Miracles and Miraculous Faith
On a warm East Prussian day in July 1926, Elder William Porter and a companion missionary were going door to door in the city of Tilsit, preaching the gospel to anyone who would listen.77 When they entered a yard, a large, agitated dog—frothing at the mouth—attempted to pounce on them but found its range limited by the chain attached to its collar. Assuming that the beast was adequately restrained, the two Mormon missionaries approached the house when, suddenly, the raging dog broke free of its chain and pounced on Elder Porter’s companion. As it tried to tear into the young man’s flesh, the dog discovered that its mouth would not open. Frustrated, the enraged animal then turned on Elder Porter, but again it could not open its mouth to bite. Having survived the attack unharmed, the two emissaries of Joseph Smith’s restored gospel delivered their message to the house’s human inhabitants and then departed, giving thanks for the divine intervention that held closed the jaws of the savage canine.78
Stories like this appear regularly in the chronicles of young Americans who ministered in the Mormon missions of the Weimar Republic. They served to buttress the faith of post-adolescent foreigners, far from home with few possessions and often short of money, promoting conversion to a strange New World religion in a tradition-bound Germany hostile to the concept, and in a German tongue that most of them were still learning. For their German congregants, whose choice to abandon their childhood Catholicism or Lutheranism often estranged them from neighbors and sometimes from their relatives, such miracles discussed during weekly meetings provided the hope that they would, one day, be able to immigrate to the American Zion, where they expected miraculous happenings to become commonplace, and where their adopted Mormonism would place them into the majority.
In most cases, according to the records of the German-Austrian Mission of Dresden/Berlin and the Swiss-German Mission of Basel, recorded “miracles” occurred after a German church member sought a blessing of comfort and healing from missionaries or the mission president. The liturgical procedure required one missionary to apply a few drops of consecrated oil, usually high-grade olive oil that had been blessed previously during prayer, to the forehead of an afflicted believer. The other missionary would then place his hands upon the head of the ill or otherwise troubled congregant, say a prayer, and thus “seal the anointing.” Such a Mormon priesthood ordinance could be counted upon to heal both sickness and injury, and to be effective on all age groups from children suffering the onset of infantile paralysis to those afflicted with the maladies of old age.79 Sometimes, the records indicate only that the missionaries prayed with their congregants, but that healings were nevertheless achieved.
In July 1927, a Sister Schüler of the Hohenstein Branch felt so near death that she called all her close relatives in order to say goodbye. She had been vomiting blood continuously for three days and had been unable to sleep. When the missionaries arrived and blessed her, she fell asleep immediately. Within fifteen minutes, she awoke refreshed, “was without pain and was not troubled with further vomiting.” She made a complete recovery.80
On several occasions, missionaries helped cure faithful members who had been sick for much longer periods. On April 30, 1926, the mission president, Frederick Tadje, blessed a female member of the Leipzig Branch who had undergone several surgical procedures and had been bedridden for one year. Within two weeks of his visit, she had regained her health.81 In the Chemnitz Central Branch in July 1927, a lady who had been confined to bed for six months summoned Elder Ray H. Adams and his companion. Within one day of their blessing, “she was up and doing her washing,” and the healing was “a topic of conversation in her neighborhood for some time.”82
Often, records indicate that the healing actions of Mormon missionaries confounded and amazed German medical practitioners. When Frau Ackermann, who was considering joining a church congregation in Chemnitz, called upon the elders to help her with a troubled pregnancy, the result caused her obstetrician to cancel plans for surgical delivery of her baby. “The doctor examined her and to his great surprise,” the mission records state, “found the unborn child in proper position and the mother in perfect condition.” Reportedly, when she told her physician of the blessing, he took the names of the ministering elders and set out to investigate this “supernatural method of healing.”83 When Sister Kant of Stettin suffered from the infirmities of aging, her doctors prescribed steady doses of morphine as the only remedy for her constant, excruciating pain. When the missionaries blessed her, however, “the pain left her body” and she was able to attend church services the next day. Additional commentary in the mission records noted: “The power of the Lord can go a lot further than the best of doctors.”84 In Berne in July 1931, doctors had given up hope for the recovery of an ill child who had not eaten in ten days. According to mission historical records, the next day the missionaries administered a blessing to the famished youth, which subsequently caused the same doctors to concede that a miracle had happened and predict that the child would fully recuperate.85
Mormon missionaries periodically claimed to have cured congregants of multiple maladies. At the end of October 1932, elders visiting the German-speaking Polish district of Masuren encountered a five-year-old child “with practically no mental ability whatsoever” who had also contracted a skin disease that covered her face with infectious scabs that did not respond to a salve prescribed by her doctors.86 Two days after they administered a blessing, “all signs of inflammation had disappeared,” and subsequently “the child showed mental improvement and commenced to talk.”87 In the city of Barmen of the Westphalia region, the young daughter of Johanne Becker had been blind for four and one-half months. When the missionaries blessed her in March 1930, she regained her eyesight within eight days. However, she subsequently became “afflicted with a long spell of dropsy,” which caused her to be bedridden for sixteen weeks. Her mother once again called the elders, who bestowed another blessing. Within one day, the mission records recount, she was completely healed and left her sickbed.88
