The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Rauhes Haus

RAUHES HAUS, (corrupted from “Ruges Haus”), an educational and benevolent institution at Horn, near Hamburg, founded in 1833 by Johanie Heinrich Wichern (1808-81), who long remained at its head. It is connected with the German Home Mission, and besides forming a refuge for neglected children receives boarding pupils from the higher classes, and serves as a training school for those wishing to become teachers, superintendents or assistants in hospitals, reformatories, houses of correction and the like. It is supported by voluntary contributions, the profits arising from the productive enterprises carried on in connection with it and the fees of the richer pupils. In recent years there has been an average of 100 poor and neglected children, about one-third girls, receiving instruction within its walls. They live in “families” of from 12 to 15, each “family” being under the care of one of the adult members of the mission training school. The educational department is in the hands of assistants, who also take part in the instruction of the institution, in order to prepare themselves for the work of the Home Mission in other localities. This indeed has became one of the most important features of the work carried on by the Rauhes Haus, and its graduates are found in every field of charitable work in Germany. The whole staff of assistants, consisting of young men of 20 to 29 years of age, are formed into a kind of society (Brüderschaft). Since 1844 the institution has carried on a printing and book-binding business. Its organ is the Fliegende Blätter.