14 A Dollhouse for a Chapel

The little city of Groitzsch, about thirty kilometers south of Leipzig, would have remained unknown in the history of the Church had it not been for one brave family that moved in there decades ago, the Böhmes. Their influence extends down to the present through several generations that carry names well known in the entire region: Bauerfeind, Hachenberger, Ritter, Sickel, Winkler.

It all began with a school teacher and his wife who became members of the Church. Leipzig was the closest branch, and they attended the meetings there with their children. That meant they had to be on their way by 6:30 a.m., travel a long distance by train, and finish off with a long walk. Sister Renate Ritter, now sixty-three years old [1989], was one of these children. Her parents’ dedication to the Church taught her to have a great love for the gospel. As a young woman, Renate would stay in Leipzig overnight in order to attend MIA. She took the train home the next morning and went directly from the train station to school.

Later, when she had to participate in the so-called year on the farm near Eilenburg and had only one Sunday off every month, Renate did not go home but met her parents at church, where they brought her fresh clothes and supplies.

The opportunity to be in a Berlin conference in 1938 when the prophet, Heber J. Grant, was there strengthened her desire to remain true to the gospel. “The last sounding of the trumpet” was the theme of the conference. “At that conference I was deeply moved in my soul. Even today I can hardly restrain my tears when I think of this wonderful experience. I recognized with gratitude what a great blessing it was for us to belong to this Church.” Soon after this, all foreign missionaries had to leave the country. World War II had begun.

The family survived the war, but the father, a former school principal, no longer had a profession; he was among the unemployed. The brother, Walter, returned from the war without a penny in his pocket and was immediately called on a mission. But Renate had completed her schooling and could support her brother from her wages. “And so the Lord assists and leads us in His marvelous ways.”

Renate Ritter. Courtesy Manfred Schütze.

The son of a knighted family with a large estate wooed her at the time, but Renate did not marry him: “a member of the Church—my Wolfgang—was dearer to me.” He also was a knight—according to his family name [Ritter means knight]. The fact that he had the same ideals was more important to her than the other suitor’s money or estate.

Renate and her new husband moved to Leipzig. They brought his father with them, and Renate’s husband opened a cleaning establishment. Before long she was caring for four men—her husband, her father-in-law, and her two sons, Roland and Lothar.

I loved my father-in-law as I loved my own husband and my children, so with God’s help everything went well. What a blessing it was to have him there to take care of our children when we were carrying out our Church duties or when we wanted to go to a concert or to the theater. On Tuesday I was busy as the president of the Primary and as a teacher in the Primary. Thursdays I was a teacher in the MIA, and in the meantime, I was going back and forth to Groitzsch.

Her frequent trips from Leipzig to Groitzsch were necessary because of the growing branch there and because her aging parents needed her help more and more. The Böhme family was still the heart of the branch. Church meetings in Groitzsch meant sacrament meeting in the Böhme living room. Each Sunday the living room had to be set up, the other rooms had to be cleared out and made ready for classrooms, and afterwards everything had to be put back in place again. This went on for years. Getting their own meeting place was out of the question. They had tried many times to get permission to build something, to add on somewhere, or to rent something—always in vain.

That was until Sister Ritter—undoubtedly after much fasting and prayer—came upon the solution one day. Her parents had a large piece of property, and she wanted to build a “weekend house” for her father-in-law behind their house. Her request to the building authorities brought the city building inspector to her parents’ house. During the week, Renate’s mother used her house for a “doll clinic.” Various village children’s organizations like kindergartens and preschools and even private citizens brought their broken dolls to Sister Böhme to be repaired. Since she had no workshop, everything was stored wherever there was room in the house. And so it was that on the particular day of the inspector’s visit there were many dolls to be repaired, and it looked like the entire house was full of dolls. “You don’t have a house here, you have a dollhouse,” the astounded building inspector said. “You are going to have to build a workshop.”

