Brotherhood and Sisterhood of the Rough House

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The brotherhood and sisterhood of the Rauhen Haus is a spiritual community founded by Johann Hinrich Wichern . It is part of the Das Rauhe Haus foundation and is based on the foundation grounds of the Rauhe Haus in Hamburg-Horn. Currently (as of 2019) the deacon Claudia Rackwitz-Busse heads the community as Konviktmeisterin.

history

Training of assistants (brothers)

Idealized representation of boy families from the Rauhe Haus who, accompanied by their brothers, go out singing to garden. In the background the prayer room (with ridge turret) and the main green fir tree

Wichern wanted to create their own training center for the parental staff who ran the children's families in the rescue village of the Rauhe Haus early on . One example was the school for the poor that Christian Heinrich Zeller founded in Beuggen in 1820. The board of directors of the Rauhen Haus did not recognize the value of a pedagogical training, but suggested recruiting the assistants from among the numerous road workers. It was not until March 1844 that the Brothers' Institute of the Rough House was officially founded, after a comparable training had previously been designated as an assistant institute . Wichern later (1868) justified the change in the designation from “assistants” to “brothers” by saying that “assistants” aroused the wrong association, as if they were not capable of independent work. Wichern rejected the term “ deacons ”.

Young, healthy, Christian-minded men who had completed an apprenticeship in handicraft or in agriculture and were willing to teach the boys of the Rauhe Haus for free board and lodging could register as assistants. In addition, the Rauhe Haus offered them a qualification for later employment as elementary or rural school teachers. There was no shortage of interested parties from all over the German-speaking region. The association for Protestant emigrants in North America , based in Bremen, had prospective colonist preachers trained in the Rauhen Haus at its own expense . The staff key for caring for the boys was now much cheaper, but a higher fluctuation of the educational staff had a negative impact.

Order of brotherhood

Following the 25th anniversary of the Rauhen Haus, on 18./19. September 1858 the First Brothers' Day took place. Before this meeting, Wichern sent the brothers a set of rules for the Brotherhood of the Rauhe Haus , which he had written , with which this organization received fixed rules for the first time, which, according to Wichern, only contained what had developed in practice. Accordingly, the brotherhood was a family that had its center in the Rauhen Haus. She stands in confession and life in the Lutheran Church and is dedicated to inner mission . The order of 1858 re-introduced the distinction between sending brothers and free brothers :

  • After completing their training in the Rauhen Haus, sending brothers were sent to work abroad. They were grouped into convicts that met regularly whenever possible. At the solemn dismissal, the brother was bound to the brotherhood order with a handshake and signature. In doing so, he accepted that the brotherhood had a say in his choice of profession, marriage and other lifestyle choices.
  • Free brothers were Evangelical Christians who had joined the brotherhood. We thought of former employees, but membership was also open to friends and sponsors. They committed themselves to an annual contribution to the Brothers Fund ( Brüdertaler ) and to regular written feedback to the leadership of the Brotherhood.

Send and free brothers living in the rough house were referred to as house brothers .

Despite strict admission criteria, hundreds of young men applied for training in the Rauhe Haus, particularly in the 1870s and 1880s. Most of the candidates came from the old Prussian provinces of Brandenburg, Silesia and Saxony. Applications from craftsmen and commercial clerks were welcome.

The main fields of work of the sending brothers were:

