16 All the Promises Have Been Fulfilled

Ilse Kaden and Herbert Kaden live in an old section of Dresden known as Freidrichstadt. Across one wall of their sitting room, a modern-styled storage cabinet stands as evidence of Brother Kaden’s abilities as a master cabinetmaker. A block from their home, the Kadens have a small garden plot where flowers, vegetables, fruit trees, and berries grow in neat rows in front of a small garden cottage. These were the settings of our interviews with the Kadens. What stands out in our memories of them is Sister Kaden’s sparkling brown eyes and radiant smile and Brother Kaden’s gentle humor.

The original interview with Brother and Sister Kaden took place in May 1990. A subsequent interview took place in April 1994, providing additional information.

Ilse: We were both born in Grosshartmannsdorf in the Erz Mountains. There used to be a branch of the Church there, but it was closed when they formed the stake. The old branch house is now used as a dormitory for temple visitors. I was born in 1914 and went to school there. When I was a child, I used to go to Sunday School, but only when my father was at work. There was a Sunday School teacher who lived in our apartment building, and she took me to church, but I had to be back before my father came home because he then took me to the children’s service of the Lutheran Evangelical Church. That’s the church to which my parents belonged. So, in 1929, I finished school and moved to Karl-Marx Stadt. Now it is called Chemnitz again. I went to church there one Sunday, and that’s where we met one another. We had gone to the same school but had never become acquainted.

G. Davis: Brother Kaden, when were you born?

Herbert: I was born in 1910, and I was baptized in 1921, when I was eleven years old. My mother was a member. My father had been killed in the First World War in 1914, and my mother was alone with us two boys. She wanted to be with her husband again, and it was because of this hope and this faith that we came to church. In Grosshartmannsdorf we had a lovely branch, about seventy members, which was quite a few for a small village. It was wonderful.

Ilse: At Christmas time, we always put on a play, and we used to have bazaars. We had big exhibits, we had all kinds of handicrafts, we baked cakes and made potato salad. The whole village turned out—the baker, the shopkeeper, they were all there.

Herbert: So, I chose a very worldly girl to be my wife, and she is still my wife. We were married in 1938, and then in 1940, I had to go to war. My wife said, “If my husband comes back from the war all in one piece, then I will be baptized.”

Ilse Kaden and Herbert Kaden. Dresden, 1991. Courtesy Herbert Kaden.

G. Davis: And where were you living at the time?

Ilse: We were living in Grosshartmannsdorf.

N. Davis: Was there heavy fighting going on there?

Ilse: Yes, there was! We fled when the Russians came. We got on the last train out. We saw the Russians coming, and there was this military train at the railroad station. My father worked at the post office in the train station. Everyone climbed onto the train, and we left because the Russians were coming. The train was heading toward Sayda and Mittelsaida, that direction.

Herbert: That’s down on the Czechoslovakian border.

Ilse: And then a troop of soldiers on horseback came toward us, and there was a volley of gunfire. We saw the men being shot off their horses, and I held my hand over my children’s eyes, and we just kept going and going. My father said we wanted to get off at Olbernhau. We had relatives there, and that’s where we wanted to get off, but the train couldn’t stop, so we just kept going and going and landed up in Czechoslovakia as refugees.

I had my two sons with me plus my parents and my brother’s two little girls, and there we were in Czechoslovakia in a town called Eger. That was the first place the train stopped. We were all exhausted, and they took us to a schoolhouse, where we were divided up into the various classrooms. There was another family from our area with us who were also Mormons. Then a man from the area came in and said, “Someone in here has to be in charge.” They chose my father. He said, “Would you help me get things under control here?” Everything was really in a state of confusion. My father said to me, “Would you help me, sweetheart?” I said, “I’ll help you,” and so we got things in order, and there we were for eight days.

A woman lived next door in a little house, and she told me, “If you need anything, you can come to me with your children, and I will help you.” She came to see me one night and said, “Listen, Mrs. Kaden. They are going to put the men into a barbed-wire enclosure and the women in another one. I don’t know if they will let you keep your children, but I can help you if you want me to.”

