Telephone counseling in Berlin
The telephone pastoral care Berlin is the oldest telephone pastoral care in Germany. The care for those tired of life began on Friday, October 5th, 1956 in West Berlin with the announcement of the private number 32 01 55 for Helene and Julius Wissinger, who are considered to be the first German telephone chaplains.
history
The telephone counseling Berlin was founded in 1956 by the couple Helene and Julius Wissinger in her private apartment in the Carmerstraße 2 in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg founded. The aim was to establish an emergency service modeled on the English Samaritans in West Berlin , which is considered the capital of suicides and which should be available around the clock ( 24/7 ) every weekday . The emergency service began on Friday, October 5th, 1956, the documented founding day of the Lukas Community (care for tired people) . Helene Wissinger (1892–1976) was a grammar school teacher specializing in mathematics and physics, Julius Wissinger (1884–1965) holds a doctorate in law, both pastors of the Order of St. Luke .
Klaus Thomas (1915–1992), often referred to in the literature as Spiritus Rector or founding father of telephone pastoral care, was the country pastor of the ecumenical Order of St. Luke at this time and on December 6, 1956, together with Julius Wissinger, he had on November 24, 1956 founded association Luke Community (tired of life care) filed for entry in the register. The tasks of the association included the procurement of office space, the solution of personnel issues (full-time and volunteer employees), financing and the development of guidelines for the training of employees and the conceptual work of caring for tired life . Klaus Thomas was the first chairman of the association, Julius Wissinger his deputy. After the Wissinger couple moved to a smaller apartment at Mommsenstrasse 53 at the end of October 1956, together with the care for those tired of life, the move to the first office of the care for tired of life in Jebensstrasse 1 (4 tr.) In Berlin-Charlottenburg 2 , immediately opposite , took place when the association was founded the train station Berlin Zoologischer Garten . And around 40 years later, the move finally took place in the current domicile of the telephone pastoral care Berlin at Nansenstrasse 27 (since 1995) in Berlin-Neukölln .
In the register of associations is tired of life care on November 24, 1956 first as a Luke Community (tired of life care) entered (VR 2595 B). On September 28, 1960 the association was renamed Telefonseelsorge Berlin (Tired of Life) , on November 8th 1973 to Telefonseelsorge Berlin (conflict counseling - suicide prevention) and on July 21st 2006 to Telefonseelsorge Berlin (conflict counseling - suicide prevention) e. V.
The first change of name of the conversation offer, documented in the association register, ended a smoldering irreconcilable dispute over the direction that led to the split in telephone counseling in 1960. While Klaus Thomas took the rigorous position that the offer of conversation must lead to therapeutic, primarily drug treatment - one can, yes one must stop (the suicides). - For the telephone counseling that was being established, anonymity and secrecy had absolute priority and became the credo of this institution, which almost characterizes the entire telephone counseling in Germany up to the present day.
The split led to the fact that there were now two emergency services in Berlin: on the one hand, the Order of St. Luke for the pastoral care of the sick and tired of life - a circle of friends with headquarters, which was founded by Thomas after he left the telephone counseling and entered in the Berlin register of associations with the statutes of April 19, 1961 in Berlin (VR 3167), on the other hand the telephone counseling in Berlin , which has been established for years and is also known beyond the Berlin state borders .
On July 1, 1997, the national telephone numbers 0800-1110111 (ev.) And 0800-1110222 (cath.) Were introduced for telephone counseling, sponsored by Deutsche Telekom . Since then, calls to the telephone counseling for those seeking help have been free of charge. In addition, since August 6, 2008, the telephone counseling service can be reached free of charge on the Europe-wide number 116123 for telephone support services ("Emotional Support"). With the changeover to the toll-free numbers, the concern was also realized that calls to telephone counseling remain undocumented in the caller's connection records and thus anonymity is preserved there too.
In 2006 the anniversary "50 years of telephone counseling in Germany" was celebrated with a symposium in Berlin's Urania . The celebrations for the 60th birthday of German telephone counseling took place in 2016.