Occasionally, members did not need to call the missionaries. Instead, these young ministers of the gospel received spiritual “promptings” or premonitions that their priesthood powers were needed. In the Schleswig-Holstein city of Husum in October 1927, Elders Edwin H. Calder and Norman W. Forsberg borrowed bicycles in order to visit the rural home of a church member. On the way, one claimed to have received a prompting that they should visit a different member. His companion protested that they would be late for their original appointment, but the young man who felt divine direction prevailed. When they arrived at the home of Sister Albertsen, they found her seven-year- old child “laid out on the table, having just fallen from an upstairs window to the stone below.” The elders applied consecrated oil and gave the child a blessing. When they returned the next day, they found the youngster playing normally. A story about the miraculous healing subsequently appeared in a local newspaper.89 In the Baden- Württemberg city of Reutlingen in March 1931, native German missionaries Dermond Madsen and Gustav Adam “felt inspired” to visit a young woman named Link. When they entered her house, they discovered that she had been in a state of cardiac arrest for a period of three hours. The pair blessed her “and in a remarkably short time she had fully regained her strength.”90
From time to time, mission records mention other miraculous interventions that did not require intercession with consecrated oil. In one case, all that was required was the waters of baptism. In Salzburg, Austria, a recently baptized woman called the missionaries to her house to attend to her husband, who was confined to bed with a severe case of rheumatism. He told the missionaries that he should be baptized at once. When he came out of the water, “he shook his feet like a person who had never felt pain, and said he felt like a new man.” He gave away the two walking sticks that he had been using and told his wife that he felt many years younger. The mission historical chronology says he never felt the pain of rheumatism again.91
Missionaries in Silesian city of Schweidnitz needed neither oil nor water to successfully intercede after an enraged Brother H. Popel attempted to cut his girlfriend’s throat one Sunday afternoon after church. When they arrived on the scene, Walter Rathke and Ossman Elgren deduced that this was not a case of domestic abuse, but rather possession by the Devil. “Brother Rathke recognized the condition and immediately demanded ‘in the name of Jesus Christ’ that the spirit leave Herr Popel’s body. Immediately, Brother Popel fell limp on the sofa and later came to consciousness.”92 Likewise, when a “poison fly” flew into the chapel during services of the Chemnitz Central Branch and stung a female congregant, recovery from her allergic reaction required neither medicine nor consecrated oil. Instead, elders John Roderick and Theron Covey simply “commanded” her to begin using her paralyzed arm and hand. She did so almost immediately.93
Even when ministerial efforts on behalf of an ailing member did not produce a healing, mission records still dutifully recorded a miracle. For almost eleven months, a male church member named Platz had been “bed-fast” as the result of unceasing headaches and constant throat pain. Sensing the grave state of his weakened condition, Elders Herman Babbel and Darrel Crockett pronounced a prayerful blessing that pleaded with God to “heal him or take him away with as little pain as possible.” According to the missionaries’ subsequent account, “Herr Platz fell into a sleep after the blessing and slept on until his death, with seemingly no pain whatsoever.”94
Stories like these, however fanciful, fell into the Mormon pattern of “expect a miracle.” Mormon history is replete with tales of divine delivery from the dual threats posed by nature on the trek to the American West, and by the persecution of neighbors who felt threatened by the Mormons’ economic collectivism and practice of polygamy. Faithful members who strove to live in obedience to the gospel and to the church leadership expected God to take care of them.
Thus, it is no surprise that when German-Austrian Mission President Fred Tadje summoned his elders to a mission-wide conference in August 1926, he did not tell the missionaries how to travel to Dresden. He had faith that they would find a way, and that God would protect them on their journey. Although some missionaries from wealthier families in Utah were able to ride the train, some seventy-five percent of the young men walked, some taking as long a two weeks to arrive at mission headquarters, “spreading the gospel message without purse or script, relying totally upon the hospitality of the people among whom they traveled.”95 They set out, “traversing countryside and villages where no Mormon has ever been seen,” with the expectation that God would provide food and lodging. When they reached Dresden, “not one man was missing on account of sickness or any other disturbing factor.” Attendance reports for the event, which was the first mission-wide conference in Europe in twenty years, list a total of 750 persons— members, their guests, and the entire missionary roster.96
In August of 1927, Mission President Tadje ordered his missionaries to forsake their supervisory duties over local branches and districts for a six-week period from July 20 through August 31. The twofold purpose afforded native Germans the privilege of running their own church affairs and gave the missionaries the opportunity to proselyte in towns and countryside communities where the LDS gospel had not been preached. Tadje ordered all Berlin-based missionaries to set up headquarters in towns without Mormon congregations: Frankfurt am Oder, Brandenburg, Eberswalde, Luckenswalde, Stendhal, and others. In other areas, missionaries pursued an itinerant schedule, holding meetings while walking from town to town. Many missionaries again “traveled without purse or script,” with little money and the barest of provisions. One missionary recalls that when he left his assigned base with no money, he was “able to get all of his meals and also all of his beds free, although it meant ‘we had to humble ourselves considerably.’” Another missionary reported that at the end of his journey, he and his companion “had ten extra Pfennigs and two more lard sandwiches than when we started.”97
Winter weather can be uncomfortably cold in the northeastern German city of Neubrandenburg, some 35 miles inland from the Baltic Sea. However, gray skies, blustery winds, and subfreezing temperatures could not dissuade six members of a German family from entering the waters of baptism on February 14, 1931, in the partially frozen Tollensee River. Nor did it discourage their young American missionary baptizer, G. A. Elbert. Baptism, regardless of water temperature, is the ultimate goal of a proselyting missionary.98 Likewise, the motivation of faith trumped considerations of personal safety when, some sixty miles away and three months later, German elders Amalie Dyck and Otto Swatski baptized two converts during a raging storm of thunder and lightning in the coastal town of Barth.99
