Actually, the situation isn't as clear as one might think. Duels are allowed under two conditions: 1) no "honor duels" (see [1], bottom of page 7) and 2) all participants must be protected (see [1], first paragraph of section 1, page 2). The latter usually means at least protective suits and in most cases dull swords as well.

There has been a duel two weeks ago in Erlangen that violated both these rules [2] - they fought for the honor of their corporation, with sharp swords and without protection. The clusterfuck ended with one minor and one major injury, now police are investigating and politicians are talking about banning duels entirely.

[1] http://www.corpsarchive.de/images/digiarchiv/bghstudnitz.pdf

[2] https://taz.de/Erlanger-Studentenverbindungen/!5917975/

We've had code review dueling for the past few years, and it has really helped with the quality of code and pull requests.

In the past, programmers submitted all sorts of junk code into our version control, what I would today call chatgpt nonsense. At the time it was likely Stack Overflow nonsense. In any case, Code Review Dueling has changed the landscape of our coding. For the past two years, not a single negative comment has appeared on code pull requests. All it took was the deaths of a few unqualified people who lied on their resumes.

This "old is new" methodology has caused programmers and architects to work with other people before ever writing code or designing systems. In our monthly metrics report from the CI (but not CD) pipeline, I also noticed that we no longer import any dependencies from 3rd parties. In fact, IT has shutdown all access to pip, apt-get, and so forth. Everything is custom and has been beautifully designed and coded in-house.

It's absolutely amazing. Even our customers regularly request they be allowed to purchase extra copies of our software, just to give to their children and grandchildren, when they come of age. But before purchasing extra copies, they always call first, since our license lawyers are very prolific, proactive, and protective of our rights.

It is actually not permissible to duel. You can engage in "friendly combat", but duelling to restore your honor is both illegal and dishonorable. (The German fraternities, which are responsible for these fights, gave their word of honor that there would be no more duels to satisfy insults to honor)

It is also an extremely stupid idea that scars are somehow an "authentic mark". As somebody who fought three of those "mensuren": Scars are a sign that you thought you are better than you actually are. It's the embodiment of "Dunning Kruger walks here".

It's also worth noting that unlike college fraternities in the US, which seem to be pretty ubiquituous, Burschenschaften in Germany are fairly niche and all veer to the right wing of the political spectrum: mostly Christian conservatism although there are widespread völkisch nationalist undertones. I'm not saying these are "nazi" groups but I've yet to encounter a Burschi who isn't at least to the right of the general public. As the StackExchange answer suggests, membership is also often tied to military service (which also is much less common than in the US) and the culture is strongly tied to aristocratic (or at least "old money") lineages and "mentorship" (some would say nepotism).

Basically the correct mental image is probably private societies in expensive English "public schools" (i.e. what most of the rest of the world would consider private schools: the kind you have to pay for), not US style "Greek houses".

It's worth noting that despite the similarities between völkisch nationalism and ethnonationalism, most Burschenschaften are explicitly opposed to the far right, at least in public statements. If you want to tie them to an anti-democratic movement it's probably more likely to be neo-feudalism (e.g. the Reichsbürger monarchists) than actual neo-nazis. There have been some instances of nazi chat groups within Burschenschaften being found out and members have been running for the far-right nationalist Alternative für Deutschland party however.

EDIT: Also, worth noting, schlagende Verbindungen, i.e. the ones engaging in ritualistic duels with sharp blades, are on the fringe of these groups and also veer to the right of those (I think most "moderate" Christian conservative ones are strongly opposed to the practice). So the entire dueling thing nowadays is a fringe of a fringe of a fringe and most Germans would feel very concerned if you tell them you engage in it.