Contracting

This article deals with the out-of-home care of children; an article on hiring out servants (servants and maids) is missing.

Verdingbub is a redirect to this article. For the film of the same name see Der Verdingbub .

In recent Swiss history, contracting refers to the placement of children outside the home for the purpose of living and bringing up them. Often the children (in fact already disenfranchised by the authorities) were given to farmers, who mostly exploited, abused and abused them as cheap labor.

Similarly, in Germany from the 19th century to around 1921, mountain farmer children , the so-called Swabian children from Vorarlberg , Tyrol , South Tyrol and Switzerland , who traveled through the Alps to the children's markets mainly in Upper Swabia every spring , were placed in child labor . In Sweden, too, “poor people's children” were hired out; Astrid Lindgren set a literary monument to them in her story Sonnenau .

history

Contract children, mostly orphans and children of divorce , were given away by their parents from 1800 to the 1960s or taken away from their parents by the authorities and offered for sale to interested parties. Until the early 20th century, children were often on a Verdingmarkt auctioned. The family that asked the least amount of board received the encouragement. Those affected describe that they were "scanned like cattle" in such markets. In other communities they were allotted to wealthier families by drawing lots. Released families were forced to take in such children, even if they actually didn't want any.

They were mostly used on farms. There they were often treated like slaves or serfs and used for forced labor without wages or pocket money. According to eye-witness reports from contract children, they were often exploited, humiliated or even raped. Some were killed. This practice was denounced in literary terms early on by writers, for example by Jeremias Gotthelf in his novel Bauernspiegel or by Jonas Breitenstein in the story The poor Annegreteli and his child .

Ill-treatment was very rarely prosecuted. If such were officially determined, the right to acquire new contract children was withdrawn from the foster parents for at least five years.

In addition to the persecution of the Yeniche by the organization Kinder der Landstrasse , whose children were often hired by various government offices and institutions (including private law), the hiring is one of the darkest chapters in recent Swiss history. It was only in the last few years that the media took up this issue more intensively after it had been suppressed for a long time.

The exact number of contract children is unknown. According to estimates, there are “hundreds of thousands” who were hired until the 1960s. Before the First World War , according to the Bernese historian Marco Leuenberger, around 10 percent of all children in the canton of Bern were hired out. In 1910, around 4 percent of all Swiss children under the age of 14 are said to have been hired out; of 1.17 million children, this is 47,000.

Todays situation

Today in Switzerland there is probably a five-digit number of former contract children who often have psychological problems. They are expecting a public apology and financial compensation from the government today. On April 12, 2013, the Swiss Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga publicly asked the former contract children on behalf of the Swiss government to apologize for the human injustice they had committed and described the previous treatment of the contract children as a violation of human dignity that could no longer be made good. In 2013 , the Guido Fluri Foundation opened the first national memorial for home and contract children in Mümliswil ( Canton Solothurn ) .

The situation of contract children was presented in the 2005 expert report on foster children in Switzerland on behalf of the Federal Office of Justice . The Federal Council proposed a total revision of the Foster Children Ordinance, but stopped further work in 2011.

The number of foster children today is not statistically recorded and is estimated at around 15,000. Critics complain that the placement of foster children through private parties is partly profit-oriented and not regulated by the state. However, if the placement happens at the request of the parents, this new form is not to be compared with the old hiring, but rather with a family after-school care center.

After any efforts by the state have been made to compensate, launched in April 2014, the wiedergutmachungsinitiative . This calls for the establishment of a fund in the amount of 500 million Swiss francs for the benefit of the victims. As an indirect alternative to the initiative, the Federal Council proposed in June 2015 that 300 million Swiss francs be made available for compensation. On April 27, 2016, the Swiss National Council approved this proposal, which grants the surviving victims of child forced labor a right to compensation of between CHF 20,000 and CHF 25,000. On September 15, 2016, the Council of States also approved this proposal.

Movies

• Swabian Children , 2003.
• Lotty Wohlwend , Renato Müller: Turi , a film about Arthur Honegger. Switzerland 2004.
• Markus Imboden : The contracting boy . Director: Markus Imboden, 2011.

Exhibitions

• Contract children speeches / Enfances volées. Foreign placements then and now (German and French). Tour through Switzerland since 2009, so far 7 stations.
• Orphans - contract children in Switzerland. From Walter Emmisberger

