The work presented by Martin Kamp is divided into a systematic part and a historical representation part. The systematic part begins with an outline of the work's objective. It focuses on the analysis of experiences with the reform model of self-governing homes, which are also referred to as children's or youth republics, and which take the democratic republic, the state, and the self-governing city as their models. Even in justifying the selection, the author makes one of his central insights clear: how democratic, free, and self-governing an institution truly is cannot be discerned from systematic, often philosophical and anthropologically grounded theories, nor from the constitution, organizational forms, and statutes. The essential point is the unfortunately elusive mood, the atmosphere, the spirit.