One colourful aspect of student life registered in the print-books is the initiation or ‘hazing’ ritual to which new students were subjected. The so-called Depositio appears in the Pugillus Facetiarum (Strasbourg 1608, 1618) and also in de Passe’s Academia sive Speculum Vitae Scolasticae (Arnhem 1612),[i] and the miniature in the Frolich album clearly copies the former, but the painting in the Spoerlin album (dated 1622) depends on neither of these print models.[ii] In a room heated by a Kachelofen and before an invited audience, two bejaunes/beani [initiates] undergo different symbolic rites – one lying on the floor is about to be ‘trimmed’ by a man wielding an axe, another wearing a fool’s hood and seated in a chair is about to have his ‘tusks’ drawn with an alarming pair of pliers. When the new savage monsters have been thus tamed and rendered harmless they will then be considered civilised enough to join the student body. But a detail just as interesting as the ritual itself, is the unremarked painting on the wall. It shows a man/student kneeling before the rump of an ass and holding its tail up so that he can kiss its arse! The picture is inscribed vnser seind [drey] [There’s three of us — i.e. ass, initiate, viewer] and is a traditional visual joke at the viewer’s expense, found in the albums elsewhere in its own right. 

Ecce beanoru[m] pater ut mira arte iuventam  Dedolat, ut Vulgi ludibria temnere discat.   [Behold the father of the freshmen in wonderful fashion may ‘tear’ youth, so that the Vulgar may learn to keep their toys]

woodcut illustrations to Dinckel, De origine… depositio Beanorum (Erfurt, 1572)

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[i]And as early as 1540 in a set of 4 woodcuts in Iudicium reverendi patris, reprinted in Dinckel, De origine… depositio Beanorum (Erfurt, 1572) ….

Johannes Dinckelius, De origine, causis, typo et ceremoniis illius ritus, qui vulgo in scholis Depositio appelatur, oratio. Additum est judicium Reverendi Patris D. Doctoris Martini Lutheri de hoc ritu, Typusque eiusdem ritus, Heroico carmine descriptus, Erfurt 1578

[ii]  https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02887060/document  The author seems not to have noticed the painting on the wall.