The first hostel for home in Hamburg, built in 1870
  • Rescue centers and orphanages in northern, central and eastern Germany, the Baltic states and the USA.
  • Hostels to the homeland and workers' colonies . Both fields of activity were a response to the problems of labor migration in times of industrialization. Journeyman craftsmen and migrant workers were in danger of being criminalized by the authorities as beggars and vagabonds.
  • City Mission - the Hamburg City Mission in particular cooperated closely with the Rauhe Haus. In the rapidly growing cities, the city missionary could be deployed flexibly as it was not tied to the structures of parishes.
  • Community diaconia. This field of activity only became more important after 1900, when the regional churches financed deacon offices in the parishes.
  • Port mission. This field of activity also only developed on a larger scale after Wichern's time. As a seaman's mission, it comprised the care of German seafarers in foreign ports as well as the maintenance of dormitories for seafarers in German port cities.
  • Nursing, on the one hand disaster relief, z. B. during the typhus epidemic in Upper Silesia in 1848, on the other hand field diakonia : During the Prussian-Austrian war in 1866 and the Franco-German war in 1870/71, the brothers cared for the wounded and cholera sufferers.
  • Prisons. Wichern worked as a consultant in the prison reform in Prussia. A cabinet order from 1851 granted the so-called "State Pensioners of the Rough House" the right to be employed as prison guards. In 1856 the first Rauhäusler brothers began their service in the Lehrter Strasse cell prison . The Evangelical Johannesstift Berlin was built as a brother house based on the model of the Rauhe Haus. In 1863 the Prussian MPs did not extend the expiring contract with the Rauhe Haus. The Rauhäusler brothers, who were already working in prisons, continued their work into the 1880s. The end of this field of activity shows, according to Desiree Schauz, "the growing loss of legitimacy of religious reform concepts and their representatives within the prison discourse." The liberal lawyer Franz von Holtzendorff was particularly prominent as a critic . He saw the Rauhäusler Brotherhood as an order comparable to the Jesuits . Every sending brother is in contact with the management, reports there and receives instructions from there. He considered that to be an unacceptable double loyalty.

Deacon Institute

At the beginning of the 20th century, the brotherhood of the Rauhe Haus increasingly approached the male diakonia; consequently, the Foundation of the Brethren Institution of the Rough House , founded in 1926, was renamed in 1930 to the Foundation of the Diakonenanstalt des Rauhen Haus . The purpose of the foundation was to train young men for free work in the fields of the Inner Mission. When mass unemployment peaked in 1931, a large number of applicants applied. The Reich Welfare Act of 1924 opened up new fields of activity for Diakonie.

Nazi dictatorship

In September 1933, the 100th anniversary of the Rauhe Haus was lavishly celebrated with a week of festivities. During the festival week on 13./14. September the German Deacon Day took place, at which around 1000 deacons met in Hamburg at the Rauhen Haus to discuss professional challenges. In fact, this meeting turned into a promotional event for German Christians :

“The 1000 deacons gathered at the birthplace of the renewed deacon office, the Rauhen Haus […], affirm their loyalty to the Reich leadership of the 'German Christians' faith movement and stand united and unreservedly behind their leadership. They expect those deacons who have not yet joined this movement to immediately declare their organizational membership. We welcome the National Socialist awakening of our people as a grace from God [...] We offer the Church again, as Wichern once did, our service [...] that the German Protestant People's Church of the Third Reich will finally become, in which all Protestant Germans will find their homeland rights . "

- Resolution : 100 years of the Rauhen Haus and male diakonia.

In February 1936, after the Nuremberg Laws came into force , Marga Meusel sent an inquiry to all 18 deacon institutions as to whether they were ready to accept deacon candidates who were “not purely Aryan, but otherwise suitable”. Three of the 18 training centers agreed to do so, including the Rauhe Haus.

The Brotherhood of the Rauhe Haus was divided in its attitude towards the Nazi state. The majority, with Education Inspector August Füßinger as spokesman, belonged to the moderate wing of the German Christians, even after their wave of resignation as a result of Reinhold Krause's speech on November 13, 1933 in the Sports Palace . A minority around the former city missionary Tilman Fries supported the Confessing Church . However, this faction was more likely to be represented among the sending brothers in the associations of Rhineland-Westphalia and Lower Saxony, from where they had little influence on the headquarters in Hamburg. Contemporary witnesses report a climate of distrust in the brotherhood. So between 1933 and 1948 there was no Brothers' Day.

In 1939 there were 286 Rauhäusler brothers, in 1946 there were only 207; 35 brothers had died or were missing.

post war period

After the end of the war, the brothers returning to Hamburg initially used the rectory of the headmaster Gottfried Donndorf at Parkallee 49 as a contact point. Here they found accommodation and information about their families.