When the “doll clinic” was finished, the branch had a place to meet. It had recently been declared illegal for church meetings to be held in private homes, so it fell out quite naturally that when the branch asked the authorities where they could meet they were directed to the doll clinic, which was under construction. To revise the building project to correspond to the needs of the Church was now only a matter of labor. The members put in many hours of hard labor until they finally held their first sacrament meeting there in May 1977.

In the meantime, the father-in-law and Renate’s mother died, and the Ritters moved to Groitzsch. Now a different type of work became the central activity of the family—genealogy.

In Karl-Marx Stadt was a man who was an amateur-archivist and collected many family trees, pedigree charts, and family chronicles. He had published some of these. Each time after visiting him, Sister Ritter returned home with the fixed idea that she had to get all the names from that man and prepare them for temple work. “I fasted and prayed many times that I could obtain those books,” but things were delayed until one day the owner died. They bought an entire washtub full of legal documents, pedigree charts, family coats of arms, etc., from the widow. Several members of the Church immediately went to work sorting out this material and preparing the names for the temple, and it was a good thing they did. When a later will was read, all of his records had to be placed into a state archive. But the work was already done. “This is the way our Heavenly Father hears our prayers and fulfills our hearts’ desires.”

Sister Ritter became known in her little village as “the angel of Groitzsch” for another type of service. It all began with two unmarried sisters named Graf, who were core members of the branch. Because they were growing old and more feeble, one day they asked Sister Ritter if she could help them. She went to their home to help them three times a day until 1973, when one of them died.

Since Liesel [Graf], the surviving sister, was completely exhausted, I took her straight home with me. At a family counsel, it was decided to keep her there. In 1985 she suffered a broken hip while in a hospital, and later she shattered her right elbow in a fall. She should have gone to a nursing home, but I prayed for strength and took care of her.

Then two more women were added to the Ritter household.

For many years, Brother and Sister Ritter spent all their vacation time in Leipzig helping an eighty-seven-year-old sister in the Church, Sister Liebing, and her crippled daughter. On Pentecost Sunday 1978, they were with them again, and Sister Ritter describes what occurred:

It was at a Mothers’ Day service in 1978, Pentecost Sunday. Famous mothers were remembered, and words of gratitude were expressed to all the mothers. One brave mother had brought eleven children to the world and raised them all to be good members in the gospel.

That evening, as it had come so often, the thought came to me once again: “Only two times have you fulfilled your partnership with the Lord.” The doctors had advised me against having another child because of the RH factor. A third child would likely be mentally retarded. I did not want to tempt God.

Nevertheless, after discussing it with my husband, I asked the Lord if it might not be possible the next time we came to Leipzig to go to an orphanage where I could find a child who would call me mother. But then I spontaneously prayed, “Or would you prefer, Lord, that I take care of Sister Liebing?” I ended my prayer: “Whatever is your will, O Lord.”

I had just lain down to sleep when I heard a scream from the bedroom. “Renate, help. My mother is on the floor, and I can’t lift her up.” Yes, she had had a sudden stroke and should have been taken to a nursing home. But we held a family counsel and decided to take care of them. I had both mother and daughter at my home for the next three years, when the dear mother died in her sleep on her ninetieth birthday.

We had prayed for a third and a fourth child of our own, but our Heavenly Father sent us instead his helpless, feeble, and crippled children to take care of. We learned to bow to his will. We learned how to love and sacrifice. How could we do all of this and maintain our family unity? During family home evening each case was discussed, and we held a common prayer for wisdom and understanding in caring for these dear sisters for an indefinite time. We had to vacate rooms and make time for others. We were suddenly no longer just ourselves in our home, but we were there to care for others, to appreciate them, to help them, to love them as we loved and understood the members of our own family.

After having lived with Sister Ritter for fifteen years, Sister Graf died. During this time, Sister Ritter’s husband died unexpectedly. Renate Böhme Ritter’s service to others is a perfect example of “pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father” (James 1:27).