Evangelical Foundation Alsterdorf
| Evangelical Foundation Alsterdorf | |
|---|---|
| legal form | charitable foundation |
| founding | April 16, 1850 |
| Seat | Hamburg- Alsterdorf |
| purpose | Protestant social enterprise |
| Chair | Hanns-Stephan Haas |
| sales | 301,888,000 euros (2018) |
| Foundation capital | 50,460,000 euros (2018) |
| Employees | 6456 (2018) |
| Website | www.alsterdorf.de |
The Evangelical Foundation Alsterdorf is a foundation in Hamburg in the Alsterdorf district ; it is best known in Hamburg under the former name Alsterdorfer Anstalten . The foundation is a diaconal service company with offers for advice and diagnostics, housing and assistance, education and work, medicine, care and therapy for people with and without disabilities. It is one of the oldest institutions for inpatient care for people with intellectual disabilities in Germany. Since April 2005 the institutions have been legally independent, non-profit organizations.
history
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Founding years (1850–1899)
The beginnings of the Evangelical Foundation Alsterdorf go back to the year 1850. On April 16, the young pastor Heinrich Matthias Sengelmann founded a “Christian work school” in his parsonage in the small Elbe community of Moorfleet . He took in sane but socially disadvantaged children, taught them cultural techniques and imparted knowledge and skills in handicrafts and agriculture.
When he became pastor at the Hamburg St. Michaelis Church in 1853 , he converted his work school into the “St. Nikolai Stift”. In 1860 Sengelmann bought the old brewery in Alsterdorf and relocated the St. Nikolai monastery there. After setting up a horticultural school, he founded the Alsterdorfer Anstalten.
Responsibility for one's neighbor
As a pastor at St. Michaelis Church, Sengelmann frequently visited Hamburg's Gängeviertel. In the poor living quarters from the 17th century he met the mentally handicapped Carl Koops. Sengelmann recognized the boy's lack of development opportunities.
After unsuccessful attempts to find a foster family for him, he launched an appeal for donations to establish an asylum. With the money he bought more land in Alsterdorf and built a small half-timbered house, into which four mentally handicapped boys and a house father moved on October 19, 1863. Care for the handicapped soon became the focus of Alsterdorf's work. In 1867 Sengelmann gave up his ministerial post at the Michel in order to organize the expansion of the institutions as an unpaid director. Having become a very wealthy man through inheritance, he brought all of his private fortune into the foundation as a loan and later as an inheritance.
A brisk construction activity, the systematic training of suitable employees and the development of differentiated educational programs based on the knowledge of the time began. Sengelmann's concept of educational ability was broad: he taught mentally handicapped people and employed them in workshops, gardening and agriculture. In 1895 he brought one of the leading curative educators of his time, the teacher Johannes Paul Gerhardt , to Alsterdorf as headmaster. This expanded the lessons with preschool, classes for mentally and learning disabled children and adult education offers in the winter months. When Sengelmann died in 1899, more than 600 mentally, physically and mentally handicapped people as well as 140 employees and their families were living in the Alsterdorf institutions.
The foundation became known far beyond the borders of Hamburg.
Difficult times (1899-1932)
Pastor Paul Stritter , Sengelmann's successor, initially adapted the expansion of the institutions to the general economic and technical development of the new century. He had large, massive houses built with dormitories for up to 100 people. The Alsterdorfers needed space, because in just 15 years after Sengelmann's death, another 400 people were accepted. In 1914 - with the outbreak of the First World War - 1,000 people lived in the institutions. Thanks to their own efficient agriculture, they managed the period of war and the inflation afterwards without famine - the facility was largely self-sufficient. However, influenza and tuberculosis epidemics claimed more than 300 lives.
Medicine instead of education
In 1913 the Hamburg Senate donated a new school building to mark the 50th anniversary of the foundation. It was handed over to its intended use in March 1914. World War I began three months later. Regular school lessons were discontinued and the building was converted into a military hospital . Although limited classes began again in 1918, the school did not get its staff and space again. Pedagogy no longer had the priority among those responsible as it did in Sengelmann's time - they increasingly focused on research and medical treatment and healing methods. Headmaster Johannes Gerhardt left the foundation disappointed in 1920.