The twin pillars of ecclesiastical discipline and unbridled faith, combined with less harassment from civil authorities, functioned to help the Mormons maintain a steady growth of membership numbers during the fourteen-year duration of the Weimar Republic. In 1920, with 9,100 members, Germany ranked third among the world’s nations in total number of Mormons residing within its borders. By 1930, with 11,596 members, Germany had surpassed Canada and ranked second only to the United States in the number of registered LDS Church members.100 That number is deceiving, however. It does not account for a steady stream of emigration, which paradoxically represents a triumph of faith over obedience to the church hierarchy. At a time when Salt Lake City was proclaiming the end of “the gathering,” and instead encouraging Mormons to build the church organization at home, German Mormons immigrated to the United States in record numbers.
German Mormon Emigration During the Weimar Republic
Prior to the LDS Church’s abandonment of polygamy in 1890, religious reasons drove most European converts to migrate to the American Zion. The opportunity for a fresh start in America, perhaps with a grant of farmland, played an important but secondary role. Celestial Marriage as part of a polygamous family was a necessary rite of “exaltation.” For many, it was an earthly sacrifice undertaken with the goal of a heavenly reward. Missionary messages and church periodicals delivered the same message: God commanded his children to build a new Zion and threatened punishment for not gathering on the American continent. University of Utah researcher Douglas Alder cites a Mormon German-language pamphlet of the 1860s, Die Reform, that warned:
It is an undeniable fact, that there are many in this land and other lands who claim to be Latter-day Saints, who, if they were so inclined to make the effort, could have already gathered with the Saints in Zion. How can this be? It comes simply from the fact that despite their assertions, they don’t actually believe the message which God has declared unto them. These people have been repeatedly warned during the last thirty years concerning the suffering and devastation that would come over the peoples of the earth and would also include the Latter-day Saints if they were not obedient to the voice from the heavens to flee out of Babylon.101
Once monogamy became the standard, German Mormons no longer had to immigrate to the United States in order to attain the highest degree of a stratified heavenly afterlife. The definition of Celestial Marriage changed. Mormons could enjoy the greatest blessing of God’s grace in the afterlife and the opportunity to achieve godhood in their own right, through faithful adherence to monogamous marriage vows sealed in the Holy Temple. If European couples could not make the pilgrimage to the temple during their lifetimes, the LDS doctrine of vicarious baptism and temple sealing would occur after their deaths.102 That, however, was not good enough for most Mormons conditioned by a sixty-year-old culture of yearning to immigrate to Zion. Most did not wish to trust survivors to submit their names for posthumous temple ordinances. They wanted the joy of temple marriage, albeit a monogamous union, unachievable outside of the United States until 1955, when the Swiss Temple opened in Berne.
Alder divides church policy on immigration into three distinct periods: immigration encouraged, 1830-1890, when missionaries told new converts to gather in America as a test of their newfound faith; the interim, 1891-1921, when church leaders issued ambivalent and contradictory guidance regarding emigration from foreign lands; and immigration discouraged, 1922 to the present, when it became church policy to encourage converts to remain in their home countries and build up the church organization locally.103
After the turn of the twentieth century, as the availability of affordably priced farmland in the Mormon Culture Region lessened and a series of late nineteenth century immigration laws tightened standards for admission to the United States, pronouncements from the Mormon hierarchy regarding the necessity for emigration became more ambivalent. Nevertheless, after the discontinuance of polygamy in 1890 and Utah’s achievement of statehood in 1896, German Latter-day Saints continued to migrate across the Atlantic. An average of 139 German speakers per year came to the Mormon Culture Region during Alder’s “interim” period (1891-1921, when church leaders could not manage a consistent message regarding the desirability of uprooting new converts from their native lands and sending them to the American Zion.104
In 1910, as the church president, Joseph F. Smith, traveled in Europe, he deemphasized the need to emigrate and promised proxy temple ordinances for those concerned about the necessity for Celestial Marriage:
We do not desire, my brethren and sisters, that you trouble yourselves too much about emigration. At present, we do not advise you to emigrate. We would rather that you remain until you have been well established in the faith in the Gospel and until each one of you has been an instrument, through the help of our Lord, in bringing one or more of our fellow men into the Church. Be not troubled about the Temple ordinances, but live in faith and confidence in the truths, and wait patiently, and if death should call before the ordinances are attended to, your children will see to it that the work will be done, and even if you have no opportunity in this life to receive these ordinances, the Lord will open the way so that it will be done in the future.105
The Prophet chose his words carefully, stressing soft admonitions such as “at present” and “until” to send a message that gently discouraged but did not prohibit emigration. Undoubtedly, he realized that several generations of tradition would be difficult to reverse. As Smith spoke, Mormon agents in Liverpool continued to assist émigrés with the logistics of coming to the United States.106 Despite tightening of American immigration laws, the death of the Perpetual Emigration Fund in 1887, and uncertain economic conditions in the United States, the rate of German-speaking emigration increased throughout the period that spanned the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth—even as German immigration as a whole declined substantially.
