PhD project

Project leader: Priv.-Doz. Dr. Winfried Süß
Project editor: Vincent Kleinbub

Duration: 2023-2026
Supported by Stiftung Deutsches Jugendherbergswerk and Wilhelm-Münker-Stiftung

During the 20th century, youth tourism and the concept of „youth hiking“ gained in importance. Consequently hiking in nature became both an educational and a leisure activity, which was influenced in and through youth hostels. On the one hand, staying in youth hostels meant stepping outside the boundaries of modern society and its responsibilities. On the other hand there were many attempts of appropriating and politicizing youth hostels and the DJH.

The project aims to review the history of german youth hostels and their umbrella organization as well as to make visible the breaks and continuities in youth tourism in the 1930s to the 1950s. The focus of the study is on longer-term effects as well as phenomena of new beginnings and change. How did expectations of youth hostels and political approaches to them change? What were the consequences? How did change in leisure and youth culture influence young peoples experiences of youth hostels?

To that end, research categories such as space, youth, and hostel serve as "brackets" to approach the guiding questions. The first category, space, aims to explore the youth hostels as ambivalent spaces on the one hand, in which access and political influence were constantly renegotiated, and as governed spaces on the other hand, in which social orders manifested themselves, which were reproduced through social practices.
The second category, youth, aims at researching the guests of youth hostels. Specifically the expectations that guests had of youth hostels. The category also includes the question of how social conceptions of youthfulness changed. This, then, begs the question of the changed political and social handling of youth and youthfulness.
The third category, hostel, aims to examine the internal history of youth hostels, their routine, everyday life and material culture. What was the image, which hostel operators had of themselves and their work? How were youth hostels presented (for example in advertisement)? What did the ideal hostel parent look like? Who became a hostel parent and how?