Maria im Tann
Maria im Tann is the center for child, youth and family aid and youth professional aid of the city of Aachen on the outskirts of the Preuswald district . The community center there also bears this name. The center for child, youth and family aid has its origins in the lung sanatorium for adults that has existed since 1909 and its expansion to include a children's home in 1916 and has been run by the "Catholic Educational Association for the Rhine Province" and its affiliated "Betriebsführungsgesellschaft mbH" since 1995 “Directed. The center described above is a member of the “Working Group of Catholic Institutions and Services of Educational Aids in the Diocese of Aachen” of the Aachen branch of the German Caritas Association and is currently home to around 220 children and young people. Around 110 people are employed.
history
After the number of cases of lung diseases increased at the end of the 19th century due to exhaust fumes and dust from the cloth and needle industry and mining as well as epidemic-like tuberculosis infections , the local doctors suggested the establishment of a lung sanatorium in the easily accessible Aachen forest near the city . But it was only after the Aachener Feuerversicherungsgesellschaft and the Aachener Verein für the Promotion of Labor had each made 150,000 gold marks available in 1906 on the occasion of the silver wedding anniversary of the German imperial couple Wilhelm II and Auguste Viktoria , the city council approved the project and made another 100,000 gold marks available. Further donations came from industry and from influential private individuals. The Aachen city architect Joseph Laurent was commissioned with the planning and execution of two buildings for the separate accommodation of men and women. A quiet forest clearing on the arterial road to Liège on the southern slope of the Aachen forest and thus an area beyond the air-polluted valley basin of Aachen, which was also easily accessible by the Aachener Kleinbahn-Gesellschaft, which was passing there at the time, was designated as the location of the construction project . On June 8, 1909, the two buildings, built in pure Art Nouveau style, were opened, one being named "Kaiser Wilhelm convalescent home for men" and the other appropriately named "Kaiserin Auguste Viktoria convalescent home for women".
The bedrooms in the houses, each for 40 patients, were divided into social classes, with double rooms for the “first class” of tradespeople, civil servants and teachers and four and six-bed rooms for the “second class”. In addition, the houses had play rooms and two dining rooms as well as smoking and billiard rooms for the gentlemen.
Soon after the opening, the spa complex was expanded with barracks for a day-care center for men and for weak children on the initiative of the mayor Gustav Talbot (1859–1921). However, since the daily transport of the children proved to be cumbersome, around 1913, with money from the "Foundation for poor orphaned children" and the "Foundation for sick and poor children in need of relaxation from Aachen", Clémence Talbot, who died in 1912, was the wife of the railway company. Industrialist and director of the Talbot wagon factory, Carl Gustav Talbot (1829–1899), began building a new children's recreation center in place of the barracks, which was opened in 1916 as the “Talbotheim”. Just a few years later, this area was busy with around 350 children per year, each of whom had been prescribed 30-day cures. The chapel of St. Mary's Birth was built in 1930 for the services of these children . This is where the name “Maria im Tann” comes from for all existing facilities and those to be added later.
The men's home was closed in 1934 and taken over by the Bildchen elementary school until 1971. At the instigation of the NS- Gauleitung in 1935 the women's home was occupied with foreign women in need of relaxation and in 1936 was given the name "Erholungsheim Stadtwald". The approval for a stay in the children's recreation home came into the hands of the social administration with the participation of the National Socialist People's Welfare and the Hitler Youth .
After the Second World War, the city of Aachen leased the women's and children's recreation house in October 1945 on the recommendation of Caritas Aachen to the sisters of the poor child Jesus who had returned from exile in Baelen , Belgium , and who now called the facility St. Joseph's Home . The nuns moved into the former women's convalescent home, which was no longer opened in its previous function and where the administration is still based today, and had six new houses built for babies, toddlers and young people up to the age of 14 by 1958. This met the space requirements for sometimes up to 190 children. After the Bildchen elementary school was relocated to the newly built neighboring district of Preuswald in 1971, the vacant premises could also be used by the order, which then set up a state household school with a sewing and ironing room and communal kitchen for the girls' groups in the former men's home.
