A heart for the Kirchentag in the East

Over the next three days here in Dresden people are hanging the bright green Kirchentag scarves around their necks and setting off to huge and much smaller events throguhout the city. It seems busier than ever at this Kirchentag and it's not just an impression. Today's press conference confirmed that there are more participants at this Kirchentag than at Bremen, Cologne or Hannover. Over 117,000 people have bought three day tickets and there are over 6,800 foreign visitors.Some are even saying that this is truly the first Kirchentag for the whole of Germany, for a united Germany.
Tonight Dresden has more than 250, 000 people in the streets for the evening of encounters. The atmosphere is great even if the weather is a little cool, at least it isn't raining though. I wonder whether it is the city itself which also attracts people, many have come on a cycling pilgrimage to get here. Set on the Elbe and as a symbol of post war reconciliation, it's a beautiful but also a very meaningful place.
Dreasden also refers to itself as being in heart of Europe. The Czech and Polish borders are not far away at all. So this Kirchentag is trying to particularly open up contacts with the churches and academies in central and eastern Europe. There's a great programme at the Three Kings Church organised jointly by the Prague ecumenical academy and Dresden's church house. It's wonderful to walk the streets and be in the hotel lobby and hear Czech, Hungarian and Polish being spoken. and tonight the city centre is pulsing first to the sound of the different opening services and now to concerts. Later tonight there will be an open air performance of a specially commissioned piece of music based on the Kirchentag theme and thousands of candles will be lit.
One of the other moving things about being in Dresden is seeing the memorials in the streets to the peaceful revolution in 1989.
The WCC general secretary has also spoken today of how churches in Dresden promoted reconciliation between former enemies after the Second World War. They also supported peace and justice groups during the time of communist rule and in doing so had helped advance the peaceful revolution of 1989 which brought down the Berlin Wall and eventually united East and West Germany.

Being here also reminds me that the East of Europe is important to me. It's good to be back. This may be my last Kirchentag for a while so it's good to be in what I like to think of as "my" part of Germany. Really pleased too that it is already such a success.

We have become a published author!

On Monday evening there were strange scenes in our household as champagne was drunk despite it being the beginning of the week. At last we received a copy of Stephen's book! The publisher's had tried to send one last week but a different - also quite interesting book - arrived instead. We knew it was at last published because a Facebook friend told us her copy had arrived!

Anyway, it is cause for much rejoicing. The foreword has been written by Dr Margot Kässmann and Dr B has benefitted from a veritable harem of German proof readers. Thanks to all of them.

He is trying to say that he will be doing an English version soon, but I think I may need a holiday before that!
Anyway Amazon.de claim to have already sold out of copies but maybe they'll stock up soon, so to buy Dr B's book for now you can go to the book depository here.

An evening on the role of the churches in the GDR at the Eglise Réformée in Ferney Voltaire

On Friday evening this week Stephen and I will return to our former residence at 13 rue de Gex here in Ferney where Stephen will do a presentation/discussion on the role of the churches in the fall of the Berlin Wall and I will read some extracts from my diary - translated into French. Of course you can go on reading his reflections in English on Holy Disorder. But if you speak French and are in Ferney on Friday evening the Temple Protestant in just 5 minutes up the hill from Voltaire's statue.

Venez nous rejoindre!

Cette semaine, nous avons beaucoup entendu parler des événements du novembre 1989 en Allemagne. Mais que savons nous sur le rôle important qu'avaient joué les églises d'Allemagne d'Est avant cet changement?
Le journaliste Stephen Brown vivait en RDA dans les années 1983/1984 et en était témoin. Il a consacré ses recherches à cette influence et a obtenu son doctorat pour ce travail. Stephen Brown nous présentera cette période d'histoire le vendredi 20 novembre à vingt heures au
presbytère de Ferney Voltaire.

