Blue cross
The Blue Cross is a Christian organization for self-help with addictions . The two key words " Gospel and abstinence - with Jesus and without alcohol " were inseparable for the founder Louis-Lucien Rochat and for the Blue Cross work.
Organizational structures
The Blue Cross is one of the most important organizations of the abstinence movement in Switzerland and Germany . In Germany there are two associations and several independent Blue Cross clubs. The associations are the Blue Cross in Germany e. V. , which was founded on August 8, 1892 as the "German Main Association of the Blue Cross" in Barmen (today: Wuppertal ), as well as the Blue Cross in the Protestant Church (BKE). In Switzerland and Germany there is a Blaukreuz publishing house , based in Bern and Lüdenscheid, respectively.
As professional associations, the BKE and the BKD are members of the “ General Association for Addiction Help in the Diaconal Work of the Evangelical Church ” and a member of the “ German Central Office for Addiction Issues ”.
The BKD is organized in 17 regional associations. More than 20,000 participants meet in 1,200 self-help groups . The concept of the Blue Cross includes abstinence from alcohol addicts together with their relatives. Around 10,000 people, members and friends of the BK, have committed to this.
- Blue Cross in the Evangelical Church Bundesverband e. V., Dortmund ; Founded in Soest in 1902
- Blue Cross Hannover e. V. in the city association for Inner Mission in Hanover; in on 23 July 1900 Hannover founded
- Blue cross in the Evangelical City Mission Heidelberg
- Blue Cross, voluntary addiction work, Ihrhove e. V. independent association since 1997
- Blue Cross Diakonieverein e. V., 2007 as an independent association in Iserlohn founded
Blue Cross Youth "Together Against Addiction"
The Blue Cross in Germany e. V. affiliated youth organization "Together Against Addiction" emerged from the Hoffnungsbund groups, which were formed in Basel in 1886. When Blue Cross groups turned to youth work in various places around the turn of the century, Blue Cross co-founder Arnold Bovet called together the leaders of around 50 youth groups on October 8, 1900, to organize them in a German-Swiss association. The Hope League enjoyed extremely high popularity well into the 20th century, like the YMCA , the blue ring or the boy scouts .
history
Switzerland
The Blue Cross was founded on September 21, 1877 in Geneva by Louis-Lucien Rochat (1849-1917), who was a free church pastor in the canton of Vaud , with another 27 people. In Switzerland, alcohol consumption almost doubled in the second half of the 19th century. Rochat saw the example of the American and English abstinence movement, which he had got to know personally in England in 1876, as a solution to the social, medical and personal problems caused by rampant alcohol addiction in the rural poor and in the working class of the industrialization era.
Together they pledged to abstain from alcohol. The founders compared themselves, based on the recently founded Red Cross , with "patient carriers who go to the battlefield of life to save the victims of alcoholism and pub life". This is how the cross was created as a symbol. The color blue has always been the color of abstinence movements in the Anglo-Saxon area.
The Swiss Blue Cross worked with the Evangelical Reformed regional church , but also with the Protestant free churches . Not only the alcohol, but also “the pub” was sharply criticized, as the Blue Cross members saw the origin of the “pleasure addiction” and thus a “threat to social morality” there.
The Swiss Catholic Abstinence League (SKAL) was founded in 1895 as a sister organization to the Protestant Blue Cross, but it never achieved the same social weight as the Blue Cross. The Hoffnungsbund is an affiliated youth organization.
The Blue Cross in Germany
Arnold Bovet , a Swiss preacher of the Free Evangelical Congregation in Bern , founded the first Blue Cross Association in Germany on October 5, 1885 in Hagen . On October 6, 1887, the Prussian officer Curt von Knobelsdorff joined, who had previously had problems with alcohol himself and was now an enthusiastic agitator of this movement.
In the years that followed, the Blue Cross experienced a significant boom, but at the same time also divisions due to denominational tensions. The “Hauptverein Barmen” took a church-neutral position, but was influenced by Pietism and Methodism . In 1902 the "Blue Cross in the Protestant Church" (until 1945: "Church Federation of the Blue Cross"), in which Lutheran circles from Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein joined together. In 1906 a free church Blue Cross split off. In 1926/27, a group that is close to the intra-church community movement separated.
In the GDR , the Blue Cross was banned as an association. That is why on January 1, 1960 the “ Evangelical Working Group for Defense against Addiction Risks (AGAS)” was founded under the umbrella of the Inner Mission . After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Blue Cross and AGAS merged in 1991.
The Blue Cross is a member of the Social Service Agency of the Association Missionary Services of the EKD , the Evangelical Gnadauer Community Association and serves on the International Blue Cross (International Federation of the Blue Cross - IFBC) to.
The Catholic counterpart to the Blue Cross is the Kreuzbund . The Good Templars (IOGT) are not affiliated with any denomination .
literature
Books
- Rudolf Schwarz: Fifty Years of the Blue Cross: 1877–1927 . Blaukreuz-Verlag, Bern, 1927, DNB 574479090 .
- Blue Cross work today. Self-presentation - information - testimony . Blaukreuz, Wuppertal 1975, ISBN 3-920106-22-9 .
- Werner Beck: You dared charity. Louis-Lucien Rochat, Arnold Bovet, Curt von Knobelsdorff . Blaukreuz, Bern / Wuppertal 1980. ISBN 978-3-85580-111-4 (Bern) or ISBN 3-920106-48-2 (Wuppertal)
- Heinz Klement: The Blue Cross in Germany: Pieces of the mosaic from over 100 years of Protestant help for addicts . Blaukreuz-Verlag Wuppertal 1990, ISBN 3-89175-041-2 .
Magazines
- for each other ; Publisher: Blaues Kreuz in Deutschland eV, ISSN 0342-4685
- Blue: the magazine for addiction and life issues ; Publisher: Blaues Kreuz in Deutschland eV, ISSN 0179-3012 . Title until 2015: Blaues Kreuz: Monthly publication of the Blue Cross in Germany .