International Fellowship of Reconciliation Collected Records

In August 1914, an ecumenical conference was held in Konstanz, southern Germany (near Switzerland) by Christians seeking to prevent the outbreak of war in Europe. Before the conference ended, however, World War I had started and those present had to return to their respective countries. Henry Hodgkin (an English Quaker) and Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze (a German Lutheran) parted company at the railway station at Cologne with the words "We are one in Christ and can never be at war." To take that pledge forward, Hodgkin organised a conference in Cambridge in 1915, where the "Fellowship of Reconciliation" was formed (England FOR). Shortly after the Cambridge conference, in the autumn of 1915, he went over to America and the American Fellowship was founded (Nov. 1915). The International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) was established in 1922 with the name of Movement Towards a Christian International; its current name came into use in 1923.

The International Fellowship of Reconciliation has had as many as 40 national Fellowships on all continents. The German branch, Versuhnungsbund, held its first conference in 1932, but in 1933, when Hitler came to power, it dissolved. Siegmund Schultze was arrested twenty-seven times during World War I and was forced to live in exile during the Nazi period. FOR Germany was officially reestablished just in 1956 with Schultze as President.

To learn more of IFOR history, see http://www.ifor-mir.org/index.php/about-ifor/history.

The IFOR Secretariat has been located in various places throughout the years, but has stayed in Alkmaar, Netherlands since 1977.