Workers colony
The term workers' colony refers to the social institutions for poor migrant workers and the homeless that were established at the end of the 19th / beginning of the 20th century . The terms Wanderhof , Migrantarbeitsstätte or Hostel zur Heimat were used in a related sense .
The industrialization and after the boom of the early days onset of economic crisis drove many job seekers men on the street. The unemployed and homeless did not receive any government support at the time. The first workers' colonies were founded by the Protestant Church as hostels for homeland based on the motive of the Inner Mission . The Catholic journeyman's associations created by Adolph Kolping had a similar objective.
Background and purpose
When, at the end of the 1870s and the beginning of the 1880s, wandering begging in Germany had reached such a considerable extent that it was perceived as a nuisance in many places, the search for effective countermeasures began. They wanted to protect themselves from the alleged dangers of commercial vagrancy , but at the same time to provide support in an appropriate manner to the needy hikers who had been sent to the streets because of unemployment . Although the Protestant and the Catholic Church had already taken measures in this regard and the associations against house begging provided small gifts of money or instructions for boarding and overnight accommodation in some places, these individual measures were not sufficient. The successes were meager because there was a lack of a fixed organization of aid activities for entire countries or because they were merely fighting the outward appearance of the begging, but not the causes.
The cause of the prevailing ills that saw Church turning away away from the church-dominated firm world order towards a this side oriented liberal society ( "undisciplined" working unwilling workers on one - and purely profit-oriented entrepreneurs on the other side).
Pastor Friedrich von Bodelschwingh in Bethel decided to give unemployed people work and to support unsound failed people through Christian discipline and order and to bring them closer to faith in themselves and in God .
The original goals were to get used to a regular life again with the aim of finding a permanent job. This appeared to be easier to achieve through an inpatient stay.
The decision to go to a workers' colony for three to six months was initially voluntary. According to the underlying idea, more or less able-bodied people were accepted. Permission to stay in a workers' colony was granted with the requirement to work, mostly in simpler tasks, but often physically difficult work, e.g. B. in agriculture , peatland cultivation , etc. Often there were authoritarian management structures and extremely strict rules of conduct with severe punishment. There was only a low wage, part of which was also withheld for accommodation costs and social security . Many inmates soon preferred freedom and escaped, and the suicide rate was high.
History of the workers' colonies
In 1879, Pastor Bodelschwingh learned that working-class colonies (“fermes hospices”) already existed in Belgium and decided that the model could also make sense for the conditions in the German Empire.
On March 22, 1882, he founded the first German workers' colony in Wilhelmsdorf . The Eckardtsheim branch of the von Bodelschwingh Foundation Bethel later developed from it . At first, his idea was only spread slowly, so that he himself founded further colonies in Freistatt (district of Diepholz ) and near Berlin ( Hope Valley , Lobetal and Gnadental). In 1884, however, there were already 20 workers' colonies in Germany. A total of 33 workers' colonies were established in the German Reich.
In September 1886 the first home colony opened in Düring near Loxstedt under the name Friedrich Wilhelmsdorf with 12 colonists. In the so-called home colonies, "those who have proven to be useful in the working colonies should be given the opportunity to settle down through their own (agricultural) work."
With the introduction of employment offices (1927), unemployment insurance (1927) and collective agreements , the number of migrant workers fell rapidly in the 1920s . Many workers' colonies (or their operators) were really worried about their existence and were therefore looking for an expanded or changed task. With the Great Depression from 1929, the numbers rose again.
The original idea was changed in the Third Reich . The colonies served to keep these social fringes systematically under control and to cut off beggars , “work-shy” and other “ anti- social ” from contact with the bourgeois world. According to the National Socialist worldview of the people's ties to the clod (“ blood and soil ”), the “ traveling people ” should be made to settle down.
State associations for "migrant and homeland service" were founded, many migrant workers were now forcibly transported to the workers' colonies by police means. Many inmates were sent to concentration camps and died there.
After the introduction of the Reich Labor Service in the 1930s, the number of those seeking admission mostly decreased.
After the Second World War , the original range of tasks was often expanded and converted into assisted communal forms of living for the mentally ill, addicts, the disabled, children and young people with behavioral problems, as well as elderly people in need of care.
List of workers' colonies
Germany and the former German Empire
foreign countries
The idea of workers' colonies, which originated in Belgium and was then widespread in Germany, also had an impact abroad, even if the implementation (sometimes greatly modified) was not always successful. The head of the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft in Barmen and journalist Friedrich Fabri (1824-1891), active in the colonial movement of the late 19th century, suggested that resocialized inmates be shipped overseas, which would then establish a new existence in workers' colonies that were also to be established there ( and the German export industry should build up a sales market).
