Heidemarie Schwermer, a 69-year-old woman from
Germany, gave up using money 15 years ago and says she’s been much
happier ever since.
22 years ago,
Heidemarie Schwermer left her difficult marriage and relocated to the
city of Dortmund (in Germany’s Ruhr area) with her two kids. A
middle-aged secondary school teacher, she quickly became aware of the
large population of homeless people in the town. It shocked her so much
she decided to do something about it. Schwermer believed the homeless
didn’t need actual money to be accepted back into society, only a chance
to empower themselves by making themselves useful. With this decided
truth, she opened a Tauschring (swap shop), called “Gib und Nimm” (Give
and Take).
Give and Take became a place where anyone could trade stuff and skills for other things and skills they needed, without a single coin or
banknote exchanged. Old clothes could be traded in return for kitchen
appliances, and car service rendered in exchange for plumbing services,
and so on. At first the idea didn’t attract many of Dortmund’s homeless,
because, as some of them told her to her face, they didn’t ‘feel an educated middle-class woman could relate to their situation’.
Instead, her small shop was eagerly taken advantage of
by many of the city’s unemployed and retired folk eager to trade their
skills and old stuff for something they needed. The unique Tauschring
eventually became somewhat of a phenomenon in Dortuman, and even
prompted its creator to ask herself some questions about the life she
was living.
She came to realize that she was living with a lot of stuff she didn’t really need. Such recognition compelled her to decide not to buy anything
else without first giving something away. Not long after, Heidemarie
realized how unhappy she was with her work. She made the connection
between her unhappiness and the physical symptoms (backache and constant
illness) she was experiencing, therefore decided to take up other jobs.
Schwermer began washing dishes for 10 Deutchmarks an hour, and despite the fact that people kept saying things to her like, “You went to university, you studied to do this?”,
she felt good about herself. The courageous woman didn’t feel like she
should be valued more because of her studies than someone working in a
kitchen.
By the year 1995, the Tasuchring had changed her life so
profoundly she was spending virtually nothing, as everything she needed
seemed to finds its way into her life. One year later, then,
Heidemarie made the very bold and courageous decision to live without money.
By this time her children had moved out, so she sold the apartment in
Dortmund and decided to live nomadically, trading things and services
for everything she needed. It was supposed to be a 12-month experiment…
But what happened is that Heidemarie found herself loving it so much that she just couldn’t give it up.
15 years later, she still lives according to the principles of Gib und
Nimm, doing a variety of chores for accommodation in the houses of
various members of the Tauschring. And guess what? She loves every minute of it.