I told my father what was happening, and he said, “Well, if that’s the case, we will give all the money we have if we can get home.” And I said, “Father, we have to tell the others from our village.” So I told the Reicherts, and they came with us through the “night and fog” [Nacht und Nebel, sneaking through fields and over the border to avoid being seen by guards]. This man put us in a boat to get across the river; it was like a ferry. There were my father and mother, myself, the four children, and the Reicherts. We had a large handcart and a baby buggy. The man had his small son as well as a bicycle. He told us, “I’ll lead you over to the place where the forest ends, and when I turn around, you run for it. Run to the house; they know you are coming. They will open the door and let you in.”

He watched until the guard went by, and then he turned around, and we ran for it. My father had the handcart; my mother had the baby buggy. I put a pacifier covered with honey in the baby’s mouth so he wouldn’t cry. The people opened the door, and we went flying in with all our belongings. When we peeked back, we saw the guards coming back. But let me tell you, we fell to our knees. Every one of us fell to our knees. And then we went on. It was about six o’clock in the morning; I remember it so clearly. We had arrived just at dawn and left at six.

And so we made it to Brambach with prayer as our guide. My parents were not members of the Church, but they went down on their knees with us. There was nothing else we could do. From there, we went to Hohendorf, where I had an aunt. This aunt had a restaurant, but the SS used it for their meeting place, so it had been taken away from her. When we got there, she had only one room left for herself. We stayed there overnight, and then my father said, “Let’s go home. Let’s go back and see if our house is still standing.” So back we went again to Grosshartmannsdorf. My mother stayed behind in Hohendorf with the three children, and my father and I and our oldest son, Rainer, walked back to Grosshartmannsdorf.

Herbert: They walked the whole way.

Ilse: There were no trains. Nothing was moving. Of course, some Russians caught up with us, and we were afraid. I took an old shawl and put it over my head so that I would look like a grandma. They didn’t bother old women, but if they got their hands on a young woman it was bad. Finally we got back to Grosshartmannsdorf. Our house was still there. My mother-in-law had saved everything she could, because the Russians had occupied it. The next day we had to report to the city hall and tell them that we were back. A man, who had been put in charge by the Russians, said to my father, “Now tell me, Max, how could you just run off like that?” My father just turned blue in the face and just screamed at the man.

But back we went to get my mother and the other children. When we were returning with our handcart, there came a truck full of Russian men and women with stuff piled high. They stopped, and someone took my little Berndt out of the baby buggy and handed him to someone up on the truck. I nearly fainted. I only remember my father trying to hold me up, and when they saw that I was fainting, they came down and said they only wanted to hold him. They weren’t going to take him away from me. Then they all got back into the truck and drove off, and we just stood there and bawled. Then six months later, Herbert came back from the war.

Herbert: I got out of an American prison camp in Bavaria in 1945. I was in prison for three days. I was a medical orderly, and that’s why I was released after three days.

G. Davis: And then you came back to Freiberg?

Herbert: It wasn’t so simple. In 1945 we had to sneak our way across into the Soviet Zone, in “night and fog,” as we say.

Ilse: He had to see whether or not his family were still all there. I kept my word and was baptized a week after he came home from the war. I always knew that it was true, but I couldn’t join because of my parents. They were always so good to me, and they were Evangelical-Lutherans. I was always telling myself, “You just can’t do it,” but then I decided to be baptized anyway. My husband didn’t even know. On the first Sunday after he came back, it was announced that Sister Kaden would be baptized in the lake. But my parents already knew about it.

G. Davis: What did your parents think about it?

Ilse: Well, it was done then.

Herbert: Things had changed, they had become much calmer about it. And besides, we were our own family then; we had our own apartment.

Ilse: At first, you see, my parents knew nothing about the Church but polygamy. That’s all they knew. They said, “Yes, you will take a handsome husband, he will never be faithful to you, and you won’t have him to yourself.” That’s all they knew, but, well, he proved them wrong.

Herbert: I returned home from the POW camp in September 1945. I applied for a job at the prison in Waldheim and got a job there as a master carpenter. We moved the family to Waldheim in 1946, February, to an apartment that was for employees of the prison. In June the Soviet Occupation Army came in and occupied the prison.

Ilse: They moved out a lot of the workers but kept the supervisors. “You, specialist, you stay.” So my husband stayed. I was so frightened when he had to go to work early in the morning and then when I had to pick him up and there were those strange guards there. And then they made us move out of our apartment.

Herbert: The Russians processed the entire group of prisoners, assembled them in Waldheim, and sent them off to the East. Then they gave orders that every apartment had to be vacated. There were forty-nine apartments there, and they had to be vacated—immediately!

