Evangelical Johannesstift Berlin
The Evangelical Johannesstift Berlin is a Protestant institution in the Berlin district of Hakenfelde in the northwest of the Spandau district . It was founded on April 25, 1858 by Johann Hinrich Wichern to support the poor, the sick, prisoners and children. It has been based in Spandau since 1910. After a merger with other evangelical institutions, it has been part of the Johannesstift Diakonie since 2019 .
Location and structure
In 1864, the planned construction of the Johannesstift with 30 houses and an assigned church began in the Plötzensee estate . However, due to the construction of the West Harbor , the site had to be sold in 1906. The Johannesstift has had its current location in the Spandau Forest since 1910 .
On the premises in Schönwalder Allee there is a hotel with a conference center, a hospital, a primary and secondary school (1st to 10th grade), a church, a bookstore, a swimming pool, various small shops, a garden center and numerous social welfare institutions . These are divided into the business areas: geriatrics and care for the elderly, assistance for the handicapped, youth welfare and the diaconal education center , which combines various training courses in social professions.
Every year large folk festivals for Thanksgiving and Christmas take place here, to which thousands of people travel from all over Berlin and the surrounding area.
From 1992 the Johannesstift was also responsible for social welfare programs in Brandenburg . On January 1, 2018, the merger with Paul Gerhardt Diakonie took place. The merged company has been called Johannesstift Diakonie since 2019 .
The Evangelical Johannesstift Berlin relies on donations and bequests for its work. These contribute significantly to the fact that investments can be made that enable new offers for children and young people, for people with disabilities and for the elderly. The ongoing work is usually refinanced from public funds.
history
Johann Hinrich Wichern: Founder of the Johannesstift
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Johann Hinrich Wichern was one of the leading founders of modern diakonia. He also wanted to implement his concept of Inner Mission when founding the Johannesstift. He came into contact with the situation of neglected children and adolescents while studying theology in Hamburg , when he was earning his living as an educational assistant in a boarding school. The educational and practical experience he gained there was the decisive factor in founding the Rauhen Haus in Hamburg-Horn in 1833 . There he was able to realize his own group pedagogical ideas. With young men, brought together in a fraternal spiritual community and trained in pedagogy, he developed offers to give the children and young people a home and a professional perspective.
Wichern's particular interest in the 1850s was the prison system. This brought him into contact with King Friedrich Wilhelm IV., Who appointed him to Berlin as a consultant in social affairs and commissioned him to push ahead with prison reform in Prussia . A key idea of this reform was to provide solitary confinement for prisoners instead of group detention, which was considered disadvantageous for rehabilitation. King Friedrich Wilhelm IV valued Wichern's achievements and suggested starting a training center for deacons in Prussia, combined with social tasks. Wichern took up this suggestion and founded the Evangelisches Johannesstift Berlin on April 25, 1858 in the presence of numerous friends and patrons in the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin , where the Maxim-Gorki-Theater is playing today .
“The Johannesstift in Berlin will be a house of brothers like the one in the Rauhen home in Horn near Hamburg. The aim is to gather Protestant men of all classes in brotherly love for joint work in word and work among the poor, sick, prisoners, children as well as among the German Protestant diaspora or in related fields, to prepare them for this service through school and practical training to send trained brothers and to keep them connected in a free evangelical community. "
In his inaugural speech in front of guests and friends, Wichern thus described the focus of the Johannesstift: service to others and training of deacons. Both belonged closely together for Wichern and are still alive today in the work of the Johannesstift and its sisterhood and brotherhood.
Beginnings of the Johannesstift
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The real work began in September 1858 with twelve young brothers from the Rauhe Haus. At first they were satisfied with an apartment in today's Berlin district of Moabit . In the beginning there was the training of men as educators and poor carers in the Christian diaconal sense (later referred to as deacons ), the work in the Moabit cell prison , the taking up of poor relief itself and the care for released prisoners, as it were as an accompanying measure to the prison reform.
Johannesstift in Berlin-Plötzensee
It was not until 1864 that the Board of Trustees, with great support from the Circle of Friends, succeeded in acquiring a 30- hectare site on the Spandauer Schifffahrts- and Charlottenburg connecting canals near the Plötzensee and laying the foundation stone for the main building. The architect was Carl Wilhelm Hoffmann . By the turn of the century, the Johannesstift developed into an institution with thirty houses, the central building being the church, consecrated in 1897 . In addition to the training of deacons, the focus of the work was on the care and upbringing of children and young people according to the principles established by Wichern. With the Plötzensee facility, Wichern wanted to create a living space in which people can receive help, live, live and work in community with one another. An idea that is still valid today and has been realized in the diaconal community of Johannesstift.
