Round table home education in the 50s and 60s

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The round table for home education in the 1950s and 1960s (abbreviation RTH ) was set up by the German Federal Government by resolution of the German Bundestag on November 26, 2008 .

Institution and members

The association of former children in care in Germany was founded in 2004 and addressed the petitions committee of the German Bundestag . The RTH was constituted on February 17, 2009 under the chairmanship of Bundestag Vice-President a. D. Antje Vollmer . He dealt extensively with the situation of children and adolescents who were housed in a home in their childhood or youth. He concluded his work with the handing over of his recommendations, decided by consensus, to the Federal President on January 19, 2011.

Members of the round table included representatives of former children in care, representatives of the Bundestag and the federal government, the (old) federal states, the youth welfare offices and youth court assistance, the Catholic and Protestant Church, the welfare associations and providers of educational aid, the German Association for Public and Private Welfare, of the German Institute for Youth Welfare and Family Law, as well as representatives of science.

Subject of the Round Table Home Education (RTH)

The RTH was initiated by nine petitions from those affected and other supporters and a subsequent petitions committee recommendation. The RTH was created as an act of sovereignty under private law and politically . He was able to start his work on February 17, 2009 in a subordination relationship to the Bundestag (subordination relationship) under the patronage of Norbert Lammert (President of the Bundestag). The subject was the problems of home education in the past decades. It was discussed that in the 1950s and 1960s alone around 350,000 children and adolescents were placed in welfare education and a further 500,000 in children's homes and youth institutions, most of which were church-sponsored. Many of them were humiliated, ill-treated and forced to work. Advice should be given about the possibilities of rehabilitation, psychological help and compensation for the victims. Children in care have often experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence at an early age and for longer periods, which was caused by people in their close personal environment and by caregivers. Such traumatic experiences can lead to traumatic stress reactions and post-traumatic stress disorders. If these persist for a long time, personality changes can occur, which can manifest themselves in various social, psychosomatic and psychiatric abnormalities. Extreme stress can also result in permanent personality changes . Another illness is hospitalism .

Involved

Representatives of those affected, sponsors, charities, churches, federal and state governments as well as science are involved in the committee.

  • Chair of the round table:
    • Antje Vollmer , former Vice President of the German Bundestag D.
  • Representation of former children in care:
    • Sonja Djurovic
    • Eleonore Fleth
    • Hans-Siegfried Wiegand

Delegitimation and marginalization of victim representatives

The Association of Former Children in Care , founded on October 14, 2004 in Idstein , sent three members from its ranks - subject to a later election and democratic legitimation - to the 22-person body, including the chairman. Despite this reservation, the three members were assured by the leadership of the round table that they could remain on the committee. At its meeting on May 30, 2009, the association decided to send three new representatives from its ranks and also wanted to try to get its own legal advice (lawyer Gerrit Wilmans and lawyer Michael Witti) at the table. On the other hand, the RTH already passed the resolution in April 2009 with three abstentions: "The round table decides that no legal interest representatives - regardless of which side - should participate at the round table." The association countered that the majority also at the round table represented churches and ministries with a total of six fully qualified lawyers would sit on the committee. The subject of dispute was also the minutes of the meeting, which the victim representatives should not forward to the association or to a legal advisor at the request of the round table.

The association of former children in care informed the public that it "definitely doesn't need any representatives who get involved in every lie and are just good!" The association also sued the Berlin Court of Appeal to “determine the right of the association to determine its representatives at the round table and not have it dictated by Ms. Vollmer.” On August 13, 2009, the judge decided that the three previous representatives should continue to the Negotiations should take part in order not to endanger the constructive course. The three representatives left the association and continued to take part in the round table. There was no longer any cooperation with the "Association of Former Children in Care".

Work of the round table

Expertise

A total of three expert reports were initiated by the round table and written by independent persons. They were working materials for the round table and reflected the current knowledge and perspectives of the authors.

  • Silke Birgitta Gahleitner : Expertise on legal questions of home education [...]. What helps former home children in coping with their complex trauma? Georg-August-Universität Göttingen from May 31, 2010 ( online ; PDF; 720 kB, accessed: January 26, 2019).
  • Dietmar von der Pfordten: Legal questions of home education in the 50s and 60s . Expert opinion on behalf of the “Round Table Home Education”, University of Göttingen, 2010 ( online ; PDF; 670 kB, accessed: January 26, 2019).
  • Carola Kuhlmann: Expertise for the round table […]. Upbringing ideas in home education of the 50s and 60s. Standards for appropriate parenting behavior and for limits of educational and institutional violence exercised. , Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 2010 ( online ; PDF; 266 kB, accessed: January 26, 2019).

Final report

In December 2010, the RTH presented its final report.pdf final report at a press conference. It shows that in the home upbringing of the early Federal Republic of Germany, the rights of the children in the home were massively violated by corporal punishment, sexual violence, religious coercion, the use of drugs and drug trials, compulsory work as well as missing or inadequate educational and professional support. Even according to the legal situation at the time and its interpretation, this was not compatible with the law or with educational convictions. Parents, guardians and carers, youth authorities, courts, the communal and church supporters of the home and the home staff and finally the silent public are named as responsible for the suffering inflicted on the home children.

The RTH demanded that the children in the home be rehabilitated by the current representatives of the responsible institutions at the time and those who were politically responsible at the time recognizing the injustice and asking for forgiveness; He also calls for financial measures in favor of individual victims, with which help to cope with trauma can be financed and financial disadvantages, for example in the case of retirement, can be compensated. He also works to ensure that the scientific processing and documentation of the grievances in home education are financially supported. A fund for former children in the home should be set up, which is to be endowed with a total of 120 million euros from the public purse and the home sponsors. Finally, organizational and legislative initiatives would have to be taken in order to better guarantee the rights of today's children in care. The final report closes with an appeal from the chairperson to the German Bundestag and the state parliaments to implement the required measures quickly.