Ilse: We moved out in a pouring rain, a regular downpour. Then the order came that all freestanding clothes closets, all lamps and ceiling lights, and all overstuffed furniture had to remain in the apartment. Fortunately, we had got our things out the day before, so we didn’t have to give up any of those things.

Herbert: We had to be out in three days.

Ilse: And we weren’t the only ones.

Herbert: Fifty-five families had to move out . . .

Ilse: All at once. But we were lucky. Most of the people had open trucks, like the farmers have, and the furniture was just piled in, in the rain! We had a closed furniture truck, and our Rainer stood by the truck and told the movers where everything went. He would say, “That’s ours, that comes over here.” He watched them when they brought things down. So when they had all our things in the truck, we were moved into the house of a dentist, where we were given the servant’s rooms. They had had a servant who occupied two rooms.

Herbert: Everything was done according to orders. We had no choice.

Ilse: So there was all our furniture stacked up in the entry and hallway so that we could get by. We had our own cooking stove, and the first thing my husband did was make a hole for a stovepipe and set up our stove. A lot of our things were wet, and we had to dry them out. Then the dentist’s wife saw the stove and said, “Oh, that’s wonderful, you won’t have to share the kitchen with me.” I said, “No, my husband has taken the liberty of setting up our stove.” She said, “Oh, I’m glad, that’s very nice.” You can understand why she was happy.

N. Davis: You mean she just had to take another family into her house? The State just said, “You go here?”

Ilse: Yes, yes. That’s the way it was.

Herbert: If a room was empty, the State would just confiscate it.

Ilse: And that room was empty, so they confiscated it. And the people didn’t get any rent, either. That was hard on them. But we had a very good relationship with the dentist and his wife. Every morning she would say to my boys, “Aren’t you going to come in and have breakfast with me?” Then she took our two boys in and gave them breakfast. We didn’t have much to eat, so that’s why she always took our boys in for breakfast.

N. Davis: Explain what you mean when you say you didn’t have much to eat.

Ilse: Everything was rationed. We got rationing stamps, but we got very few. Bread was rationed, butter was rationed, meat was rationed. There was really very, very little to eat. But we had it better than many. I set up an exchange with some farmers. I darned their stockings. You can’t imagine how their stockings stunk when I got them—from the cow barns. I had to soak them in water and then beat them because we didn’t have any soap. We had some canned soap called Bimstein, but it wouldn’t even make suds. So first I washed all the socks and hung them up to dry, and then I darned them, even though they weren’t really clean. And then I took them back to the farmers in a big sack, and I got butter, cottage cheese, eggs, milk. I never took money, never.

Once I knitted jackets for a miller—for him, for his wife, and for his son. I often knitted all night long in order to finish them on time, and I got a sack of flour. They asked, “Do you want money or flour?” Who would have said money in those days? No one! I took the flour. I still had my parents to take care of, and I had to share our food with them.

And then it came out that the miller had been with the SS. A big politician, and he had cheated a lot of people at the mill. So he was taken to Waldheim, where my husband was foreman in the cabinet shop and my uncle was the warden of the prison. All of the new prisoners were interviewed, and my uncle said, “Well, Mr. Hempel, would you like to work in the kitchen. Since you were a miller, I think you belong in the kitchen.” “No,” he said, “I would like to work in the cabinet shop.” “Why in the cabinet shop?” my uncle said. “Because I know Mr. Kaden. I helped his wife once when they were desperate.” That’s what he said because he had given me that flour. My uncle asked him, “What great things did you do for them?” I ask you, who would have worked for money when they were starving to death. No one!

N. Davis: Money was of no value?

Ilse: Useless. There was nothing to buy. We got some Zuckerrüben [sugar beets] from some members in the Döbeln Branch. We scrubbed them thoroughly, and then we cooked them. We made syrup, sugar-beet syrup. And again I had good luck in that I didn’t have to do all the work by myself. My husband sent some help over from the prison, and they helped me scrub and cook the sugar beets. Well, they ate a lot of them, but that didn’t matter; I was glad to share them. We had a big washtub, the kind we used to boil our clothes in, and we used a tub like that to cook the sugar beets. We took off the water and spread it on our bread. We would take dried potato flour and mix it with a little oil and smear it on the stove top and bake things on it.