Relocation to Spandau
When, towards the end of the 19th century, Berlin was planning the construction of a large inland port on the grounds of the monastery, the area had to be sold and cleared by 1910. In lengthy negotiations the pen succeeded in negotiating an advantageous price. The around 11.2 million marks (adjusted for purchasing power in today's currency: around 69 million euros) enabled the monastery management to acquire the current location of the Johannesstift, an approximately 75 hectare site in the Spandau city forest, and to develop it on a generous basis. Around thirty houses were built between 1907 and 1910 with the collegiate church in the center. The architects Hermann Solf (1856–1909) and Franz Wichards (1856–1919) were initially commissioned with the planning, and after their departure, Otto Kuhlmann (1873–1948).
Crisis development after the First World War
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The First World War and its aftermath led the Johannesstift to the brink of ruin. The inflation in the early 1920s and wrong decisions consumed the assets acquired through the sale of Plötzensee. The circle of supporters had almost completely ceased to exist. The school operations that had shaped the Johannesstift until then had to be given up. A cooperation agreement and long-term rental agreements were concluded with the German National Handicrafts Association , an influential, anti-democratic interest group for employees at the time. The social activities were largely stopped. The Evangelical Johannesstift experienced a standstill. What remained was the training of deacons and the tentative establishment of an adult education system.
Pastor Helmuth Schreiner , head of the monastery from 1926, succeeded in showing the Johannesstift a new diaconal and economic perspective. He laid the foundation for a diaconal work, the main features of which are still valid today. Under difficult conditions, he de-rented the houses. New tasks were tackled and numerous offers developed in a short time. The care for the elderly and care for the elderly joined the educational work on children and young people. A home for severely handicapped children and another house for children with poor posture was opened. Young people received vocational training in a home for apprentices. The education system was also expanded. At the end of the 1920s there was, in addition to the deacon training, the welfare school for the training of social workers, the Evangelical School for Folk Music (later: Berlin Church Music School ), the Fichte School and the Evangelical Social School as facilities for adult education as well as the "Apologetic Central", the dealt with the then intense debates of world views. Furthermore, the Wichern-Verlag moved to the Johannesstift. The Voluntary Evangelical Labor Service also moved into a base in the monastery. During the Great Depression in the early 1930s, he tried to give unemployed young people employment and a livelihood.
Between 1933 and 1945
Between 1932 and 1939 Wilhelm Philipps (the younger, 1891–1982) was in charge of the monastery. The leadership and the Johannesstift Brotherhood initially placed great hopes in the National Socialists' takeover of power . The idea in large parts of the Protestant Church that the Third Reich would also be a time for the Church met with a great response. Numerous deacons joined the SA , Philipps and other leading employees in the NSDAP and the " Faith Movement German Christians ", which is close to the National Socialists . The board of trustees was reorganized according to the new political situation.
However, the political adaptation to the Hitler regime did not prevent the appointment of a church commissioner, who particularly examined the activities of the former mayor Schreiner, who was critical of National Socialism. With the closure of the Evangelical Social School in 1933, a piece of evangelical, independent educational work had to be given up. In 1937 the Gestapo closed the Apologetic Central, the director of which, Walter Künneth, had dealt critically with the Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg .
Radical tendencies within the German Christians led Philip and numerous colleagues to join the Confessing Church . In the second half of the 1930s and during the Second World War , the monastery increasingly had to defend itself against attempts by the Nazi state to withdraw welfare tasks from independent providers.
The euthanasia measures during the Second World War forced the Johannesstift to take cautious countermeasures. For example, threatened residents were released home in order to withdraw state access. As far as we know from the beginning of the 21st century, the monastery largely succeeded in protecting its disabled residents. The transfer of mentally ill residents to the Wittenau sanatoriums posed a certain risk , because from there people came to the Meseritz-Obrawalde institution, known as the place of killing . This also affected seven people who had been relocated from Johannesstift to Wittenau in the 1930s and 1940s . Five of them died in Meseritz-Obrawalde, and it is very likely that they were murdered.
During the Second World War, forced laborers from the European countries occupied by German troops were used in the Johannesstift as well as in many other institutions of the Diakonie and Church to keep the company going. Most of them had to work in agriculture and the technical auxiliary companies, some forced laborers also in the nursing homes.
Boom after the Second World War
The Johannesstift was largely spared from bomb attacks , only the gymnasium was completely destroyed by a direct hit. The occupation of the site by the Red Army in April 1945 was accompanied by attacks against employees and residents; this trauma remained alive in the memory of the monastery residents for a long time and suppressed their own involvement in National Socialism.