The reorganized deacon training began with an internship as an assistant to an older brother. This was followed by a total of four years of training. The budding deacons volunteered in one of the boys' families , and brother classes were held while the boys were in school. The first year of deacon training was followed by a two-year training as a state welfare worker, followed by a second year of deacon training. The graduates were thus qualified for tasks in the church, in diakonia and also in civil service. The typical career path led Rauhäusler brothers of this generation as church officials in the parish diakonia.

Realignment since the 1960s

Deacon formation was reformed in the 1960s. The suggestion for this came from the regional church, which, in view of the shortage of young people in the parish, wanted to develop deacon training as a kind of second educational path to the pastor's profession. The head of the Rauhen Haus, Wolfgang Prehn, saw this critically: "The deacon must not be the lower level of pastor."

Then came the end of the interlinking of deacon and welfare nursing training, as was common in the immediate post-war period. In 1968 the new building of the Brothers House was completed and now the higher technical school for social work has taken place . During the student unrest , budding deacons also protested against the previously usual training conditions with restricted privacy, strong differences in authority and the double burden of working as educators in children's families alongside their studies. The Rauhe Haus then converted the higher technical college into a technical college in 1971 . The obligation to work as an educator in addition to training was dropped.

The connection between the Brotherhood of the Rauhe Haus with its traditional structures and the students of the technical college loosened considerably since the 1970s; only a minority of the students still lived in the Brothers House , and only a minority took advantage of the opportunity to be blessed at the end of their training. In the North Elbian Church , membership in a community was a prerequisite for working as a deacon, and this profession was equally open to women and men. The first deacon entered the fraternity in 1968. In 1972 the Brotherhood decided to treat female deacons "like female brothers". In 1983, a new order took into account the changed realities, with the renaming of the community as the Brothers and Sisters of the Rauhe Haus . Most of the members were employed in church and diakonia. In the following years, the church's financial planning cut a particularly large number of positions in the parish diaconate: "In 1984, 71.5% of deacons were employed by the church and diakonia, in 2004 it was just 32.6%."

present

The brotherhood and sisterhood is part of the Das Rauhe Haus foundation and leads an independent life within this organizational framework. It cooperates with other communities in the diaconate within the Northern Church and is a member of the Association of Protestant Diaconal, Diaconal and Diaconal Communities in Germany eV (VEDD). In order to be accepted into the community, ordination to the diaconate is necessary or a bond with the Rauhen Haus as well as diaconal competence, be it through appropriate training or through many years of activity in church and diakonia. Admission is preceded by a preparation period that includes active participation in the Konvikt. It is performed in a service by the head of the Rauhe Haus and the Konviktmeister.

Every two years there is a brothers and sisters' day, which is convened by the council of elders.

Convicts and convents are the essential places of common life. Convicts are regional associations, while convents are dedicated to one topic.

The organs of the brotherhood and sisterhood are:

  • the general assembly;
  • the council of elders;
  • the assembly of delegates;
  • the head of the Rauhe Haus and the Konviktmeister (or the Konviktmeisterin).

Currently (as of 2018) the brotherhood and sisterhood has 756 members, 645 of whom are entitled to vote; the other persons belong to the community as widows or widowers, or they are in the preparatory phase. Most of the voting members, 572 people, are ordained deacons.