N. Davis: Did you have a garden then?

Ilse: We didn’t have a garden, but I had some connections with a man who raised vegetables. But then we finally got another apartment in Waldheim and moved out of the two little rooms. We were given an apartment for employees; the Russians had occupied it. That was a real catastrophe, what they had done to that apartment. They didn’t understand running water and had poked pipes into the walls wherever they wanted. We planted rows of beans in the backyard and had them growing on stakes. The blossoms were a fire red, and the Russians came along and thought they were flowers. They broke the blossoms off and made bouquets out of them.

Herbert: We belonged at the time to the Döbeln Branch. They met in the back rooms of a building there in Döbeln, and all the members from Freiberg and Karl-Marx Stadt attended there. There were a group of refugees from Silesia who had settled there, so we built up a branch. There were about eighty members.

Ilse: But we had to get from Waldheim to Döbeln . . .

Herbert: By bicycle.

Ilse: There were no trains running then. So we went by bicycle, each one with one of the children on the front. He took the older boy, I took the little one, and we had our lunch sack hanging off one side. There was nothing there to eat; we had to take our lunch with us. We could not eat with the members; they didn’t have anything either. And then back home again, and you could always count on it—one of the bicycles would break down, and we would have to walk the rest of the way. Oh, that was something.

My husband had a position in the branch there, and when there was bad weather, I couldn’t go with my little children, but it never stopped him. Sometimes the weather was really bad, and I would say, “Oh, Herbert, you had better stay home today,” but he went anyway, on his bicycle, and I stayed home with the children.

One day I went with my son Rainer from Waldheim to Döbeln because some welfare supplies had arrived from America. We got bags of wheat, canned peaches, salt, canned herring, and powered milk. We loaded everything into this four-wheeled hand wagon and pushed it the eight kilometers back to Waldheim.

G. Davis: Was the wagon covered?

Ilse: Well covered, so that no one could see what we had. On the way back, our Rainer kept saying, “Mommy, if the people knew what we had in this wagon!” We couldn’t let them know. They would have taken much of it; they would have confiscated it. We got home safely, and what a joyful day that was. We could live well for a while. I didn’t have to tell my children, “No, you can’t have a slice of bread.” In the apartment next door was a family who kept a lock on their bread box. Only the father had a key, and at night he would cut off a slice for each of the children. That was hard. Whenever the children came to our apartment, I gave them something to eat.

And then in the fall, I went to Grosshartmannsdorf, where my parents lived, and helped harvest potatoes for the farmers. They turned them up with a machine, and then the women came along behind and put them into baskets. My parents took care of the children while I worked in the fields. For a day’s work, I got a hundred pounds of potatoes.

N. Davis: How long did you have to work in a day?

Ilse: We started at six in the morning, had an hour off for lunch, and worked then until six in the evening. That was long enough. You could feel it in your back.

Herbert: In 1950 we moved to Bautzen. I was employed by the prison there, and that is where our Elke was born. In Bautzen the branch was very small, about thirty members.

Ilse: They were so happy when someone moved in.

Herbert: When they got new members. But we didn’t want to stay in Bautzen. The prison system had been under the Department of Justice, but now the State Police had taken them all over, they had become political institutions, and I didn’t want to work for the police. Then the director of the prison called me in and said, “I’m sorry, but I am going to have to let you go because you belong to that American church.” And then he said, “If you sign this document that certifies that you do not belong to that church, then everything will be all right.”

Ilse: “If you belong to that American church, you can’t work for us anymore.”

Herbert: I said, “Well, I’m sorry, but I really enjoy attending my church.”

Ilse: You told me about it. “I can’t sign that, and I’m going to go to church no matter what you say.” Right? And then he had to spend his vacation looking for another job, and we had three children then.

Herbert: So I went looking for work and got a job with a firm in Dresden. That was in 1952.

Ilse: But you couldn’t start in an administrative position. You had to start out supervising the apprentices.

G. Davis: Now was this a problem when one belonged to any church, or was it a problem only for the Mormons?

Herbert: No, anyone. If you were Lutheran, no administrative position.

Ilse: More particularly the Lutheran Church . . .

Herbert: Because we were not so well known.

Ilse: The Evangelical Lutheran Church was so active, they couldn’t study at the university, they couldn’t do anything.

