Legacy commits – history can be expierenced
Interview with Mayor Joseph Zolk by Christine and Christian Ottens, Germany
The Sunday visit to Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen’s newly renovated residential and office building in Flammersfeld (Germany) was a humanely impressive experience for us.
We were welcomed by Mayor Joseph Zolk already in the entrance area. Once a week, alternating with three committed citizens also working voluntarily, he leads interested visitors through Raiffeisen’s residential and working site. Here, in a short travel through time you can experience how people lived and worked at Raiffeisen’s time. The 250-year-old Raiffeisen-house is now a museum with a cottage garden. In the period 1848 to 1852 the social reformer Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen (*30.3.1818 †11.3.1888) had worked there as a mayor. Raiffeisen’s idea of helping people help themselves caused a world-wide movement. Among other things, he had schools built and provided for the development of today’s Raiffeisen-Road Hamm/Sieg to Neuwied, so that farmers, in order to do their trade, had better transport connections to the town. He founded the associations “Weyerbuscher Brodverein”(Bread-Association of Weyerbusch) to alleviate the famine, and the “Hülfsverein zur Unterstützung unbemittelter Landwirte (Benevolent society to assist impecunious farmers) in Flammersfeld, where the farmers could save up money, but could also borrow money in order to buy, livestock and equipment, for example. In 1864 the “Heddesdorfer Darlehenskassenverein” (Loan association of Heddersdorf) was founded, which became a model for many cooperative banks existing around the world now.
In a personal interview, we could ask the committed Mayor our questions.
Christine and Christian Ottens: Mr Zolk how long have you been Mayor in Flammersfeld?
Joseph Zolk: In the 13th year, now.
How did you get the idea to renovate Raiffeisen’s house?
On the ground floor this house has been a museum of local history for 15 years. Of course Raiffeisen played a role in it, but things became a bit confused, and then, with the support of the German Raiffeisen Association, which has its headquarters in Bonn, we suddenly had the opportunity to buy the house and restore it – which we then realized. We changed everything structurally, and we developed a didactic approach.
Raiffeisen organizations in 36 countries of the world
The didactic concept was supposed to focus on Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, but it was not to be an imitation of what had already been created in his birthplace Hamm, but was supposed to have its own style. And we wanted to arrange the whole thing in a modern museum-didactical way. We have succeeded in large part, and we wrote texts which can also be understood by a non-specialist. We are observing that the idea of cooperatives has a genuine renaissance. This is the case in Germany, when I think of Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen’s energy cooperatives, and it is also the case worldwide ; when I look at the world map, we see that we have Raiffeisen organizations in 36 states today. The international headquarters of the Raiffeisen-organizations are in Bonn, and the Austrian Raiffeisen organizations have their branches even in China. Last week we were visited by the International Raiffeisen Union – there were Africans, Chinese, Asians – especially the Japanese have developed quite a lot in the cooperative system, and it was just great.
Meanwhile we have the information available in several languages, because we often have visitors from abroad. Especially in developing countries the setting up of co-operatives plays a very important role. Taking together the Volks-und Raiffeisenbanken (cooperative banks) in Germany and adding their total assets, you get a balance sheet sum which is higher than that of the Deutsche Bank. That is not really known, and throughout the whole financial crisis “only” 0.2% of the cooperatives have gone bankrupt.
What is the reason?
The reason is the smaller structure with clear supervisory committees. Each cooperative bank has its supervisory board, and things are more manageable and transparent that way. And each member of the cooperative has one vote. They have not been involved in the whole financial hype and were laughed at by some of the big banks at first. However, it has turned out to be right to maintain this structure and not to participate in the whole financial practice of the big banks, which is no longer transparent. The stability of the cooperative banks, which also applies to the saving banks (Sparkassen) is significantly higher. In addition, there is the fact that the cooperative banks are actually the banks of the middle class. For a long time, the Deutsche Bank has indeed considered itself too good to provide credits at less than a million. On the other hand one can really say that the cooperative bank is the bank for the small and medium enterprises, comparable to the savings banks.
