Deutscher Pfadfinderbund

Deutscher Pfadfinderbund
First national emblem of the DPB, the so-called "chessboard"
Location	Berlin
Country	Germany
Founded	1911
Membership	ca. 90,000
Reichsfeldmeister	Maximilian Bayer
Affiliation	World Organization of the Scout Movement 1929-1933
Next Deutscher Pfadfinderbund (1945)

The Deutscher Pfadfinderbund (DPB) (literal translation German Scouting Union) was the first German Scouting association, and the forerunner of the Deutscher Pfadfinderbund (1945). It existed from 1911 until 1933, when it was disbanded by the National Socialists.

Scouting in Germany started in 1909. The Deutscher Pfadfinderbund was founded on 18 January 1911 in Berlin, becoming the first Scouting union in Germany. Being the first-and, at least in the beginning, the only-of its kind in Germany, the Pfadfinderbund quickly gained around 90,000 members.

The first Scoutmaster (in German: Reichsfeldmeister or Bundesführer, literally field-leader of the realm, or union-leader) was military person and Scouting pioneer Maximilian Bayer. The military background of Bayer was reflected in the military orientation the Pfadfinderbund had in the beginning.

With the end of World War I, the Scouting movement in Germany strove to reintroduce a general structure, and reorganized the Pfadfinderbund in 1918. The first years of the newly formed Bund were marked by a recurring conflict about the orientation, between the "old" members that were active before World War I, and the "new" ones. While the old leading members almost all served in the German military during the war and wanted to rebuild the Pfadfinderbund in its old form, the new, progressive powers leaned more towards the Wandervogel as being more back-to-nature orientated and less nationalistic. This two main factions were the "jungdeutschen" (young German) and the "neudeutschen" (new German) Scouts. The latter adopted the so-called Prunner Gelöbnis (Vow of Prunn) in 1919, which became the German Scouts' epigraph.

The first "Reichsfeldmeister" (fieldleader of the realm) after the war was Carl Freiherr von Seckendorff, chosen in Eisenach in 1919. While von Seckendorff was of the old leadership generation, both Scouting factions remained in the union.

This soon changed in 1920, when two leaders of the "Neupfadfinder" (New Scouts) faction, Martin Voelkel and Ludwig Habbel, were ejected from the Bund. Both "Jungdeutsche" and "Neudeutsche" formed their own Scouting organization after that, the "Bund Deutscher Neupfadfinder (BDN)" (Union of German new Scouts), in 1921.