Bismarck was born in 1814, and at the age of seventeen went to the University of Göttingen. Here he joined a _Verbindung_—one of those student associations whose members wear flat caps of many colors, hold interminable _Kneipen_ or beer-carousals, and fight rapier duels with the members of other clubs. Bismarck's _Verbindung_ was select, containing none but the sons of noblemen, and it called itself by Kotzebue's name, out of antagonism to a Liberal club which was named after Karl Sand, Kotzebue's murderer.[29] There hangs in one of the rooms at Varzin, a pencil sketch of young Otto Bismarck fighting with a “Sandist” who was the great swashbuckler of his party. Both combatants are dressed, as is still the custom for such meetings, in padded leather jackets, tall hats, iron spectacles with wire netting over the glasses, and they wear thick stocks covering all the neck and throat. Only parts of the face are exposed, the object of the fighters being not to inflict deadly injuries, but to slit each other's cheeks, or to snip off the tip of a nose. Bismarck's adversary, named Konrad Koch, was a towering fellow with such a long arm that he had all the advantage; and after a few passes he snicked Bismarck along the left cheek down to the chin, making a wound of which the scar can be seen to this day. But before the duel he had bragged that he would make the “Kotzebuan” wear the “Sandist” color, red—and, laughing triumphantly at the fulfilment of his threat, as he saw Bismarck drenched in blood, he so infuriated the latter that the Kotzebuan insisted on having another bout. This was contrary to the regulations of student duels, which always end with first blood, so Bismarck had to take patience until his cut was healed, and until he could prove his fitness to meet Koch again, by worsting a number of Sandists. The rapier duels were, and are now, regular Saturday afternoon pastimes, taking place in a gymnastic room, and the combatants on either side being drawn by lot; but it is a rule that, when a student has beaten an opponent, he may decline duelling with him again until this antagonist works his way up to him, so to say, by prevailing over all other swordsmen who may care to challenge him. Bismarck had to fight nearly half-a-dozen duels before he could cross swords with Koch again, but on this second occasion he dealt the Sandist a master-slash on the face and remained victorious.