Civil Protection
Draftees could also opt for service in the Civil Protection, which was by law equal to military service. Today, those are normally medical ambulance organisations and organisations for disaster relief (Katastrophenschutz). This was subject to validation by local authorities, who usually were allowed a certain contingent of such volunteers per year of birth. Thus, organizations such as the Technical Relief Service (Technisches Hilfswerk, THW), volunteer Fire Departments or other emergency assistance and crisis management agencies such as the Red Cross were supported in performing their volunteer services in disaster response. In the ambulance services, their service could overlap with the service of conscientious objectors.
Draftees in the Civil Protection got no payment outside of compensations for clothing and transportation fares, doing an honorary service (ehrenamtlich).
Read more about this topic: Conscription In Germany
Famous quotes containing the words civil and/or protection:
“Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“After so many historical illustrations of the evil effects of abandoning the policy of protection for that of a revenue tariff, we are again confronted by the suggestion that the principle of protection shall be eliminated from our tariff legislation. Have we not had enough of such experiments?”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)