Holy Disorder

Twenty years ago this spring I was trying to sort out the various formalities for getting a visa to go the German Democratic Republic to study theology for a year.
In the end it all worked out well and I arrived in Wittenberg in early September 1989. Even today when I mention I studied theology in the GDR many people look very puzzled and ask whether that was really possible.
I lived through world changing events and experienced churches fuller than at any revival meeting. Early on in the demonstrations I also felt real fear about how things would develop. It is quite an experience to stand up in church to lead prayers and face a dozen secret police sitting on the first row.
It was the first and only time in my life that I kept a diary. One of the things I must try and do this year is transcribe some of what I wrote then.
The churches in central Germany are marking the 20th anniversary of the process leading the fall of the Berlin wall with a series of events called "Gesegnete Unruhe"- Holy Disorder. You can even send Holy disorder e-postcards to raise awareness of the anniversary and the events.
This was the revolution of candles, Psalms and Taizé songs, it was the revolution of Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation. You can read an interview with the year's coordinator Ralf-Uwe Beck in which he talks both about ordinary household candles as an important symbol but also about how marking the anniversary is important for people in the region today, a way to encourage people's self-confidence and faith - look at what we managed to do together 20 years ago.
When I finished my year in the GDR and went back the UK I wondered whether I would ever again experience the Bible having such immediate personal and political resonance. I grieved for that short-lived time when faith and life and action somehow seemed to dovetail. By the time I got back to the UK the country I had just lived in for a year was about to no longer exist.
"What is past is not dead, it is not even past. We cut ourselves off from it, we pretend to be strangers." is how Christa Wolf begins her book A Model Childhood. Many people from the former GDR have lived through that - a sort of wiping out of their experience. For a while in conversations with West-German friends I felt I had become a sort of honorary "Ossi".
Today this well-known quote from L.P. Hartley also resonates, "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."
It may be a foreign country but as the year advances and particularly as the autumn approaches I intend to go to that foreign country and revisit some of what I lived through in that time of Holy Disorder.

Ce qui touche le coeur se grave dans la memoire

This is a 'bonmot' of Voltaire that forms the refrain of the latest song - Voltaire-Chanson by Wolf Biermann, the East German singer who was forced into exile and deprived of his GDR citizenship in 1976, Dr B writes from Berlin. 'That which touches the heart is engraved in the memory.' The sentiment chimed with the reason for the concert, which took place during a two day conference preparing for the 20th anniversary of 1989 on, 'The peaceful revolution, the opposition and the Socialist Unity Party'. The conference has brought together academics, researchers and activists involved in the citizens' movements and political parties. The concert took place at the Langenbeck Virchow Haus. This was the first seat of the East German parliament and it was where Wilhelm Pieck was elected the first president of the GDR in 1949. It is also the place where the founding assembly of the New Forum citizens' movement took place during the peaceful revolution. Biermann wrote his latest song to mark the ceremony on 7 November at which he was presented (several decades late) with his graduation certificate from the Humboldt University. The Stasi had instructed the university back in GDR times not to give Biermann the certificate, but not to destroy it either. The conference itself is a reminder of the immense courage of the people who took to the streets in East Germany in 1989 to demand change, not knowing whether or not the government was planning a 'Chinese solution' and suppress the uprising by force, as well as the daily harrassment many of the activists had to ensure.

A hot potato for some of those who worked for civil rights in East Germany

In this international year of the potato it seemed fitting that at ecumenical tea-time today I was invited to drink a small glass of Rotkäppchensekt to celebrate the award of the Heisse Kartoffel (hot potato) to Dirk-Michael Grötzsch who works with the Lutheran World Federation in the office for communication services.

The "hot potato" is an award first made in 1993 to people who have had a particular impact on economic and social affairs in "Mitteldeutschland" and it's given by the Mitteldeutsche Presseclub zu Leipzig e. V. The Sentin.el press agency organized the prize giving. Each recipient receives a small version of the sculpture by Jörn Konrad which shows a hand wounded by a hot potato but still holding on to the hot potato despite being wounded by it.

This year the award was made to a group of people who played important roles in the peaceful autumn revolution of 1989 in the former GDR (Mitteldeutschland is mainly located in the former GDR). Dirk-Michael was a spokesperson for Neues Forum, one of the new political parties founded as part of the protests and movements that led to the Berlin wall coming down.

As we drank our Sekt he told us how some of the others in the group who already had children had made arrangements for adoption of their children in case anything should happen to them because of their political activities. Civil courage is something that builds up civil society but it comes at great personal cost sometimes. Working for human and political rights isn't easy work.