Independent of this, the following emerged:
- German workers colony London , Great Britain
- Dietisberg , Läufelfingen, Canton of Basel-Land, Switzerland
- Herdern , near Frauenfeld, Switzerland
- Libury Hall , near Ware (near Hertford ), Great Britain (part of a German workers' settlement , “almost served as a German workhouse for the indoor relief of paupers”)
See also
- Itinerant people , hobo , tramp , Berber , homelessness , policy of demanding and conveying , Inner Mission , job creation scheme , 1-euro jobs , social work , workhouse , asociality
literature
- Matthias Benad, Hans-Walter Schmuhl : Bethel-Eckardtsheim: From the establishment of the first German workers' colony to its dissolution as a subsidiary (1882–2001). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2005 ?, ISBN 3-17-019018-0 .
- Annette Eberle (author) / Herzogsägmühle ( Inner Mission Munich - Diakonie in Munich and Upper Bavaria eV ) (Ed.): The workers' colony Herzogsägmühle. Contributions to the history of the Bavarian homeless support. Peiting 1994.
- Manfred Klaar: Immobility in the FRG and the system of non-sedentary assistance: a representation with special consideration of the workers' colony. Thesis. Kiel University of Applied Sciences, Department of Social Affairs, 1987.
- Roland Paul, Nikolaus Götz, Dieter Müller: The Schernau. From the workers' colony to the old people's, nursing and transitional homes. Martinshöhe 1999.
- Jürgen Scheffler (Ed.): Citizens & Beggars. Materials and documents on the history of helping the sedentary in diakonia. Vol. 1: 1854 to 1954. Bielefeld 1987.
- Central Association of German Workers Colonies (ed.), Hannes Kiebel, Heinz Oelhoff (editor. And design): A century of workers' colonies. “Work instead of alms” - Help for homeless migrant arms 1884-1984. VSH-Verlag Soziale Hilfe, Bielefeld 1984, ISBN 3-923074-01-8 .
- Fermes-hospices des deux Flandres , in: Bulletin de la Commission centrale de statistique , Vol. IV, Ed. Ducpétiaux, Brussels 1851, pp. 123–145.
- Workers colonies. In: Meyers Konversationslexikon, 1905
- 100 years of Catholic workers' colonies in the Rhineland. Rhenish Association for Catholic Workers Colonies. Aachen, 1986
- Wolfgang Spellmeyer: Resource-oriented social therapy in the inpatient support system of homeless men using the example of the brother help house. What works in social therapy from the perspective of clients and professionals? Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH, 2012, pages 33 to 40 on the situation of the workers' colonies.
Web links
- Association for Catholic workers' colonies in Westphalia
- Jürgen Scheffler: The Vagabond Question (online text)
- Schenk: On the way to the eternal wanderer? (Online dissertation)
- The Jewish workers colony and asylum
Individual evidence
- ↑ On the terms cf. Wolfgang Ayaß : "Vagabonds, hikers, homeless and non-sedentary people". A brief history of the concept of help for the homeless , in: Archive for Science and Practice of Social Work 43 (2013), Issue 1, pp. 90-102.
- ↑ See collection of sources on the history of German social policy 1867 to 1914 , Section II: From the Imperial Social Message to the February Decrees of Wilhelm II (1881–1890) , Volume 7: Communal Poor Care , edited by Wilfried Rudloff, Darmstadt 2015, No. 20.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Christian Aschoff: retro | bib - Page from Brockhaus Konversationslexikon: Arbeitermarseillaise - Arbeitserschutzgesetze. Retrieved June 18, 2018 .
- ↑ Cf. Wolfgang Ayaß : The persecution of the non-settled in the Third Reich. The ZVAK in the Third Reich 1933-1945 , in: Central Association of German Workers Colonies (Hrsg.), One Century Workers Colonies , Bielefeld 1984, pp. 87-101.
- ^ Diakonie Kästorf Foundation. Retrieved June 18, 2018 (German).
- ↑ Erlacher Höhe: Erlacher Höhe. Retrieved June 18, 2018 .
- ↑ The Schernau | The Schernau. Retrieved June 18, 2018 (German).
- ↑ Ursula Röper, Carola Jüllig: The power of neighborly love: one hundred and fifty years of inner mission and diakonia 1848-1998. 2007, p. 107
- ↑ Panicos Panayi: The Settlement of Germans in Britain. (PDF; 468 kB) In: IMIS articles. Head of the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at the University of Osnabrück, June 2000, p. 40 , archived from the original on June 9, 2007 ; accessed on July 28, 2017 .