In Postwar Germany—Youths Praise Jehovah
GERMANY, 1978. The flat windswept plains of the north carpeted with eye-catching fields of heather; the big industrial center of the Ruhr, as hustle-bustle as ever, lying half hidden under a layer of smog; the majestic Bavarian Alps blanketed with thick coats of freshly fallen snow, and with tourists swarming over the landscape in search of leather pants, colorful dirndls, beer mugs and cuckoo clocks—that is the Germany everybody knows. Little seems to have changed.
And yet the world, including Germany, has changed, perhaps never so rapidly as since the end of World War II. It has been introduced to new dangers, new attitudes and new standards of conduct. Emerging from the holocaust of war, what kind of heritage would the former generation be able to give the postwar generation?
There could be no better heritage to enable the new generation successfully to cope with their problems than an accurate knowledge of the true God Jehovah and of his purposes. During the Hitler regime there were Christians who had this knowledge and whose faithfulness under persecution is well known. Keeping in mind David’s words, that “generation after generation will commend your works, and about your mighty acts they will tell,” they have been resolved to pass this fine heritage on to the postwar generation. (Ps. 145:4) Have they succeeded in this? Let us investigate.
THOSE REARED BY BELIEVING PARENTS
Many of Jehovah’s Witnesses of the present generation (since 1945) have had the advantage of being reared by parents and even grandparents who were Jehovah’s Witnesses. For example, Elke and her sister Heidi, both serving God full time, are happy to belong to the fifth generation of Witnesses in their family. How wonderful to see whole families serving Jehovah unitedly!
Consider, too, a family in Westphalia with 15 children. Gerhard, now serving full time at the headquarters office of the Watch Tower Society in Wiesbaden, remembers the fine parental training the children received when all were still at home. Three family studies were necessary to look after their individual needs: one for the older children, one for the very small, and one for the “middle-aged.” Before meetings, and afterward as well, the father would spend an hour and a half driving back and forth to get the entire family to the Kingdom Hall. Strong Christian families are not built without effort!
THE PROBLEM OF DIVIDED HOUSEHOLDS
Others have not been blessed with a united family background, for they have been brought up in religiously divided households.
Friedhelm recalls that his father repeatedly burned his Bible, his books and his magazines. Despite the ambitious plans his father had made for him, an only child, he settled instead on serving as a full-time proclaimer of the good news of God’s kingdom.
Similarly, Wilfried tells of how he and his mother often found themselves locked outdoors when they returned home from Christian meetings. Once they even had to spend the night in the car. At another time his father dragged him out of bed and began beating him with a lamp. But by remaining faithful, he earned, not only his father’s respect, but, what is more important, Jehovah’s approval. “The brothers always made me feel welcome in the congregation, even though I was only 11 or 12 at the time, and it was this love that kept me going,” he explains.
Uwe, a teen-ager when he first became a Witness, had opposition at work as well as at home.
He remembers once when he took advantage of an opportunity to speak the truth to others during a coffee break and was rewarded, not with hearing ears, but with a bucket of water dumped on his head. However, both he and his brother, now a missionary in Spain, continued to advance to Christian maturity.
Rolf-Dieter was only five or six when his mother came to appreciate Bible truth. He and his younger brother were not permitted by their opposing father to attend Christian meetings, although their mother talked to them at home and took them along whenever possible.
“I remember once when my father made me go to the church services of one of Christendom’s denominations,” he relates. “But mother had explained everything to me beforehand. I went and listened, but could not conscientiously take part in the ceremonies, which I understood to be unscriptural, despite the fact that the others sitting nearby kept punching me and whispering what I should do.” Nevertheless, Rolf exercised self-control toward those in attendance at the services, recognizing that the Scriptures command respect for other persons.
COPING WITH PROBLEMS, LARGE AND SMALL
Young Christians do not have it easy. Being mocked and made fun of at school can be a real test of one’s integrity. After graduation male students are faced with the question of neutrality. And they, as well as female Witnesses, have had to contend with all the problems common to young people today: drugs, alcohol, immorality and so many, many more.
