villa residences, a Kurhaus, sanatorium, &c. In the immediate neighbourhood is the beautiful ducal hunting seat of Reinhardsbrunn, built out of the ruins of the famous Benedictine monastery founded in 1085.
FRIEDRICHSDORF, a town of Germany, in the Prussian
province of Hesse-Nassau, on the southern slope of the Taunus
range, 3 m. N.E. from Homburg. Pop. 1300. It has a French
Reformed church, a modern school, dyeworks, weaving mills,
tanneries and tobacco manufactures. Friedrichsdorf was founded
in 1687 by Huguenot refugees and the inhabitants still speak
French. There is a monument to Philipp Reis (1834–1874),
who in 1860 first constructed the telephone while a science
master at the school.
FRIEDRICHSHAFEN, a town of Germany, in the kingdom
of Württemberg, on the east shore of the Lake of Constance, at
the junction of railways to Bretten and Lindau. Pop. 4600.
It consists of the former imperial town of Buchhorn and the
monastery and village of Hofen. The principal building is the
palace, formerly the residence of the provosts of Hofen, and
now the summer residence of the royal family. To the palace
is attached the Evangelical parish church. The town has a
hydropathic establishment and is a favourite tourist resort.
Here are also the natural history and antiquarian collections of
the Lake Constance Association. Buchhorn is mentioned (as
Buachihorn or Puchihorn) in documents of 837 and was the
seat of a powerful countship. The line of counts died out in
1089, and the place fell first to the Welfs and in 1191 to the
Hohenstaufen. In 1275 it was made a free imperial city by
King Rudolph I. In 1802 it lost this status and was assigned
to Bavaria, and in 1810 to Württemberg. The monastery of
Hofen was founded in 1050 as a convent of Benedictine nuns,
but was changed in 1420 into a provostship of monks. It was
suppressed in 1802 and in 1805 came to Württemberg. King
Frederick I., who caused the harbour to be made, amalgamated
Buchhorn and Hofen under the new name of Friedrichshafen.
FRIEDRICHSRUH, a village in the Prussian province of
Schleswig-Holstein, 15 m. S.E. of Hamburg, with a station on
the main line of railway to Berlin. It gives its name to the
famous country seat of the Bismarck family. The house is a
plain unpretentious structure, but the park and estate, forming
a portion of the famous Sachsenwald, are attractive. Close by,
on a knoll, the Schneckenberg, stands the mausoleum in
which the remains of Prince Otto von Bismarck were entombed
on the 16th of March 1899.
FRIENDLY[1]
SOCIETIES. These organizations, according to
the comprehensive definition of the Friendly Societies Act 1896,
which regulates such societies in Great Britain and Ireland,
are “societies for the purpose of providing by voluntary subscriptions
of the members thereof, with or without the aid of donations,
for the relief or maintenance of the members, their husbands,
wives, children, fathers, mothers, brothers or sisters, nephews
or nieces, or wards being orphans, during sickness or other
infirmity, whether bodily or mental, in old age, or in widowhood,
or for the relief or maintenance of the orphan children of members
during minority; for insuring money to be paid on the birth of
a member’s child, or on the death of a member, or for the funeral
expenses of the husband, wife, or child of a member, or of the
widow of a deceased member, or, as respects persons of the
Jewish persuasion, for the payment of a sum of money during
the period of confined mourning; for the relief or maintenance
of the members when on travel in search of employment or when
in distressed circumstances, or in case of shipwreck, or loss
or damage of or to boats or nets; for the endowment of members
or nominees of members at any age; for the insurance against
fire to any amount not exceeding £15 of the tools or implements
of the trade or calling of the members”—and are limited in
their contracts for assurance of annuities to £52 (previous to the
Friendly Societies Act 1908 the sum was £50), and for insurance
of a gross sum to £300 (previous to the act of 1908 the sum was
£200). They may be described in a more popular and condensed
form of words as the mutual insurance societies of the poorer
classes, by which they seek to aid each other in the emergencies
arising from sickness and death and other causes of distress. A
phrase in the first act for the encouragement and relief of friendly
societies, passed in 1793, designating them “societies of good
fellowship,” indicates another useful phase of their operations.
The origin of the friendly society is, probably in all countries, the burial club. It has been the policy of every religion, if indeed it is not a common instinct of humanity, to surround the disposal of a dead body with circumstances of pomp and expenditure, often beyond the means of the surviving relatives. The appeal for help to friends and neighbours which necessarily follows is soon organized into a system of mutual aid, that falls in naturally with the religious ceremonies by which honour is done to the dead. Thus in China there are burial societies, termed “long-life loan companies,” in almost all the towns and villages. Among the Greeks the ἕρανοι combined the religious with the provident element (see Charity and Charities). From the Greeks the Romans derived their fraternities of a similar kind. The Teutons in like manner had their gilds. Whether the English friendly society owes its origin in the higher degree to the Roman or the Teutonic influence can hardly be determined. The utility of providing by combination for the ritual expenditure upon burial having been ascertained, the next step—to render mutual assistance in circumstances of distress generally—was an easy one, and we find it taken by the Greek ἕρανοι and by the English gilds. Another modification—that the societies should consist not so much of neighbours as of persons having the same occupation—soon arises; and this is the germ of our trade unions and our city companies in their original constitution. The interest, however, that these inquiries possess is mainly antiquarian. The legal definition of a friendly society quoted above points to an organization more complex than those of the ancient fraternities and gilds, and proceeding upon different principles. It may be that the one has grown out of the other. The common element of a provision for a contingent event by a joint contribution is in both; but the friendly society alone has attempted to define with precision what is the risk against which it intends to provide, and what should be the contributions of the members to meet that risk.
United Kingdom.—It would be curious to endeavour to trace how, after the suppression of the religious gilds in the 16th century, and the substitution of an organized system of relief by the poor law of Elizabeth for the more voluntary and casual means of relief that previously existed, the modern system of friendly societies grew up. The modern friendly society, particularly in rural districts, clings with fondness to its annual feast and procession to church, its procession of all the brethren on the occasion of the funeral of one of them, and other incidents which are almost obviously survivals of the customs of medieval gilds. The last recorded gild was in existence in 1628, and there are records of friendly societies as early as 1634 and 1639. The connecting links, however, cannot be traced. With the exception of a society in the port of Borrowstounness on the Firth of Forth, no existing friendly society is known to be able to trace back its history beyond a date late in the 17th century, and no records remain of any that might have existed in the latter half of the 16th century or the greater part of the 17th. One founded in 1666 was extant in 1850, but it has since ceased to exist. This is not so surprising as it might appear. Documents which exist in manuscript only are much less likely to have been preserved since the invention of printing than they were before; and such would be the simple rules and records of any society that might have existed during this interval—if, indeed, many of them kept records at all. On the whole, it seems probable therefore that the friendly society is a lineal descendant of the ancient gild—the idea never having wholly died out, but having been kept up from generation to generation in a succession of small and scattered societies.
- ↑ The word “friend” (O.E. freond, Ger. Freund, Dutch Vriend) is derived from an old Teutonic verb meaning to love. While used generally as the opposite to enemy, it is specially the term which connotes any degree, but particularly a high degree of personal goodwill, affection or regard, from which the element of sexual love is absent.
