Social Work between National Socialist People's Welfare and Human Rights Professions
When the term "social work" is used, many today associate it with a human rights profession - social workers are those who look after people, individual fates - rather apolitical and with the concept of promoting social cohesion, strengthening people in their autonomy and self-determination - even in difficult situations. The conference "Continuities and Discontinuities in Social Pedagogy / Social Work in the Transition from National Socialism to the Post-War Period" at the Würzburg-Schweinfurt University of Applied Sciences highlighted that this was not always the case.
The hundred or so participants examined the question of whether there had been a "zero hour" in social work since May 1945. They examined the historical developments from five different perspectives - from personal, ideological, organisational-institutional permanence or changes, continuities / discontinuities on the level of politics and practices as well as from the reception and reappraisal of National Socialism. In post-war Germany, did those ways of thinking and acting that were action-guiding during the dictatorship remain or did a conceptual-practical reorientation develop?
The welfare work of the Weimar Republic at that time was instrumentalized in the sense of Nazi ideology: From 1933 onwards, the allocation of social benefits was defined by racist characteristics: The national community and national hygiene were placed above the neediness of individual people; the sick and disabled were demarcated, segregated, forcibly sterilized, also killed on the basis of new laws such as the Race Acts, the Reich Citizens Act, the Blood Protection and Marriage Health Act. Many social workers did the preparatory work in this system and made decisions as to who could expect help.
The organizers of the conference stated in the "Call for Paper": "While a large number of publications on the history of social work under National Socialism are now available, this does not apply to the early post-war period in the FRG and GDR, or only to a very limited extent. If one takes careful stock of the contributions available, it becomes clear that the political caesura of 1945 was by no means an 'hour zero' with regard to the institutional infrastructure, the personnel tableau, but also with regard to existing patterns of interpretation and action. On the contrary: in the two post-Nazi post-war societies, ways of thinking, concepts and practices that were already guiding action during the years of the Nazi dictatorship remained virulent." It could be stated that "in post-war social work, specific elements of continuity mixed with those of discontinuity". From a personnel biographical point of view, "far less is known about the personnel at the middle political-administrative level and above all at the level of practical-operational social work". If one considers the ideological and ideological perspectives, one can increasingly assume a "persistence of Nazi thought patterns" with "the (continued) existence of social racist, racial biological and eugenic patterns of interpretation and problem perceptions reaching far into the 1960s".
In the field of organizations and institutions of the immediate post-war period there had been a "strong moment of persistence and functional continuities", later in West Germany "comparatively quickly" succeeded in "restoring and consolidating the pattern of the welfare state from pre-Nazi times". On the level of everyday practices, one could not assume a drastic caesura in 1945, the organizers continued, but in the immediate post-war period "the pragmatic coping with the consequences of war, flight and expulsion had been the focus". Finally, if one considers the reception of Nazi history and the coming to terms with the past, it must be noted that social workers dealt with the Nazi past "comparatively late", characterized by "repression and trivialization.
To the individual contributions:
Professor Dr. Sven Steinacker of the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences gave a lecture on "Continuities and discontinuities in social work in the post-war period - findings and open questions". Overall, he assumes an uneven picture with continuities and discontinuities. After 1945, the reconstruction of social structures had proceeded "restoratively", new structures had hardly been recognizable. Especially on the management level, many had regained office and dignity in the social sector, although their activities had been known between 1933 and 1945. The willingness to deal with wrongdoings had been low.
Professor Dr. Christian Schrapper, University of Koblenz-Landau, presented Hans Muthesius as a