So you also give lectures?
We wanted to keep the idea of Raiffeisen alive in the region, so we developed it just as we have it today. When I have to give a Raiffeisen lecture somewhere now, I take these slides with me which I developed here – and I am quite often giving lectures on the topic.
Who requests you?
Educational centers, politicians ... I just recently gave a lecture at Credit Mutuel in Strasbourg for instance, which is the Raiffeisen-foundation of one of the largest French banks.
How does the cooperative idea flow into the system of the bank?
Everyone has one vote, regardless of how much money he or she brings. The members of the co-operative choose the supervisory bodies, and then the interest rates will be manageable. If you go back to Raiffeisen’s time, the interest rates at that time had been over 100%. Then Raiffeisen fied the interest rate at 7%. What was also important to Raiffeisen, was transparancy. He did not want the loans coming from a big bank, but he wanted to tie the credit to the community here - often to the church.
So there were no businesses beyond regional borders?
For Raiffeisen, the regional aspect was in the centre. Raiffeisen actually had the idea that it would be best if the pastor was in charge of the cash balance, because of his assumed honesty. But what was always very important to him as, was the issue of transparency and that the wealthy people deposited their money and that the not well-to-do people could obtain loans, as well. Here in Flammersfeld he made 61 people deposit money into the fund so that others could take something out: a loan they had to pay back with interest of course, but the interest rate was “only” seven per cent. That is something quite different compared to one hundred per cent.
You are a historian?
I am a trained historian, political scientist, Germanist and have a sound high- school teacher training – but I never worked at a school. I worked in adult education in Baden-Wuerttemberg for 16 years, in service with the church, I led a vocational training center for people with learning disabilities. Then I was at the Federal Ministry of Labor in the management area and policy department and I have always wanted to work at a City Hall when I would be fifty. Eventually, my superior at that time told me, “they are looking for a mayor.” “Thank you, but then you will lose an employee,” I answered and this is precisely what happened. My boss lived here in Flammersfeld, very close. That way as a resident of Baden-Württemberg, I came to the Westerwald, we want to maintain the legacy of Raiffeisen.
He was oriented towards the human person
Raiffeisen was involved not only in the credit and cooperative work or in road construction, but also made an effort to ensure a reasonable education. He built and renovated school buildings, made sure that teachers were sober when they came to work in the morning and that they received a better training. He took care of the miners, as we are a mining region here. For example, the forest owners did not allow the miners to walk through the forest on their way to the pit – those distances were all covered by foot at that time – because of the deer. Consequently he quarreled with the forest owners until the miners were allowed to take the direct path to the pit and cross the forest – which reduced the way to the pit by half. He always had the human being in mind. He was born in 1818, in the same year as Karl Marx, who died in 1883. He died in1888. Karl Marx and Engels published the Communist Manifesto together in 1848 – “A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of communism”. In 1848 Raiffeisen started here in Flammersfeld – at the same time the Frankfurt National Assembly in Frankfurt’s St. Paul Church took place from 1848 until 1849, with the election of the first freely elected parliament of the German lands. Furthermore, there was the first German Catholics Assembly starting in March 1848. A lot of things happened at that time. Peasants had been free since 1818 and were no longer dependent. However, at that time the property used to be divided among all heirs, so the plots became steadily smaller.
The plots that were there, were divided among the children. With so many children the property surfaces quickly became too small to work them and make a living. In parallel, there is the beginning of industrialization, however this did not play any role here in the Westerwald. But when Raiffeisen went down from here to Neuwied and Heddesdorf (today this is Neuwied), he also encountered the industrial workers on the Rhine and took care of them as well. He also ran public education and libraries. So Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen is an incredibly dense personality. We are grateful that we can honor him here, and we greatly enjoy it.
Mr Zolk, we thank you for the stimulating conversation about life and work of F.W. Raiffeisen at his time and his importance for current issues. •
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