The Twilight of the Civvies: Germany To Scale Back Mandatory Civilian Service

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Sebastian Haferkamp, 19, is a member of what could well be the last generation of young men participating in the civilian service program. During his shifts at St. Elisabeth House, the civvie delivers food and provides simple care for residents like Michael Sonntag. The baby-faced young man says one builds a "sense of community" when helping others in need. Moreover, the skills he has learned at the Caritas facility have also helped him closer to home, where he helps care for his aging grandmother on the weekends. He says it would be a shame if future generations weren't able to share the same formative experience.

For health, charity and social workers already looking for ways to make ends meet during the financial crisis, the cuts present an additional headache.

Mild-mannered Daniela Weisser-Brunschen has been St. Elisabeth House's director for the past three years. Sitting in her office, decorated with handmade crafts and paintings, she says it will be "very, very difficult" to run the facility without the civvies.

St. Elisabeth currently hosts seven civvies, whose training can last for six to eight weeks. Most of the residents at the home have speech impediments, and the civvies must learn a complicated language of gestures and sounds in order to properly communicate and care for them. When the civilian service duration is shortened, Weisser-Brunschen says, it will become less useful. St. Elisabeth House plans to remain part of the program, but Weisser-Brunschen says there will be "a hole." And that hole "will be bigger than the one left by the military conscripts."

A Tradition at Risk

St. Elisabeth could look to social year volunteers, Weisser-Brunschen adds, but she doubts that a flood of applicants will materialize anytime soon. The volunteers are also more expensive: St. Elisabeth House's contribution to civilian service participants is €150 per month, but a social year volunteer would cost €500 per month because Caritas would have to pay an allowance, room and board and health insurance.

Many, though, see the cuts as an attack on a decades-long German tradition that has been an important part of the country's social fabric. Civilian service has fostered connections in society over the decades that wouldn't otherwise have been made. For people living in hospitals and care facilities, the ties with the youth are highly valued and even therapeutic. "We build relationships with the civvies," St. Elisabeth resident Sonntag says. "How else would these youths come in contact with handicapped people?"

While those in charge of caring for socially marginalized groups and the needy are reluctant to say that the people in their charge will suffer from the cuts, it is inevitable that they will.

Sonntag, who has been bed-ridden for the past decade and has strongly benefited from the care and companionship provided by the civvies, is angry about the government's decision. At St. Elisabeth's, residents literally have no voice in the federal government's decisions in Berlin.

"There are some groups of people who simply can't do without the care the civilian service provides," Sonntag says. "And some are even needier than we are."

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• Part 1: Germany To Scale Back Mandatory Civilian Service
• Part 2: A 'Hole' in Care Services