This can be attributed, in part, to the steady growth of Mormon congregations in Germany, plus the attraction and financial support available from an increasing German- American population in Utah and surrounding states and territories. The 1900 U. S. census had recorded 4,074 native-born German-speaking persons in the State of Utah.107 By the next decennial census in 1910, that number had increased to 7,524. This placed German speakers third among foreign immigrants in the State of Utah, following only those whose native tongues had been English and the Scandinavian languages.108 In the first decade of the twentieth century, recently converted German Mormons arriving in Utah could find LDS congregations that conducted services in German. They could read several locally edited German-language periodicals, including the weekly newspaper, The Salt Lake Beobachter, which was published until 1935.109 They could choose from among four Holy Temples, located in Salt Lake City, St. George, Logan, and Manti, where they and their spouses could go to be blessed, albeit monogamously, with the ordinance of Celestial Marriage.
In the 1920s, American xenophobia and the perceived threat of mass immigration from war-ravaged Europe spawned tough new immigration laws that strictly limited migration from certain parts of the world. The restrictions adopted in 1921 and 1924 against southern European immigration did not impede migration from Germany, except for a limit on the total number of immigrants admitted to the United States. However, by the post-World War I era, the same prejudices that influenced American public opinion nationwide were affecting attitudes in the Mormon Culture Region. As Thomas Alexander notes, by 1921, as Utahns celebrated twenty-five years of self-governing statehood, their politics moved toward the American mainstream.110 That included fear of how immigration would affect the domestic economy. Thus began the period Alder described as “immigration discouraged.”
Formal discouragement of German emigration first surfaced in a 1921 article in the Millennial Star, the English language publication of the European Mission based in Liverpool. Rather than reflecting growing American opposition to immigration, the author, Mission President Orson F. Whitney, concentrated on economic difficulties encountered in the United States by many recent immigrants:
Now is not a time to migrate to the Rocky Mountains. Abnormal industrial conditions prevail in that nation, as in other parts of the world. Many of our people are out of work and cannot find employment, and those who go there now, hoping to better their lot, are liable to be disappointed and become disheartened.111
Church leaders left the task of admonishing perspective emigrants to the church’s German-language periodical, Der Stern. Its author, a Swiss Mormon who would later serve as a mission president during the Second World War, warned:
No missionary, and certainly no officer in the church, is justified in spreading any emigration propaganda. We admonish our brothers and sisters and friends specifically to remain here and build up the church in this land. Any person who in any way encourages another person to leave his homeland does so in direct opposition to our church leaders and should be taken into account for his actions by his superiors. 112
Max Zimmer remained an ardent foe of Mormon emigration in the years that followed World War I, but he chose to relocate to Utah after the Second World War. His eventual choice demonstrates that emigration to the American Zion had an almost irresistible hold on the consciousness of German converts—one that would test their obedience to their ecclesiastical leaders. Although LDS Church leaders strove to make consistent statements that discouraged emigration after 1920, some contradictory policies still sent mixed signals. For example, in August 1927, local German youth who were completing full-time missionary service were offered free passage to Utah if they wished to immigrate at the conclusion of their terms. A subsequent clarification denied enterprising inquirers the cash equivalent if they elected to stay at home.113 As a result of ambiguous guidance that defied strong church doctrine and a historical precedent, Mormons from the Weimar Republic prepared to migrate in record numbers. See Table 4.
Table 4: German-Speaking LDS Immigration to the United States During the Weimar Republic
During the fourteen years of the Weimar Republic, German Mormons took advantage of their newfound constitutional liberties and precipitously disregarded the anti-emigration warnings of their ecclesiastical leaders, in order to migrate to Utah at an unprecedented pace. A total of 2,827 Latter-day Saints made the passage. When one discounts two periods of economic hardship, the first associated with the end of the First World War through the end of hyperinflation (1918-23), and the second beginning with the Great Depression and ending with the advent of the National Socialist regime (1929- 1933), an average of 343 Latter-day Saints per year left the German-speaking missions.
The emigration of German Mormons during the Weimar Republic illustrates an important limit of obedience by Latter-day Saints. Mormons struggled to tolerate a mandate that conflicted with longstanding Church tradition on emigration, in much the same way that many found the abolition of polygamy impossible to accept decades earlier. Failure to discontinue blessing new polygamous marriages resulted in many individual excommunications and several schismatic movements, but no record exists of any attempt to discipline a Mormon for emigrating once church leaders changed their stance. Church leaders learned when it was important to enforce conformity in order to save the church organization from government reprisal, and conversely, when enforcement of lockstep obedience might temper spiritual enthusiasm.
