The founders, who set up a rescue house for children at risk in Arnsburg Monastery in 1846, had little money but a lot of trust in God. The facility is still there, today it is called ESTA, Evangelical Foundation Arnsburg. For the 175th anniversary there will be a ceremony, a summer party and a book: »Strengthened for the future – a history of home education.
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The men of the first hour did not have enough money. But the Comité, which in 1846 initiated the establishment of a rescue house for children at risk in Arnsburg Monastery, just got started. “The means for founding and maintaining the establishment grow on the basis of voluntary love,” the founders wrote in their statutes. You should be right. 175 years later, the rescue house is still there.
It’s just called differently: Evangelical Foundation Arnsburg, ESTA for short. And the children and young people no longer live in the Arnsburg garden house, but in the new building that the children’s and youth home moved into in 1962 on Höhlerstraße in Lich. But the confidence that was inherent in the founding fathers continues to shape the institution’s DNA to this day. At least that’s how Fabian Scharping, the Executive Board of ESTA, sees it. “Just get started” is an attitude that people want to give to the residents along the way. “You have to try things. They don’t always work. But sometimes they just work. “
In the past few months, Scharping has thought a lot about the facility that he has been running since 2014. Together with the historian Annette Neff, he wrote a book about the ESTA. »Strengthened for the future – A story of home education« is the title of the festschrift that will be published on the anniversary. Preserving your own history, becoming aware of lines of tradition and continuities and inspiring future generations: this is where the 200-page book should help. It deals with the development of home education since the middle of the 19th century and always takes the historical framework into account.
The initiator of the rescue house, the deaf and dumb teacher Johann Peter Schäfer from Wetterau, had nothing less than a “living memorial” to erect in 1846 for Pestalozzi, whose 100th birthday was being commemorated at the time. Last but not least, he found support from Count Otto from Laubach, who made the Arnsburg garden house available for the project. To this day, Solms-Laubach has a permanent seat on the Board of Trustees.
Daily devotions, school lessons, work in the house and garden shaped life in the rescue house. The fare was meager; the children were to be brought up to be good Christians and capable maidservants and servants. You have to see these framework conditions in the context of time, says Scharping. Arnsburg was the first rescue facility in the Grand Duchy of Hesse; previously, needy children ended up in poor houses. Regular meals, education and later a permanent job were a privilege in times when many people had to eke out their lives as day laborers without any social security.
In 1877 a new chapter was opened in Arnsburg: Management was given to the Darmstadt deaconesses, and Arnsburg became the only girls’ institution in the Grand Duchy of Hesse. Whether the girls, some of whom came from difficult backgrounds, were doing well there? The Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees also asked herself this question. “We don’t know,” writes Dr. Christiane Princess zu Solms-Hohensolms-Lich in the foreword to the commemorative publication. “We can only guess what happened behind the walls of the storage facilities of stumbled children for small and large tragedies, but perhaps also small joys and bright spots.”
Scharping is optimistic about the sources. Some former residents had entrusted their savings to the children’s home for safekeeping and kept coming back to visit. Others would have sent money during difficult economic times such as hyperinflation in the 1920s. “You don’t do that when things have gone badly for you.”
Survived two major crises
Twice in its long history, the children’s and youth home was on the verge of collapse. Once in February 1945, when you had to share the rare space and the at least as rare coals for heating with the bombed-out Gießen clinic. The Reich Defense Commissioner had already ordered the dissolution of the home, but that never happened. With the invasion of the Americans on March 27, 1945, the war in the district of Giessen came to an end. In the years that followed, the facility could always rely on the support of the US military.
A lack of occupancy by the youth welfare offices led to the second existence-threatening crisis in the mid-1990s, which was overcome through a conceptual realignment. The team headed by Reiner Philipp at the time “pulled the cart over the mountain” in a tremendous collective effort, says Scharping. The ESTA can celebrate its 175th anniversary much more easily than the 150th anniversary in 1996 – despite Corona.
On Sunday there was a ceremony for invited guests in Arnsburg Monastery. All interested parties are then welcome to the summer festival, which will be celebrated on September 18 from 4 p.m. on the outdoor area in Höhlerstraße.
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