Hermann Gmeiner

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Bust in front of the elementary school in Alberschwende (2008)

Hermann Gmeiner (born June 23, 1919 in Alberschwende , Vorarlberg , † April 26, 1986 in Innsbruck , Tyrol ) was an Austrian educator. After the Second World War he founded the SOS Children's Villages .

Life

childhood

Birthplace in Vorholz, Alberschwende (2011)

Hermann Gmeiner was born on June 23, 1919, the sixth of nine children of a family of mountain farmers in Alberschwende, in Vorarlberg , Austria. At the age of five, in March 1925, he became a half-orphan through the death of his mother Angelika . The eldest sister Elsa took on maternal duties in the house and was therefore the most important caregiver for him and seven other siblings. The early loss of his mother and the role of his sister Elsa as a surrogate mother for the extended family was a formative experience. Helmut Kutin regards Elsa's sacrifice for the family and the security she gave the family members as a key experience "that should shape Hermann Gmeiner's whole life."

Training and wartime

Due to his achievements in the Alberschwende village school, he received a scholarship that enabled him to attend the grammar school in Feldkirch from 1936 . Gmeiner was drafted into the Wehrmacht in February 1940 before he passed his Matura .

In the war against the Soviet Union , Gmeiner was deployed on the Arctic Front (Northern Finland) and in Hungary and was wounded several times. Once a Soviet Russian boy saved his life. This memory of it was to become an important spiritual guide for Hermann Gmeiner. He himself said later that the story "that I actually want to tell" began with this experience.

Until November 1945 he was in the Bregenz military hospital . After his recovery, he helped his father on the farm. When the first brother to return home from captivity took over this position, Hermann Gmeiner was able to catch up with the high school diploma. In autumn 1946 he began to study medicine in Innsbruck .

First social thoughts

Through his work as an altar boy , which the devout Gmeiner exercised in the Catholic parish of the Innsbruck district of Mariahilf in his limited free time, he knew the local chaplain Mayr. When he met a twelve-year-old boy in the winter of 1947, whose fate moved him deeply, memories of his own childhood and his experiences in the war came up. Gmeiner wanted to do something for the boy and went to Kaplan Mayr with his request. So he built a new youth group. He was able to motivate 16 young people and founded the shock troop , which became known throughout the Tyrolean Catholic youth.

Hermann Gmeiner visited an "educational institution", spoke with child welfare workers and discussed with other students. Finally he became convinced that homes and institutions were not the right way to help children and young people from difficult family backgrounds. He also remembered his own childhood, the early loss of his mother and the surrogate mother in the form of his sister Elsa. He drew up the plan to build a house for these children where a mother could give a real home, yes, a number of these houses should be, a real children's village .

The way to the first SOS Children's Village in Imst

In 1948 Kaplan Mayr suggested that Gmeiner should become the youth leader for the entire deanery . In this role Gmeiner founded an association . On April 25, 1949, he held the founding meeting, the goals of the association should be:

  • Establishment of a village for orphans
  • Establishment of a "mother and child" facility to protect married mothers
  • Establishment of a “mother house” to train a sisterhood for social work

The activities of the association should be limited to the state of Tyrol and have its seat in Innsbruck. Gmeiner gave the association the name Societas Socialis , which already contained the abbreviation SOS , which means Save our Souls (later: SOS Children's Villages ).

First Gmeiner wanted to realize the idea of ​​the SOS Children's Village, only then should “Mother and Child” and the “Mother House” be tackled. He started with a capital of 600 schillings, that was all of his savings, and after he had been given a storage room free of charge in Innsbruck, which he converted into an office, he invested in leaflets containing an appeal for donations, which were sent by some women and friends from his youth group were distributed in the city. In 1949 he wrote to Tyrolean communities and tried to provide the association with a piece of land for the construction of a children's village free of charge. The mayor of Imst , Josef Koch, responded positively to Gmeiner's request. Gmeiner met a war comrade there who was a builder in Imst and who agreed to start building a house on credit. Slowly the success of many efforts became apparent and money came in, which was usually immediately put back into new member recruitment. On December 2, 1949, was topping are celebrated (the topping) of the first children's village house without any money.

