Rathausen reform home

The Rathausen educational home in Ebikon near Lucerne was one of the largest children's homes in Switzerland with up to 230 pupils . It was housed in the rooms of a former monastery and existed under different names, most recently as Kinderdörfli Rathausen , from 1883 to 1989. More than three and a half thousand boys and girls spent part of their childhood in Rathausen . The conditions described below are examples of the conditions in many other homes during this period.

Former Cistercian convent and Rathausen reform home

history

A Cistercian monastery was founded in the district Rathausen in Ebikon in 1245 . In the course of the abolition of the monastery in 1848, the canton of Lucerne nationalized the properties of the monastery complex. In subsequent years, the rooms were a teacher training college , to house intern Bourbaki soldiers and as a home for the isolation of smallpox patients used.

In 1882, the Grand Council of the Canton of Lucerne decided to set up the catering and education center for poor children in Rathhausen , which began operations in 1883. At that time it was not a direct state institution, but was entrusted "to a committee of non-profit men under the supervision of the government council". In 1911 the establishment was transformed into an independent public law institute. In 1915 it was called Kant. Catering and educational facility for poor children in Rathausen , 1934 kant. City Hall of Education and 1943 Kant. Rathausen reform home . In 1951 the private foundation Rathausen or Kinderdörfli Rathausen was established .

From 1983 the vacant buildings of the Children's Village Rathausen were used by the Foundation for the Severely Handicapped (SSBL), and in 1989 the previous foundation was merged into the Foundation for the Severely Handicapped (SSBL), founded in 1971.

management

The children's home was under the direction of the Catholic Order of the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross (Ingenbohl Sisters) with a priest as director until 1976 . The organizational structure of the establishment meant that the bishop of the Basel diocese de facto appointed the respective director.

daily routine

The daily routine in Rathausen was strictly regulated. Up until the 1950s, work dominated a large part of everyday life in the home, later games and leisure time became more important. In addition to the sports field, there was also a swimming pool.

Agenda for the summer semester	School-age children
5.15	Get up, comb your hair, wash, dress, make beds, mop
6.30	Morning prayer and breakfast
7.15	Holy Mass
7.45	Start of school
11.15 a.m. - 1 p.m.	Lunch, then rinse, wipe, prepare vegetables, relaxation
13.00	school
15.00	End of school
15.00 - 15.30	Coffee and relaxation
15.30 - 16.30	Needlework
16.30 - 17.30	Study lesson
17.30 - 18.30	Dinner and relaxation
6.30 p.m. - 7 p.m.	Rosary and night prayer
19.00-20.00	recreation
8:00 pm	night rest

school

The inmates could be taught in the prison school. The records show that schooling was of little importance to the management of the home. A life as a maid or servant was intended for children from the lower social classes. In the home's annual reports, there is repeated talk of the pupils' poor school performance. Former residents report that the circumstances prevented them from studying. Religious instruction and instruction in craft subjects would have been of great importance.

Religious practice

Rathausen was a Catholic institution: embedded in the Catholic Lucerne milieu, led by a priest as director and Ingenbohl sisters as educators. The church was considered suitable for running the institution and could look back on a long tradition of education. Former inmates sometimes describe the actual religious practice as excessive. In addition to the compulsory confession , they mention frequent church attendance, but also religious instruction, which had a higher priority than school lessons. It is known from publications from the 1930s and 40s that the director followed a conservative, anti-modernist course and conveyed the image of an omniscient, punitive and fearful God. A former inmate reports that in the 1940s people went to church four times on Sundays: early mass, after breakfast the office followed , in the afternoon the Christian doctrine and, depending on the season, an additional prayer . After the daily Mass, an additional five Our Fathers and three Hail Marys were requested for the benefactors. Morning and table prayers, rosary and evening prayers completed the religious daily routine. There was a prayer corner in front of the bedrooms for evening prayer.

Former inmates point to the discrepancy between the religious claim and everyday home life with the brutal punishments and sexual assaults.

Dairy farm

The attached agricultural property, the dairy farm , generated part of the operating costs of the home and kept the children busy with auxiliary work. Individual pupils report of hard work in the yard, field and forest. Punishments in the home were often carried out in the form of work assignments in the yard. Most of the work on Sundays was done as detention by inmates. The work was supposed to prepare the children for later life, in the 1930s the motto was still that the children should be educated to be good servants as well as agricultural support staff.

