Catholic youth movement

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The Roman Catholic youth associations , which were shaped in form and content by the German youth movement in the first third of the 20th century, are called the Catholic youth movement in the narrower sense . In a broader sense, the term includes all Roman Catholic youth organizations that work completely or largely independently of adult organizations.

history

Origins (until 1918)

The Catholic youth movement began with the founding of Catholic youth and young men’s associations, especially the Jesuit- inspired Marian congregations and the journeyman's associations, which were particularly influenced by Adolph Kolping , from the middle of the 19th century.

In 1896 around 600 such associations came together for the first time to form the Association of Catholic Youth and Young Men’s Associations in Germany , which, however, remained very closely oriented to the ideals of the Marian congregations until the end of the First World War. After all, in 1907 it had 150,000 members. In that year, an association headquarters was set up in Düsseldorf - called Jugendhaus Düsseldorf from 1924 - and Carl Mosterts was the first general secretary . The associations organized there aligned themselves more closely with the youth movement , especially after the First World War , but in the actual sense they cannot be counted as part of the Catholic youth movement in the narrower sense.

The actual Catholic youth movement has one of its origins in the Catholic abstinence associations. In 1909, the first abstinent high school groups were founded in Breslau and Neisse , which later called themselves " Quickborn ". From 1913 on, girls' groups were also formed. With the title of a magazine, the name was fixed for the community: "Quickborn". In October 1913 representatives of the Catholic abstinence associations took part in the Free German Youth Day. Impressed by this, but at the same time critically, these and similar associations tried to gain their own identity, especially in the period that followed.

Partly dependent, partly independent of this, other groups of students of this type emerged in the following years, mostly at higher educational institutions and quite in close contact with the Wandervogel and shaped by the ideas of the youth movement , the scout movement and the Bündische Jugend .

Catholic youth movement after 1918

At the end of the Weimar Republic, around one million young Catholics belonged to the Catholic youth associations. The Altenberg House , which was founded in 1922 as a meeting place next to Altenberg Cathedral in the Bergisches Land near Cologne by Carl Mosterts, the General President of the Association of Catholic Youth and Young Men’s Associations in Germany, became the center of the Catholic youth movement in Germany in 1926 under his successor, Prelate Ludwig Wolker, and still exists today as a youth education center of the Archdiocese of Cologne.

Catholic youth movement under National Socialism

From 1934 onwards, the Catholic youth organizations had to accept increasing restrictions on their external activities from the Nazi regime . From July 23, 1935, police ordinances prohibited them from practicing any activity except purely religious, initially in Prussia and then throughout the German Reich. Locally there was a loss of membership in the youth associations, but overall the inner conviction of the young people who continued to participate grew.

It turned out to be necessary to find new organizational forms of youth work. The emphasis was on religious celebrations, rallies, light processions and pilgrimages . The annual Confession Sunday on Christ the King's Feast was given a whole new status. In Cologne Cathedral alone, 30,000 young people met at 5 a.m. for the Christmas festival in October 1934.

New hymns were created, mainly composed by the secretary of the Catholic Young Men’s Association Georg Thurmair and distributed among other things in the popular hymn book Kirchenlied , in which the protest against the regime was expressed in a subtle way, for example the “various complaints” of the well-known song “We are only guest on earth ”or in the“ Altenberger pilgrimage song ”(“ Well, brothers, we are happy ”), z. B. in the verse "But we come from THE time very poor in your light", both set to music by Adolf Lohmann . In view of the prohibition of external activity, faces became flags ; In a poem by Thomas Klausner (a pseudonym for Georg Thurmair) it says:

“Roll your flags around the shaft and go like mute messengers:
The power is over our strength. Power dictated it.
The street is clear, the noise goes away, we move into the quiet,
and even if no flag is blowing, we still have the will:
We want Germany, and we remind the people of its strength.
Now faces are our flags and bodies are our shaft. "

From June 18, 1937, double membership in the Hitler Youth and a Catholic youth group was prohibited. In March 1934, the Archbishop of Freiburg , Conrad Gröber , had spoken out in favor of "starting negotiations as soon as possible, with the aim of including the Catholic youth in the Hitler Youth."