In the next section, as illustrated in Table 5, this study examines the degree to which Mormons who stayed in Germany, and their American missionaries, conformed to civil authority when challenged hostile public officials or religious leaders.
Recorded Instances of Mormon-State and Mormon-Ecclesiastical Conflict During the Weimar Republic
Date / Place / Incident / Source
Jan. 1925 / Berlin / Mass missionary expulsion and facility denial. / S&GM MH116
Mar. 1925 / Selbongen Police expel all missionaries after accusation against one for sexual impropriety. / S&GM MH
Apr. 1925 / Braunschweig Police refused to let missionary live in Hanover suburb. / S&GM MH
May 1925 / Stadthagen Pastors hold anti-Mormon rally that LDS members attend. / S&GM MH
May 1925 / Minden Jeering spectators interrupt baptism in Weser River. / S&GM MH
May 1925 / Hanover Police question missionaries on three separate occasions. / S&GM MH
June 1925 / Dresden Police order missionaries to leave. / S&GM MH
June 1925 / Stadthagen Catholic priest attempts to deny deceased Mormon burial in town’s only graveyard and use of the only hearse. / S&GM MH, S&GM MH
Oct. 1925 / Nürnberg Missionary jailed for three days after refusing police order to leave town. Upon release, he transferred to another city. / S-G MH117
Nov. 1925 / Saarbrücken Permission to do missionary work denied by municipal officials who later reverse their ban. / S-G MH
Dec. 1925 / Schleswig Schoolhouse rental for Sunday meetings refused. / S-G MH
Jan. 1926 / Elberfeld Local minister holds series of anti-Mormon meetings. / S-G MH
Feb. 1926 / Chemnitz “Sectarian” pastor holds widely advertised anti-Mormon meeting. Mormons attend and receive favorable publicity. / G-A MH118
Mar. 1926 / Fürth Two elders arrested and tracts seized. They are released but banned from subsequent ministry in the town. / S-G MH
Mar. 1926 / Augsburg Catholic and Protestant ministers publish anti-Mormon newspaper articles. / S-G MH
Apr. 1926 / Frankfurt-Main Two missionaries questioned by police but later released. / S-G MH
Apr. 1926 / Schleswig Protestant clergy combine to author many unfavorable articles that appear in the local press. / S-G MH
June 1926 / Selbongen A “crowd of antagonists” blocks a planned baptismal service. / G-A MH
Aug. 1926 / Hameln Two missionaries “arrested as American spies.” Released. / S-G MH
Sept. 1926 / Hildesheim Lutheran minister protests lease of schoolroom for Sunday meetings. Requires two-week search for a replacement. / S-G MH
Dec. 1926 / Kassel Police arrest two missionaries on the basis of an accusation by a local pastor that Mormons were enticing young German women to emigrate. American embassy becomes involved. / S-G MH
Dec. 1926 / Bielefeld Police question and release two missionaries. / S-G MH
Feb. 1927 / Kolberg Local group of unknown origin disrupts Sunday services. / G-A MH
Mar. 1927 / Schwabelweis Bishop of Regensburg warns local citizens to boycott Mormon informational meeting. It would be “mortal sin.” / S-G MH
Mar. 1927 / Heiligenbeil Local pastors unite to oppose Mormon organizational meeting, but 500 attend including some opposing clergy. / G-A MH
Apr. 1927 / Regensburg Elders warned to leave town by concerned citizens. One family wishing to join relents because of threats. / S-G MH
Apr. 1927 / Reutlingen Missionaries subjected to “bitter opposition” by residents. / S-G MH
Apr. 1927 / Greiz Three local pastors disrupt church meeting; ask for “sign.” / G-A QR119
Apr. 1927 / Angerbert Local authorities prohibit public meetings based on grounds that the elders “were Mormons.” / G-A QR
Apr. 1927 / Euba Permission to rent local hall withdrawn after having used it since last April. / G-A QR
Apr. 1927 / Ludwigsburg Adventist minister stalks missionaries who are making their daily visits, intruding upon appointments to warn citizenry. / S-G MH
June 1927 / Mülhausen Missionaries allowed to use a school room free of charge provided that they tip the janitor. / S-G MH
June 1927 / Augsburg Bible class established despite “trouble with Adventists.” / S-G MH
Aug. 1927 / Flensburg Mormons hold special meeting to confront opposition. / S-G MH
Aug. 1927 / Munich American embassy helps attain reinstatement for missionary banished from Bavaria. / S-G MH
Nov. 1927 / Detmold Anti-Mormon heckler interrupts Sunday services. / S-G MH
Nov. 1927 / Hanover Local Lutheran Church newspaper warns faithful against “female seeking” Mormons. / S-G MH
Dec. 1927 / Weissenfels American counsel in Dresden assists when local police forbid missionaries from establishing residence. / G-A MH
Apr. 1928 / Oberschlesien Local Catholic organization publishes book unfavorable to the Mormons that sells “thousands of copies.” / G-A MH
Apr. 1928 / Ratibor Effort of Catholic priests results in eviction of the missionaries from their apartment. / G-A MH
Jun. 1928 / Beuthen A “burly Catholic” employs physical violence in removing proselytizing missionary from his home. / G-A MH
July 1928 / Ratibor Catholic priests unsuccessfully try to dissuade a landlord from renting meeting space to the local Mormon branch. / G-A MH
July 1928 / Hildesheim “Sectarian opponents” erect a tent mission and distribute anti-Mormon literature. / S-G MH
July 1928 / Gliewitz Public bathhouses organize to oppose rental for baptisms. / G-A MH
Aug. 1928 / Ratibor Catholic clergy lobby rental property owners not to rent to Mormons, threatening a Catholic boycott. Six changes of location for services necessary in a six-month period. / G-A MH
Oct. 1928 / Halle After a three-month effort, permission to rent a classroom in a local school for Sunday services is obtained. / G-A MH