Herbert: I was a cabinetmaker, that is, carpenter or cabinetmaker. We did all the work for the big communist buildings here in the GDR. You have seen some of those big buildings in Berlin, the Congress Hall? We did all of the interiors.

Ilse: He had seventy workers under him in his department. He was the foreman.

Herbert: For a time, we were doing the interiors of airplanes. They wanted to start up an airplane factory here. They built only one plane, and it crashed, and that was the end of it. I was permitted to do the interior construction, but I was not permitted to work on a plane when it was at the airport.

Ilse: Because he was a Mormon. And then he was supposed to sign a document that he was not a Mormon, and he lost his job.

Herbert: I had to go looking for work.

Ilse: After he looked for about three months, the mayor of Dresden finally had four jobs available. So that’s when you applied at the Hellerau Furniture Factory. And they hired you, but not as a foreman, which you really were, but you had to go back to the workbench.

Herbert: So now I was in a large firm, the Hellerau German Furniture Factory, and I had a chance to work my way up, but only because of my professional experience.

Ilse: He couldn’t start out as a foreman. They told him he had to supervise the apprentices, but he said no, he would rather go back to the workbench. Then later they had to beg you to become the foreman, right?

Herbert: I stayed there eight years, until 1975, but only during the later years was I the foreman.

Ilse: And you were given high recommendations and awards, several, and in spite of the fact that you did not belong to the party.

G. Davis: So, tell us about the branch then. You were in the branch house on Dr.-Kurt-Fischer Allee then, right?

Herbert: When we came here in 1952, the Dresden Branch had about three hundred members, on the books.

Ilse: But how many active?

Herbert: In the years right after the war, 1945 to 1950, there were many added to the membership list because of the welfare plan.

Ilse: We got peaches, shortening, and wheat.

Herbert: And the branch grew because of the “canned-goods Mormons,” and then they dropped out, but we still had about three hundred members. From 1953 until 1955, I was the branch president here in Dresden. That was when we celebrated the one-hundredth anniversary of the Dresden Branch.

N. Davis: 1855 to 1955, right?

Herbert: Right. And that was the first time we had the opportunity of having an American mission president visit us in Dresden—Brother Gregory. We printed beautiful golden invitations, which, of course, had to be approved by the Russian Commander. He approved everything.

G. Davis: So who was supervising the missionaries during this time?

Herbert: We didn’t have any missionaries from outside the country. Later, Brother Burkhardt, the first counselor to the mission president, supervised the missionaries for fifteen years, from 1954 until 1960. Brother Schulze and Brother Ortlieb were missionaries.

Ilse: After 1982, when the first stake was organized, we had stake missionaries. Look how full our new chapel is now, how many attend the meetings. We might have 260 or 280 members in attendance. There was a time here around 1960 when we had been reduced to about fifty members at our sacrament meetings.

G. Davis: What had happened to all the members?

Ilse: All emigrated or died.

Herbert: We used to have only one organist here in Dresden. Now we have several. That was Brother Hilde. He did what he wanted and didn’t let anything bother him. The organ was up in the loft, and the choir was down below. The choir director had to follow him.

Ilse: He could play beautifully.

Herbert: We experienced everything here in the Dresden Ward, from the depths to where we are now.

G. Davis: Would you say that those days were difficult or beautiful?

Herbert: Difficult.

Ilse: Well, yes, they were difficult, but beautiful, too. For me those were the most beautiful times; I have to say that. We had very little, but how I remember Easter, Christmas—we always had the youth conferences here in Dresden. Those were wonderful times.

Herbert: Yes, in spite of everything.

Ilse: The way we stuck together was beautiful. Oh, the excursions we took! And what plays we put on! We even did a big production of Hanneles Himmelfahrt [Hannele’s Ascention by the German playwright Gerhart Hauptmann]. That was supposed to be a serious drama, and when Hannele was lying in her casket—that was Sister Moskva—she got to laughing so hard that the casket was shaking. I played a deaconess. That was wonderful. The productions were marvelous. Of course, we didn’t take it all too seriously; at practices we laughed and had a good time.

We had a director, Brother Böhme, and he expected everything to be perfect. Sometimes, when we didn’t pay attention, he would throw the script down and say, “That’s it, I’m through.” Then we would be very humbled and repentant and say, “Please don’t leave, Brother Böhme, we’ll do it right.” “Alright,” he would say,” and we would go on with the rehearsal, and the performance was always a big hit. It was wonderful.