Social darwinism
In 1920 a little pamphlet appeared on the book market: Approval of the destruction of life unworthy of life . The ideas of the authors, the criminal lawyer Karl Binding and the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche , had their roots in so-called social Darwinism , which quickly spread in Germany around the turn of the century. His followers transferred Darwin's theory, according to which the sick and weak in nature perish through natural selection, to social conditions. By systematically selecting “valuable” genetic material, they wanted to improve their own breed and eradicate “inferior” genetic material. For reasons of cost and utility, the authors called for the killing of the terminally ill and the " destruction of life unworthy of life ". The politically and economically difficult 20s turned out to be a suitable breeding ground for these radical theses - despite vigorous protests from specialist circles. The Alsterdorfer initially had other worries: The city of Hamburg was getting closer. A principle of the foundation's work - life far away from the "challenges of the big city" - became obsolete. The institutions sold agricultural land in Alsterdorf and used the proceeds to acquire the " Adelige Gut Stegen " on the upper course of the Alster. Stritter intended to relocate the entire facility, but that turned out to be financially impractical. The 250 hectare Stegen estate became the first agricultural branch. In 1930 Paul Stritter retired. During his term of office, the first fundamental paradigm shift in assistance for the disabled took place: the ever-increasing dominance of medicine at the expense of education. Towards the end of the 1920s, every expansion of care was closely linked to medical perspectives and medical ideas about healing.
Period of National Socialism (1933–1945)
The foundation was in 1930 under director Friedrich Karl Lensches , Protestant theologian , to 1927 chaplain , Oberscharführer the SA , Volkssturm leader , a member of the German Labor Front and the National Socialist People's Welfare and Nazi pastor out. Under him, the institutions became a “special hospital for all kinds of mental defects” and a “National Socialist model company” , and Lensch received a Gaudiplom for outstanding achievements . Gerhard Kreyenberg , member of the NSDAP and SA, head of the race hygiene research center of the NSDAP and assessor and assessor of the Hereditary Health Court in Hamburg, was chief senior physician from 1931, later a member of the board and finally deputy director of the institutions. There he forcibly subjected numerous residents to experimental treatments: X-rays of the brain, insulin and cardiazole shock treatments, long baths, sleep and fever cures. Outside of the institutions he also supported the forced sterilization of the mentally handicapped , vagrants, beggars, “ gypsies ”, prostitutes, homosexuals and auxiliary students.
Sterilization and euthanasia
Since the end of the 19th century, science and public opinion had increasingly prevailed worldwide that heredity, in contrast to the environment, played by far the most important role in the development of disabilities and diseases. After the seizure of power, the totalitarian Nazi regime claims the right, from its point of view, to suppress such “inferior life” for the benefit of the healthy and capable “Aryan race” and finally to remove it from the “ people's body ”. The National Socialist state is also fully affirmed in the Christian institution Alsterdorf: most of the employees are party comrades, members of the SA, the SS or other branches of the party. The " Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Offspring " from 1933 is welcomed in Alsterdorf and initially implemented in the form of forced sterilization. The Protestant medical institutions received numerous National Socialist awards.
Deportation and extermination
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In 1938 - just a few days after the 75th anniversary of the foundation - 22 Jewish residents were selected without external pressure and transferred to other institutions for murder there. A year later, the foundation now had 1900 residents, the Nazi extermination campaigns were expanded in the shadow of the Second World War , and systematic euthanasia began in 1940 . Under Lensch as director and selected by Kreyenberg, a total of 71 residents were deported in 1941, and in August 1943, after the heavy bombing raids on Hamburg, a further 469 residents of the Alsterdorf institutions were deported to institutions that had been set up specifically to kill the newcomers. Most of these deportees were adults who murdered "euthanasia" doctors by systematically starving to death and overdosing on drugs. Adults and children were also transferred to the specialist department of the Rothenburgsort Hospital, where they became victims of medical experiments and so-called child euthanasia .
Mural of the Aryan Christ
Behind the altar of the neo-Gothic brick church St. Nicolaus on the premises of the Alsterdorfer Anstalten there is a large mural, designed and executed by Lensch in 1938. It shows the image of an athletic “Aryan” Christ on the cross. The depiction of Christ, thus “de-judged” in “embodiment of the Nordic race soul” according to Alfred Rosenberg and Walter Grundmann, is surrounded by twelve white-clad parishioners, all with a halo - with the exception of three depicted as disabled. The three disabled people stand outside of the full-fledged parishioners. They are seen as inferior.
