Bilthoven Meetings

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Meeting of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation in Bithoven (1919) 1919-IFOR-c.png
Meeting of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation in Bithoven (1919)

The Bilthoven Meetings were a series of networking and capacity building meetings of pacifist activists after World War I in the town of Bilthoven in the Netherlands. The activists gathered under the name of Movement Towards a Christian International, which was later renamed to International Fellowship of Reconciliation. The meetings took place at the house of Kees Boeke, a Quaker missionary and pacifist.

Contents

The meetings were fundamental for the development of the international peace movement in the first half of the 20th century, as they resulted in the creation of three international peace organisations between 1919 and 1921:International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), Service Civil international (SCI) and War Resisters' International (WRI).

Three Meetings

October 1919

The invitation to the first of the three meetings was issued by Ernest and Eveline Fletcher, Kees Boeke and Henry Hodgkin for participants to attend an international peace conference to take place between 4-19 October 1919. [1] [2] Fifty participants attended this meeting, among them people from Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, Switzerland and the USA. Notable attendees included Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze, J. B. Hugenholz, Mathilda Wrede, Lilian Stevenson, Leonhard Ragaz and Pierre Cérésole. [3] [4] [5] Many of the participants were conscientious objectors who were detained during World War I. Cérésole was appointed as conference secretary due to his extensive language skills.

August 1920

The second Bilthoven meeting took place in July of 1920. Here, Pierre Cérésole suggested to organise international workcamps as a means to foster reconciliation by rebuilding infrastructure destroyed during World War I. The work was to be organised in a way similar to the reconstruction efforts of the Quakers in Poland and France. This suggestion was positively received by those at the meeting, notably a German man whose brother had been involved in the destruction of Northern France as a soldier and now wished to be involved in the reconstruction. [6]

The first reconstruction camp took place in November 1920 in the village of Esnes, which had been destroyed in 1916 during the Battle of Verdun. The village was chosen also in order to foster reconciliation between French and German citizens. For the project, Cérésole enlisted the help of English Quaker Hubert Parris for his experience in organizing relief work. [7] The project eventually had to be cancelled due to resentment from local French towards the German volunteers as the scars of World War I were still fresh. Inspired by the efforts of the volunteers, Cérésole conceptualized a voluntary service as an alternative to countries' mandatory military service. This became known as Service Civil International (SCI).

March 1921

A short conference with representatives of European peace activists took place in Bilthoven from 22-25 March, 1921. Together with Helene Stöcker, they founded the "PACO" ("peace" in Esperanto) movement, which in 1923 changed its name to War Resisters International. Following the conference, the founders of "PACO" took part in the International Anti-Militarist Union (IAMV) in The Hague on 26 March. [8] [9] [10] [11]

Formation of pacifist networks

Before World War I, there were some international pacifist networks such as the International Peace Bureau (since 1891) and the IAMV (since 1904). The atrocities of World War I increased anti-war sentiments and in this context, the Bilthovenen meetings brought together three complementary attitudes of the organisations in the emerging international peace movement:

These pacifist networks built relationships with other international movements of the time. Associated with them were the Quakers, the Esperanto movement, Montessori education as well as the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

Related Research Articles

The Fellowship of Reconciliation is the name used by a number of religious nonviolent organizations, particularly in English-speaking countries. They are linked by affiliation to the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR).

Alfred Hermann Fried

Alfred Hermann Fried was an Austrian Jewish pacifist, publicist, journalist, co-founder of the German peace movement, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1911. Fried was also a supporter of Esperanto. He is the author of an Esperanto textbook and an Esperanto-German and German-Esperanto dictionary, first published in 1903 and republished in 1905.

The International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) is a non-governmental organization founded in 1914 in response to the horrors of war in Europe. Today IFOR counts 71 branches, groups and affiliates in 48 countries on all continents. IFOR members promote nonviolence, human rights and reconciliation through public education efforts, training programs and campaigns. The IFOR International Secretariat in Utrecht, Netherlands facilitates communication among IFOR members, links branches to capacity building resources, provides training in gender-sensitive nonviolence through the Women Peacemakers Program, and helps coordinate international campaigns, delegations and urgent actions. IFOR has ECOSOC status at the United Nations.

Bilthoven Village in Utrecht, Netherlands

Bilthoven is a village in the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is a part of the municipality of De Bilt. It has a railway station with connections to Utrecht, Amersfoort and Baarn. It is home to the Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, RIVM; and to the Union Mundial pro Interlingua, UMI, which promotes Interlingua internationally.

