Friedrich von Bodelschwingh the Elder

Wanting to help the needy, he sought to engage in missionary activity but his parents convinced him to get a Protestant theology MA first.

Bodelschwingh raised money in Germany to build a church and a school near Buttes-Chaumont at 93 rue de Crimée, Paris 19e.

In the 1890s he founded in Norddorf, on the island of Amrum, in the North Sea, a series of homes, destined to offer holidays in a Christian environment.

Friedrich von Bodelschwingh senior invented and applied several unusual and innovative ideas which have captured donors' imagination and provided work to the poor.

The Swiss charity "the house of shreds" (das Brockenshaus) is continuing this activity today according to the Bodelschwingh principles, collecting, repairing and reselling old clothes.