The father of the Christian Peace Service is the Alsace Etienne Bach,who back then was an officer in the French army of occupation in the Ruhr. During the sacrament, he was standing next to the mayor of dates, which the occupiers had great difficulties. "The hand of the clergyman trembled as we drank from the same cup and the same break bread," Bach said later about this moment, but also: "The hea
rts were changed." After this experience, the two have in common is trying to improve on the one hand the living conditions of the local people and also to change the image of the French occupier in the minds of people. Pastor Thomas Mämecke wrote about this meeting a detailed article, which is available here for download. Christians from Holland, Belgium, England and Switzerland agreed with this reconciliation idea and founded in 1924 the "Teutonic Order", which was later renamed the "Christian Peace Service". After the takeover by the N***s yap-cfd was forbidden. Likewise, it was the Mouvement Chretien pour la Paix (MCP) after the occupation of France. However, individuals tried to keep privately contact with the active refugee helpers in Switzerland. So it was mainly the Swiss Gertrud Kurz who founded by the reception and care of war refugees a new, until now the current working field. "Mother short", as it was called, organized by the assumption of power of Adolf Hi**er along with other "crusaders" the care of thousands of refugees with privately raised clothes, food and kitchenware and their inclusion in special "crusaders homes". After the war, the ideas of cfd has been returned by Switzerland to Germany and France. The ideas have spread rapidly in Europe. So are soon in Italy, the Benelux countries, England and other European countries such as Malta and Portugal founded cfd branches. Later contacts were made on peace activists in Algeria and Palestine. After the collapse of the Warsaw Pact have initiatives from Eastern European countries, for example, connected from Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Hungary. All feel a community belonging. This is also evident in the figurative language that speaks of the various national associations as "branches". The West German branch of cfd focused after the war on international exchanges and build youth camp and participated in the resistance against nuclear weapons during the Cold War. In the 60s and 70s, our cfd changed from a personal move to a club with office and volunteer staff / inside. Both the association was founded (1967) as well as the reformulation of the self-image (1975) was preceded by several years of discussion processes in cfd. Early 80s took the action "hunger for peace and justice", in the context of arms and hunger was discussed, an important place in cfd a. The action linked the involvement of developmental groups, peace groups and communities. Was A second focus in this period, the reconciliation with the peoples of the Soviet Union. In the 90 years working for peace in the former Yugoslavia was added. The national partner organizations of cfd are united in an international umbrella organization. The association called for a long time "Christian Movement for Peace" (CMP), however, was in 1994 "Youth Action for Peace" (YAP) renamed to document his openness to all religions. This was followed by the cfd in 2000 by in yap-cfd order named. In 2013 yap-cfd was integrated with its work in the fields ICJA volunteer exchanges worldwide. Since then leads yap-cfd his two program formats volunteering and work camps through under the umbrella of ICJA. In the next two years we will work on the idea of the now common association consisting of yap-cfd and ICJA under a vision development process.
