Chris? "Freiwillige" means it's a volunteer brigade.
Yes, and many seem to be "volunteer" but my German friend phoned one of them (at 430pm on a Sunday) it turns out that they are sitting there waiting for a call 0630 to 1900 5 days a week with 1 person on site at all times. So they may be "volunteer" but I think they spend a lot more time at the station than any UK volunteer fire fighters.
If anyone can explain more about the differences beween the "volunteer" and "occupational" brigades, please go for it. The volunteer ones seem to outnumber the occupational ones.
I went on an exchange trip to Pforzheim in Germany some years back.
From memory most of the 1,400,000 firefighters in Germany are volunteers.
The german Feuerwehr is not organised nationally as such, but is instead organised locally at village / town / city level as opposed to county or regional level.
"Berufsfeuerwehr" are the full time fire service
"Freiwillige Feuerwehr" Volunteeer Fire Brigade
"Werksfeuerwehr" - Industrial Fire Services
By law large cities must have a full time fire service, smaller cities / large towns have a mix of full time fire crews supported by volunteers, smaller towns / villages generally will have volunteers.
Pforzheim was a large town and had a mixture of full timers and volunteers if I remember correctly. The mayor was in charge of the fire service and had full control over the budget. The mayor also appointed the Fire Chief.
Alot of the volunteers spent a great deal of time on station purely for the social interaction with their full time colleagues. Often the firefighter had their families around too, very much like the UK Fire Service did at one time.
The volunteers were summoned by a siren, they were on the verge of moving onto pagers when we visited.
Don't quote me on this but whilst the volunteers did not get paid per call out (unlike a retained firefighter) they did get concessions / reductions on the ammount of tax they paid
Furthermore, again from memory but Im sure that in some areas where the recruitment of volunteers was difficult a Mayor could require citizens to become volunteers - bit like a sort of conscription if you like.