The institution (1946–1979)
Technical reconstruction
The years after the Second World War were marked by the reconstruction of the heavily destroyed houses on the foundation's premises. Many of the buildings were only provided with temporary roofs. Lively construction activity began under the direction of the new director, Oberkirchenrat Volkmar Herntrich : the church college got its headquarters in Alsterdorf. New buildings for employees and sisterhood as well as the new nanny school were built. The Evangelical Hospital Alsterdorf - expanded in the run-up to the war and opened to the surrounding population - was able to continue its operations. Farm buildings were repaired. The special school resumed its work in makeshift barracks.
Spiritual new beginning
Lensch and Kreyenberg resigned from their offices at their own request in 1945; criminal investigations against both were discontinued in 1972 without charge. Lensch was the parish priest in Hamburg-Othmarschen from 1947 to 1963. Kreyenberg was not allowed to work as a doctor from 1945 to 1948, in 1952 he opened a doctor's practice in the Alsterdorf district and fought for beds in the Alsterdorf institutions in court. For almost two decades, he was also an expert in reparation proceedings after forced sterilization. At the end of the 1950s - Pastor Julius Jensen was now the director - the foundation's management, in close cooperation with the City of Hamburg, planned the construction of the Stegen branch (today's Heinrich Sengelmann Hospital ), a 1,000-bed clinic for long-term mentally ill patients at the gates of Hamburg. The first two construction phases with a third of the originally planned beds were realized in the 1960s, then more recent findings overtook the old plans. In the early 1960s, therapeutic approaches came to the fore again. The system with which Sengelmann had promoted and employed disabled people in his time had largely been lost. Occupational therapy and work therapy (today "alsterarbeit") were set up. Most of the 1200 residents lived in cramped, handicapped accessible rooms. A situation that made targeted funding almost impossible. A general development plan for the foundation site should help. In keeping with the zeitgeist, three high-rise buildings replaced the old residential buildings - e.g. Sometimes with a twenty-year delay. Although they replaced the old dormitories, they are now a significant legacy.
Early detection and pedagogy
Since 1968 Pastor Hans-Georg Schmidt was director of the Alsterdorfer Anstalten. During his term of office - in addition to the construction of the three high-rise buildings - far-reaching decisions were made: With considerable financial support from the founder of the mail-order company, Werner Otto , a center for the early detection and treatment of disabilities was built on the Alsterdorf site in 1974. The Werner Otto Institute has an interdisciplinary diagnostic and therapeutic outpatient clinic, a small clinic and the first integrated kindergarten in the Hanseatic city. The Social Pediatric Center is the foundation's first outpatient offer for families with disabled children.
"Dormitory atmosphere"
The Behindertenhilfe the Foundation at this time - structurally and personnel - organized as a large hospital. Medical and nursing aspects dominate, personal property and the privacy of the residents are a privilege that few enjoy. At the beginning of the 1970s, the idea of normalization spilled over from Scandinavia to Germany. But it was only hesitant to assert itself in the major institutions. After all, in 1975 the first outdoor residential group was built in the immediate vicinity of the foundation's premises. In the same year, the healing educator school began its training. Holistic and educational perspectives came into everyday work with the graduates, but could hardly be implemented due to the existing environment. Demands from the workforce for fundamental changes in content - the implementation of the normalization idea - became louder and louder. A so-called group of colleagues was formed.
The demands of the Alsterdorf employees at the end of the 1970s read like a matter of course today: establishment of residential groups in the city districts, abolition of gender segregation in the apartments, creation of support offers for people with very severe disabilities.
The "time scandal" and its consequences
In 1979 ZEIT magazine published a report on the catastrophic living conditions of very severely disabled people in Alsterdorf. The public reaction put the foundation management and the supervisory authority under massive pressure to justify and explain. The director of the facility, Pastor Schmidt, admitted in May 1979 that disabled people had been buckled up and beaten and that sedatives had been administered without medical necessity. He explained these abuses with insufficient staff density and insufficient training of the existing staff. The care rate of the foundation, until then the lowest of all facilities for disabled people in Hamburg, was increased by the social authority at the time. In addition, the foundation was granted a loan for the construction of a new house, which improved the housing situation. The six-storey Carl-Koops-Haus was inaugurated in 1982 and offers approx. 220 people living space in 2-3 bed rooms - an improvement for the existing dormitory situation. Nevertheless, the Carl-Koops-Haus was not considered particularly suitable for handicapped people even then. In the meantime (2011–2012) the Carl-Koops-Haus has been completely demolished. A technical functional building is currently being built on the site.