Nov. 1928 / Ratibor Local Catholic priests cause change in Mormon lecture location when they prevail upon owner to cancel the lease at the last minute. / G-A MH
Dec. 1928 / Hindenburg Catholic clergy threatens rental property owners with business boycott if they rent to Mormons. / G-A MH
Jan. 1929 / Hindenburg A Jesuit priest claiming to be an American citizen interrupts numerous LDS meetings with admonitions and heckling. He claims to have “done research” on the LDS. / G-A MH
Feb. 1929 / Bamberg First meeting of new congregation closed early “on account of disturbances.” / S-A MH
Feb. 1929 / Bonn New missionaries encounter hostility and cannot find an apartment to rent. / S-A MH
Apr. 1929 / Hindenburg “The Catholics” are “doing all they can to break up the meetings.” An anti-Mormon campaign enjoys limited success but missionaries continue to conduct services. / G-A MH
May 1929 / Bamberg Unknown provocateurs disrupt a Sunday meeting with “laughter, smoking, talking as if they were on the street, and mixing politics with religion.” / S-G MH
Aug. 1929 / Berlin Members of a breakaway Mormon sect, the Reorganized Church, seek converts from mainline LDS Church. / G-A MH
Sep. 1929 / Mittweida Permission to meet in a school withdrawn because school administrator wanted to “nip Mormonism in the bud.” / G-A MH
Sep. 1929 / Forst (Brandenburg) / Mormons enjoy an unprecedented welcome from town officials. They are afforded free use of schoolrooms and their youth organizations are included in the municipal athletic and cultural leagues. / G-A MH
Oct. 1929 / Hanover Local Lutheran church opens its facilities for Mormons to meet and town officials allow free use of municipal swimming pool for baptisms. / S-G MH
Dec. 1929 / Flensburg (German-speaking Denmark, bordering Schleswig- Holstein) / A rare case of reported domestic violence in a Mormon family, the murder of a devout woman by her “apostate” husband, becomes a sensation in the German-language press when it is reported that the source of their troubles was disagreement over her continued church membership. / S-G MH
Jun. 1930 / Coburg Two elders injured when attacked by occupants of a house where they went to visit members. One assailant strikes missionary in the face with a cane. Police investigate and take statements from members who insist missionaries were invited guests. / S-G MH
Sep. 1930 / Bernau Lutheran ministers bring their congregations to Mormon services, which then walk out en masse. / G-A MH
Dec. 1930 / Mühlhausen Two missionaries arrested after they presented a tract at the home of the police commissioner. Vagrancy charges dismissed. Subsequent local meetings banned. / S-G MH
Dec. 1930 / Hamburg American consul erroneously refuses to extend passport of missionary, an American citizen, because he was born in Germany. Error corrected after elder transferred to Switzerland. / S-G MH
Jan. 1931 / Mühlhausen Two missionaries banished from province. / S-G MH
Jan. 1931 / Augsburg Reorganized Church, in an effort to recruit German LDS, offers “land plots in Zion” as inducement to conversion. / S-G QR
Jan. 1931 / Peine A Lutheran prelate writes an unfavorable newspaper article concerning the Mormons. / S-G QR
Mar. 1931 / Glückstadt A citizen accused LDS church of attempting to defraud him in a land purchase deal. Municipal officials warn church they will not afford protection to members. / S-G MH
Apr. 1931 / Mühlhausen Missionary leaves city “to avoid police difficulties.” / S-G MH
May 1931 / Mühlhausen Replacement missionary refused permission to live in city. / S-G MH
May 1931 / Regensburg Missionary expelled because his “pass was not in order.” A second missionary ordered to leave town for failing to apply for extended residency on a timely basis. / S-G MH
May 1931 / Hamm Missionaries told to purchase a permit to remain in town and subsequently expelled because of “opposition.” / S-G MH
Jun. 1931 / Mühlhausen Because of recent difficulties, church closes local branch. / S-G MH
Jun. 1931 / Ulm Policeman tells missionaries to leave town by 5 p.m. / S-G MH
Jul. 1931 / Wesermünde Police question missionaries’ residence permits. / S-G MH
Jul. 1931 / Ludwigsburg Police arrest missionaries for dealing in illegal commerce. / S-G MH
Jul. 1931 / Augsburg Reorganized Church succeeds in converting several LDS. / S-G MH
Aug. 1931 / Oberhausen Missionaries threaten force to remove man causing a disturbance in a meeting. / S-G MH
Sep. 1931 / Stettin Owner of church-rented meetinghouse assaults missionary, who requires days to recover from injuries. / G-A QR
Oct. 1931 / Belgard Pastors hold meeting to protest presence of Mormons. / G-A QR
Oct. 1931 / Coburg Local school prohibits children from affiliating with Mormon-sponsored scout troops / S-G MH
Dec. 1931 / Ratibor Missionary arrested and searched for weapons. Local elders endure constant police surveillance. / G-A MH
Jan. 1931 / Bruchsal City refuses to allow elders to perform a funeral service. / S-G MH
Feb. 1932 / Offenbach Ex-member files civil suit to regain tithing paid. / S-G MH
Table 5: Recorded Instances of Mormon-State and Mormon-Ecclesiastical Conflict During the Weimar Republic
Church-State and Ecclesiastical Relations during the Weimar Republic
