The story
Founded by Richard Schirrmann in 1932.1
Richard Schirrmann, a German schoolteacher, opened the first youth hostel on 1 June 1912 in Altena Castle, in northwest Germany, with the goal of providing affordable accommodation to youth travelling the country. More hostels were opened in Germany throughout the 1910s, and Schirrmann founded the German Youth Hostel Association in 1919.
Other countries in Europe adopted this concept, which led to the founding of the International Youth Hostel Federation (IYHF) in October 1932 in Amsterdam by representatives from Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Poland, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Britain, Ireland, France, and Belgium. Schirrmann, who became president in 1933, resigned in 1936 when the Government of Nazi Germany forced him out while the hostels were put under control of the Hitler Youth.
Throughout the 1950s, the hostel concept spread to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. By 1977, the international hostel network had reached a total of 500 million overnight stays, and by 1997, it counted one billion stays.
IYHF began using the name Hostelling International in 2006.
Youth hostels originally differed in setup from modern hostels, although the growing popularity of backpacking culture forced them to evolve. For example, in England and Wales, the practice of visitors completing daily chores and cleaning tasks as part of their stay was phased out during the 1980s.
From Wikipedia’s article on Hostelling International, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5