Housing offers in the districts of Hamburg
At the beginning of the 1980s, more and more residential associations moved from the foundation's premises in Hamburg's districts. A first group with very conspicuous residents settled in the Hamburg area. The vacant premises on the foundation's premises made it possible to loosen up the occupancy - the foundation had an admission freeze for years. Better staff and space, intensive care and modern educational concepts improved the living conditions of the mentally handicapped residents in the foundation considerably in the 1980s.
Inclusive education
Another decade-long provisional arrangement also ended in 1981: the special school moved from the post-war barracks into a spacious new school building. Now - even if they are the school age z. Some of them had long outgrown - very severely disabled residents started school. The era of the home special school ended 10 years later, because hardly any children of school age lived in the foundation. In 1989 those responsible founded Hamburg's first elementary school with integrated classes and named the school after Johann Bugenhagen , Luther's companion and church and school reformer. In 1995 the Bugenhagen School continued the idea of integration in the comprehensive school area. A few years earlier, she reformed her special school branch.
A new board
In 1982 Pastor Hans-Georg Schmidt resigned. Lübeck's later Bishop Karl Ludwig Kohlwage became interim director for a year . In 1983 the Hamburg provost Rudi Mondry took over the chairmanship of the now three-person board. Mondry took care of the processing of the Alsterdorfer history and consistently pushed the conceptual development of the handicapped assistance forward. Their regionalization became a program in 1989. The name of the foundation was also changed during his term of office: 1988: The Alsterdorfer Anstalten became the Evangelical Alsterdorf Foundation.
New paths 1990–2003
Refurbishment and future security
At the beginning of the 1990s, economic difficulties became apparent: for years the Foundation's expenses had been higher than its income - not all changes were refinanced and there was a lack of clear budget management for the individual areas. The pressure to save increased. In 1992 employees and the public discussed the salaries of the Alsterdorf board members with the utmost sharpness. At the height of the campaign, Rudi Mondry resigned. In 1993 a board of four took over the management. Since April 1995, CEO Rolf Baumbach († 2006) and his deputy Wolfgang Kraft have run the foundation. With the support of the Senate, Church and banks, they initiated a comprehensive restructuring that was completed two years later. Securing the future of the foundation continued in 1998: the board of directors, employee representatives and ÖTV agreed on a joint process of internal modernization and concluded the alliance for investment and employment. In it, all employees waived wage increases for five years and invested 50 million marks in new buildings. In return, the foundation management decided against redundancies for operational reasons and the outsourcing of parts of the company. The alliance ended on December 31, 2003.
More rights for more independence
A new care law (January 1, 1992) was passed. It should create more personal responsibility for the individual disabled person, especially with regard to his legal capacity. New concepts in assistance for the disabled have emerged: The focus is on people with disabilities, who should plan and develop their lives with as much independence as possible with professional support. This was tested in a European joint project between Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany called “ Community care ”. (The Evangelical Foundation Alsterdorf was involved in this project.) The basic idea of this project was aimed particularly at the structure of large institutions. The aim was to convert the available supply structures in such facilities into flexible, demand-oriented assistance and services. The handicapped person at the center buys his or her appropriate assistance and support offers himself or through a supervisor. Such models have been implemented in Denmark and Sweden since the 1980s.
From the supervised to the customer
The reform of Section 93 of the Federal Social Welfare Act , which came into force in its new form in 1999, changed the situation of assistance for the disabled again. In the new legal texts, the person in need becomes a “service recipient”. Care shares in the care of disabled people should be deducted from the care rate and financed from the long-term care insurance funds. The providers of disability assistance must offer their services in the form of precise descriptions of services and measures to the customer, i.e. the person with a disability and / or their supervisor, and in front of the authority. This means that there is no longer any preference for free, non-profit organizations, which means that all providers have the same starting position. Whether these changes will prove to be successful in the next few years will have to be measured by their practical implementation and, above all, by the opinion of customers.
