Association of German Girl Scouts (1912–1933)
The Association of German Girl Scouts (BDP) was a German Girl Scout Association founded in 1912 . In the years up to 1922 he was close to the women's movement . After 1922 he joined the Völkisch movement and worked with the Artamans . In 1933 he was dissolved like numerous other groups of the Bündische Jugend .
history
The first German girl scout groups emerged in 1911 in Hamburg and Frankfurt am Main . When the German Scout Association for young girls was founded in Berlin in 1912 under the chairmanship of Elise von Hopffgarten , they joined him. In 1913 this association changed its name to Association of German Scouts .
In its work, the BDP was based on the "Boy Scout Book for Young Girls" published by Elise von Hopffgarten in 1913. The contents were partly taken from the pathfinder book of the German Pathfinder Association published by the same publisher ; They were supplemented by topics that were female at the time, such as housekeeping or horticulture. The selection of the “People's Scouts” presented there clearly shows the emancipatory approach of the BDP. Also in 1913 the BDP contacted Hedwig Heyl , the founder of home economics , who made a vegetable garden available to the BDP for experimental cultivation.
Since it was heavily funded by the state, the BDP grew very quickly. In 1914 it already comprised 6,000 girls.
After the outbreak of World War I , the work changed quickly. For many groups, the focus was now on aid measures for the population. Several groups concentrated on growing vegetables in order to improve the supply of the population, while others looked after refugee homes towards the end of the war. As the possibilities for communication and travel in the Reich were increasingly restricted, numerous groups broke up.
After the end of the war, there were also conflicts in the BDP between the older women leaders from the prewar period and younger women leaders who had taken on tasks during the war. In 1920, at a conference in Weimar , the old federal leadership was first confirmed; it was not until 1922 that Jena broke with the past. In its new structures, the BDP was based on Germanic and medieval ideal images, and chose Thusnelda , the wife of Hermann the Cheruscan , as "patroness" .
The nationalist orientation of the BDP increased in the following years. In 1923 he founded the German Young Girls Service with other conservative youth associations . From 1926 the BDP promoted the Artamans' settlement movement in its magazine . A few years later he tried to put the Artaman's approaches into practice with so-called borderland work.
In the summer of 1933 the BDP was dissolved like numerous other groups of the Bündische Jugend . At that time it had about 2,000 members.
After 1945, a female scout association was founded again under the name of the Association of German Scouts .
literature
- Elise von Hopffgarten: Boy Scout Book for Young Girls . Reprint. Deutscher Spurbuchverlag, Baunach 1991. ISBN 3-88778-169-4
- Wolf Kuhnke: blue flower and distaff. The history of the Association of German Girl Scouts 1912-1933. Association of Boy Scouts, Giessen 1984