In 1949 Gmeiner gave up his medical studies and work as a youth leader of the deanery in order to be able to devote himself entirely to the SOS Children's Village task. There were also difficulties: he and many of his helpers were arrested and interrogated several times by the police. In the summer of 1949 there was even a house search . Thanks to a lawyer friend of mine , operations were resumed. In the spring of 1950 he had almost 1,000 regular donation members on his lists and there were also larger individual donations. When the Imst municipality agreed to build the necessary access road, electricity and water pipes to the property free of charge, he gave the order to build four more children's village houses.

In the meantime Gmeiner had started looking for the children's village mothers. The first, Helene Diddl, came up with the idea of ​​the Christmas card campaign. The fundraising campaign was expanded and intensified throughout Austria. This enabled him to pay off all of his debts by the end of 1950. On Christmas Eve 1950, five orphans who had recently lost their parents moved into the first children's village house. A few months later, all five houses were completed and by the summer of 1951 a total of 45 children lived in.

The Children's Villages are based on the mother-sibling-house-village principle, which corresponds most closely to natural family relationships. The beginning was difficult, countless problems had to be discussed with the children's village mothers, the correspondence with youth welfare offices , guardianship courts and welfare institutions had to be dealt with, and many details, from vaccination cards to document folders, had to be organized for the children.

Expansion of the children's villages

In the summer of 1951, Gmeiner went to Vienna to set up his own SOS office there. This year, two more children's village houses and a community center were built in Imst. A hospital ward, a common room, a laundry room, sewing and handicraft rooms and storage rooms were housed in the parish hall. In 1952 the Kinderdorfbote appeared for the first time , a quarterly magazine that reported everything in and around the Children's Villages and was sent to all donors. This sheet, printed in numerous languages, would later become the most important donor in millions. In addition, the children's village calendar was launched, a children's village lottery was founded, and more and more companies and organizations were won as supporters. The increasingly plentiful donations made it possible for Gmeiner to continuously expand the children's village in Imst in the following years.

In 1953 Gmeiner set up a holiday camp in Caldonazzo , Italy , which was later to become a meeting place for all European children's village children and which was used as a training facility for future children's village leaders. 1954 followed in Innsbruck for the first time a mother school established as a training center for children's village mothers . In 1954, Grund was bought in Nussdorf-Debant in East Tyrol and the second children's village in the world was built. On October 23, 1955, the first house could be moved into.

On February 10, 1955, Gmeiner was able to host the founding meeting of the German “SOS Children's Village” in Munich . V. ”under the direction of Jürgen Froelich and Peter Hecker. In 1955 Gmeiner founded the “SOS Children's Village Upper Austria ” association, and the Altmünster Children's Village was established in the spring of 1956 under its managing director Hansheinz Reinprecht . In 1956 the first youth center was opened, for which Gmeiner bought an abandoned rest home in Egerdach near Innsbruck. The latter became a home for future apprentices and students from children's villages. In 1957, after Gmeiner had personally collected donations in Vienna for months, the hitherto largest children's village in Hinterbrühl in the Vienna Woods was opened . After initial difficulties at the German SOS Children's Village e. V. - there were also seizures by the police - the first German children's village was opened in 1958 in Dießen am Ammersee . Children's villages in France and Italy followed .