Ah yes and Rotkäppchensekt means little red riding hood champagne. And of course the little red riding hood forest is also in Mitteldeutschland.

Gardening with Martin Luther ..and Roman Catholics ... guest post

The Protestant churches in Germany are launching the Luther Decade this weekend, a 10-year series of events leading to the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther's "95 Theses", the event often seen as marking the Protestant Reformation. The great and the good are gathering at the Castle Church in Wittenberg, where Luther is said to have nailed his theses, for a special service on 21 September. (The picture shows the Wittenberg Stadtkirche, which towers over the market place.) Already on 20 September, the first sod was cut in Wittenberg for the Luther Garden, where 500 trees are to be planted between now and 2017. Churches worldwide are to be encouraged to adopt one of the trees that are planned for the Luther Garden and also to plant a tree themselves to denote a link with the birthplace of the Reformation. Meanwhile the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Cardinal Walter Kasper, has, in an interview printed in a German newspaper, said that Roman Catholics can learn from Luther. ENI reported that Cardinal Walter Kasper encouraged Catholics to read Luther's commentaries on the Bible, and his "hymns full of spiritual power", the German Protestant news agency epd reported."One will then discover a Luther who is full of the power of faith, whom one cannot simply make Catholic, whom we find provoking and even alien in many respects, but from whom even Catholics can learn."

Anniversary of the building of the Berlin wall

Today marks the 47th anniversary of the building of the Berlin wall. I showed a large group of young people from German-speaking Switzerland around the ecumenical centre today and ended as often by showing them the large piece of the wall which is in the garden a few metres away from my office. As I was talking about it I realised that not a single one of them was born at the time the wall came down in 1989 - a key event in my life as I was living in East Germany at the time.
The picture above is of part of the wall which is now protected and still standing as a reminder in Berlin.
As we were looking at the remains of the wall today the group's pastor said that he hoped that other walls and divisions would be similarly overcome some day - in Israel, in Korea ... and many other places.

Today's the day

Stephen took the Eurostar to Britain yesterday. He will be having a few tense hours this afternoon at the department of German studies at the University of Reading defending his PhD. He's already spotted typos, so there will be corrections. Nearly there I hope ... But I probably shouldn't say that, he gets superstitious about such things. Fingers crossed. Good luck!
There's another interesting post from Tom Heneghan which seems appropriate, all about the retirement of the pastor of the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig.
So if you want to know something about the "Transformation of Dissatisfaction into Dissent: The Conciliar Process for Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation in the German Democratic Republic", I know Stephen would be very happy to enlighten you.
(And of course a University of Reading sounds very appropriate but it's pronounced redding and is quite a big place between London and Oxford.)

"Freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently"

The quote is from Rosa Luxemburg, whose writings were fairly freely available in former East Germany. Twenty years ago this month at the January 17th official East German commemoration of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg (socialist heroes as a result of their execution during the 1918-19 revolutions), homemade banners were quickly unfurled by members of opposition groups. One of the banners read "Freiheit ist immer der Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" the quote from Rosa Luxemburg. Another read "Those who don't move can't feel their chains".
We're listening to a Radio Berlin Brandenburg programme where many of those who took part in this counter demonstration are telling their stories of arrest - many of them before they even got to the demonstration, and some of whom were arrested a week after the demonstration took place. One of the things that became clear is that there are still different understandings of what actually took place then, between, for example, those who hoped that by taking part in the protest would speed their explusion to the west, and those who wanted to stay in East Germany to work for political change. A number of those who wanted to stay in East Germany were transported from prison to the West.
Many of the peace and human rights groups met in churches; the printing press and environmental library violently closed by the state was in the Zionskirche; as news of the arrests spread so hundreds gathered to pray in Berlin, Leipzig, Magdeburg and Erfurt. Conviction took those people onto the street, determination to think differently.
Eighteen months later after the peaceful revolution of autumn 1989 many began to discover that it was in some cases those closest to them - the father of their children, the lawyer defending them - who had betrayed them.
Resistance and opposition is not an easy path. Nearly 90 years ago, being one of those who thought differently meant that Rosa Luxemburg herself met her death.