SSK Socialist Self-Help Cologne

Logo SSK Cologne

House of Dortmunder Selbsthilfe eV, Dortstfelder Hellweg 13 in Unterdorstfeld, 1977

The Socialist Self-Help Cologne , abbreviated SSK , was launched in 1969 as a student project “Social Pedagogical Special Measures Cologne” to offer the large number of homeless young people in Cologne a contact point and perspective. A comparable and also still existing association project was created as “socio-educational special measures berlin” (ssb eV) almost simultaneously in what was then West Berlin ( drugstore (Berlin) , Tommy-Weisbecker-Haus ).

From the "reform pedagogical" beginnings, several loosely connected groups, organized as registered associations, developed in predominantly squatted houses, which took radical approaches to combat abuses in homes, psychiatric hospitals and the housing market and financed their own maintenance through used furniture stores and furniture transports. In 1975 the name was changed to “Socialist Self-Help Cologne” while keeping the common abbreviation. After the psychiatry and home reforms brought about by the group and the rethinking from “demolition renovation” to “careful urban renewal” , the big issues were missing, so that this approach of a communal form of living and working has declined sharply.

Social policy issues

Home education

In 1972 the SSK opened the first "contact center for escaped foster children". Further improvised contact points and reception points in rented apartments or occupied houses followed. The unlimited admission of homeless young people and the refusal to take part in a return to the home education led to sometimes militant conflicts with the authorities. This only calmed down gradually, especially since the Cologne Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll initiated the association “Help the SSK” and gave the association a house that is now home to the SSK Ehrenfeld. Recognition and funding of contact centers followed. Since it was renamed “Socialist Self-Help Cologne” in 1975, the SSK has refrained from any public funding.

Psychiatry (regional associations)

In 1977 the SSK founded the “Complaints Center - Initiative against Crimes in State Hospitals”. The allegations of detaining patients almost indefinitely for financial reasons with questionable reports and of sedating them with medication were directed primarily against the regional associations in North Rhine-Westphalia , the main authorities for educational homes and psychiatric institutions. The allegations were based on reports from escaped and, in some cases, actively “liberated” inmates. It was especially the cases of apparently healthy people who had a long careers at home behind them that, as “psychiatry scandals”, brought about changes and ultimately a major psychiatric reform.

Demolition renovation

In addition to looking after homeless young people, the fight against the demolition of old building districts close to the city center and thus the preservation of affordable housing became a further component of the SSK groups' field of activity. The "Housing Defense Initiative", later the "Housing Rescue Society", was founded at Salierring . In the 1970s and 1980s, almost 100 houses in Cologne were temporarily occupied and some were later legalized; overall the speculative destruction of cheap housing stopped.

social care

Social welfare advice and help with the enforcement of claims in the social welfare offices are still a continuous offer of the SSK groups. It is about independent and self-determined life in your own home, regardless of age and health impairments.

Groups in Cologne

Socialist Self-Help Cologne eV (SSK-Salierring / SSK Ehrenfeld)
Socialist Self-Help Mülheim eV (SSM)

Groups outside of Cologne

Dortmund Self-Help eV (DSH)
Bielefelder Selbsthilfe eV (BIS)

Web links

literature

Gothe, Lothar; Kippe, Rainer, Aufbruch - 5 years of struggle of the SSK - From the project group for fled welfare pupils to youth support for self-help of impoverished young workers, Kiepenheuer & Witsch publishing house, Cologne 1975
Schölzel-Klamp, Martha; Köhler-Saretzki, Thomas, The blind eye of the state - The home campaign of 1969 and the demands of the former home children, p. 92ff, Bad Heilbrunn, 2010 ( ISBN 978-3-7815-1710-3 ), also googlebooks
R. Schmidt, A. Schulz, P. von Schwind (eds.): “Change the city, the country, the world! The 70s / 80s in Cologne - alternative, left, radical, autonomous ”. Cologne (Kiepenheuer & Witsch), 2015