Journeyman's Association

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Membership card of the Association of Catholic Journeyman's Associations, 1925

Journeyman's associations are or were, in addition to workers’s associations , Catholic workers’s associations and, in contrast to journeyman's brotherhoods , associations that emerged from the transition to industrial society in the 19th century as free associations of independent craft journeymen on a professional and religious basis with the aim of maintaining professional training and sociability or to give social support. In order to be able to provide this support, many journeyman's associations have set up journeyman's hospices . In these the journeyman craftsmen could be looked after better than in inns.

Confessional Influences

The Catholic journeyman's associations gained great social importance. In addition to professional training, they also provided religious and moral support for journeymen. They became more widespread and important, especially the Kolping Families named after their founder , which are still grouped together in the Kolping Society today.

Later the possible membership was mostly extended to the working youth in general.

history

In 1846 the first Catholic journeyman's association was founded in Elberfeld (today in Wuppertal ) by the teacher Johann Gregor Breuer (born in Lohmar ). Just one year later, in June 1847, the Catholic priest Adolph Kolping was elected president of this Elberfeld journeyman's association. At the same time he also promoted the construction of the Catholic journeyman's houses , which became the "home" of the wandering craft journeymen . The former Catholic journeyman's houses were later renamed Kolping houses .

October 1848, Kolping completes the work " The journeyman association, for the heart of all those who mean good to the people's true good " (published in 1849). With this font Kolping promotes the spread of the idea of ​​the journeyman's association. On May 6th, 1849, he and seven journeymen founded the Cologne journeymen's association in the Columbastube in Cologne , which became the nucleus of the Kolping Society .

The pastor Johann Hinrich Wichern is considered the father of the evangelical journeyman's associations . According to his writing from the Wittenberg Kirchentag of September 23, 1848 about the intellectual and character coping with the fate of the craftsmen , Lutheran associations were founded in several cities.

Now journeyman's associations developed in other cities and found plenty of support. This was also because young people of both sexes could meet here under the roof of the church and organize and attend joint events.

literature