Critics object that the Catholic Youth Movement put the focus of its reactions to the restrictions imposed by National Socialism on the cohesion of the Christian ingroup and an "internal emigration" against the regime without actively offering resistance or actively helping other persecuted people in the country come. Hans Maier said in a speech on the 50th anniversary of the Christophorus Verlag in 1985: “On the one hand, it was certainly a bit of contradiction and resistance when there was no picture of Hitler in a room, but a Madonna or a Dante verse. [...] On the other hand: the laboriously shielded, laboriously asserted space of private freedom, personal self-disposal - could it not also become a réduit of a powerless inwardness, a retreat in which the so-called good, morality, and decency were less preserved and claimed to be hidden in order not to have to compete 'outside' against the overwhelming world? ”And with Dietrich Bonhoeffer , Maier asked whether one had to scream for the Jews first before one could dare to sing chorale.

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Example: The Bund New Germany fought to keep it after 1933. However, the reprisals were very large and culminated in the evictions of the ND homes and house searches. Due to the Reich Concordat of July 1933, the ND was still doing well and, under the protective cloak of the Concordat, the resistance against the Nazis was even able to form. On July 23, 1935, Himmler issued an ordinance that largely paralyzed the youth associations. In mid-1937, all but ten federal districts were abolished. Finally, the entire federation was repealed on July 6, 1939. The ND retreated more and more into the underground and worked from there. Important resistance fighters from the ranks of the New Germany were: Willi Graf , the Lübeck priest Hermann Lange and Father Alfred Delp . But the later Archbishop of Paderborn, Johannes Joachim Cardinal Degenhardt , was arrested and interrogated several times in the infamous Dortmund stone guard for his commitment to ND and the Catholic Church .

present

Development after 1945

The Catholic youth formed anew after the Second World War. The partly re-founded, partly newly founded associations found a common platform and church-recognized form of organization as early as 1947 in the " Bund der Deutschen Katholischen Jugend " (BdkJ) as an umbrella organization. The member associations still see themselves as a "movement" in terms of content, in some cases even by name. The BdkJ was initially based in Haus Altenberg , and since 1954 the federal office has been in the Düsseldorf youth center .

The current member associations of the BDKJ

Among the current member associations of the BDKJ, the following associations in particular have roots in the Catholic youth movement:

Associations outside the BDKJ

In addition to the member associations of the BDKJ, there are also independent associations.

literature

  • Franz Henrich : The unions of the Catholic youth movement. Kösel, Munich 1968.
  • Hans Böhner, Arno Klönne (ed.): What do you know about the earth. Documents of the Catholic youth movement. Publishing house of the youth movement, Witzenhausen 1995. ISBN 3-88258-126-3 .
  • Gerold Schmitz: The Catholic Youth Movement. From the beginning to the new beginnings , Stein am Rhein 1997, Christiana, ISBN 978-3-7171-1034-7 .
  • Arno Klönne: Youth in the Third Reich. The Hitler Youth and their opponents. Cologne 3 2008, ISBN 978-3894382612 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barbara Schellenberger: Catholic Youth and Third Reich. A history of the Catholic Young Men Association 1933-1939 with special consideration of the Rhine Province. Matthias Grünewald Verlag Mainz 1975, p. 126ff.
  2. ↑ In: Die Wacht , July 1934, p. 4f, printed by: Barbara Schellenberger: Catholic Youth and Third Reich. A history of the Catholic Young Men Association 1933-1939 with special consideration of the Rhine Province. Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag Mainz 1975, p. 127, note 295.
  3. ^ Maria Margarete Linner: Song and singing in the denominational youth movement of the early 20th century. Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-631-59148-2 , p. 27.
  4. ↑ Thomas Labonté: Excursus: Was the hymn a book of resistance? In: ders .: The "Kirchenlied" collection (1938). Origin, corpus analysis, reception. Francke Verlag, Tübingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-7720-8251-1 , pp. 155-169, here pp. 168f.
  5. ↑ Unpublished speech at the publisher's anniversary, March 22, 1985 in Freiburg, quoted in: Thomas Labonté: Excursion: Was hymn a book of resistance? In: ders .: The "Kirchenlied" collection (1938). Origin, corpus analysis, reception. Francke Verlag, Tübingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-7720-8251-1 , p. 168.
  6. ↑ https://www.bdkj.de/der-bdkj/jugendverbaende/
  7. ↑ kjb.info: About us .