Young Congregation (Protestant)

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Junge Gemeinde ( JG ) is one of several different names for Protestant youth within a church community.

Originally the term Young Community referred to the youth group of a parish within the Protestant churches in the GDR . This name was retained after the reunification and peaceful revolution in the GDR in 1990.

history

The young congregations tried to be consciously young Christian congregations within the church congregations. They were particularly persecuted by the SED and the state it ruled in the 1950s . In the spring of 1953, the Young Community was openly attacked and heavily attacked as the “illegal organization Young Community”. Erich Honecker , the first secretary of the FDJ at the time , was charged with “cleaning up” the FDJ from supporters of the Junge Gemeinde . The FDJ central organ Junge Welt was instructed to discredit the work of the Junge Gemeinde with inflammatory articles. This was intended to prepare a ban.

About 3000 students who professed to join the Junge Gemeinde and did not sign a resignation letter were expelled from high schools . At the end of 1952, conference venues for Protestant youth work, such as Mansfeld Castle, were expropriated and handed over to the FDJ . There were arrests of youth and student pastors. As part of these actions, the Evangelical Youth Welfare Office in Leipzig was searched as a supposed "agent center" by security organs in April 1953.

With the announcement of the "New Course" by the government of the GDR on June 11, 1953, the measures against the Young Community and its members were discontinued, youth and student pastors who had been imprisoned in the meantime were released from prison and the buildings returned. Students who had been expelled from high school were readmitted and admitted to high school.

On August 18, 1961, five days after the construction of the Berlin Wall began , ten members of the Junge Gemeinde Berlin-Schmöckwitz were arrested on board the ship Seebad Binz , as they demanded to continue their journey towards Bornholm in Denmark despite bad weather . Eight of the juveniles received sentences of between three months and two years. Two young people were sentenced as so-called "ringleaders" to eight years' imprisonment each. They were in October 1963 by the Federal Republic of Germany ransomed .

In the GDR, the young parishes offered a space beyond their parish, biblical orientation, to express their own thoughts, which were independent of state thought regulations and censorship . They were the only youth movement that was independent from the state and thus became a reservoir for young people critical of the system. This is one of the reasons why they were watched suspiciously by the state organs of the GDR until the end and are considered to have helped prepare the peaceful revolution.

literature

  • Christine Koch: The young community of the Protestant regional churches in Saxony and Thuringia 1945–1953: presented with special consideration of the conflict between the state and church youth work. Roderer, Regensburg 2000 (= theory and research; Volume 9, contemporary history), also: Dissertation, University of Mannheim, 1999, ISBN 3-89783-129-5
  • Ellen Ueberschär: Young Community in Conflict: Protestant Youth Work in the Soviet Zone and GDR 1945-1961. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2003 (= Denomination and Society, Volume 27), plus short version of: Dissertation, University of Marburg, 2001, ISBN 3-17-017898-9
  • Peter Helmberger (2008): Blue Shirt and Ball Cross. Conflicts between the SED and the Christian churches over young people in the Soviet occupation zone / GDR. Dissertation. Forum German History Vol. 16. Meidenbauer, M Press

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Day X - June 17, 1953. The "Inner State Foundation" of the GDR as a result of the crisis in 1952/54. P. 318
  2. ^ The Young Community on  jugendopposition.de  ( Federal Center for Civic Education  /  Robert Havemann Society  eV), viewed on March 8, 2017.
  3. ↑ Day X - June 17, 1953. The "Inner State Foundation" of the GDR as a result of the crisis in 1952/54. P. 319
  4. ^ Armin Görtz: "Agent Wallmann" and his son, in DNN of March 26, 2013, p. 3
  5. ↑ Hellmuth Henneberg : Mutiny off Rügen - What happened on the 'Seebad Binz'? Hinstorff Verlag , Rostock 2002, ISBN 3356009524
  6. ↑ The Young Community (JG) on  jugendopposition.de  ( Federal Center for Civic Education  /  Robert Havemann Society  eV), viewed on March 8, 2017.