Why, even finding a marriage mate can pose a problem. It was Ute’s. She explains:
“Where could I find a suitable mate? All the young people in our congregation were already married. Maybe it would not hurt to ‘look around in the world’ just a little. But, no, I just couldn’t, being aware of the Scriptural counsel to marry ‘only in the Lord.’ In this matter, too, I placed my confidence in Jehovah. Then during construction work on our new assembly hall in Trappenkamp I met my fiancé. We are getting married in June.”
And what about our little ones and their “little” problems? Let us listen to Eric:
“I am 10 years old and in the fourth grade. My parents have been Witnesses for a long time, so until I started school I associated only with fellow believers. Everything went along fine until the day our class left to spend a week in the country at a school hostel. I had never been away from home before. Suddenly our teacher took sick and a substitute teacher went along. I did not know him. Sunday morning he said: ‘This morning we are all going to church.’ I knew I must explain to him that I did not agree with the teachings presented there, and for this reason would rather not go. During breakfast I thought of what I could tell him. After breakfast, I talked to him, but he said: ‘You are going, so let’s not have any argument!’ I went to my room and, when I was alone, I recalled what mother had told me the morning I left: ‘If you run into trouble, Jehovah knows your heart. You can speak to him about your problems.’ I cried as I prayed. I didn’t want to have anything to do with false religion! A little while later when I went back outside I met another teacher who asked me what the matter was, because she saw I had been crying. I told her. She said: ‘I will take care of it for you.’ A little later she came back and told me: ‘You don’t have to go. I spoke to your teacher.’ I was so happy! I thanked Jehovah that he had listened to my prayer. His hand was not too short.”
A “little” problem? Some may think so, but our postwar generation has discovered that Jehovah considers no problem too small or insignificant to warrant his attention. Neither does he desert us in the face of larger ones. Take the case of Marion:
She was a fine example of Christian youth, regularly active in Kingdom preaching. Marion was just 17 years old and full of life. But then a tumor on her spinal cord started slowly to paralyze her arm. An operation became absolutely necessary, but because of its dangerous nature no doctor was willing to perform it without blood. Marion and her parents remained firm. Disobedience to Jehovah was out of the question! Although she was in pain, her good spirits never faltered. Finally a surgeon was found who was willing to respect her religious convictions. An operation was successfully performed without blood! However, relief was short-lived; a second operation was necessary and then a third one. As the paralysis spread, her pain increased. Her tongue became paralyzed, but her actions at the hospital continued to give witness to her faith. Lovingly, and with great effort, she knitted her nurse a sweater. When death finally became inevitable, her parents took her home. Although her voice was almost inaudible and she could scarcely lift her head, yet as often as possible they took her on a stretcher to Christian meetings. Like Job when plagued, she held to the firm conviction that she, too, would one day be blessed by God and be as full of life as ever. She died on December 28, 1977, at the age of 18. Refusing to compromise her faith in Jehovah, she was strengthened by Him and joined a long line of Christians faithful unto death, including others of our postwar generation, whose prayer for life will be answered in the resurrection.—Acts 24:15.
THOSE NOT REARED BY BELIEVING PARENTS
Of course, many of our young Witnesses were not reared by believing parents. They, too, have had to overcome problems, sometimes very serious ones, before they could become servants of Jehovah.
For example, there is Christa, 22 years old, who became interested when Jehovah’s Witnesses started a Bible study with her brother. She was active in Catholic youth work, but also attended Baptist meetings every week. She explains why she herself then began to study with the Witnesses:
“I had not the faintest idea of becoming one. My aim was to win my brother back to Catholicism. So I wanted to learn as much as possible about the Bible and then use it to fight against these ‘enemies.’” But the more she studied, the more she became convinced that the Witnesses had the truth, as she says, “to my horror!” She continues: “I was torn between my Catholic friends, my newly found Baptist friends and Jehovah’s Witnesses, of whom I really knew very little except that they were able to answer all my Bible questions.”
