Can the 200-year history of a charitable organization include a core idea that defies most contemporary political currents and social expectations? This question intrigued the team of Prof. Sabine Holtz at the University of Stuttgart’s Department of Regional History, part of the Historical Institute. The result is a volume created by five students together with Ph.D.s and professors from the University for publication on the occasion of the 200-year anniversary of Baden-Württemberg’s Public Welfare Service.
Historical overviews often take the form of a chronology. But in this book, entitled ‘Helping Others Help Themselves. 200 years of Public Welfare Service in Baden-Württemberg,’ Sabine Holtz casts light on the individual stages of a 200-year history. Also unusual was the method of instructive research and learning used to assemble this commemorative work: ‘Essentially, the method consisted not only of presenting information for readers’ reception but also of jointly generating the contents on the basis of archival sources previously left untouched on dusty shelves,’ explains Sabine Holtz. ‘This is our way of leading students to carry out active research on their own, and the idea of working independently and as an individual also surfaces in the contents of this publication - thus mirroring one of the basic foundational ideas of the Public Welfare Service.
Modern thought back in the 19th century
Representatives of the Public Welfare Service approached Holtz in 2013 with the request that she put together a commemorative volume. Historian Holtz took the idea to her graduate seminar on ‘Social Mores and Social Welfare Work in the Kingdom of Württemberg’. Five enthused students from the 27 seminar participants immediately volunteered to help with the project. The biggest challenge facing them: all available sources dating from the 19th century are handwritten. ‘The arduousness of working with these old documents shouldn’t be underestimated: deciphering them is much more laborious than working with printed sources or collating existing research work,’ says Holtz.
The graduate seminar was the seedbed for three Bachelor’s and two Master’s degree theses. Their core ideas reappear in the individual essays which form the guiding themes of the book. For example, Dominique Corinne Ott’s text takes up the gender-specific behavioral structures of the 19th century within the ‘Charitable Organization’, as it was called then. The reason for the name: Queen Katharina, the founder, was already a very modern thinker back in 1816 and originally wanted the association to consist only of women. And Amelie Bieg talks in her essay about the ‘Sanctuary House Movement.’
The concept, which originated in Basel, consisted of offering orphaned or disadvantaged children both refuge and active support. Bieg presents five biographies to show how children with no hope of a future became young, professionally trained adults. ‘The history and the different forms of today’s public welfare service work have a common core that reappears time and again: helping others to help themselves, without ever losing sight of current events or acute needs,’ says Holtz. And in spite of all the vicissitudes during 200 years of history, this has remained unchanged. Michaela Gnann
The year without a summer: the origin of the public welfare service
Today’s public welfare service work started in 1817 as a charitable organization founded by Queen Katharina of Württemberg. its birth marked a time of political upheaval in Germany’s southwest: the economic situation was extremely precarious. The financial crisis reached its peak in the ‘hunger years’ of 1816 and 1817. Due to an exploding volcano in Southeast Asia, the German summer was a period of endless rain and storms. The consequences were dramatic, with horrendous crop failures, exorbitant prices for scarce foodstuffs, famine, disease, and poverty. The impact on social structures was dramatic: for example, the numbers of beggars increased, and the crime rate rose rapidly. The reaction of the young kingdom of Württemberg to all this was to found the Charitable Organization.