Sieferts in Prison?

So here’s the deal—Chip and Doug’s dad doesn’t talk much about his German past, but one thing we do know is that his family name was changed from Siefert to Seefer when his parents came to the United States. We had always wondered why. Little did we know that we were about to solve this family mystery!

We got up Saturday morning, and everyone met in the dining room for breakfast. Chip, Doug, Jake, and I had decided to go on a guided walking tour of Heidelberg, which started at 10:30; Paul would meet us later for lunch. We had a little time to kill before the tour started—perfect for touring the Student Prison.

Did I say “Student Prison”? You bet! And it’s got to be one of the most interesting places I’ve ever visited. I’ve already mentioned that the University of Heidelberg opened in 1386, making it the oldest university in Germany. But with any university, at any time in history, come rowdy college students. And in the 1700s the Heidelberg police force got sick of dealing with them and told the university that it had to handle its own unruly students. As a result of this order, the university built its own Student Prison (Studentenkarzer), which operated from 1786 until 1914. Here students were kept for sentences up to two weeks, most for minor offenses. Students were jailed for such things as extinguishing street lights, throwing bricks through the dean’s window, drunken brawls, and helping pigs to escape.

A trip to prison became an event. Most of the students were members of fraternities. When a student was sentenced to prison, he would be picked up by an officer, placed in restraints, and then put into the back of a wagon. His fraternity brothers would follow along, singing funeral marches. When the sentence was over, they would be waiting for his release, this time singing celebratory songs.

And just how bad was a prison sentence? First of all, the student had a choice of when to serve his time. When an officer was sent to pick someone up, it was common for him to say, “Today’s not a good day; I have a test.” “No problem, we’ll come back tomorrow.” “Actually, Thursday would be better.” “We’ll see you then.”

Once the student was finally placed behind bars, he was served nothing but bread and water the first three days. After that, anything went! He could have visitors at any time. He could have food and drink brought to him. He could be released to attend class or a social gathering. Prison life was actually pretty darn good! In fact, over the years, spending time in the Student Prison became a badge of honor. Students would actually try to get a sentence, and those who hadn’t served time became more desperate as graduation approached. To graduate from the University of Heidelberg without having served time was considered a disgrace!


There’s no record of who was the first to write his name on the prison walls, but he certainly started a tradition. Over the centuries students prisoners spent their time “writing on the walls.” In the early years it was common for a prisoner to write his name and the dates of his sentence and to draw a profile of his face (when cameras were invented, students began to post their photos in frames on the walls). In addition to names, dates, and faces, students also created a variety of drawings on the walls and wrote clever poems and sayings. Fortunately someone had the foresight to preserve all of this “graffiti”; today it creates a priceless record of the history of this unique facility.


So imagine our surprise, as we were climbing the very first set of steps, to find the name “Siefert” boldly written on the wall! And that wasn’t the end of it. Everywhere we looked, we saw “Siefert”! Could these possibly be Chip, Doug, and Jake’s ancestors? If so, they spent an awful lot of time behind student prison walls. We laughed and laughed each time we spotted a new occurrence, and we couldn’t wait to return to the hotel to ask Paul about this.


Could this be the real reason we are known as “Seefer” today?