceived plan by the National Socialist students and to propaganda by the Socialist students, both of which groups were participants in the clash.

One version has it that the Fascist students prior to the outbreak held a meeting at a beer-house near the University where their leaders, Herr Von Buenau egged them on and laid plans for a number of anti-Jewish attacks in the future carefully arranged to look like spontaneous affrays. Simultaneously the Fascist students are said to have organized a girls’ detachment under the leadership of a professor’s daughter.

Dean Adolf Deismann, however, claims that the disturbance was started by the Socialist students by their distribution of anti-Hitlerite leaflets. The National Socialist students too blame the Socialists charging them with shouting anti-Semitic slogans, including “death to the Jews,” which were not discontinued when the police dispersed the rioters.

Meanwhile the Democratic press is critical of Dean Deismann’s actions but praises the energetic intervention of the police which prevented a more serious affair. A belief that the University enjoys extra-territoriality was dissipated by the police commandant, M. Heimannsberg, who announced that the police would intervene when outbreaks that endangered public safety took place.