In 1960 Gmeiner founded the umbrella organization “European Association of SOS Children's Villages” in Strasbourg . Here it was also decided to legally protect the name SOS Children's Villages and the children's village emblem . Hermann Gmeiner was unanimously elected President, Hansheinz Reinprecht as Secretary General. Now the actual expansion of the SOS Children's Villages, which continues to this day, began in large parts of the world. After other European countries, the first overseas children's village followed in South Korea . During a visit to Seoul in early 1963, Gmeiner had the idea of ​​selling a grain of rice for one dollar to finance it. The campaign “A grain of rice for Korea” was a resounding success, in 1964 the “Children's Village Association Korea” was founded and in 1965 the first non-European children's village was opened in Daegu . In 1966 he traveled to Saigon during the Vietnam War to set up an SOS Children's Village Vietnam , which despite the war was able to open in 1969 in Go Vap, a suburb of Ho Chi Minh City . Children's villages followed in India , including for the Tibetan refugee children living in exile, and finally in Latin America and Africa .

Logo of SOS Children's Villages International

In 1965, Gmeiner took the internationalization of his idea into account and the umbrella organization was renamed “SOS Children's Villages International” based in Vienna. In order to be able to drive the expansion in the poorer countries, numerous own development associations were founded in the richer countries , z. B. in Germany the “Hermann Gmeiner Fonds Deutschland e. V. ”(in contrast to“ SOS Children's Villages ”, which was only responsible for the construction and maintenance of the German children's villages) or in Switzerland the“ Swiss Friends of SOS Children's Villages ”. The donations to these development associations are used exclusively for the construction of children's villages in developing countries. In this context, a new funding program was born, the sponsorship. Here everyone had the opportunity to sponsor an SOS Children's Village child anywhere in the world and to come into direct contact with them.

Hermann Gmeiner himself felt at home in the Imst Children's Village. He always returned there, especially after his numerous trips abroad. The Imst Children's Village was also his family, as he never married and had no children of his own.

death

After 37 years working in the service of disadvantaged children Gmeiner died at age 67 on April 26, 1986 in Innsbruck on cancer . According to his wishes, he was buried in the Imst children's village, where a small memorial also commemorates him. Gmeiner had already appointed his successor in 1985: Helmut Kutin headed the worldwide social welfare organization from 1986 to 2012 since Gmeiner's death. Kutin's successor was Siddhartha Kaul in July 2012 .

In 1986, the year Gmeiner died, there were 233 children's villages in 85 countries where 40,000 children were cared for. In 2006 there were “1,715 facilities and aid programs in 132 countries and territories”, in which over 60,000 children and young people were cared for based on the idea and idealism of Hermann Gmeiner. And in 2019 there were 572 SOS Children's Villages in 135 countries with the associated 2,100 additional facilities. 1.5 million children are cared for there. Albert Schweitzer described the Children's Villages as “the friendliest miracle of the post-war period”. Gmeiner received a total of 96 nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize during his lifetime .

Fonts

  • Impressions, thoughts, confessions . SOS-Kinderdorf-Verlag, Innsbruck, Munich 1979
  • The SOS Children's Villages . SOS Children's Village Publishing House, Innsbruck, Munich 1985
  • My daughters, my sons . SOS Children's Village Publishing House, Innsbruck, Munich 1987
  • Views & Insights . SOS Children's Village Publishing House, Innsbruck, Munich 1990
  • All children of the world, the message from the founder of the SOS Children's Village . Styria, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-222-13198-8 (quotations from Hermann Gmeiner, compiled by Hansheinz Reinprecht )

Awards

Posthumous honors

Hermann Gmeiner as namesake

A barely manageable number of schools, kindergartens, streets and parks today bear Hermann Gmeiner's name.

  • Hermann-Gmeiner-Park, Vienna

Schools:

  • Hermann Gmeiner School in Hinterbrühl
  • Hermann Gmeiner primary school in Imst
  • Hermann Gmeiner School , elementary school in Monheim am Rhein
  • In the southern German town of Ehingen (Danube) a special needs school is named after Hermann Gmeiner.
  • A secondary school is named after him in Dormagen in West Germany .
  • Hermann Gmeiner School , elementary school in Waldsee

Streets:

  • Hermann-Gmeiner-Straße, street in the Bonn district of Vilich
  • Hermann-Gmeiner-Strasse Innsbruck, Egerdach
  • Hermann-Gmeiner-Strasse Salzburg
  • Hermann-Gmeiner-Strasse, street in the Espenau district of Mönchehof (Espenau)
  • Hermann-Gmeiner-Strasse, Bad Vilbel
  • Dr.-Hermann-Gmeiner-Gasse, Hinterbrühl
  • Hermann-Gmeiner-Strasse, Imst
  • Hermann-Gmeiner-Straße in 555300 Cisnădie (Romania)

Further honors

  • Hermann-Gmeiner monument on Hermann Gmeiner Platz in Vienna 1, donated by the architect and violist Erich Boltenstern
  • Hermann Gmeiner fair , musical and social composition by Gerald Spitzner (premiered with SOS Children 1993), was developed by Helmut Kutin recorded
  • In 1994 the Austrian Post dedicated a stamp to him.

literature

(Chronologically, oldest first)

  • Ludwig Stadelmann: Hermann Gmeiner, A life for the motherless, way and work of my childhood friend . New Life Publishing House, Bad Goisern 1969
  • Hansheinz Reinprecht : The Hermann Gmeiner book, The SOS Children's Villages and their founder . Verlag Styria, Graz 1974, ISBN 3-222-10796-3
  • Hansheinz Reinprecht: Hermann Gmeiner, the father of the SOS Children's Villages . Molden, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-217-00398-5
  • SOS Children's Villages Publishing House (ed.): Hermann Gmeiner, father of the SOS Children's Villages . SOS Children's Village Publishing House, Innsbruck, Munich 1987
  • Hansheinz Reinprecht: Hermann Gmeiner, adventure charity . Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1989, ISBN 3-215-07283-1
  • Jens Lehmann: Hermann Gmeiner - A pioneer of modern experiential education? An idea is celebrating its anniversary: ​​50 years of SOS Children's Villages! With a foreword by Jörg W. Ziegenspeck, a contribution by Iris Mainka and an afterword by Wolfgang Graßl. Series: Wegbereiter der Moderne Erlebnispädagogik , Heft 54. Lüneburg (edition erlebnispädagogik ) 1999, ISBN 3-89569-040-6 , ISBN 978-3-89569-040-2
  • Horst Schreiber and Wilfried Vyslozil: SOS Children's Villages - The Dynamics of the Early Years . SOS-Kinderdorf-Verlag, Innsbruck, Munich 2001
  • Inge Breid: Liberation education and the children's village idea, SOS Children's Villages in developing countries, Paulo Freire and Hermann Gmeiner in comparison . Dialogical Education Publishing House, Oldenburg 2003, ISBN 3-934129-43-9
  • Claudio J. Honsal : For the children of this world. Hermann Gmeiner: The father of the SOS Children's Villages. The biography. Kösel Verlag, Munich 2009.

Web links

Commons : Hermann Gmeiner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Claudio J. Honsal: For the children of this world. Hermann Gmeiner: The father of the SOS Children's Villages. The biography. Kösel Verlag, Munich 2009, p. 20.
  2. ↑ Claudio J. Honsal: For the children of this world. Hermann Gmeiner: The father of the SOS Children's Villages. The biography. Kösel Verlag, Munich 2009, p. 12.
  3. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Hermann Gmeiner
  4. ↑ A life for children in need. Life and work of SOS founder Hermann Gmeiner, in: https://www.sos-kinderdoerfer.de/informationen/Menschen/Hermann-Gmeiner/ein-leben-fuer-kinder-in-not
  5. ^ Hermann Gmeiner, Nominee in 96 nominations on nobelprize.org
  6. ^ Hermann Gmeiner Mass in G major by Gerald Spitzner accessed on June 12, 2009
predecessor Office successor
- President of SOS Children's Villages International
1955–1986 		Helmut Kutin
personal data
SURNAME Gmeiner, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian educator and founder of the SOS Children's Villages
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Alberschwende , Vorarlberg
DATE OF DEATH April 26, 1986
Place of death innsbruck