page_title: Strength Through Joy
section_title: After work
hierarchical_section_title: Strength Through Joy / After work
caption_attribution_description: English: Bronze pin-badge (tinnie), 37 x 45 mm. Pfronten St Nikolaus Church below in 3 lines: "N.S.G. KRAFT D. FREUDE PFRONTEN 1935"/ Pin Issued by Nationalsozialistische (Nazi) Gemeinschaft (N.S.G.) Kraft durch Freude (KdF). KdF (literally "Strength through Joy") was a large state-controlled leisure organisation in Nazi Germany, as part of the the national German labour organisation. Condition: Extremely Fine.
context_page_description: Kraft durch Freude was a state-operated leisure organization in Nazi Germany. It was a part of the German Labour Front, the national German labour organization at that time. Set up as a tool to promote the advantages of National Socialism to the people, it had become the world's largest tourism operator by the 1930s.
  KdF was supposed to bridge the class divide by making middle-class leisure activities available to the masses.
  It also sought to bolster the German tourist industry, something it did successfully up until the outbreak of World War II. By 1934, over two million Germans had participated in a KdF trip; by 1939 the reported numbers lay around 25 million people. With the outbreak of war in 1939, the organization was mothballed, and several projects, such as the Prora holiday resort, were never completed.
context_section_description: Feierabendgestaltung (English: After-work organization) was the "planned" structuring of daily leisure time within the KdF programme, attempted by the National Socialists through individual state agencies, including the Office for After-Work Activity (Amt Feierabend) and the Office for Popular Education (Amt Volksbildungswerk). In National Socialist usage, the term "after-work organization" was increasingly applied to the entire area of organized leisure activity (including holidays).
caption: 1935 KdF pin depicting the Catholic St. Nikolaus Church in Pfronten, Allgäu
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