When Karoline Uder, a member of the Stadthagen congregation near Hanover, died during the summer of 1925, her family wanted to bury her in the local municipal graveyard. They also asked the local Mormon missionaries, who held leadership positions in the Stadthagen Branch, to officiate at the funeral. However, because of the blurred lines of authority that marked church-state relations in Germany, a local pastor felt free to deny Uder not only a final resting place in the city’s cemetery, but also use of the only hearse in town. In the minister’s view, she had apostatized her cradle faith in favor of a scandalous foreign-based religion, for which he felt justified in denying her burial in a Christian graveyard and transportation in the hearse that had carried so many faithful believers to their graves. Under no circumstances would he allow heretical young missionaries from a controversial overseas sect to conduct a religious service in her honor.
This is where the story would have ended in Imperial Germany; there would have been no avenue of appeal. Given their newfound Weimar Republic constitutional liberties, however, Uder’s family and its Mormon spiritual advisers petitioned to overturn the autocratic pastor’s decree. A spirited debate occurred in the town council and a compromise ensued. Frau Uder would be allowed burial in the town cemetery and a ride to her grave in the municipally owned hearse. The Mormon missionaries would be permitted to pray silently at the gravesite if they agreed not to perform any kind of liturgical funeral service. To insure the tranquil dignity of the burial, free from trouble caused by religious antagonists, the council dispatched local police to the cemetery on the day of Uder’s funeral.121
As the previous chapter relates, from the establishment of Mormonism in Germany until the First World War, pastors, policemen, and politicians colluded to harass, suppress, and expel representatives of a foreign sect that encouraged Germans to abandon the faith of their birth and immigrate to a strange land. After the establishment of the Weimar Republic, as Table 5 demonstrates, Mormons still faced opposition from all three of these traditional nemeses, but their newfound constitutional liberties allowed them to exploit statutory divisions of authority between religious and governmental officials, often with the assistance of American consular officials or embassy diplomats. This freedom allowed the Mormons to pick their battles and sometimes isolate and wear down their antagonists. The Mormons did not win every confrontation; sometimes they chose to withdraw missionaries from a particular town as they had done in the nineteenth century. But on many occasions during the Weimar period, surrender was not the only option.
In Imperial Germany, established German Mormon congregations could offer limited help to missionaries that many officials saw as being in the country illegally. After the constitutional changes that followed the First World War, the presence of German citizens as missionary companions to young American elders provided a legal basis for local officials and police to assert the right of the LDS Church to proselytize and organize congregations in German municipalities. For example, in December 1926, police in Kassel responded to the complaint of a local pastor that the missionaries were in town “to entice young girls to go to America.” They arrested Elder Otto Seifart, an American citizen of German extraction, but released him when they found his passport and visa to be in order. They could find no evidence of illegal activity regarding his companion, Albert Schmuhl, who asserted his rights as a German citizen. When the American consul in Hanover intervened on behalf of Seifart, the authorities dropped all charges, much to the annoyance of the local pastor who continued to warn his congregation that the Mormons were engaged in the white slave trade.122
Often, local ministers resorted to campaigns against resident Mormon elders without the help of the civil government. Catholic priests threatened boycotts and other economic retaliation against townspeople and parishioners who rented apartments where missionaries stayed or meeting halls where they held church services. In the town of Ratibor in Silesia, such economic blackmail caused landlords to cancel six different rental agreements during a six-month period in 1928, but in each case the missionaries persevered and found new meeting places for their small congregation.123 Earlier that year, the same priest had succeeded in having the local missionaries evicted from their apartment, but the elders were able to exploit changing attitudes among the populace and obtain other accommodations.124
Often, during Sunday services, a lone heckler who would suddenly interrupt the speaker, such as when a man claiming to be a Jesuit priest lodged a loud protest one Sunday morning in Hindenburg. He claimed to be an American citizen who had “studied Mormonism.”125 Usually, local congregants were able to escort such malefactors out of the building. On one occasion, several local Lutheran ministers in the Berlin suburb of Bernau attended Mormon Sunday services accompanied by members of their congregations. Upon a prearranged signal, their parishioners all stood up and walked out of the meeting while their ministers filibustered loudly.126 Once, in the Bavarian city of Bamburg, opponents apparently employed a gang of hooligans and ne’er-do-wells who proceeded to disrupt Sunday worship by carrying on in an irreverent manner, “smoking, stalking, and laughing as if they were on the street, and mixing politics with religion.” When the missionaries visited the local police department the next day, they received assurances of protection from subsequent boorish behavior.127
