ABSTRACT
Hermann hoffmann, a student at Berlin University, founded in 1896 a shorthand study circle at Steglitz Grammar School which also from time to time arranged group excursions. Hoffmann was a pleasant and able man, an enthusiastic rambler, but he had neither vision nor charisma, and the brooding, over-bearing Karl Fischer, with all his intellectual limitations, had precisely these qualities; he was the born leader. The story of the youth movement in the first decade after the meeting in the Steglitz Ratskeller is one of steady and inconspicuous growth, not of great deeds and memorable events. Youth movement literature was curiously flat and formless; its early magazines are almost unreadable. The early histroy of the youth movement is one of idealistic endeavour and high aspirations. Hoffmann-Voelkersamb dropped out of the Wandervogel before it was even officially born, and his role as one of the pioneers was soon forgotten.