literature

• Nils Adolph: As if it weren't part of me - forgotten recognition of foreign placements in rural areas , Kovač, Hamburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-8300-8616-1 (= Socialia , Volume 140, dissertation Uni Basel 2015).
• Elmar Bereuter : The Swabian children. The story of the Kaspanaze. Novel. 9th edition, Herbig, Munich 2004, ISBN 978-3-7766-2304-8 (as paperback: 10th edition, Piper-TB 4066, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-492-24066-6 ).
• Daniela Freisler-Mühlemann: Contract children. A life in search of normalcy. Hep, Bern 2011, ISBN 978-3-03905-735-1 . (At the same time dissertation at the University of Zurich in 2009.)
• Manfred Hertzog: Dragonflies and their habitats in Thurgau. Self-published by Hertzog, Scherzingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-033-02736-7 .
• Arthur Honegger : The finishers. New edition, Huber, Frauenfeld / Stuttgart / Vienna 2004 (first edition Zurich 1974), ISBN 978-3-7193-1354-8 . (With an appendix: If I can, I'll write against injustice , Arthur Honegger in conversation with Charles Linsmayer .)
• Otto Hostetter, Dominique Strebel: They even took their savings book from them . In: The Swiss Observer . No. 21, Zurich October 14, 2011, ISSN  1661-7444 , pp. 28-36.
• Marco Leuenberger, Lea Mani, Simone Rudin, Loretta Seglias: “The authority decides” - for the good of the child? Foreign placed children in the canton of Bern 1912–1978. here + now, Publishing House for Culture and History , Baden AG 2011, ISBN 978-3-03919-203-8 .
• Marco Leuenberger, Loretta Seglias (Ed.): Provided and forgotten. Former contract children tell. Rotpunkt, Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3-85869-382-2 .
• Suzann-Viola Renninger: Dossier: given away, taken away: contract children. In: Schweizer Monatshefte , No. 968, Zurich March / April 2009, ISSN  0036-7400 , pp. 18–40.
• Markus Lischer: Contracting. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Josef Martin Schibli : Carnival child. OSL, Schwaderloch 2013–2014.
• Franz Eugen Schlachter : Resli, the goods boy , story of a Bernese boy. (Reslis retold his own messages, story of a Bernese boy from Bern Verdingkindes Andreas Balli.) Self-published by Freie Brüdergemeinde, Albstadt 2004 ( PDF, 1 MB, 50 pages ) / Verlag der Brosamen, Biel 1891), St. Johannis-Druckerei, Lahr 1936 (2 . Edition 1949).
• Loretta Seglias, Marco Leuenberger, Thomas Huonker ; Association “Verdingkinder sucht seine Spur” (Ed.): Report on the conference of former contracted children, children in care and foster children on November 28, 2004 in Glattbrugg near Zurich Wildgans, Zurich 2005, ISBN 978-3-9523118-0-6 .
• Dora Stettler: I silently accused the world. As a “foster child” in the Emmental. With an afterword by Jacqueline Fehr . Limmat, Zurich 2004, ISBN 978-3-85791-467-6 .
• Rosalia Wenger : Rosalia G .: One life . 15th edition, Zytglogge, Gümligen 1989 (first edition 1978), ISBN 3-7296-0081-8 .
• Lotti Wohlwend, Arthur Honegger: Stolen Souls. Contract children in Switzerland. 4th edition. Huber, Frauenfeld 2006 (first edition 2004), ISBN 978-3-7193-1365-4 . (Also published by Weltbild-Verlag .
• Kathrin Barbara Zatti: Foster children in Switzerland - analysis, quality development and professionalization . (PDF; 1 MB; 70 pages) Expert report on behalf of the Federal Office of Justice, June 2005.
• Roland M. Begert : Foreign for many years. Biographical novel. Edition Liebefeld, Liebefeld 2013 4th edition, ISBN 978-3-9523510-1-7 .

See also

• Administrative care
• Children of the country road
• Swabian children

Web links

• Club placed outside the box
• Association network contracted
• Exhibition Enfances volées / Verdingkinder talk
• Meta Doubt: Unloved Nobody . In: Life & Belief , No. 47, November 20, 2003.
• History of the contract children. SF Schweiz aktuell, June 29, 2006, 7:14 am
• Inventory: Contract children, Swabians, Spazzacamini and other forms of external placement and child labor in Switzerland in the 19th and 20th centuries: Documentation in the finding aids of the Swiss Social Archives

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Charlotte Theile Now you are with us in Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 10, 2016 p. 8
2. ↑ Marco Finsterwald: Contract children. Child removal by the Bern Youth Welfare Office 1945–1960 ( memento from April 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) and swissinfo.ch: Bern apologizes to contract children.
3. ↑ ^{a b} The contracting boy
4. ↑ tagblatt.ch
5. ↑ Contract children: Sommaruga apologizes. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, April 12, 2013, accessed on April 12, 2013 . 
6. ^ Report on the Swiss government's apology on tagesschau.de, accessed on April 12, 2013 ( Memento from April 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
7. ^ First national memorial for home and contract children. NZZ, June 2013.
8. ↑ Mümliswil becomes the first national memorial. Radio SRF, May 2013.
9. ^ Foster children in Switzerland - analysis, quality development and professionalization. (PDF; 1 MB)
10. ↑ bj.admin.ch ( Memento from March 6, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
11. ↑ kath.ch
12. ↑ kinderohnerechte.ch ( Memento of the original from December 27, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
13. ↑ Contracted and suppressed. Up until 40 years ago, children were abused as work slaves in Switzerland . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 19, 2009, p. 9
14. ↑ Counter -proposal to the reparation initiative in consultation . SRF, June 24, 2015.
15. ↑ Decision in the Swiss Parliament - "contract children" receive compensation . at tagesschau.de
16. ↑ A small gesture for former contract children In: Migros magazine from January 3, 2017
17. ↑ Pictures from the exhibition
18. ↑ A tightrope walk between life and death: The eventful life of Manfred Hertzog - Verdingkind, Foreign Legionnaire, Insect Expert , NZZ , December 13, 2010.
19. ↑ New book to shed light on the fate of Bern contract children in: Berner Zeitung from March 15, 2011
20. ↑ Book launch «The authority decides» - for the good of the child? - New findings on the history of the contract children. Media release in: Canton Bern of March 15, 2011.
21. ↑ Information about the book at verdingkind.ch