Evangelical Girl Scout Association
The Evangelical Girl Scout Association (EMP) was a German Evangelical Girl Scout Association that existed from 1926 to 1972. At the beginning of 1973, he merged with the Bund Christian Boy Scouts (BCP) and the Christian Boy Scouts of Germany (CPD) to form the Union of Christian Boy Scouts .
history
In the Burckhardthaus , an institution of the Evangelical Young Girls Association (later: Evangelical Reich Association of Female Youth), scouting methods were also used from 1922 within the youth group work. In 1925, the Danish YMCA scouts invited six German employees to a training course. These formed the core of the Evangelical Girl Scout Association, which was founded in 1926 and based its work on the Scandinavian model. The theological orientation of the EMP was significantly influenced by Pastor Otto Riethmüller , the director of the Burckhardthaus.
The EMP grew rapidly through the training of other guides and the establishment of a scout page in the Burckhardthaus schoolgirls magazine. In 1933 it comprised around 3,500 girl scouts in 120 groups (local groups).
With the agreement reached at the end of 1933 on the integration of the Evangelical Youth into the Hitler Youth , the EMP also had to stop its scouting work. Nevertheless, on Whitsun 1934, the EMP was able to hold a final imperial camp. A little later, almost all EMP groups officially dissolved and continued to work as so-called service groups in their parishes. These service groups were able to exist relatively undisturbed as part of the Protestant youth until the outbreak of World War II . Unlike almost all other scout associations, the EMP was not banned or dissolved during the “Third Reich” as part of the Evangelical Reich Association of Female Youth.
As early as 1944, Minnie Otte, the former leader of the EMP, was asked by the former youth pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover to start planning the reconstruction of the EMP. The deliberations on this were shaped by the idea that a girl scout association needed a different form after the experiences of National Socialism . In 1947 the EMP officially resumed its work.
The four German scout associations, the Federation of German Scouts , St. Georg Scouts , BCP and EMP founded the Ring of German Scout Associations as a joint umbrella organization. The RDP was accepted into the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts in 1950 and into the German Federal Youth Association in 1952 .
By 1952 EMP groups were formed again in all federal states - with the exception of Bavaria , where, according to an agreement made in 1949, only the BCP was allowed to work. The EMP reached its greatest expansion in the late 1960s, when it had almost 8,000 members.
The second half of the 1960s was also shaped in the EMP by demands for co-education and changed forms of work. In 1968, BCP, CPD and EMP agreed to work together in the ranger and rover stage. When the CPD decided in 1969 that it would be a co-educational association with immediate effect, these talks picked up speed. The first EMP countries and CPD national brands joined forces as early as 1971. On January 1st 1973 the BCP, the CPD and the EMP merged to form the Association of Christian Scouts and Scouts .
Some Hessian groups refused to join forces and continued their work under the name of the Evangelical Girl Scout Association of Hesse until the 1990s.
literature
- Christine Kunze, Ursula Salfeld, Ruth Stalmann: The history of the Evangelical Girl Scout Association - A documentation . Association of Christian Boy Scouts, Kassel 1993