Members of the Schwerin Branch costumed for a play from the Book of Mormon. Branches in the German Democratic Republic built unity through drama. And drama-related practical jokes lightened the members’ lives. Neubrandenburg, 1984. Courtesy Edith Krause.

Then we did Christmas plays, manger scenes. My husband was a shepherd; Brother Strauch was also a shepherd.

Herbert: And Brother Höhle was one of the actors.

Ilse: Yes, Brother Höhle. And something always happened; it was always something. Brother Strauch had this long staff, and he used it to scratch his head. That was so funny to see, and just at that moment Brother Robert Höhle gave the cue, and the shepherds were supposed to sing. But they just stood there with their cheeks puffed out, trying to suppress their laughter, and when Brother Höhle gave the signal, not a sound came out.

Herbert: The whole branch broke out laughing.

Ilse: Then Brother Robert Höhle said, “Alright, we will just begin again.” Then everyone got control of themselves and sang properly. But the audience, all of the guests, they laughed and laughed and couldn’t stop laughing. Brother Kempe, who played Joseph, was so angry afterwards. Well, we just made a comedy out of the whole thing. It was the shepherds’ fault. But that’s the kind of fun we had putting on plays.

Herbert: And I was the branch president.

Ilse: Oh, we had some great theater. Once we were doing a drama, and Anneliese or someone came up to me before the performance and said, “Watch out, Brother Höhle has some trick in mind.” During the dress rehearsal, everything went fine. But during the performance, he said to me, “Well, my lovey-dovey” or some silly thing like that. He was just supposed to say, “Well, dear.” Everyone else knew that it was a joke that didn’t fit at that point in the play, and oh, how they broke out laughing. It was just too beautiful.

We used to be at the church three times during the week. I was the president of the Primary then; that’s when we still had our children at home. Then I went to Relief Society and then to Mutual. And Papa was everywhere all the time. I don’t know where we found the time in those days. I was working then, and we had all of these meetings during the week. Sometimes I would run out of clean clothes and would have to do the washing on a Sunday. My neighbor was always saying, “Ilse, how do you keep it up? You are running off to your church at least three times every week.” Well, we did it, and it was wonderful.

On Saturday we used to have outings in the woods or to Sonnland. Once the men decided they wanted to get off by themselves, and so we said, “Fine, they can go off by themselves if they want to.” But one sister, Sister Herta Moskva, got out of her husband where they were going. The men were going to take a hike to Sonnland. So we decided that we would take a hike to Sonnland but didn’t tell them anything. You should have seen their mouths fall open when we showed up with all the children. We had a wonderful time. We played games. Of course, I had to be everywhere and in everything and ended up spraining my ankle, and they had to carry me to the bus. I couldn’t walk. But it was fun anyway.

And we used to go swimming in the Elbe. Then Sundays we were all together at church, Sunday morning and then again Sunday afternoon.

Herbert: We spent more time at church than we did in our apartment.

Ilse: Yes, yes, yes, yes!

G. Davis: Did you ever feel a little overburdened?

Ilse: Never, never!

Herbert: She just didn’t notice.

G. Davis: Did the members here feel somewhat isolated from the Church in Salt Lake City or from the General Authorities?

Herbert: Yes, certainly we did.

Ilse: We didn’t have many visitors, but when one came, the building was packed. Of course, Brother Burkhardt was always here. He was everywhere, and everyone loved him so much. That was a big advantage for us. He did so many, many good things for us. Those were beautiful times. I would not have wanted to miss them. Of course, it is nice now, too, but. . . . It would be so hard on us now if we had to go to church twice on Sunday, to say nothing of the expense. But in those days it wasn’t hard, not at all. And if you sang in the choir, you had to be there an hour earlier.

N. Davis: Then someone had to get the building ready.

Ilse: Oh, the heating; that was hard. That was Brother Heller. Sometimes he had to be there all day long with just a short lunch break. There was a big furnace, and he had to keep shoveling the coal in so that the building would be warm when the brothers and sisters arrived.

Herbert: But we didn’t have the large furnace then, just the old small one. Sometimes the brothers had to work all night long on Saturday until Sunday morning just to get the building warm.