Operational areas and subsidiaries of the foundation
The only operational areas that remain directly at the foundation are child and youth welfare with their schools and day-care centers, the foundation's advice center and therapy center, and assisted living for the mentally ill. However, all of the foundation's services, including the ten new subsidiaries, remain closely linked within the foundation's group of companies. This is ensured by the common corporate design , clearly recognizable from the outside, as well as uniform rules such as mission statement and corporate principles, which are binding for all service areas and subsidiaries. This means that strategic topics such as controlling, principles of personnel management or public relations will also be uniformly regulated in the future. Asset management, i.e. the management of the land and buildings, also remains the responsibility of the foundation. Other subsidiaries of individual areas are also part of the foundation association, such as various integration companies that provide work and employment in different fields of work, or company investments. And the commercial subsidiaries that have emerged in recent months and years will also remain companies of the Evangelical Alsterdorf Foundation.
facts and figures
The foundation employs around 4,000 people in its operational areas, its subsidiaries and sub-subsidiaries as well as its range of services and functions. The foundation and its societies serving the purpose of the statutes are members of the Diakonisches Werk and the Association of Church Diaconal Employees. The collective agreement KTD concluded with the trade union ver.di - United Service Union applies to their employment relationships .
Sub-companies
- Alsterdorf assistant west gGmbH
- Alsterdorf assistant ost gGmbH
- prosocial gGmbH
- alsterarbeit gGmbH
- Evangelical Hospital Alsterdorf gGmbH
- Heinrich Sengelmann Hospital gGmbH
- Werner Otto Institute gGmbH
- tohus gGmbH
- Evangelical City Mission Kiel gGmbH
- Diakonie- und Sozialstation HamburgStadt gGmbH
subsidiary company
- Alsterdorf Finanz und Personalkontor GmbH
- AlsterFood GmbH
- AlsterDienst is a division of AlsterFood GmbH
- Alster Service Center GmbH
- CareFlex GmbH
- facility management GmbH
- Kesselhaus restaurant
- theravitalis alsterdorf
literature
- Michael Wunder, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner, Rudi Mondry (eds.): There is no stopping this inclined plane: the Alsterdorfer Anstalten under National Socialism . Rauhen Haus agency , Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-7600-0455-5 .
- Theodorus Maas, Wolfgang Beyer, Dagmar Götz, Joachim Heimler, Wolfgang Kraft, Kay Nernheim, Birgit Schulz and Lisa Schulze Steinmann (eds.): Community living - building blocks for a civil society . alsterdorf verlag, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-9810756-1-8 .
- Bugenhagenschulen of the Evangelical Foundation Alsterdorf (ed.): The Alsterdorfer Children's Bible . alsterdorf verlag, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-9810756-2-5 .
- Gerda Engelbracht, Andrea Hauser: In the middle of Hamburg. The Alsterdorfer Anstalten 1945-1979 . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-17-023395-9 .
Movies
- 1927 The Alsterdorfer Anstalten in Hamburg (documentary film) - Vera-Filmwerke
Web links
- Evangelical Foundation Alsterdorf
- alsterdorf assistant west gGmbH
- alsterdorf assistenz ost gGmbH
- alsterarbeit gGmbH
- Evangelical Hospital Alsterdorf gGmbH
- Heinrich Sengelmann Hospital gGmbH
- Werner Otto Institute gGmbH
- tohus gGmbH
- Sport-Alsterdorf.de
- Alsterdorf history. Retrieved June 15, 2018 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Ingrid Genkel: Pastor Lensch - an example of political theology. In Michael Wunder , Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner: There is no stopping this inclined plane - The Alsterdorfer Anstalten under National Socialism , Ed. Board of Directors of the Alsterdorfer Anstalten Rudi Mondry, Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-7600-04-55-5 , p 77.
- ^ The National Socialist "euthanasia" program in Hamburg: The curriculum vitae of Friedrich Karl Lensch [1]
- ↑ The National Socialist "Euthanasia Program" in Hamburg: Gerhard Kreyenberg's curriculum vitae [2]
- ↑ The Society of Hard Hearts . In: The time . Hamburg April 20, 1979 ( zeit.de [accessed May 5, 2019]).
- ↑ Broken in psychiatry - the fate of Albert Huth in the Alsterdorfer Anstalten in Hamburg . In: Zeitmagazin . Hamburg April 20, 1979 ( blogspot.com [accessed May 5, 2019]).
- ↑ Disabled people: improvement in sight . In: The time . Hamburg June 8, 1979 ( zeit.de [accessed May 5, 2019]).
- ↑ Kirchlicher collective agreement Diakonie on the homepage of the North Church . Retrieved April 21, 2015.
Coordinates: 53 ° 36 ′ 49 ″ N , 10 ° 1 ′ 33 ″ E