Jakob Fugger founded the Fuggerei “in example” in 1521. Today’s oldest social settlement in the world was not only intended to give those in need a place to live, it was not only to be preserved and developed after his death. The then richest man in the world also wanted to find imitators with his settlement in Augsburg. For the celebrations of the 500th anniversary, which was postponed to 2022 due to the pandemic, there are now actual projects in Lithuania and Sierra Leone that the Fuggerei has taken as a model. At the start of the five-week celebrations in Augsburg, the intention was to “incite donations,” said Hereditary Count Alexander Fugger-Babenhausen, Chairman of the Senior Council of the Fugger Foundations.
Those responsible for the Fuggerei had a “Next 500 Pavilion” built on the town hall square of the Fuggerstadt: a huge wooden structure in which visitors should be inspired and motivated so that the Fuggerei idea will live on for the next 500 years. And so in the pavilion you can not only read historical facts about the Fuggerei. There is also an interactive game in which visitors have ten minutes to come up with the idea of a new Fuggerei on screens and plan such a project right away.
Stella Rothenberger, head of the NGO Pfefferminzgreen, is developing a village based on the model of the Fuggerei in Sierra Leone, which is intended to become a sustainable living space for families.
(Photo: Stefan Puchner/dpa)
Stella Rothenberger is already further along. The head of the NGO Pfefferminzgreen doesn’t need to play a game, she has launched a concept for a Fuggerei in Sierra Leona together with her local partner, Rugiatu Neneh Turay. Although, as Fugger-Babenhausen makes clear, the Fuggerei is not concerned with lending its name to projects all over the world. Rather, the Fuggerei helps with its know-how about foundations and 500 years of experience if questions arise. The projects themselves are independent – and do not necessarily have to focus on the topic of “need”. In Sierra Leone, for example, a remote village is to be developed that served as a base for slave traders in the 17th century and is located in a region of extreme poverty. “There is a lack of almost all basic needs,” says Rothenberger.
The founders Rothenberger and Neneh Turay have made it their task not just to develop infrastructure. They were on the spot, they sat down time and time again with the village community and discussed what the people needed. The result is a plan that should help the residents of the fishing village to a better life – with a school, a small hospital, a boat dock, with roads. The aim is a sustainable living space for families that enables women and girls in particular to develop independently.
The Fuggerei wants to help people to help themselves. “Far more than a cheap roof over your head,” says Fugger-Babenhausen. Needy Augsburgers can move into an apartment there for 88 cents a year, the waiting list is long. Those responsible have identified seven social challenges that the Fuggerei is tackling: Values such as creating living space, strengthening dignity, providing security should also be implemented in other projects. Gintaras Grachauskas, for example, wants to create a settlement in Lithuania that offers pensioners a safe home, but where younger generations also feel at home.
Ursula von der Leyen will speak on the occasion of the anniversary
“23 years ago,” says Grachauskas, “I visited the Fuggerei.” The idea behind the social settlement is firmly anchored in him. As an advisor to two governments in Lithuania, he tried to implement concepts for an aging society. He is now convinced that the state cannot do everything, that some social tasks require private initiatives. “Three quarters of all pensioners in Lithuania live below the subsistence level,” says Grachauskas. The average pension is 280 euros, but the cost of living is only 20 to 30 percent below that in Germany. So Grachauskas wants to create a village where pensioners can live in dignity. He even works with Stanford University in the USA for this, the village should be sustainable, it should also create jobs and thus added value for the area. In politics, in business, in industry, his suggestion was often smiled at, says Grachauskas. “We have to bring the idea deeper into society.”
The Fuggerei is a unique Augsburg institution that, even after half a millennium, still serves as an international catalyst for social innovation, says Mayor Eva Weber. “An admirable sense of citizenship coupled with entrepreneurial foresight” is the Fuggerei, says Ursula von der Leyen. The President of the European Commission will speak on the occasion of the anniversary in Augsburg on Saturday. Those responsible at the Fuggerei would have no objection to further imitators in even more countries.