Bethanien Children's Villages

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The logo of the Bethanien Children's Villages

The Bethanien Kinderdörfer are child and youth welfare institutions with a focus on inpatient youth welfare. The current three facilities, which are also known colloquially as Kinderdorf Bethanien , have been run by “Bethanien Kinderdörfer gGmbH” based in Schwalmtal since 2001 . The managing director of this company is Klaus Esser , the partner is the Catholic religious order of the Dominican Sisters of Bethanien . The order founded and built up the children's villages in the 1950s and 1960s.

Origin and pedagogy

The idea of children's villages came about after the Second World War . The first in Germany opened in 1946 and were originally intended primarily for war orphans. In 1956, the Dominican Sisters of Bethanien , who started working with orphaned children in the Netherlands in 1947, founded their first children's and youth village in Germany in Waldniel (since 1970: Schwalmtal) on the left Lower Rhine. They saw it as a new home in a family-like atmosphere for children and young people who for various reasons can no longer live with their families. In 1965 it was founded in Eltville-Erbach and in 1968 in Bergisch Gladbach-Refrath .

The organizational principle of the Bethanic work is the children's village family with the institution-specific Catholic-Christian character, otherwise similar to the concept of the SOS Children's Villages . In the children's village, which in addition to the residential buildings has a church, playgrounds, play areas and offers for sport and leisure, “children's village mothers” live and work with the children around the clock in one house as an “extended family”. Variants are residential or day groups, groups only for boys or girls, assisted living and socio-educational communities in outdoor living groups, educational centers, family on-call care, a small-scale special educational school and outpatient offers. The sponsoring association also maintains several day-care centers .

In 2015, around 340 children from different cultures live in the Bethanien Children's and Youth Villages, 210 children are cared for in the four day-care centers.

Bethanien Children's Village in Schwalmtal

The entrance gate of the Bethanien Children's Village in Schwalmtal
The Schwalmtal children's village map painted by Margret Bernard

The Bethanien Children's and Youth Village in Schwalmtal was founded in 1956 on the site of the historic "Haus Clee". The management of Bethanien-Kinderdörfer gGmbH and the German administration of the Order of Dominican Sisters of Bethanien are located in the former Clee House - a stately home in the English country house style in the middle of the park. Around 20 nuns live in the sister house ( convent ) on the shared park area.

The children's village houses are located on an area with old trees around the Clee house. The Bethanien Children's Village has several outdoor living groups, a curative educational horse farm and its own music school. Both institutions belong to the pedagogical service, which supports the children and young people in their problems. In 2015 around 135 children and young people lived in the Bethanien Children's Village in Schwalmtal. The director of the children's village is Klaus Esser, who also works as a specialist author on educational topics.

The Bethanien Kinderdorf now has three day-care centers in Schwalmtal: the Bethanien day-care center St. Gertrudis , the Bethanien day-care center St. Michael and the inclusive day-care center Kaiserpark , which is also a family center .

Bethanien Children's Village in Eltville

An aerial view of the Bethanien Children's Village in Eltville
The Eltville children's village map painted by Margret Bernard

The Bethanien Kinderdorf Eltville is located in the Rheingau , between Wiesbaden and Rüdesheim , in the vineyards on the "Marienhöhe" outside the town of Erbach. It was founded in 1965 and offers space for around 70 children and young people who live in four children's village families and three residential groups with the children's village mothers and educators in family communities. In addition, there is an outdoor living group in Oestrich-Winkel and a curative educational living group in the old rectory in Erbach. Thomas Kunz is in charge.

Since October 2013 there has been a Bethanien day-care center at Marienhöhe in Eltville with 40 crèche places for children from six months. The catchment area is the city of Eltville and its districts.

Bethanien Children's Village in Bergisch Gladbach

Bethanien Children's Village
chapel

The Bethanien Children's and Youth Village Bergisch Gladbach is a district in the Lustheide district of Bergisch Gladbach in a wooded, undeveloped area on the edge of the Königsforst recreation area . The director of the children's village is Martin Kramm.

architecture

In 1962, the Dominicans announced a competition to build the children's village. The winner of the 1st prize, the architect Gottfried Böhm , impressed with the concept of the development through a ring road that loops past the houses and the lively facade design through polygonal breaking of the building's ground plan. Böhm then worked out the designs executed from 1963 to 1965.

The children's village is designed in the form of an anger village . The 15 individual pavilion-like children's houses made of red brick , but connected by a wall, are structured by exposed concrete elements such as gargoyles or small bay windows. They give the impression of a closed development. They stand along the Ringstrasse and enclose the square on which the Dominican nunnery and a chapel stand. The houses are two-storey and each side has a courtyard for playing. Up to 109 children and young people are looked after in the village.

The plant is located on the site of the former Consolidierte Catharina II mine on the northern edge of the Königsforst not far from the Flehbach . After the mine was closed, a dynamite factory was established here, which was owned by the Hamburg explosives company Kosmos. This company closed its operations in 1925. After the Second World War, tiles and pumice stones were last manufactured here .

chapel

The tent-shaped church building was made of coarse-grained exposed concrete. The church tower looks stocky and protrudes only a little over the crystalline broken church roof and the rest of the buildings. The almost symmetrical interior is defined by gray, angularly adjoining concrete surfaces. The concrete surfaces of the walls and the ceiling differ in the granularity of the concrete and the formwork technology . The brightly colored windows with representational motifs were made to designs by Böhm.

Monument of the month

The Rhenish Association for Monument Preservation and Landscape Protection and the Working Group Half-timbered, Monument, Cityscape Maintenance of the Bergisches Historisches Verein named the village Monument of the Month for October 2009. The building was entered under number 169 in the list of architectural monuments in Bergisch Gladbach .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Homepage Bethanien Children's Villages accessed on April 20, 2019
  2. ↑ The philosophy and history of the Bethanien Children's Villages accessed on September 10, 2017.
  3. ↑ a b Welcome to the Bethanien Kinderdorf Schwalmtal accessed on September 10, 2017.
  4. ↑ Welcome to the Bethanien Kinderdorf Eltville accessed on September 10, 2017.
  5. ↑ Welcome to the Bethanien day care center in Eltville, accessed on September 10, 2017.
  6. ↑ Welcome to the Bethanien Kinderdorf Bergisch Gladbach accessed on September 10, 2017.
  7. ↑ Refrath's explosive past, accessed April 30, 2015.
  8. ↑ Grube Katharina and dynamite factory accessed on September 10, 2017 ( PDF ; 1.2 MB)

Web links

Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 37.2 "  N , 7 ° 6 ′ 53"  E