M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

German Saints are Steadfast in the Faith
By Laurie Williams Sowby and Robert B. Sowby

NEUBRANDENBURG, Germany — Werner Leonhardt had been waiting all his life to be able to go to the temple. So he was understandably excited about the Freiberg Temple, which hosted an open house during 10 days before it was dedicated in 1985. He was so excited, in fact, that he personally invited 15 former schoolmates from Freiberg to attend.

“I’ll be waiting at the door at 4 p.m. on June 12,” he told them. Then he traveled from his current home in Neubrandenburg, north of Berlin — between six and seven hours’ drive — to be at the temple door as he’d promised. Fourteen of the 15 invited friends came.

“I did not expect many to come,” says Werner, “so I was excited that they did show up.”

The picturesque city of Freiberg has a beautiful, old cathedral, notes Werner, but even a man giving tours there would tell people, “The Mormons are building a temple. Go see it!”

“Of course, they did,” he says.

In fact, Werner recalls, open house organizers — who expected perhaps 12,000 visitors — were overwhelmed at the 93,000 who toured the temple during those 10 days in June.

Click on photos to enlarge

The Freiberg Temple, dedicated in 1985, was built at the invitation of the East German government. All photos are by Laurie Williams Sowby.

The temple was dedicated later that month in 1985 by Gordon B. Hinckley, then a counselor in the First Presidency. Werner and his wife Anne attended several of the dedicatory sessions, along with members of Werner’s family still living in Freiberg. Following one session, as they were taking pictures outside the temple, they noticed a dove landing on the spire.

“We took it as a sign of confirmation by the Holy Ghost,” Werner says. “It is a special memory.”

He also remembers how, as the busload of leaders and General Authorities was getting ready to leave the parking lot, German Saints surrounded the bus, waving white handkerchiefs to honor their guests.

At the time, Freiberg was part of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Soon after the temple’s dedication, Werner and Anne Regina Leonhardt were sealed with their four children, now ages 33, 31, 27 and 24. A son and daughter have served full-time missions, to Ukraine and Spain. Their eight grandchildren are being raised as Latter-day Saints.

Werner and Anne Leonhardt are longtime members of the Church, having grown up as members in East Germany.

The fact that those children are fifth-generation members of the Church in what used to be East Germany surprises many who thought the Iron Curtain that fell between the West and Communism prevented the gospel’s spread behind it.

But The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had already taken root with the baptism of Karl G. Maeser in the Elbe River at Dresden in 1855, and those who were already members before Communists closed the borders in 1961 remained true to the faith.

While not allowed to leave East Germany between 1961, when the concrete and barbed-wire Wall went up, and 1989, when it fell, Church members continued to meet in homes. They had to have government permission and teach from Church manuals printed in 1936.

Neither Church officials nor missionaries from outside were allowed into East Germany. But leaders maintained contact by phone, and missionaries from within East Germany served in their own country.

Members were no longer allowed to go to the temple in Bern, Switzerland, so, according to Werner, the East German government invited the Church to build a temple within the country. Four years after its dedication, Communism began to fall throughout Eastern Europe, and the first missionaries from the West flowed into the former East Germany. (The two Germanys reunited in 1989.)

“There were a lot of baptisms between August and December,” recalls Werner.

But the gospel had come to the Leonhardt family long before then. Werner’s parents were introduced to the Church by friends in 1949, and he was baptized in 1955. Anne was “born in the Church” — “actually, in a hospital,” she jokes, “but my parents were members.” She credits faithful grandparents who joined the Church; Anne’s own mother was baptized as a child at 8 years and still attends the Neubrandenburg Branch.

Werner and Anne met after Werner’s family moved there from Freiberg. They married in 1972 and waited 13 years to be sealed when the temple opened in Werner’s hometown. Anne is fond of telling people, “We had two weddings.”

Werner Leonhardt was a branch president in Neubrandenburg, now part of the Germany Berlin Mission, at the time the Freiburg Temple opened. Although those 14 friends who attended the open house have not joined the Church, they still talk about the event when they get together for class reunions.

Werner Leonhardt, right, often accompanies elders to the train station Neubrandenburg. Convert Robert Schnell stands next to him.

Werner has maintained a successful auto painting business while serving over the years as district president, member of the district council, teacher in Sunday School and priesthood quorums, and, currently, counselor in the branch presidency — “everything but Primary and Relief Society,” he says with a laugh.

Anne has served in those as well as Young Women and is currently a counselor in the branch Relief Society presidency. She picks up her mother each Sunday to drive her to meetings at the small white chapel, where they join maybe 45 others for services. Trained as a medical assistant, she instead works in a federal government office which coordinates child support for new mothers.

Anne is well-known among the local missionaries for at least two things: making grand meals for Sundays after church, and dropping water balloons on their unsuspecting guests as they pass below the Leonhardts’ third-story window on the way to or from dinner. But it was missionaries who taught Anne her first phrase in English and encouraged her to use it with Americans: “Go jump in a lake!”

The Leonhardts are well known among the missionaries for their support
— and great Sunday dinners.

Although the growth of the Church in East Germany has been welcome, other influences that have come with the fall of Communism have not all been positive, say the Leonhardts. When they heard the news that the Wall had come down, the family went to West Berlin and into a modern, new world of bright-colored billboards and the availability of fresh fruit they’d never seen before. Things such as bananas, oranges, and inexpensive pantyhose — unknown to East Germans during the years the Wall was up — were happily and eagerly accepted.

