Juhu

The first worldly-oriented youth work started about 100 years ago as part of preparatory courses for the ceremony ‘Jugendweihe” in which 14-year-olds are given adult social status. This event was organized by the free-religious community at the end of the 19th century in Berlin. The courses connected to the mentioned ceremony, which had religious and political self-determination of the individual as its aim, were criticized, hindered as well as forbidden by the state. A free-thinker-atheistic youth work could be established in the period of the Weimar-Republic. Along with the mass-mobilizing ceremony, other free-thinking orientated youth groups were founded, which were united in the Association of the Freethinker Youth on Easter of 1927. At this time, the focus laid on trips as well as free-time activities besides workshops in world-viewing-tolerance and political commitment. All of these activities were put to an end in March of 1933, when the Free-thinker movement was forbidden by the national socialists. After 1945, the free-thinkers were newly founded and continued with the ceremonies. In the GDR, this movement was forbidden, but the ceremonies came back to life in the 50’s. The ceremonies were being transformed in obligatory events, which had nothing to do with the initial intentions of the “Jugendweihe”. The Free-thinker youth of West Berlin became part of the Regional Youth Council in 1982, a council that combines all important youth organizations, independent of their direction of world-viewing tolerance, that collaborate on behalf of the youth. In 1993, the German Free-thinker Association merged with other organizations to form the Youth Humanists Association and the Free-thinker youth renamed itself as Young Humanists.