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Keeping Up with the TruthThe Watchtower—1956 | March 1
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up with his victory march? Are we in step with his undefeated organization? That is for each of us to make sure individually. If we keep up with the spirit under Christ Jesus’ direction we shall not die spiritually to be dead forever as the rest of the world, but we shall surely obtain the glorious prize of everlasting life in the new world. “He who is sowing with a view to the spirit will reap everlasting life.”—Gal. 6:8, NW.
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The “Triumphant Kingdom” Assemblies of 1955The Watchtower—1956 | March 1
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The “Triumphant Kingdom” Assemblies of 1955
Nuremberg, West Germany, August 10-14, 1955
The greatest and the most international assembly of Jehovah’s witnesses ever to take place on European soil convened at the ancient city of Nuremberg, West Germany, during the second week of August. From all parts of the world the friends were especially wanting to attend this assembly, so that finally the tens on tens of thousands of requests for rooming accommodations emanated from sixty-two different lands. Four years previous, at the international convention at Frankfurt, 47,432 assembled for the public lecture and 2,373 were baptized; and in view of the still larger crowd expected for the 1955 assembly the vast Zeppelinwiese (Zeppelin Meadow) at Nuremberg in Bavaria was selected. Here at the Zeppelinwiese the late Nazi fuehrer Adolf Hitler used to stage his great military party rallies and to speak from its imposing Steintribuene (Stone Tribune), shrieking to his party followers in the great stadium before it. Here, in hope of a Nazi victory, he wanted to have the peace treaty of World War II signed. In this stadium it is possible to seat 84,000 persons. In 1953 the German witnesses of Jehovah held a convention here on one side of the stadium in front of the pompous Steintribuene, with a public-meeting attendance of 55,240, and less than 3,000 were baptized. But now the entire stadium and its Steintribuene and all its surrounding grounds were rented at a cost of about five thousand dollars.
All the organizing skill of the German brothers had to be called into play, for a camp was to be established adjacent to the stadium. They set themselves to build huge canvas-covered structures and to erect tents and lay out the ground for a Kleinstadt (Little City) to accommodate 37,000 campers. Five general camping lots were arranged, called respectively in Bible terms Gilgal, Hebron I, Hebron II, Carmel and Ramah. Mass lodging at a cheap cost was provided for, the sexes being segregated to different tents. About 100,000 square meters of ground were thus covered over with canvas. In these tents the convention servants, also the then German branch servant and his family, had their lodging. In each of those tall, long, canvas-covered structures 600 persons could be accommodated. In the camps Carmel and Ramah some 4,500 small individually owned tents, many “pup tents,” sprang up in due time. The camper slept on straw, loose or in sacks, and hundreds of tons of straw had to be brought in sixty cars and put up in 31,000 sacks by August 9 and distributed. Toilet facilities had to be provided on a large scale. Tents also had to house the twenty-eight departments of service for the direction and maintenance of the assembly activities, and a great kitchen and cafeteria besides refreshment stalls needed to be set up.
Weeks in advance hundreds of preconvention workers had to volunteer their services and engage in erecting the necessary structures. Streets and lanes were laid out and given Bible names and names mindful of the theocratic organization. The number ran up as high as 800 workers finally. Thus the Nuremberg assembly had the attractions of a stadium assembly and a vast camp city all rolled together into one. To serve the conventioners with hot, palatable food the temporary kitchen employed 400 workers, including sixty-four professional cooks; and there were sixty 200-liter kettles to cook three times daily 35,000 portions of food, and three refrigerator cars from the railroads. Four dishwashing machines, each able to clean thirty-two plates every nine seconds, were installed. There was a regular bakery also.
Arrangements were made not only for thousands to lodge in the camps but for others to room in the hotels and private homes of the residents of Nuremberg. This called for a house-to-house canvass for rooms by volunteer workers. The religious organizations of Western Germany did not want the assembly in Nuremberg, Hitler’s former party city. The religious authorities in the Catholic stronghold of Munich (site of Hitler’s unsuccessful beer-hall Putsch) tried to prevail upon the city fathers of Nuremberg to refuse the Zeppelinwiese to Jehovah’s witnesses, but the Nuremberg authorities resented this meddling or dictation from Munich and, in the language of a local bank agent, told the Munich religionists to go to their creedal “hot place.” The religious organizations of Nuremberg now let their attitude toward Jehovah’s witnesses become publicly known and tried to create difficulties by stirring up religious prejudice. The Office of Congregational Service in the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Bavaria circulated a six-page leaflet setting out why Evangelicals should not offer rooming quarters to the conventioners. The front page of the leaflet contained in large letters “Visit by Jehovah’s Witnesses—Watchtower Society—New World Movement—not wanted!” And on the reverse side of this were just the words “To be torn off and pasted on the door!” The churches left nothing untried to make clear to church members their position against the witnesses. In newspaper articles, in handbills and in sermons they formulated their blunt attitude of refusal. “We must turn down the teaching of ‘Jehovah’s witnesses,’” said a circular that the Roman Catholic clergy had distributed in July. But fair-minded, honest-hearted people treated all this with resentful contempt and opened their homes to Jehovah’s witnesses, to receive the blessing that this would mean to themselves. Conventioners lodging with them had wonderful experiences and were instrumental in getting many of them to sessions of the assembly, to see and hear for themselves.
The Steintribuene from which the assembly speeches were to be given was adorned with Kingdom symbols. The tremendous white marble structure is unusual in itself. It is 300 meters or 984 feet long. Up its front side ascends a flight of seventy-five steps to a colonnade on top, consisting of a double row of columns, thirty-six in front and in back, on each side of the central unit, or in all one hundred and forty-four columns. At the center is a broad raised platform, at the middle of which, to the front, is the canopied speakers’ stand. Upon the stone baldachin or huge centerpiece forming the background for the speakers’ stand was suspended a great blue hanging, with graceful folds, and upon this was fixed a symbol of Christ’s ‘rod of strength’: a tremendous human hand extending from part of a sleeve and holding a great eight-meter-long scepter surmounted by a crown beneath which were the four heads, to the front a man’s head denoting love, to the right a bull’s head denoting divine strength, to the rear a lion’s head denoting justice, and to the left an eagle’s head denoting wisdom. This scepter with hand weighed 770 pounds. Above this blue curtain and atop the centerpiece of the Steintribuene was mounted a golden, bejeweled seven-horned crown eleven meters long, four and a half meters high, weighing 3,310 pounds, or 1,500 kilograms. Potted flowers and many shrubs and trees provided more platform adornment. Atop the colonnade, and flanking the crown on each side, stood large, golden, red-bordered letters 3.4 meters high, spelling out in German the words “Triumphant Kingdom,” the assembly motto. This whole platform decoration was a most beautiful sight at night when floodlights were playing upon it.
To the right below the platform at street level was located the orchestra, which grew to 180 pieces under a capable conductor, seated under large umbrellas of red-and-white bars. In front of the Steintribuene ran a broad street, which was appropriately called Kingdom Street and which separated it from the extensive semi-oval stadium. To the left (west) of the Steintribuene, at a distance, was situated the main entrance of the ground, flanked by two tall white watchtowers with a sign suspended between: JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES TRIUMPHANT KINGDOM ASSEMBLY 1955.
The Zeppelinwiese stadium is a field of vast expanse walled in by tiers of seats on a structure that has thirty-four white sustaining towers, with a set of steps between each two towers
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