Todays situation
In 1995 the nuns had to give up the Maria im Tann children's home due to a lack of young people and terminated the rental agreement with the city of Aachen. This now transferred the administration of the facility, which had now been renamed the “Center for Child, Youth and Family Aid”, to the “Catholic Educational Association for the Rhine Province” and also set up a branch office with workshops for the city's youth professional aid. In addition, two outsourced classes from the Martin Luther King School in Aachen, a municipal special needs school with a focus on emotional and social ties, were added to the site from 2002.
The core of the facility are the four residential groups for boys and girls under the age of 12 and one for over 12 year olds with 10 places each and a transition group with eight places as well as an intensive group for 9 children and adolescents up to the age of 20, regardless of their national or ethnic origin or religion in the different groups. They come from parental homes that were and are overwhelmed with upbringing for social, health or psychological reasons, and where they have sometimes experienced violence or been sexually abused. There is also accommodation for children and young people who themselves suffer from developmental delays or disorders, behavioral problems or physical and psychological disabilities. The aim of the facility is to strengthen one's own personality, improve social skills, obtain the necessary school leaving certificates and prepare for professional life planning. In addition, the home regularly takes in refugee children who come from the most varied of crisis areas around the world and where they receive medical care, therapeutic help and intensive language lessons.
For physical exercise, there is a multi-purpose hall with a climbing wall , a fitness area, a soccer field, numerous basketball hoops and the public rope garden right next to the site. In addition, the surrounding forest area offers numerous opportunities for forest and adventure education . In addition, with the active and financial support of the Aachen Lions Club and its youth organization Leo Club, a multifunctional house was built in 2012, which can be used for therapy sessions or targeted support offers as well as for various leisure activities for children and young people outside their residential groups.
The former women's shelter and the current main and administrative building with the address "Unterer Backertsweg 7" and the former men's shelter and today's building of the youth professional aid "Unterer Backertsweg 6" have been included in the list of monuments in the area of the city of Aachen on March 11, 1980.
Parish Maria im Tann
The chapel of St. Mary's Birth , consecrated in 1930, was built on the premises there for the pastoral care of the children's recreation home . It was looked after by the pastors of the Aachen Church of the Holy Spirit and was also open to citizens from the border settlement of Bildchen and the Belgian Hergenrath . After the Preuswald settlement had been built in the early 1960s and the number of inhabitants was steadily increasing, in 1969 the parish of the Holy Spirit set up a vicariate in this new district , which now encompasses the area south of the main ridge of the Aachen forest up to the Belgian border. For this purpose, a new community center was built in the village not far from the old chapel and inaugurated in 1976 under the name “Maria im Tann”. Between 1990 and 2002 Maria im Tann was raised to the status of her own parish, but was then initially reintegrated into the pastoral care district of the Heilig Geist parish and, with this, finally incorporated into the community of the Aachen-West parishes in 2010.
Attached to the community center as a partially open door (TOT) is a branch of the Aachen children's and youth center St. Hubertus.
literature
- Joseph Laurent : The Kaiser Wilhelm convalescent home for men and the Kaiserin Auguste Viktoria convalescent home for women in Aachen. In: Zeitschrift für Krankenanstalten , Volume 8, 1912, p. #.
Web links
- Homepage "Maria im Tann"
- Eventful history surrounds "Maria im Tann" , In Aachener Zeitung from July 29, 2009
- 100 years "Maria im Tann", In: Euregio aktuell from July 18, 2009 ( Memento from July 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- History of the parish "Maria im Tann" on the pages of the churches in the diocese of Aachen
Individual evidence
- ^ Branch office of the Maria im Tann youth vocational assistance service
- ↑ Outsourced classes of the Martin Luther King School in Maria im Tann ( Memento of the original from June 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Rule groups Maria im Tann ( Memento of the original of September 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Intensive group Maria im Tann ( Memento of the original from September 17, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ 200 refugee children in 2012 in Maria im Tann , in: Aachener Nachrichten of December 27, 2012
- ↑ Maria im Tann youth center
- ↑ TOT Maria imTann ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 50 ° 44 ′ 32.3 " N , 6 ° 2 ′ 58.7" E