The years after 1945 were economically difficult for the Inner Mission institutions. The diaconal work continued as before, but the shortage caused by the war could only be overcome very slowly. The proximity of living and working environments promoted social relationships among employees and residents. With the economic upturn, the existing buildings could be restored and modernized, and numerous modern buildings designed accordingly were created for new tasks, for which the architect Otto Block was often responsible. Additional staff were hired and the training centers for social professions could not train enough skilled workers as quickly as they were needed. This shortage of employees could only be overcome in the 1970s.
As the East-West meeting point of the Protestant Church, the monastery was an important link in the life of divided Germany. When the Johannesstift lost its “hinterland” with the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, contact with the deacons living in the GDR was made more difficult.
The monastery was the site of numerous important conferences and synods. It was here in 1965 that the EKD Synod passed its controversial "Ostdenkschrift", now recognized as groundbreaking, in which a new definition of the relationship between the capitalist countries of the West and the communist Eastern Bloc states was formulated and which gave Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik an impetus.
Structural changes in the 1970s
The specialization in the fields of work and the social upheaval led to a new form of monastery management in the early 1970s. The patriarchal management, consisting of the head of the monastery and his administrative director, was no longer able to cope with the pressure with regard to the need for advice and decision-making and was also felt to be out of date. A board of trustees decided in 1974 to set up a five-person board, which then increasingly ensured more democratic management structures.
As a result of the new management forms, the previous services of the Johannesstift were structured over the years in the fields of youth welfare, handicapped care, geriatrics and elderly care, schools and technical schools, professional development and guest and conference services.
Diaconal company Johannesstift from 1990 to 2017
Since the reunification of Germany , the Johannesstift has also become increasingly active in Brandenburg . It took over the old people's and nursing home in Velten (1992) and the Annagarten (1993), an institution for mentally disabled women in Oranienburg . The senior center in Hohen Neuendorf was established in 2004 .
The Evangelical Johannesstift grew in many areas. Altenhilfe developed a geriatric supply chain that covers all the needs of an elderly person in need of help. The Johannesstift took over responsibility for the Evangelical Geriatric Center Berlin. In the area of youth welfare, facilities in the Oberhavel district were added. The Disabled Aid continuously expanded its number of places and made new offers available for different target groups. The number of employees rose from around 1,000 in 1990 to around 2,100 in 2007, including the subsidiaries.
These developments are accompanied by changed framework conditions. These include, among other things, competition between social enterprises and private providers, dwindling financial resources, quality requirements, demographic development with regard to the number of elderly people and the increasing importance of the concept of customer and the service character of social providers.
One consequence of the internal and external developments was that the Johannesstift started a strategy process in 2001 that resulted in a new structure and basic goals for medium and long-term planning. From 2005 there was a two-man board, the work areas were divided into five business areas, each with a managing director at the top.
social commitment
The Evangelical Johannesstift donates a wreath annually since 2003 a Wichernhaus wreath for the German Parliament and one for the banking hall of the Berlin branch of the Evangelical Bank in the Protestant Center in the district of Friedrichshain .
art
Three stainless steel sculptures by the sculptor Volkmar Haase are set up in the outdoor area of the Johannesstift . The 1998 exhibition Perspectives - Sculptures by the sculptor Volkmar Haase in the landscape of the Johannesstift was dedicated to him.
Open contact (1989/1990). In the history of art, the ball stands for perfection as well as - sometimes personified by the goddess Tyche of Greek mythology - for destiny and destiny, compare for example the stone of good luck .
Wave with two diametrical spheres (1991/1992). Haase was concerned with the wave subject from the 1990s onwards. "When looking at such a sculpture, the past and the future seem to merge, transience becomes tangible." (Hella Kaiser, 1996)
literature
- Alexander Uhlig: Otto Kuhlmann (1873-1948). Architect between tradition and modernity . Dissertation, Technical University of Hanover, 2002.
- Helmut Bräutigam: Courage for small deeds. The Evangelical Johannesstift 1858–2008. Berlin 2008.
Web links
- Entry in the Berlin State Monument List
- Internet presence of the Evangelical Johannesstift
- Internet presence of the project to inspire children
Individual evidence
- ↑ Uwe Kieling: Berlin private architects and railway builders in the 19th century . Kulturbund der DDR, Berlin 1988, p. 32 .
- ↑ EDG website ( Memento of the original from January 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed December 14, 2011
- ↑ Perspectives: Sculptures by the sculptor Volkmar Haase in the landscape of the Johannesstift. Catalog on the occasion of the exhibition from April 26 to September 27, 1998. Evangelisches Johannesstift, Havel Spree Verlag, Berlin 1999.
- ↑ Volkmar Haase - Sculptures 1989–1996. Exhibition catalog. Galerie Bremer, Berlin 1996/1997, pp. 6-7.
Coordinates: 52 ° 34 ′ 10 ″ N , 13 ° 11 ′ 40 ″ E