The name Telefonseelsorge has been protected as a word mark since March 26, 1999 with the registration number 39918058 at the German Patent and Trademark Office in Group 45 (“Offer of willingness to talk and advice on life problems, primarily by telephone”) .
Organization and financing
The managing director of Telefonseelsorge Berlin was from 1982 to 2009 the well-known non-fiction author Jürgen Hesse , his successor the former Green politician and PR expert Heinz-Anselm Lange. In 2017, the graduate psychologist and health scientist Sabine Stührmann took over the management, on January 1, 2020 the humanities scholar, Master of Business Administration and international education expert Kerstin Beate Großmann.
The telephone counseling service in Berlin (eV) is free for those seeking help, but not free of charge. According to the 2015/2016 annual report, it caused expenses of 344,200 euros in this period alone. These expenses have to be financed with well over 50 percent from donations , with which this offer of conversation, which is indispensable for many people in a life crisis, stands or falls.
The situation is different with the overwhelming number of telephone counseling centers, which are mainly financed from the church coffers. For example, the church telephone counseling service in Berlin , which was founded in the former East Berlin , is supported by several religious communities, which also finance this position.
In July 2007 the Stiftung Telefonseelsorge Berlin was founded with the aim of securing the work of the Telefonseelsorge Berlin in the long term by improving its level of awareness and developing new groups of supporters for this discussion offer.
The telephone counseling Berlin is a member of the umbrella organization of Telefonseelsorge Germany and DPWV ( The welfare organization ).
Offers for those seeking help
Well over 100 telephone counselors are currently working around the clock on up to three telephones. These volunteers are trained and trained by a team of three full-time employees and, above all, supervised within the framework of the supervision that is mandatory for the volunteers . In 50 years the telephone counseling in Berlin has received over 950,000 calls from people looking for help. Personal advice for those looking for help, which was provided for many decades by the full-time psychosocial team of the telephone counseling in Berlin , is no longer offered there. To this end, those looking for help now turn to the so-called open doors under the broad umbrella of telephone counseling , for example to the life counseling in the Berlin Cathedral , which is also a possible substitute for personal counseling by the telephone pastoral care Berlin .
Thank you concert
The cultural highlight in the calendar of the telephone counseling in Berlin is the “thank you concert”, which has been receiving considerable feedback from volunteers and donors for years and which takes place regularly in the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche . In 2018 as the 23rd thank you concert. This always moving evening traditionally ends with the poem The moon has risen ( Matthias Claudius ), sung by the around 500 people present , the last three lines of which read: “Spare us, God! with punishments / And let us sleep peacefully! / And our sick neighbor too! "
Awards
- 1996: Hans Rost Prize for outstanding achievements in the field of practical suicide prevention.
Individual evidence
- ^ Franz-Josef Hücker: Landmarks in the history of telephone counseling. In memoriam Helene and Julius Wissinger . In: Suizidprophylaxe - Theory and Practice No. 173, Heft 2, 2018, 45th year (S. Roderer Verlag Regensburg), pp. 60–63.
- ^ Franz-Josef Hücker: Voluntary office in crisis service - the telephone counseling . In: Paths to People. Journal for pastoral care and counseling, healing and social action, 63rd year, issue 2, March / April 2011 (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), pp. 191–201.
- ↑ DPMA register information on the protection of the word mark TELEFONSEELSORGE Accessed on August 16, 2020
- ^ Telefonseelsorge Berlin e. V .: Annual report 2017, The full-time team , p. 4 Retrieved on August 16, 2020
- ^ Telefonseelsorge Berlin e. V .: Team Accessed on August 16, 2020
- ^ Telefonseelsorge Berlin e. V .: Annual Report 2015/2016, Finances, p. 15 Retrieved on August 16, 2020
- ↑ Conversation offer from Telefonseelsorge Berlin hangs on the donation drip. Accessed on 16 August 2020
- ↑ Website of the Church Counseling Service in Berlin.Retrieved August 16, 2020
- ^ Telefonseelsorge Berlin e. V .: Annual Report 2015/2016, Our Foundation, p. 14 Retrieved on August 16, 2020