We are in the year around 1995 when Arthur Trossen (Richter), Eberhard Kempf (Diplom-Psychologe) und Ralf Käppele (Rechtsanwalt) have been thinking about methods to improve dealing with conflicts in family affairs at court. The idea of an integrated mediation was born.

Mediation suddenly became the key for everything. Not because parties wanted to deal with mediation, but because mediation showed the way how to get to amicable solutions created by the parties themselves with the help of judges, lawyers and experts.

Mediators couldn’t believe that mediation is possible for a sitting judge who is decision maker. But we could prove it is. Not as a procedure in a legal sense but as a method to be implemented in other procedures.

We worked out the idea and learned to enhance it. A concept about mediation was the outcome. It was a concept covering all kinds and ways of mediation possible. We later should develop a theory about mediation, which has been called cognition theory.

The new and broad view on mediation needed a name to not being mixed with the term of mediation in its narrow sense. As to the ability to be implemented anywhere, we called it Integrated Mediation.

Founding an association around was the next logical step. Thus Integrated Mediation became a NGO. It has been founded the 11th of April in 2001 in Hachenburg.