Supervisory bodies

According to the regulations, which were valid until 1951, the supervision of the home was the responsibility of the Government Council of the Canton of Lucerne, the Additional Commission and the Supervisory Commission . As the later investigation showed, responsibilities were not always clearly defined. The supervisory bodies dealt primarily with financial and administrative issues. There are no indications that the supervisory bodies systematically questioned children about everyday life in the home. Complaints about the conditions in the home were not recorded, neither by the members of the supervisory committees themselves, nor by school inspectors, guardians or poor authorities. It is no longer possible to determine today whether there were no complaints or whether they were not recorded and followed up. An exception was the advance of a guardian in 1949, which subsequently led to the “institutional crisis” in Rathausen. In the course of this crisis it became apparent that the institutions were blaming each other for the grievances.

Social and legal background

The societal norms that were rigid from today's perspective and the legal foundations provided the guardianship authorities with backing for numerous home admissions until the 1970s. The origin as an illegitimate child or the fate as a half or full orphan or divorce orphan suffices for the order of an admission. Often, children from impoverished, large families were placed in homes. Another group were children and adolescents who were conspicuous, difficult to bring up or who had committed offenses. Protection against “neglect” - a term that is generously interpreted in practice - served in many cases as a pretext for training.

Accommodation in church-run homes was cheaper for the referring congregations than other places. Thanks to its size and the church staff, the institution in Rathausen was able to be run particularly inexpensively: in the 1940s, a place cost only 250 to 500 francs per year. Adjusted for inflation (as of 2014), these amounts amounted to around 2000 to 4000 francs (1600 to 3200 €) per year.

Allegations of abuse

An instruction from the leadership of the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross from 1926 read: Corporal punishment should always be given with great caution. Hitting the head, the mouth or the back, tearing the ears and hair is unworthy of religious sisters.

Witnesses prove that this instruction was systematically disregarded in town hall. Everyday life in the home included widespread abuse: lashes with a stick, simulated drowning ( waterboarding ), imprisonment - sometimes for several days - in the Chrutzi , a dark dungeon without a bed, and sexual assault.

Children from socially disadvantaged families or from unmarried mothers were largely outlawed by society. Their low social status deprived them of protection against what is now unjustified instructions from the authorities. Once admitted to a home, they were at risk of assault and, in a sense, fair game of their carers, especially if they had no loved ones. The children had no effective legal means of defending themselves against attacks on their personal integrity. Homes, guardians and guardianship authorities formed a kind of interest group that knew how to assert itself against the ward . Complaints from the children ran in circles: Complaints with the home management against the guardian as well as with the guardian against the home management came to nothing or resulted in a punishment. The children were systematically discouraged from fighting back. When the children spoke to their supervisors, for example a guardian, representatives from the home were usually present. The children could therefore not express themselves freely. Your correspondence has been censored. Escape had little effect: in reports to the homes and guardians, the police sometimes mentioned critical statements by the refugees. These claims were dismissed as unfounded.

If the children physically defended themselves against attacks, they could even be punished if, from a legal point of view, there was self-defense against the assault by an adult. From town hall visits by pupils to the authorities are documented. Like reports from the police after escapes, these complaints had no consequences for the home.

Religious upbringing aimed, among other things, at blaming the children for their predicament. Theses by leading scholars from the field of youth education in the first half of the 20th century supported the harsh practice of the guardianship authorities and homes.

Investigation of the conditions in the home in 1949

The complaint of a Winterthur official guardian about the mistreatment of his ward led to the formation of a commission to investigate the conditions in the home. The report of the expert commission from 1949 to the attention of the municipal department and the supervisory commission on the home in Rathausen noted, among other things:

In summary, it can be said about the interrogation of the staff of the nursery and the farm that there is absolutely no special educationally trained staff and that the educators are not fully aware of their responsibility towards the children. Director and prefect, who would have to be the spiritual director of this great institution, are primarily punishing gods. The pedagogical interests that still exist with the sisters and their inner ties to the children have to wither under the pressure of inadequate conditions and excessive workload. They become police officers when they want to keep order in their groups that are far too large .

The results of the expert commission led to the dismissal of the director Gottfried Leisibach. In his statement on the work in Rathausen he stated, among other things:

My entire educational work was anchored in Christianity. [...] In punishing children, I appeal to divine law .

- Director Gottfried Leisibach : Leisibach Memorial from 1949 on his work in Rathausen

The time after Leisibach's dismissal led to a certain improvement in conditions in the 1950s. Successor Anton Sigrist was feared by some of the pupils like his predecessor, while others recognize his reform efforts.

