Affected by Inappropriate Treatment — Hermann Gmeiner and Us

Icons have tenacious defense strategies that also succeed because they are met with credulity. In this way, evil can entrench itself all the better

Hermann Gmeiner, son of small farmers in Alberschwende, early a half-orphan with the mother's death, conspicuous for talent, chosen by the priest for an academic career and later studies, usually with the hope of gaining a theologian. And how it succeeded. The man had a charitable idea appropriate to post-war society: the Children's Village. The time was full of orphans; the state-leading fathers had once again ensured massive decimation of their populations.

Gmeiner invented a solution: familial closeness and warmth, relationships for growing children. No cold socialism with its large institutions, no National Socialism with its cruel breeding institutions — family, above all mother, also for those little ones who stood alone before the world. A magnificent, a humane idea.

It made a career, became successful worldwide. Pictures showed Hermann Gmeiner and the Federal President, Hermann Gmeiner and the Pope, Hermann Gmeiner and the Dalai Lama, Hermann Gmeiner and Mother Teresa, Hermann Gmeiner on all continents — Gmeiner himself had become an icon of humanity. An icon of Catholic-friendly post-war Austria in any case. Hermann Gmeiner — that sounded as native as Toni Sailer or Hermann Maier — more Austrian you couldn't get.

Hermann Gmeiner, charitable icon of post-war Austria, subjected those under his protection to inappropriate treatment.

Gmeiner stood for the politically black variant of human friendliness. As a Vorarlberg child, I sometimes visited a newly built Children's Village house in the 1950s; relatives were active in the Catholic workers' movement. I have memories of a raw brick building, of extreme industriousness, of neediness and bravery in somehow managing the impossible. Post-war Austria — that was not only reconstruction, that was also living in barracks, poverty, hard winters, sharing and donating. For example, for the Children's Village. Hermann Gmeiner was a myth there.

I only want to say: the fall height is all the greater. The charitable intention, the good will, the worldwide success of the humane idea of the founding icon make the now publicly revealed inappropriate treatment of at least eight boys appear all the more abhorrent, now that it can no longer be concealed. It was known to the affected persons for decades; they were silenced with payments. One does not rebel against icons; institutionally founded icons have tenacious defense strategies that also succeed because they are met with credulity. Behind the iconically generated incredulity, evil can entrench itself all the better.

Once one has recognized this mechanism, it is hard not to dismiss the entire project together with those who perverted its meaning, like Hermann Gmeiner. At first it is hard to even acknowledge the fact. Institutional protection first had to be broken by the revelations of Falter.

This is not perpetrator-affected person reversal; it is simply the attempt to slither out of the embarrassment of having been duped for decades. Can one imagine being an affected person of such inappropriate treatment and not being able to overcome the towering wall of friendliness that surrounded the perpetrators? Being paid off with money by an organization that only wanted to reform itself under external pressure that was never sufficiently present because the wall also ensured that?

The post-war wall no longer holds, certainly not in a world whose leaders openly boast about inappropriate behavior toward women. No, Hermann Gmeiner did not boast. He certainly suffered, like most perpetrators, from his wrongdoing. It should not relativize the suffering of the affected persons, but one would not want the psycho-structure of a compulsively disordered person with inappropriate interest in minors.

One knows this from priests whose superiors believed in their will to improve and who nevertheless could not withstand their urge. Such a combination of human failure is particularly insidious in organizations that exist to institutionally absorb and prevent such failure, that want to improve, save, and help people. The Children's Village bears "Societas Socialis" in its name, which became SOS and suggests a church proximity that does not exist.

Now streets and squares are being renamed, awards revoked, monuments toppled. That must be, but it doesn't help. Can the tragedy be addressed with means of enlightenment like journalism? One can create relief for the moment, force reforms, put a stop to it, compensate affected persons as well as possible. Inappropriate treatment, it is to be feared, will keep recurring. So one must not stop fighting it.

Even if the hope is as naive as the ORF week expressed it in its summary in simple language: "Inappropriate treatment means (Gmeiner) did bad things with children. Inappropriate treatment is forbidden. This inappropriate treatment was known for a long time. But nobody did anything. Now SOS Children's Villages wants to change a lot. So that inappropriate treatment should no longer be possible."