Christa’s next problem was music. Since the age of 15 she had sung in public and dreamed of one day being a “star.” She had received good reviews at talent shows and had performed in England as well as in Germany. What should she do? She goes on to say:
“I made my decision after visiting my pen pal, Janet, in England. She told me she had been forced to leave home because of the truth. This made me stop and think, because Janet had known about the truth for only four months, since the time my brother and I had witnessed to her during her visit to Germany. Now things began happening fast. Before leaving England I stopped smoking. As soon as I arrived home I broke off all my worldly friendships and stripped my walls of all the photos of the ‘stars.’ Now I was free to attend all the meetings. Soon I had many new, and really true, friends. I was baptized in 1974. Seven months later I flew to England to see my friend Janet being baptized. We are so grateful to Jehovah that he delivered us from false religion and strengthened us to overcome our many problems.”
FULL-TIME SERVICE
Because they are young and generally without family obligations, many of this postwar generation in the Federal Republic of Germany have been able to devote their energies full time to preaching and teaching God’s Word. Once having tasted the blessings of full-time or “pioneer” service, most have wanted to continue enjoying them as long as possible. In fact, Karl-Heinz was so determined that he sought a mate who held his viewpoint of this service. He says:
“We have since enjoyed eight years of ‘pioneer’ service together and have been greatly blessed. We have a happy marriage and have helped several persons accept the truth, including an entire family, the head of which is now himself an elder in the congregation.”
Others have been willing to make changes in their secular work to enable them to devote more time to proclaiming the “good news.” “It was not beneath my dignity to work as an unskilled laborer in order to ‘pioneer,’” is the way Wolfgang, a professional decorator, expressed it. Eighteen-year-old Carola does part-time housework and describes it as “a wonderful profession!” Helmut, trained in an architectural office, spent part time in the plastering trade and switched over to delivering newspapers early in the morning so that he could be a “pioneer.”
Before learning the truth, Ulrich was a chef, working in the best hotels, catering to prominent politicians and well-known movie personalities. He gave it up to have more time for Scriptural pursuits. He says:
“My friends and colleagues advised against it, saying I would ‘sink’ ever lower. My career of becoming a famous chef was over, also my dream of ‘big money.’ But I would never exchange all of that for what I have today. As a ‘pioneer’ I am happier than ever before—certainly happier than I was before I ‘sank’ so low.”
PRAISING JEHOVAH IN MANY TONGUES
The postwar generation has also done excellent work among the foreign-language groups in Germany. Many have learned a foreign tongue in order to serve in one of the 167 English, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish or Yugoslavian congregations in Germany. So they are “missionaries” in a foreign field within their own country. Others have moved to Spain, Luxembourg, France, Italy and other countries and are serving there.
But, of course, Germany’s postwar generation has its missionaries who have received training at the Witnesses’ missionary school, and are now serving in foreign countries. The majority of the 124 young men and women sent from Germany to this school (in the United States) during the past 10 years belong to this age group. And some who have had to return from their assignments for health or other reasons are, nevertheless, still in full-time service.
THE OTHER SIDE
But, of course, there are two sides to every story and it would be misleading to assume that all young people among Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany are like the ones described above. Public indifference, worldly influences, materialism—they have all taken their toll and continue to do so. Some youths have become spiritually weak because they have not diligently studied the Bible and prayed to God for “the wisdom from above.” A traveling overseer recently wrote that he was shocked to see how little some of the young people are doing in the preaching work:
“In the last three congregations that I visited, they make up 23 percent of the Witnesses but, as regards time spent in preaching, they are the weakest. It hurts a person to see that some of them have scarcely any relationship with Jehovah and with the congregation. They are ‘members’ of a religion, nothing more. It is bitter for the parents when they discover this, but oftentimes they themselves are not without blame. It is, in some cases, due to parental neglect of their children’s spiritual welfare.”
As this wicked system hurries toward its destruction, it is high time for all such youths to awake to the seriousness of the situation, and act accordingly. Jehovah will bless them if they do so.—Rom. 13:11; Luke 21:34-36.
May those of our postwar generation faithfully serving Jehovah and telling of his mighty acts KEEP UP THE FINE WORK! (Ps. 145:4, 12) May their example encourage others of their age group to put up a strong fight against becoming ensnared by Satan’s wicked system. Having been recipients themselves of a fine heritage, let them recognize their obligation to transmit it now to the oncoming generation. But there is further motivation for serving faithfully now. If they do so, they may be privileged, because of the coming miracle of the resurrection, to pass this fine heritage on to generations that have preceded them! What a thrilling prospect! Who would not want to be among those so privileged?