Criminal proceedings

In the aftermath of the 1949 investigation, criminal proceedings were brought against a secular employee of the home. He was convicted of sexual assault, repeated abuse and neglect of a child. The criminal court of the Canton of Lucerne judged the child to be hit on the ground, punched in the face until it bled, the upper body submerged in the well, blows with a shoe, a stick and a cattle halter, but not slaps in the face, and blows with a pitchfork as criminally relevant on your back and with your flat hand on your bare buttocks.

In suspected cases of sexual assault against priests and religious women, the judicial authorities seem to have been presumed innocent because of the celibate way of life of church people.

Documentary film

Beat Bieri: Children's Stories - Abused According to Divine Law , is an updated documentary by SF I, broadcast on September 27, 2012, length 50:32.

The documentary is based on testimony from former pupils in town hall. The sequences mentioned below convey a picture of everyday life in the home and life after being released from the institution.

sequence	content
2:30	Assignment of contract children who had no relatives to farmers in the region.
7:10	Abuse by a vicar , blow with a brass ruler on the top of the skull with permanent consequences, the home management conceals the real cause of the injury from the doctor.
14:10	Degrading display of bed-wetting people.
17:55	Pedophile attacks and beatings with a cane by the priest and director Gottfried Leisibach.
25:30	Bertha Bucher dies after being beaten by Sr. Ursula in Rathausen in autumn 1928, the cause of death is covered up, the elder sister of the victim is arrested and forced to remain silent by the superior .
27:30	Paul Wildi is thrown down a flight of stairs by the same nun in 1929 and killed, the cause of death is again covered up.
32:15	Intimidation by the aggressive dog Leisibach.
34:30	Pedophile attacks and beatings by Leisibach.
35:30	Excerpt from the report of the expert commission of 1949. He found intolerable conditions in town hall: "Director and prefect [...] are primarily punitive gods" [...] "One has the impression that these primitive punitive measures are the most important represent educational acts. The punishment has become a habit in Rathausen, a system, it too is part of the mass operation that is stuck in a template. "
39:20	Three sisters beat up a pupil.

Reactions to the film: "Is someone lying there?" - Beat Bieri about his documentary and the reaction of a former home occupant who denied the conditions in town hall.

The final report of the independent expert commission Ingenbohl comments on the deaths in Rathausen described in the film:

In the Bucher case, he comes to the conclusion that the files do not provide conclusive evidence of the true cause of death. What is certain is the fact that the girl was not taken to hospital, although she was obviously in mortal danger. Whether something should be covered up with this approach remains unclear. The diary of the victim's sister mentioned in the film was not created during the stay in the home, but about 60 years later as a résumé. Bertha Bucher's sister was around 75 years old at the time of writing.

The same report refutes the cause of the death of Paul Wildi named in the film. The boy became seriously ill on September 15, 1928, but began to complain of a headache at the beginning of September. He was admitted to the Lucerne Cantonal Hospital after September 15; his death was reported to Rathausen on September 21, 1928. A tubercular meningitis was diagnosed. Falling stairs in 1929 can be ruled out.

Processing of the events

The government council of the canton of Lucerne commissioned a commission to review the events in the children's homes in the canton. This resulted in the report on Children's Homes in the Canton of Lucerne for the period 1930-1970 from July 31, 2012.

The Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross recognize today that there have been cases of abuse in homes. On January 23, 2013, they published the final report of their expert commission Ingenbohler Sisters in children's homes .

The Lucerne Synod, as the parliament of the Roman Catholic regional church, approved a study to investigate what is going on around the Catholic homes in the canton of Lucerne: The Book Behind Walls. Welfare and violence in church-run educational institutions in the canton of Lucerne was published in spring 2013.

literature

Author collective: Ebikon - Rathausen monastery. (PDF; 5.2 MB) Reports! 2016/10. In: ssbl.ch. Department of Higher Education and Culture, Monument Preservation and Archeology of the Canton of Lucerne, October 2016, p. 88 , archived from the original ; accessed on September 28, 2017 .
Markus Ries, Valentin Beck (ed.): Behind walls. Care and violence in church-run educational institutions in the canton of Lucerne . Theological Verlag Zurich 2013. ISBN 978-3-290-20088-6 ( online ; PDF; 6.5 MB)
Nadja Ramsauer: Neglected - child removal and the emergence of youth welfare in the Swiss welfare state 1900–1945 . Chronos Verlag Zurich 2000. ISBN 978-3-905313-57-4