Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft der Kinderfreunde

The Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft der Kinderfreunde (RAG) was a division within the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) during the Weimar Republic .

history

The working group was founded in Berlin in 1923 and banned after the takeover in 1933. Its first chairman was Kurt Löwenstein until the ban . The child friends were part of the " social democratic family" such. B. the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO) and the women's organization. Despite the freedom of choice granted by the Social Democratic Party in its own affairs, the RAG was a dependent party division.

The management of RAG was taken over by Hans Weinberger , who headed sales for the weekly magazine Blick in die Zeit after the ban . The party-internal responsibility was incumbent from 1923 to 1928 the education officer of the SPD. The functionaries of the children's friends organization had to be members of the SPD or the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ), the members of the educational associations were not allowed to belong to any opposing party. The organization of the Kinderfreunde was divided into:

Local organization
District organization and
Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft der Kinderfreunde.

The organizational structure was formally based on the cooperation of the Kinderfreunde with other organizations of the labor movement in the form of a working group. The SPD, SAJ, the General German Trade Union Federation and the Workers' Welfare Association should be represented on all organizational levels on the executive boards. Like the SAJ, the Kinderfreunde took up the ideas and forms of the Red Falcons from Austria around 1926 and formed age-appropriate groups of falcons.

In 1927, the then journalist Andreas Gayk from Kiel organized a children's republic on the municipal property Gut Seekamp on the west bank of the Kiel Fjord , in which around 2,000 children took part. The idea came from RAG. A documentary about the Red Children's Republic was published in 1929.

Even before the organization was banned in 1933, the work of the Kinderfreunde organization in Bavaria, for example , was massively restricted in its work from 1930 onwards and in fact prohibited. Among other things, the child friends were accused of politicizing school-age children ( socialism upbringing , criticism of school, church and parental home) and coeducational upbringing (especially in the tent camps). In Bavaria, especially in the Palatinate, the organization could only continue to work under the umbrella of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt, but it had to forego political orientation such as flags, group names, public parades, and support for party events.

After the ban in 1933, leading functionaries went into exile . After the Second World War , the former children's friends and the former members of the Socialist Workers' Youth succeeded in becoming active again in the western occupation zones and West Berlin from 1946 onwards and founding a joint association called Socialist Youth of Germany - Die Falken .

Known members

literature

Archive of the workers 'youth movement (ed.): Pictures of friendship - photos from the history of the workers' youth . VOTUM Verlag Münster 1988, ISBN 3-926549-07-6
Heinrich Eppe: data chronicle of the child friends movement in Germany 1919-1939 . 2., ext. Edition. Archive of the Workers' Youth Movement, Oer-Erkenschwick 2000, ISBN 3-926734-52-3 .
Roland Gröschel (Ed.): On the way to a socialist upbringing - contributions to the prehistory and early history of the social democratic "child friends" in the Weimar Republic . Klartext Verlag, Essen 2006, ISBN 3-89861-650-9 .
Ida Hinz: The Seekamp Children's Republic. In: Jürgen Jensen and Karl Rickers (eds.): Andreas Gayk and his time. 1893-1954. Memories of the Lord Mayor of Kiel. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1974, pp. 151–152.
Children of solidarity. The socialist pedagogy of the “child friends” in the Weimar Republic . Library for Research on Educational History , Berlin 2006.
Christoph Spehr : Destroyed progress. The Bavarian Child Friends Movement - a social democratic lesson . Archives of the Workers' Youth Movement, Oer-Erkenschwick 1991, ISBN 3-926734-11-6 .