REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS IN PRUSSIA.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1269, 12 April 1878, Page 3

REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS IN PRUSSIA.

The “Rough House of Hamburg ” is an institution which our philanthropists would do well to study. Forty years ago Hamburg was renowned for being the wickedest city in the world. “ Its vice was more open, its materialism grosser, and its religion more of a sham.” The only hope of religion was among the younger classes of criminals. A few spasmodic efforts were made fo teach and refine them, but"all in rain, while at length even these were given up, and respectable Hamburg folded its hands and wondered at the wickedness of its neighbours. Then a certain Immanuel Wichern, firm of purpose, and believing in the old maxim, “Desperate courage makes one majority,” put his hand to the enterprise —his heart in the work—and carried it through. The enterprise, like the famous Refuge of Fritz Miller, has never asked for State or individual aid, and has always been amply supported. In October, 1838, Immanuel Wichern and his mother opened the doors of a small cottage known as “ Das Rauho Hauc,” announced their'pfirpoae, and waited. -At fho»nd or a week three hoys had come ; at the end of two months there wore twelve, all that the house could hold. Their ages varied from 5 to 15 and they were uniformly steeped in crime. Such a band of prematurely developed rascals was probably never collected together before. Wichern was a sentimentalist, and the only rule was love. There was no restraint; the mmaieo came and went at will. A high wall which ’surrounded th j grpunfirf, was removed, in order that there should not he even the semblance of forcible control. 4-t the end of a year the first twelve boya were reformed. Applications for admission poured in, and the twelve built themselves a new house, and gave up the old one to the new-comers. Then a house was built for girls. The day it was finished it was

filled—and filled with the vilest of the vile. The hoys had given trouble enough, but the girls were by far more wicked and unmanageable. Rut Wichern’s sentimentalism conquered here, too. From that time to this, the Rough House of Hamburg has pressed on in its triumphant career. It now consists of thirty-eight separate houses, owns -100 acres of land, and educates yearly more than 1100 boys and girls. Of its 43,000 graduates not more than 5 per cent, have fallen. It has given rise to more than 800 similar reformatories in Prussia. Of these, that of Berlin, founded in 1858, is the largest, and keeps busy, merely in the work of superintendence, forty-eight men. The order of the “ Knights of St. John,” of which we heard so much during the Franco-Prussian war, was founded at the Rough House of Hamburg, and now controls all the kindred institutions in the country. Immanuel Wichern is still at the head of affairs.