Web links

literature

  • Annette Noller: Diaconate and church reform. Empirical, historical and ecclesiological dimensions of a diaconal church . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016.
  • Hans-Walter Schmuhl : Mustard seed and sourdough. The history of the Rauhen Haus in Hamburg 1833–2008 . Rauhen Haus Hamburg agency, Hamburg 2008. ISBN 978-3-7600-1196-7 .
  • Johannes Wichern: The Rauhe Haus and the fields of work of the Brothers of the Rauhen Haus 1833 to 1883. A jubilee with festive greeting from Karl Gerok , Agency of the Rauhen Haus, Hamburg 1883.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Annette Noller: Diaconate and church reform. Empirical, historical and ecclesiological dimensions of a diaconal church . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016, p. 304.
  2. ^ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Mustard seed and sourdough. The history of the Rauhen Haus zu Hamburg 1833–2008 , Hamburg 2008, p. 75.
  3. ^ Annette Noller: Diaconate and church reform. Empirical, historical and ecclesiological dimensions of a diaconal church . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016, p. 310. Cf. Johann Hinrich Wichern: Rettungsanstalten als Erziehungshäuser in Deutschland , in: Selected Writings , Volume 2, pp. 239–249.
  4. ^ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Mustard seed and sourdough. The history of the Rauhen Haus zu Hamburg 1833–2008 , Hamburg 2008, p. 76.
  5. ^ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Mustard seed and sourdough. The history of the Rauhen Haus zu Hamburg 1833–2008 , Hamburg 2008, p. 77 f.
  6. ^ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Mustard seed and sourdough. The history of the Rauhen Haus zu Hamburg 1833–2008 , Hamburg 2008, p. 151.
  7. ^ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Mustard seed and sourdough. The history of the rough house in Hamburg 1833–2008 , Hamburg 2008, p. 162 f.
  8. ^ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Mustard seed and sourdough. The history of the Rauhen Haus in Hamburg 1833–2008 , Hamburg 2008, pp. 166–171.
  9. ↑ Illustration from: Johannes Wichern: Das Rauhe Haus and the fields of work of the Brothers of the Rauhe Haus 1833 to 1883 , Hamburg 1883, p. 144.
  10. ↑ Jürgen Scheffler: "The migrating population." In: Ursula Röper, Carola Jüllig (Ed.): The power of charity. One hundred and fifty years of Inner Mission and Diakonia . 2nd edition, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1998, pp. 174-182, here p. 174.
  11. ↑ Michael Häusler: From assistant to deacon. In: Ursula Röper, Carola Jüllig (ed.): The power of charity. One hundred and fifty years of Inner Mission and Diakonia . 2nd edition, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1998, pp. 112-119, here p. 114.
  12. ↑ Desiree Schauz: Punishments as a moral improvement: A history of criminal welfare 1777-1933 . Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, pp. 174-176.
  13. ↑ Desiree Schauz: Punishments as a moral improvement: A history of criminal welfare 1777-1933 . Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, p. 181.
  14. ↑ Desiree Schauz: Punishments as a moral improvement: A history of criminal welfare 1777-1933 . Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, p. 176 f.
  15. ^ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Mustard seed and sourdough. The history of the Rauhen Haus zu Hamburg 1833–2008 , Hamburg 2008, pp. 221–223.
  16. ↑ Wolfgang Maaser, Gerhard K. Schäfer (Ed.): History of Diakonie in sources: From the beginning of the 19th century to the present . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Neukirchen-Vluyn 2016, p. 384 .
  17. ↑ Jörg Thierfelder: Between adaptation and self-assertion. In: Ursula Röper, Carola Jüllig (ed.): The power of charity. One hundred and fifty years of Inner Mission and Diakonia . 2nd edition, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1998, pp. 224-235, here p. 233.
  18. ^ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Mustard seed and sourdough. The history of the Rauhen Haus zu Hamburg 1833–2008 , Hamburg 2008, p. 235.
  19. ^ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Mustard seed and sourdough. The history of the Rauhen Haus zu Hamburg 1833–2008 , Hamburg 2008, p. 256.
  20. ^ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Mustard seed and sourdough. The history of the Rauhen Haus zu Hamburg 1833–2008 , Hamburg 2008, p. 260.
  21. ^ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Mustard seed and sourdough. The history of the Rauhen Haus zu Hamburg 1833–2008 , Hamburg 2008, p. 266.
  22. ^ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Mustard seed and sourdough. The history of the Rauhen Haus zu Hamburg 1833–2008 , Hamburg 2008, p. 273.
  23. ^ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Mustard seed and sourdough. The history of the Rauhen Haus zu Hamburg 1833–2008 , Hamburg 2008, pp. 273–276.
  24. ^ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Mustard seed and sourdough. The history of the Rauhen Haus zu Hamburg 1833–2008 , Hamburg 2008, p. 294.
  25. ↑ Order of the Brotherhood and Sisterhood (2017)
  26. ^ Annual report of the Rauhen Haus 2018 (PDF; 4 MB), p. 37, accessed on September 21, 2019.