They're brown, they're soft, and they're very, very many.

Almost 580 rescue teddy bears are piled up in the foyer of the Bad Homburg fire station on Monday.

Stacking is possible because most teddies are in boxes, 24 in one.

Florentine Fritzen

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

  • Follow I follow

The stuffed animal's job is to save souls during emergency operations.

If a child is in danger, firefighters and paramedics in the Hochtaunus district can now press a teddy bear about 25 centimeters in size into their arms.

The Bad Homburg fire director Daniel Guischard found the experiences in Frankfurt so convincing that he contacted the action committee child in the hospital (AKIK).

The Frankfurt association distributes the teddy bears.

When all have been used, there is a load of new ones.

Each child can keep their teddy bear.

The animals are needed, Karin Schmidt is sure of that.

The chairman of the association reports that the German Red Cross has 1,700 missions with victims under the age of 18 in the Hochtaunus district every year.

These didn't all need a teddy bear to cuddle and soothe.

But even twelve-year-olds often hug someone in the ambulance.

The rescue workers decide when to pull out a teddy bear that is ready in the car.

"There are paramedics who give it out immediately." Others use it specifically when a child becomes restless.

Sometimes psychologists later used the teddy bear as a “negative souvenir” to come to terms with what they had experienced with a child.

"Providing first aid to an injured little soul is something else"

"DRK Hochtaunus" is written on most of the 24 teddy packages.

384 bears go to the German Red Cross.

The others will go to the Bad Homburg fire station and the Malteser im Hochtaunus, which will mainly be deployed in Usingen and the surrounding area.

The men and women of all three organizations wear operational clothing during the handover.

In this way, the preschool children who visit the fire brigade on Monday can easily distinguish between the emergency workers.

"We prepared the children," says Carola Weinheim, the deputy head of the small municipal day care center in Engelsgasse.

All children got a teddy bear.

There are animals in brown and beige, with a green and brown bow.

"These are for the children who are injured," explains one girl.

“The teddies help to comfort.

Because – they are also cuddly.” The young visitors themselves do not need comfort at the moment, and so the teddies can now enjoy loving care and medical treatment.

"This is my baby now," says a girl, stroking the really, really fluffy fur of the stuffed animal with the amber eyes.

Fire director Guischard knows how precious children's happiness is.

He points through the glass wall of the guard to the row of streets opposite.

There was a terrible fire in a building some time ago, in which a six-year-old girl was injured.

"The family only had what they were wearing." The sight is still present, says Guischard: "These pictures remain." The fire brigade has heavy rescue equipment.

"But providing first aid to an injured little soul is something else." That's why he's very grateful for the teddy bears.

Thanks also go to Karin Giersch: She and her husband have been supporting the use of teddy bears for ten years with their Frankfurt foundation.

Next delivery in summer

The four women from AKIK wear bright orange.

"We are not the green ladies," says Karin Schmidt, alluding to other hospital assistants.

But the association's 50 to 70 volunteers also support the work in clinics: they visit children there.

However, not in the Hochtaunus district, where there is no children's ward.

The assistants in Höchst, for example, take care of small patients from there.

Mayor Oliver Jedynak (CDU) is also impressed.

Because he is also the head of the Bad Homburg fire department, he poses for a photo in front of the police station with Guischard, Giersch and three teddies.

Then he strokes his animal's fur and says: "That's great!"

The animals are manufactured by the Nuremberg toy company Bauer, but to the regret of the donors, not in Germany but in the Far East.

Last year a teddy bear got stuck in the Panama Canal.

It currently takes twelve weeks for a delivery to arrive.

The next one will come in the summer.

Before the fire brigade serves the day-care children a meal of their choice – French fries and chicken sausages – they are allowed to sit in an emergency vehicle.

The teddies are sitting on their laps and they already have names.

The girls are called Sweetie, Sternchen, Sterni and Sternschnuppe, the boys are called Bären, Berni and Brian.