Personal memories and thoughts about honorary work

Carmen Stadelhofer, ZAWiW, Ulm

I grew up with honorary work. I drank it,  so to speak, with my mother’s milk. As a small girl I sat at the back of the bicycle when my mother went to the garden huts of the refugee families that were accommodated in our quarter. She brought to these people, who lived in the small provisional homes, food and clothes from the care packets, that from somewhere in America landed in our church community and were distributed by my mother and the other women.

I remember many evenings in our small cellar, where the women opened the large, round, gold-coloured tin cans, and with a string cut into small peaces the yellow cheese balls that these contained. Then they packed the pieces to bring them on the next day to the families in need.

My mother personifies for me honorary work as such. She was always engaged in social work as a so called “Elisabeth-Frau”, for which she got  from the Charitas-Association to the 50th jubilee of her honorary work a medal and words of thanks. A few words and a bouquet of flowers as acknowledgement for 50 years of unpaid work in scope equivalent to a part-time position that she untiringly dedicated to the catholic church. She organised visits to older members of the parish, the sick and the needy and she was very active in these visits herself. How many people did she accompany in their dying! She organised community celebrations, travel events, bazaars and much more, following the example of St. Elisabeth von Thüringen, who is depicted in various stories as a person who in spite of her royal birth, took care of the poor and the sick and went from house to house with a basket full of bread. And so we also went with our mother to the poor and the sick, and when I got a little older, I was sent as a matter of course alone on the way to “give up” something.

Honorary work means for me the work of a woman, whose husband was often absent on business trips, who took care of the household and four children,  and who was so engaged in her honorary work that we only met at home at lunchtime, when she quickly prepared for us children something to eat. There was time, when I was jealous on this voluntary work that occupied my mother so much so that she quasi forgot us sometimes. I also wanted a mother who had time and who waited with the food for the return of her child from the school. And it was annoying sometimes to be involved in all sorts of social actions, without being asked – as a matter of course. But when I grew older, I realised that we have got from our mother something much more important than punctuality and personal comfort. Namely the consideration for others and improvisation ability, organisation talent, and also the ability to put own situation into perspective and to take responsibility for the hardship of others.

She is for me a model of a seizing humanity that she applied in the many fields of honorary activity. Social engagement conditioned my childhood and youth and later I also became active in youth groups of the parish, as school spokesperson and in many other areas. Later I became the spokesperson in the student community and so continued a long history of my honorary work, in my case always connected with the focus of my professional work in the field of education.

Also today I am involved in all sorts of honorary activities, although my time schedule does not allow so much time for it as I would like. This work, this I understood, brings me in contact with many people and makes communication possible that many people have to buy through the media. It sharpens my perception of many things of life and also my professional work was enriched and influenced by many of these activities. In my post-professional life I will do surely many things for which I do not have time now but I am sure, that I will continue and increase my honorary activities, perhaps in very different areas.