Service Civil International (SCI) is an international peace organisation. Since 1920, it organises international volunteering projects in the form of workcamps and it was the first organisation worldwide to do so. The organisation was founded by Swiss pacifist Pierre Cérésole in the aftermath of World War I in order to foster understanding and a culture of peace between people from different countries.

Kees Boeke Dutch educator, Quaker missionary and pacifist

Cornelis Boeke, usually known as Kees Boeke, was a Dutch reformist educator, Quaker missionary and pacifist. He is best known for his popular essay/book Cosmic View (1957) which presents a seminal view of the universe, from the galactic to the microscopic scale, and which inspired several films.

Helene Stöcker

Helene Stöcker was a German feminist, pacifist and gender activist.

The Quaker movement began in England in the Seventeenth Century. Small Quaker groups were planted in various places across Europe during this early period. Quakers in Europe outside Britain and Ireland are not now very numerous although new groups have started in the former Soviet Union and satellite countries. By far the largest national grouping of Quakers in Europe is in Britain.

War Resisters International International anti-war organisation

War Resisters' International (WRI), headquartered in London, is an international anti-war organisation with members and affiliates in over 30 countries.

José Brocca was a pacifist and humanitarian of the Spanish Civil War, who allied himself with the Republicans but sought nonviolent ways of resisting the Nationalist rebels.

Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze

Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze was a German academic working in theology, social pedagogy and social ethics, as well as a pioneer of peace movements.

Myrtle Solomon was an active pacifist. She was general secretary of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), a British pacifist organisation, between 1965 and 1972, and Chair of the War Resisters International (WRI) between 1975 and 1986.

Switzerland Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, or simply Switzerland Yearly Meeting or SYM, is the organizing body for Quaker groups and meetings in Switzerland.

Pierre Cérésole

Pierre Cérésole was a Swiss peace activist and engineer, known primarily as the initiator of workcamps and the founder of the peace organisation Service Civil International (SCI).

Henry Hodgkin

Henry Hodgkin (1877-1933) was a medical doctor and a British Quaker missionary who, in the course of his 55-year life, co-founded the West China Union University in Chengdu, co-founded and led the first Christian pacifist movement, the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, and founded the Pendle Hill Quaker meeting and training center, in Wallingford, Pennsylvania.

Lilian Sinclair Stevenson was a Christian peace activist, historiographer and one of the founders of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Fred Haslam was a Canadian administrator and pacifist.

Hélène Monastier

Hélène Monastier was a Swiss peace activist and teacher in Lausanne.

Workcamp

A workcamp is international volunteering, where groups of volunteers from different countries work and live together as a team on a short-term basis and for a not-for-profit cause, usually for one to three weeks. Workcamps are considered one of the most important types of international volunteering programs. They were first introduced in 1920 as a way of bringing people together for increased international understanding and peace reconciliation efforts.

References

  1. ↑ Julia Boeke, Cees Smit. "Archief Werkplaats Kindergemeenschap (Bilthoven), (1921-) 1926-1954 (-1986)" (PDF) (in Dutch). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-02-23.
  2. ↑ John Ormerod Greenwood (1978), Quaker encounters (in German), Vol. 3, York: William Sessions
  3. ↑ J. Jürgen Seidel (2006), "Biographisch-Bibliographisch Kirchenlexikon", Biographisch-Bibliographisch Kirchenlexikon (in German), Traugott Bautz, XXVI, pp. Spalten 1573-1576
  4. ↑ Hélène Monastier et al.: "Pierre Ceresole d'après sa correspondance", La Baconnière, Neuchâtel, 1960.
  5. ↑ Hélène Monastier: "Pierre Ceresole", Société religieuse des Amis, Paris, 1947 – Donne par erreur l'année 1918 pour la conférence de Bilthoven.
  6. ↑ Rodriguez, Philipp (2019). The first workcamp and the founding of SCI. Words about Deeds. One hundred years of international voluntary service for peace. Antwerp / La-Chaux-de-Fonds: Service Civil International. ISBN   978 94 639 6538 5.
  7. ↑ "History". International Voluntary Service. Retrieved 2020-06-22.
  8. ↑ List of the archives of the War Resisters' International (WRI), 1921-1991, J.R. van der Leeuw .
  9. ↑ War Resisters' International Archives.
  10. ↑ Devi Prasad : War is a Crime against Humanity: the Story of War Resisters' International, London, WRI, 2005.
  11. ↑ WRI Gründung.
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