Ilse: That’s right. Our boys had to help, and sometimes they set up a cot and took shifts shoveling coal through the night so that the rooms would be warm for us the next morning. And then, the cleaning! We didn’t have a janitor; we all had to pitch in. We sisters had to get down on our knees with scrubbing brushes and scrub the entire building while the brothers carried and changed the water. Oh, that was hard.

And downstairs we had the kitchen. We had such a big kettle to cook for the conferences that I couldn’t get up high enough to stir the food. Brother Krause had to make a platform for me to stand on so that I could stir the food.

Herbert: Brother Krause could do anything. He was a carpenter, plumber, he was everything.

Ilse: There were stairs leading out to the big park beside the church, and to call the young people in for breakfast or for lunch, we had a big gong. All the little children fought over who would get to strike the gong. That was fun.

Then we always had a genealogy week here. All of the genealogists from the country came here for a week. They worked and slept right in the chapel, and we took care of feeding them. We had a breakfast and then a little snack in the middle of the morning, then lunch and another snack in the afternoon, and then supper. There were usually four of us in the kitchen. There was Sister Wöhe, there was Sister Pfeil, and there was Sister Hagen. And we didn’t have any machinery; we had to do everything by hand—scrubbing and peeling and slicing. Not like at this last Youth Conference where we had an electric stove and oven and a machine that peeled the potatoes. We used to sit in a circle around a pot and sing songs and peel potatoes. Then my little grandson Kai would come along and throw a potato in and splash water all over us. Oh, that was fun. But then we were often worn out for two weeks after. Papa would come along and say, “You said it didn’t hurt then, but now you are moaning and groaning.” Oh, those were beautiful times.

Herbert: We stuck together. We knew one another. We worked side by side year after year. That was better.

Ilse: We used to get packages of used clothing from West Germany, which were given to the Relief Society to distribute. That was nice. Of course, sometimes we got things that we couldn’t pass on to anyone, but we got many, many nice things.

G. Davis: What kind of a relationship did you have with the government?

Herbert: During the years when I was the branch president, we had to report every sacrament meeting, every meeting of any kind to the police. I had to turn in a monthly report of every speaker by name. One time I didn’t report a branch party [Faschingsvergnügen]. I was informed that it should have been reported within one week.

Ilse: He had to go to the police station, and I was afraid they might lock him up.

Herbert: It wasn’t so pleasant. I appeared before this official, and he said to me, “I know you very well. I know everything about your branch. I attended the big celebration you had.”

Ilse: That was our centennial celebration.

Herbert: “But,” he said, “there has been a crime committed, and I am obligated to punish you.” I had to pay a fine of eleven marks. That was it.

Ilse: Practically nothing.

Herbert: “I understand your situation,” he said, “but I have to punish you.” He was a very nice official. But those were difficult days. They were always checking on everything. The secret police would go to the neighbors and ask about us because we belonged to an “American church.” They were not supposed to say anything, but they always came to us afterwards and said, “Listen, someone was here from the secret police again.”

Herbert: We were always being watched. You had to behave yourself. They probably had me on their list because I was the branch president at the time. But I never had any trouble at work. They would ask me why I never drank coffee, and I would tell them honestly why. “Oh, it’s forbidden for you.” “No, it’s voluntary.” They used to tease me at first, but then things were OK.

Ilse: I never had any trouble at work, none at all. I was the head saleswoman for our floor in a department store on Ernst-Thälmann Street. When I left, one of the saleswomen said to me, “Do you know what we used to call you? We used to call you the Good Samaritan; we always called you Ilse, the Good Samaritan.” “That’s nice,” I said. I did what I could, but it wasn’t much.

We didn’t have much. Sometimes the people would want a little wool yarn, and I would feel so sorry for them because we had wool in our warehouse, but we weren’t allowed to sell it, just because we had to have a supply in our warehouse. Well, sometimes I would just snatch a little of it and give it to someone.

We used to tie our bathrobes here around the waist with a cord. Well, this woman had been everywhere. She was going on vacation to the Baltic with her children and couldn’t find any cording for her bathrobe. We had the material. I told her, “If you could just wait a little while until I have my lunch break, then I will braid you a cord.” She waited very patiently, and I got the yarn together and went up to the next floor and braided her a cord. Our boss looked in and thought, “What’s she up to now?” Well, there was an article about this in the newspaper. The lady said she thought she was living in paradise; the saleslady braided a cord for her bathrobe.