On December 13th, the final report of the RTH was presented to the public by the “Free Initiative of Former Home Children” during an additional press conference.

Round table recommendations

The recommendations of the round table encompass both immaterial and material forms of dealing with restitution that has to be paid voluntarily . Through the establishment of a nationwide fund for home education, which is jointly supported by the federal government, West German federal states, the two large Christian churches and has no legal claim, should alleviate the suffering and injustice of the time. The aim of the fund is to enable those affected to receive help in overcoming the consequences of the time they were housed in a home between 1949 and 1975, which can still be proven today.

Reactions

The former children in the nursing home reacted indignantly to the details of the report that had become known and to the "unified" voting result. In the press conference it was claimed that:

  • the fund proposed in the final report (to be set up by the federal government, the federal states and the two large churches) with 120 million euros is by no means sufficient - purely arithmetically this results in a maximum of 1,000 to 4,000 euros per person;
  • "Compensation" was linked to very detailed statements on the part of the former children in the home;
  • the former children in the home were not followed in large parts of their descriptions - although the report says that the descriptions of the former are credible;
  • former home children with disabilities were not even considered;
  • former home children from the ex-GDR were also neglected;
  • the time window (1950s and 1960s) is clearly too small;
  • Great pressure was exerted on the children’s representatives in the vote in order to create a unanimous agreement. VEH representatives felt this was an outrageous process and certainly not worthy of a democracy.

The social pedagogue Manfred Kappeler also found this final report extremely worthy of criticism and only a few days after it appeared it went public with sharp criticism.

“They went to this body with confidence in the unreserved clarification of the home upbringing and its consequences for the children and adolescents who were handed over to them and with the expectation of a rehabilitation and compensation that would do them justice and had to experience that most of the other members were condescending and how "Clients" were treated whose substantive concerns were not accepted. They were not heard, but heard like witnesses before a committee of inquiry. All six alumni at the RTH, the three members and their three representatives (those with a mere right to be present, i.e. without the right to speak and vote when the full members were present - they were only allowed to speak and vote in the last meeting), have had this humiliating experience for me, which reminded her of her childhood in the homes, reported repeatedly. "

Results and criticism

On July 7, 2011, the German Bundestag decided to largely adopt the recommendations of the RTH. The Federal Government was requested, in coordination with the states and churches concerned, to promptly present an appropriate implementation of the RTH's proposed solutions, to propose a suitable legal form for the implementation of the proposals, and to allow access to files and documents in child and youth welfare and the guardianship system and to present a progress report in June 2013 to effectively help victims of injustice and ill-treatment in home care. “The Bundestag and the federal government did not seek to set up a national compensation fund.” (Quote from a letter from Federal Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen on December 15, 2008). The so-called rehabilitation or compensation took place exclusively in the form of benefits in kind, with the victims initially having to pay in advance. The investigation, rejected by Ms. Antje Vollmer, into the implementation of medication tests on former children in a home, which constitute the criminal offense of (serious) bodily harm, has meanwhile been taken up by Sylvia Wagner (University of Duisburg). The first results of these human experiments could be found in 2016 under the title: 'A suppressed and repressed chapter in home history. Drug studies on children in homes are presented in the journal 'Sozial.Geschichte Online' (issue 19, pages 61–113).

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Decision
  2. ^ German Bundestag. Decision recommendation of the Petitions Committee. Bundestag printed matter 16/11102 of November 27, 2008 (accessed on May 1, 2019).
  3. ↑ Detlef Grumbach: If you don't feel, you'll come to the home! Late help for West German children in homes. In: Deutschlandfunk. January 22, 2009. Retrieved January 25, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Round table "Home Education in the 50s and 60s". In: Fund home education. Retrieved August 29, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Manfred Kappeler: Injustice and Suffering - Rehabilitation and Compensation? The final report of the home education round table .
  6. ↑ Heinz Duthel: Tormented, Abused and Destroyed! 10 years in the children's home, reform home, educator, pastor, youth welfare office: And I was always to blame! Books on Demand, 2014, ISBN 978-3-7357-8708-8 , pp. 205 .
  7. ↑ FINAL REPORT (PDF) fonds-heimerendung.de. Retrieved October 13, 2019.
  8. ↑ M. Kappeler: Injustice and Suffering - Rehabilitation and Compensation? The final report of the home education round table (PDF).
  9. ↑ M. Kappeler: Injustice and Suffering - Rehabilitation and Compensation? The final report of the home education round table (PDF), p. 5.
  10. ↑ Application to help victims of injustice and abuse effectively in home education (PDF) stiftung-anzeichnung-und-hilfe.de. June 8, 2011. Retrieved October 13, 2019.
  11. ↑ Manfred Kappeler: The struggle of former home children for the recognition of the injustice committed to them . In: contradictions. Journal of socialist politics in the education, health and social sectors . No. 111 . KleineVerlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-937461-62-5 , pp. 93 .
  12. ↑ The Hans Ehrenberg Prize, awarded to Ms. Antje Vollmer for the desired result of the RTH (in 2011), was paid out in cash in the amount of 5,000 EUR.
  13. ^ Wagner, Sylvia: A suppressed and repressed chapter of home history: drug studies on home children. University of Duisburg-Essen , September 15, 2016, accessed on August 29, 2020 .