When a group of courageous parents from Taufkirchen was looking for a name for their kindergarten almost 30 years ago, they came across the turtle Tranquilla Trampeltreu from Michael Ende’s fable of the same name. In this the armored animal wants to attend the wedding of its large-maned majesty, Leo Leo the Twenty-eighth – on foot, which is acknowledged by the other animals with mockery and suspicion because of its slowness. But even if it is belated, Tranquilla Trampeltreu reaches her goal – because she persistently goes her way.
The parents realized that this story was a perfect fit for their kindergarten, where children with and without disabilities find a home together and each of them should develop according to their individual needs – step by step, at their own pace, like the turtle. And so the integrative kindergarten Tranquilla Trampeltreu opened in Taufkirchen at the beginning of 1993. There are also two nativity scenes with the same name today. In addition, the association behind it is involved in many ways for families in the village – with lunchtime care, in the family center, with a counseling center, a family support point and soon also in a new forest kindergarten.
The association was founded on this Friday 30 years ago by some committed mothers. At first it was called the “Association for the Joint Promotion of Disabled and Non-Disabled Children”; in 2001 the name was changed to Integra. Since then, the association has taken an astonishing development that also shows parallels to Michael Ende’s turtle.
Because, as Brigitte Haas, Managing Director of Integra since 2014, puts it: “We have always paid attention to slow growth – step by step. We never wanted to open another facility, everything that happened came from our own Need out. ” At the beginning, this was the wish of some parents that their disabled and non-disabled children go to kindergarten together – which was completely unusual at the time, as Haas says. “Children with disabilities stayed at home until they were six and then went to special school.” Inclusion? Only very few knew the word at that time.
And so the Taufkirchen mothers became active themselves, got together based on the model of an Oberhachingen Montessori kindergarten and founded an association in 1991 – with the aim of opening an integrative kindergarten. Andrea Riesenberger was elected chairwoman, her deputies were Gabriele Höbenreich-Hajek and Marianne Sobetzki, and Sabine Harbeck and Roswitha Leysieffer were also members of the board.
One and a half years later, the Tranquilla Trampeltreu kindergarten was opened on Postweg and expanded shortly afterwards; In 1995, the company moved to a new building in Köglweg next to the secondary school. There was “a very special atmosphere”, says Dorothee Bischof. She moved from Munich to Taufkirchen in 1997, her daughter and son attended the Integra kindergarten, and she was later chairman of the association for many years. “The teachers were all there with a lot of passion,” says Bischof about the facility. In addition, the parents were involved, for example when it came to gardening, cleaning windows or the next Christmas market. “We had the feeling that this was our house,” she says of the kindergarten. “The parents weren’t just consumers, they wanted and were allowed to help shape it.”
The great commitment and the needs of the parents also meant that the Integra association grew steadily and took on additional tasks. The family center on Postweg opened in autumn 1996 – including lunchtime care for school children, which was later gradually expanded. Another big step was the commissioning of an integrative crèche in 2011, which, after a long search for a location, found accommodation in the Unterhaching industrial park on Grünwalder Weg. In 2016, the starting signal for the family support point followed, which Integra operates together with the neighborhood help. And as the latest major project, the forest kindergarten behind the cemetery is currently on the list, where a group will start in September.
In short: What began in 1991 as a parents’ initiative with a handful of mothers is today “one of the most important players in Taufkirchen in the social field”, as Mayor Ullrich Sander (non-party) put it. The numbers alone speak for themselves: Integra currently has 270 members and 85 employees; 270 children are cared for in the three facilities. “Compared to the past, everything has become much more professional,” says Dorothee Bischof, who has accompanied the development of the association for 25 years. “But even if a lot is changing – the core of Integra has remained.” And for this core no one is better than the turtle Tranquilla Trampeltreu, who walks her way step by step and does not allow herself to be dissuaded from her goal – for 30 years now.