Sometimes, Mormons stood their ground when opposing pastors disrupted worship services or organized municipal opposition. In the East Prussian town of Heiligenbeil, visiting elders from Königsberg spent days preaching and distributing literature on the street. Some five hundred local residents attended subsequent Sunday meeting, as did several local ministers who tried to disrupt the service. However, the visiting elders successfully engaged their interlocutors in debate.128 In the Thuringian town of Greiz, local ministers attending a Mormon Sunday service disrupted the proceeding by demanding a “sign,” to which the missionaries replied by quoting the New Testament admonition against “a wicked and adulterous generation [that] looks for a miraculous sign.”129
On other occasions, Mormons staged their own counter protests. In the Schleswig-Holstein city of Flensburg, a Protestant pastor named Lensch and several colleagues had been writing anti-Mormon articles for the local press and organizing opposition among the churches. LDS missionaries from the region gathered to hold a week of intensive proselytizing, followed by a worship service. Some ten elders, aided by German congregants, distributed more than eight thousand tracts—fliers that had been specially prepared to counter recent unfavorable newspaper editorials. Then, when more than one hundred people attended an open-air rally, they acquiesced to the troublesome pastor’s demand to speak. The compromise “averted a near riot,” after which several missionaries provided rebuttals. In the end, after an hour of orderly debate, Rev. Lensch stomped out of the meeting in frustration.130
Disruptive activities also manifested themselves outside of church services, such as attempts to prevent missionaries from conducting baptisms. In the East Prussian village of Selbongen, a hostile crowd broke up a baptism in June 1926.131 In the Upper Silesian city of Gleiwitz two years later, a coalition of ministers successfully petitioned the local bathhouse owners’ association to deny rentals for Mormon baptismal services.132
One of the more effective instances of ecclesiastical opposition came from a fellow American sect, a breakaway Mormon denomination know as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Founded in 1860 by followers of Joseph Smith who refused to accept the leadership of Brigham Young, and who remained in the American Midwest while the larger body of Mormons trekked to Utah, this group of Mormons began establishing small congregations in Germany shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. German RLDS membership numbered less than one thousand in the early 1930s, compared to LDS membership more than ten times as numerous. However, before the ascension of Hitler to the chancellorship in 1933, Reorganized Church missions or congregations existed in Berlin, Brandenburg, Breslau, Augsburg, Hanover, Offenbach, Einbeck, Plauen, Braunschweig, Elmshorn, Tilsit, Groß- Wartenberg, and Großräschen.133
From time to time, LDS missionaries encountered difficulties with the professional ministers and missionaries sent to Germany by RLDS officials intent on convincing already-baptized Mormons that their breakaway church had inherited the true mantle of restored gospel preached by Joseph Smith. In the early 1930s, this resulted in a running battle for the loyalty of converted Mormons in a few strategically selected places, one of which was the southwestern Bavarian city of Augsburg. Records of the local LDS congregation reveal a concentrated effort in January of 1931, during which RLDS missionaries convinced several Latter-day Saints to switch allegiances, allegedly based on an inducement involving plots of land in the United States.134 By July of that year, RLDS activity had driven a wedge into the existing LDS branch in Augsburg, which reported several more “apostasies” of German Mormons who changed their membership to the Reorganized Church.135
Despite the fact that records of both LDS missions in Germany reveal numerous instances of conflict with civil and religious authorities in Weimer Germany, not all such incidents had unfavorable endings. The same police who arrested Mormon missionaries on trumped-up charges occasionally became their friends and allies, or at least neutral arbiters of disputes. Police in the northern Rhineland city of Bielefeld, acting on a tip from law enforcement officers in another jurisdiction, investigated the missionaries in late 1926. They found no evidence of illegal activity, and in fact became so impressed with the young Americans that the officers helped the missionaries locate a suitable place for the fledgling congregation to hold its Sunday meetings.136 In July 1931, police in Ludwigsburg arrested two missionaries on charges of engaging in illegal commerce, more than likely the sale of Books of Mormon or other religious materials. When local citizens intervened on the young Americans’ behalf, the police officers “apologized and withdrew.”137 Even when two American missionaries committed the faux pas of trying to present a religious tract at the home of the police commissioner of the city of Mühlhausen in Thuringia, police soon dropped the ensuing vagrancy charges and helped negotiate a settlement with local citizenry in a town where the Mormons’ relationship with the local populace had been strained.138 No such compromise was necessary in the Brandenburg city of Forst, where the town council gave the Mormons free use of school buildings for religious meetings and invited the church’s youth organizations to participate in municipal leagues—membership in which allowed the use of civic libraries, gymnasiums, and other facilities.139