German Youth Movement

German cultural and educational movement The German Youth Movement (German: Die deutsche Jugendbewegung) is a collective term for a cultural and educational movement that started in 1896. It consists of numerous associations of young people that focus on outdoor activities. The movement included German Scouting and the Wandervogel. By 1938, 8 million children had joined associations that identified with the movement. Wandervogel In 1896 the Wandervogel, a popular movement of youth groups who protested against industrialization, was founded in Berlin, and its members soon derived many vital concepts from the ideas of earlier social critics and Romantics, ideas that had extensive influence on many fields at the onset of the 20th century. To escape the repressive and authoritarian German society at the end of the 19th century, its values increasingly transformed by industrialism, imperial militarism, as well as by British and Victorian influence, groups of young people searched for free space to develop a healthy life of their own away from the expanding cities. Expressing a romantic longing for a pristine state of things and older diverse cultural traditions, they turned to nature, c