Comparison of American and German fraternities/sororities

[VictoriaGermany]

Originally Posted by carnation

Singen Sie ”Die Lorelei”? Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten....
Do your sororities have symbols, colors, and flowers? Do they allow all who want to join to do so or do they have selective membership? You could find out more about us by going to this link: www.npcwomen.org or you could look on the websites of various universities.

Hi carnation!

Oh, you speak German? Well, actually we didn´t sing this songs so far, but this are folk songs and we also sing some folk songs beside the traditional student´s songs.

On http://www.studentenlieder.de.vu you will find several German student´s songs for download. Very popular are e.g. the following songs:

- Oh alte Burschenherrlichkeit
- Student sein, wenn die Veilchen blühen
- Gaudeamus Igitur
- Nicht der Pflicht nur zu genügen

Yes, your sororities and fraternities have own symbols and colours (but we don´t have flowers). Every corporation has its own "Zirkel" (e.g. http://www.noricagraz.com/download/zirkel.jpg). Originally a Zirkel was a kind of a secret symbol for a fraternity. I goes back to the brotherhoods in the mid-age. A Zirkel is a mixture of different letters which usually refer to a whole sentence. E.g. my sorority´s Zirkel has the letters V, v, s and c. It stands for the latin sentence:

Circulus sororum victoriae vivat! (The circle of the victoria sisters may live)

The Zirkel is usually written after your name in any corporation related issues. As long as your corporation does exist, it is followed by an exclamation mark.
If you are currently in a specific position within your corporation, you will put a shortcut of your position behind the exclamation mark, e.g.

Hans Wurst Z! x

The positions vary a lot from corporation to corporation, therefore I will not list them here. In General, x stands for the first representive of the corporation. Other positions (e.g. responsible for finance or written communication) will have shortcuts like xx, xxx or xxxx. The person responsible for the education of new members will have the shortcut FM.
Well, as I said: In general.

German corporation do not accept all members. Beside the gender, there are other criterias that depend on the corporation of course. The catholic corporation only accept catholics. The Burschenschaften mainly only except Germans with German roots (e.g. a guy born in Germany which parents are from Turkey won´t be accepted in some Burschenschaften) and guys who didn´t deny liability for military service.
And of course you have to study to be accepted in most fraternities/sororities (except the ones at schools).