Germany: Cologne, feast for the 125th anniversary of Caritas Germany, the country’s biggest charity

On November 9th, Caritas Germany will be celebrating its eventful history at a special ceremony near the place it was founded, in Cologne. Precisely 125 years ago, on November 9th 1897, a group of socially active citizens met at the “Fränkischer Hof”, very close to the cathedral of Cologne, and founded the “German Caritas association” in response to the needs of the time. Hence the idea of a charity organised under the symbol of the red cross of fire as a trademark of the Catholic social movement: the Caritas cross has spread with explosive political power in over 160 countries. Today, with nearly 700 thousand full-time employees and several hundreds of volunteers, Caritas is the biggest charity in Germany. To celebrate the anniversary, the Federal Ministry of Finance will issue a commemorative stamp with a special postmark called precisely “125 years of German Caritas Association”. Many important guests from the political world, from the Church and from Caritas, including delegates from other countries, will attend the celebration. After that, the German-Danish professor Karin Bjerregaard Schlueter, a scientist in charge of strategic development and digital learning at the ‘Leadership in Digital Innovation’ course in Berlin University of the Arts, will give a lecture on the history, the present and the future of the Caritas brand. At the end, the attendants will march along to the Tunisstraße, where everything started in 1897.
Valentina Bombelli