Kibbo Kift

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The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift was a British organization founded by John Hargrave in 1920 .

As a split from the Boy Scout Movement , Kibbo Kift was strongly oriented towards the Woodcraft Movement of Ernest Thompson Seton . In the 1930s , Kibbo Kift changed from an educational association to a political movement that advocated social credit .

Mediated by the new scouts , Kibbo Kift had a lasting influence on the German scout movement to this day.

Kibbo Kift as a community of experiences

Ceremony during the Allthings by Kibbo Kift (1927).

John Hargrave was expelled in 1920 by Robert Baden-Powell from the British scout movement, in which he had previously been commissioner for rangers and tent camps . The reason for this was his protest against the increasing militarization of scouting work after the end of the First World War . With some like-minded pacifist scout leaders, he founded a very different alternative movement.

Kibbo Kift (Old-Kentish dialect for "proof of great strength"), which was mainly based on the Woodcraft movement of Ernest Thompson Seton , was not a youth association, but encompassed all ages and was open to both sexes. It saw the achievement of world peace and the renewal of urban people through life in nature as essential goals .

Ideally, Kibbo Kift was strongly influenced by Indian, Anglo-Saxon and old Nordic ideals. The members of the organization wore Anglo-Saxon costumes they had made themselves and were given nicknames in the Indian style. They were organized into clans and tribes . All activities such as camps and hiking were seen as spiritual experiences . Great emphasis was placed on common rituals, which included the annual Althing .

Although Kibbo Kift never had more than a few hundred members, it was well known in the UK. Numerous celebrities were among those around him, including the writers Rabindranath Tagore , HG Wells and DH Lawrence . The refined design of various utensils made by the members themselves also contributed to the awareness of the organization.

John Hargrave led Kibbo Kift autocratically , with the result that as early as 1924 some groups that were demanding a democratic style of leadership split off from the movement. Under the name The Woodcraft Folk it exists the idea of the union movement closely linked and the International Falcon Movement ( International Falcon Movement ) connected grouping today, while The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift dissolved 1,951th

Turning to politics

In the second half of the 1920s, Hargrave became increasingly concerned with social credit , a radical economic theory by Clifford Hugh Douglas . 1931 is changed Kibbo Kift from the Youth League in the propaganda organization a political movement, focusing its activities on the industrial cities of England. The Anglo-Saxon costumes were replaced by green uniform shirts. Tent camps and hikes were replaced by propaganda marches. In 1932 , Kibbo changed Kift to The Green Shirt Movement for Social Credit before the definitive name Social Credit Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was found.

The party was not granted any great successes, the uniform ban in Great Britain issued in 1937 severely restricted its publicity, failures in several elections were the direct result. In 1951 the party disbanded.

Influences on the German scout movement

John Hargrave published his ideas in several books, which were translated into German in the early 1920s and published by the “White Knight” publishing house , which was affiliated with the Bund Deutscher Neupfadfinder (BDN).

Based on these books, the principle of tribal education was developed and tested in the BDN. It replaced the previous structure of the Boy Scout groups , which was strongly oriented towards English Scoutism , with their uniform military designations and the associated educational model. In place of the troop were the clans , from the corps were tribes. More important, however, was the emphasis on the mutual upbringing of young people in their groups, over which adults had little influence. With the tribal education also was bearing anchored as a place of education in the scouting movement.

The strong design of the " everyday life of scouts" with rituals can also be partly attributed to Kibbo Kift .

literature

Primary literature

  • John Hargrave: Kibbo Kift: The Forest Kinship . Deutscher Spurbuchverlag, Baunach 1993. ISBN 3-88778-185-6 . [Reprint]
  • John Hargrave: The Wigwam Book . Deutscher Spurbuchverlag, Baunach 1993. ISBN 3-88778-186-4 . [Reprint]

Secondary literature

  • Cathy Ross and Oliver Bennett: Designing Utopia: John Hargrave and the Kibbo Kift , Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2015, ISBN 978-1-781-30-040-4 .
  • Annebella Pollen: The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians , Donlon Books, 2015, ISBN 978-0-9576095-1-8 .

Web links