Heliand Bund
The Heliand-Bund (also: Heliand-Mädchenkreis ) is a Roman Catholic girls and women association in Germany that emerged from the Catholic youth movement . It was created in 1926 from groups of girls that were close to the New Germany Confederation , which was restricted to boys . It is named after Heliand , an early medieval Christian epic Bible paraphrase in the Old Saxon language . The federal government is entered in the register of associations of the Cologne District Court .
The founding of the covenant was shaped by the ideas of the youth movement , the liturgical movement and the striving for closeness to nature. The goal was to integrate Jesus Christ into one's own life and make it accessible to the time. The number of Catholic girls in secondary schools was low at that time, so they saw themselves as privileged and saw in it an obligation to take on responsibility in church and society.
Even today, the Heliand Association, according to its own account, consists of women with a high level of education, intellectual abilities and strong biblical-liturgical spirituality . The covenant sees itself as a vital covenant .
After the Second World War , the community was reorganized into a “Heliand girls group” and the “group of Catholic women in the Heliand Association”. Today there are groups in many of Germany's larger cities that are open to guests.
The Heliand-Bund maintains, among other things, an auxiliary service to support and advise members, for example in cases of social hardship, as well as a missionary office that promotes the work and projects of members, mostly women religious who are active in developing countries.
According to its own information, the group of Catholic women in the Heliand Association has 1200 members.
The Heliand girls' group with a total of 12,000 members formed a working group with the school community in the Bund Neudeutschland (ND) called Catholic Students Youth . In 2012 both associations merged to form a unified youth association with the name "Catholic student youth (KSJ)".
literature
- Sigrid Doerry: Girls and Women Education in the Heliand Association, 1926-1950 . Heliand-Bund, Mutterstadt 1997.
- Maria Schaeffler-Laub: The Heliand Association in its founding years 1924-1932. A contribution to the history of Catholic girls and women . Heliand-Bund, Mannheim 2001.