The Educational And Scientific Project „Boys Town Buchhof”

“Boys Town Buchhof“ was once a quite reputable paedagogical concept - but today it nearly got buried in oblivion. Therefore our research project wants to take a closer look at this almost forgotten institution. The main question for us is if it really succeeded with establishing an effective selfgovernment. We try to answer it through the analysises of historical documents and by interviewing former inhabitants of Buchhof and other contemporary witnesses. The "Starnberger Merkur" (a local newspaper) and the "Helfer" (the magazine of the "Arbeiterwohlfahrt") supported our search for them. The following link leads you to their articles about our study: Supporting articles (please note that these articles are only availiable in german!)

Meanwhile we also published a short article about Boystown Buchhof and our project. The following link leads you to our own article: Article about the project

The Research Team
The research team, from left to right:
Bernhard Babic, Maximilian Wagner, Martin Zawidzki, Daniela Clausnitzer, Trixi Fuchs, Tamara Martin, Stephan Neuwerk, Ninja Berndt, Justyna Jarczok, Bozhidar Tsolov, Melanie Huber

The first interviews with contemporary witnesses as well as the research for historical archive materials took place within the scope of a university course at the Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich. Due to a fortunate and unexpected high number of contemporary witnesses, and a less fortunate lack of personal and financial ressources, the evaluation is put back with time delays.

However, the results are planned to be published not later than spring 2006, last but not least because of the assured subvention of the Bayerische Volksstiftung (a small foundation related to the bavarian parliament) in regards to the printing of our final report. Although this does not improve our current capacities we would like to thank the Bavarian Foundation for their interest in and their recognition of our project. We hope that this will make it easier for us to find additional supporters, who can relate themselves to our endeavours.