But the same Wall that had kept East Germans in and isolated from the rest of the world for nearly three decades had also prevented a lot of modern influences, such as Internet pornography and certain dress styles, from becoming temptations for Latter-day Saints. Members must be strong to withstand such influences, say the Leonhardts, but the gospel provides a firm foundation.

Many things were dazzling when the West first entered the East, but with the gospel an integral part of the lives of Latter-day Saints in Germany, explains Anne in English, “Now one knows what really is important.” – Laurie Williams Sowby

Living the Laws

One January evening in 2007, the sister missionaries were going door-to-door in Neubrandenburg. Sibille Pelikan-Pape, a 60-year-old woman who lived in the heart of the city with her only son, had compassion on the freezing sisters and let them in.

Although not devoutly religious, she did have some degree of faith and loved the message which the missionaries shared. “I believe in God,” she told them, “but why belong to a church?”

Sibille Pelikan-Pape, shown here with Elder Sowby, was baptized after she committed to pay tithing along with keeping all the commandments.

A few months later, the sisters were transferred from the city, and my companion and I began teaching Sibille. By this time she was coming to church regularly, despite having serious health problems that were worsening. She loved the gospel and the ward members. She listened to the scriptures on CDs because of her failing eyesight.

But there was one thing holding her back from being baptized — the law of tithing.

Sibille was an accountant, having worked 30 years at the local bank. We tried our best to explain to Sibille that the blessings one receives from paying tithing cannot be calculated or added up numerically. For three decades she had managed budgets and reasoned that when 10 percent is gone, it's gone, and it doesn't come back. No one's budget allowed for such expenditures, she argued.

Stubborn, and afraid of long-term commitment, she often said, "I'm never going to be baptized. And if I do get baptized — which will not happen! — I wouldn't pay my tithing anyway." Nonetheless, we loved Sibille and enjoyed her sharp wit and convivial manner. We prayed for the Lord to bless her with an understanding of the law of tithing, as well as the faith needed to keep it.

My mom, who was serving as a missionary in Chile at the time with my dad, sent Sibille a letter that I translated and read to her. In it, my mom offered her own testimony of how keeping the law of tithing has blessed our family. She also asked Sibille if she planned to pick and choose which commandments she would keep, or if she was going to keep all of them, the law of tithing included. (Months later, when my parents picked me up after my mission ended, we visited Sibille, and she expressed gratitude for the little push my mother had given her to commit to paying tithing.)

In time, the Lord answered our prayers on Sibille’s behalf. Following church meetings a few weeks later, Sibille eagerly approached me in the church foyer, walking slowly but excitedly with her cane. She said she had something important to tell me. Because she was a rather short person, I had to lean in as she whispered proudly, "Elder Sowby, starting next week, I'm going to pay my tithing." Needless to say, I was stunned.

But this was only the beginning of a series of miracles that eventually led to her baptism on March 29, 2007. Having never been completely under water before, she allayed her own fears by making a “dry run” into the font to see if she could support herself on her amputated foot.

On her baptismal day, as the branch president led her into the font, I was also standing in the water as backup to help her feel secure. Immediately after we’d helped her out of the water, I asked her to describe how she felt. "Wet," she responded, without missing a beat. She later described it as feeling “as though I were being carried, light as a feather.”

Sibille became a faithful member, full tithe-payer, beloved "grandma" to the missionaries, and secretary in the ward's Relief Society. She related to my parents how the gospel had brought into her life a different perspective, the love and caring of other members, and the availability of priesthood blessings to help her endure her physical trials.

Sadly,Sibille was hospitalized after our last visit and passed away the day after Christmas 2007. But she kept her good humor, wit, and faith right up to the last minute. She told us before I left Germany, “I have suffered so much on this earth, and I can’t imagine not having pain. But I believe that after the Resurrection, I will have a perfect leg — and I will dance! Because Jesus was perfect, that’s where I want to go.”

– Robert B. Sowby

Prepared to Hear the Gospel

As some elders were walking back to the train station after a zone conference, they stopped a moment to introduce themselves to a young man named Robert Schnell. Although it was not Robert’s habit to give out his phone number or address, something prompted him to share these with the missionaries. The elders knew upon their initial visit that this was a “golden” contact who had been prepared to hear their message.

They began meeting in the town’s LDS chapel to teach Robert the lessons. As his last name indicates (“schnell” means “fast” in German), he spoke fast and questioned fast and progressed quickly as an investigator. He also played killer ping-pong.

Robert Schnell was a "golden" investigator and still shines as a faithful member
of the Church in this city north of Berlin.

He was enthused about the gospel and readily accepted the principles and made the commitments given him by the elders. It was a matter of less than a month until he was baptized just a week before Sebille, and she was on the front row to witness it. It was after his baptism that she announced she would herself be baptized.

As with many German converts, once Robert had made the commitment, he was steadfast. He attended church every Sunday and served mini-missions (short-term when an elder needed a companion for a couple of weeks). Within months, he was ordained an elder and called as ward mission leader. A 21-year-old student, Robert remains active in the Neubrandenburg Branch and is preparing to serve a full-time mission.

– Robert B. Sowby

The doors of the church in Wittenburg contain bronze copies of the 95
theses nailed to the doors by Martin Luther in 1517. His defiant act helped set
the stage for the Restoration of the gospel.

Return to Top of Article

Click here to sign up for Meridian's FREE email updates.