I was trained in textiles. I went to work later in a butcher shop only out of desperation, at the time when there was nothing to eat.

N. Davis: We have heard about your problem of getting teaching manuals for the Church.

Herbert: Not allowed. If we could get a teaching manual from over there [West Germany], it had to be copied sixty or seventy times so that the branches could have at least one teaching manual.

G. Davis: Brother Albrecht told us about an occasion where President Burkhardt instructed you to destroy all unauthorized material.

Herbert: There was always the danger that these things would be confiscated, and it became important that all the branches not have any written material that had not been explicitly authorized. So everything was burned. We spent day and night in front of our stove burning the stuff.

Ilse: That was sad; that was really sad.

Herbert: But I didn’t burn any of my private literature.

Ilse: The first time I was permitted to go over to West Germany, after I was on a retirement pension, that was the only thing I wanted to bring back—teaching manuals and copies of the Stern [Church magazine in German].

N. Davis: Did Herbert go over with you?

Ilse: No, that was not permitted. That was before his retirement, and I had to go by myself.

N. Davis: So how did that come about?

Ilse: I was a clerk in a grocery store, and I had to have permission from my supervisor. My supervisor said to me, “But you don’t have your authorization from the City Hall.” I had to have permission from the authorities to travel because I had to make a monthly report of sales. Anyone who accounted for money had to have special permission to travel. Normally, I would have had to wait three years, but my supervisor stamped my request anyway, and then I could buy a ticket to Stuttgart.

I had a “cousin” over there; we just say cousin, which means a member of the Church who helped sponsor people from the East. We didn’t even know one another; she had only written to me. So we said we would tie a red scarf to our purses, and that way we would recognize one another at the train station. I was one of the last persons to get off the train. I saw this enormous fat woman, and I thought to myself, “Can that be her?” It wasn’t. Then my “cousin” came up to me and gave me a big hug. We had a wonderful time together; I will never forget it. I was invited out to see so many members. Everyone wanted to meet me. I made so many friends. A few years later, Herbert was able to travel with me.

G. Davis: So, what did you bring home with you from Stuttgart?

Ilse: I brought copies of the Stern and teaching manuals so that we could type off copies. And I brought a children’s Bible. My cousin was so generous. She was always putting money in my hand and saying, “Here, buy whatever you want.” But what did I buy? Things for the children and grandchildren. She was always saying, “What did you buy for yourself?” No, nothing. Only for the children and grandchildren and a watch for Herbert. And the teaching manuals. I packed them between my clothes in the suitcase and put something in every pocket.

Anyway, she said, “You can’t take that with you. What if they check your bags at the border? I’m going to pray for you until I know you are across the border.” She was more afraid than I was. Well, they would have taken it all away from me and detained me there. But I was a disobedient citizen. I said, “Father in Heaven, it’s not a sin to smuggle these things in.” They didn’t check me, not once. In our train compartment, they always pointed out someone and made them unpack everything, but never me. Heavenly Father knew that we needed these things I was carrying in. Oh, that was wonderful. And I made so many new friends over there.

G. Davis: So you always brought teaching manuals with you.

Herbert: I was coming across once from West Berlin, and they checked my bags, and I had a bunch of Church forms. The guard looked in: “What is this?” Then he didn’t say anything more. That was it.

Ilse: Those things weren’t forbidden. But I didn’t have to open a bag.

Herbert: It was always a frightening experience.

Ilse: We prayed a lot at the border; that’s for certain. We prayed until we were over. I really prayed to my Father in Heaven that they would not want to see what was in my bags. It worked every time.

When we were both retired, we could cross the border together. We would go to visit Brother Schlevoigt in Frankfurt, and he had everything, all the teaching manuals. We knew him quite well. “Here,” he would say, “I’ll gladly give you everything, but will you make it across the border?” Yes, that’s the way it was in those days. Nowadays we say, “Oh, those days weren’t so bad,” but I can remember how my heart would be pounding.

Ilse: It was 1981, when the two of us traveled to the temple in Switzerland. At that time, we had no idea that we would have a temple here. But we didn’t have any money. We were allowed to exchange fifteen East marks for fifteen West marks; that was all. But we were fortunate we got to go at all.

Sister and Brother Ringger were here in Dresden and Sister Ringger said to me, “Tell me, Sister Kaden, have you ever been to the temple?” “No,” I said, “we’re not allowed to travel. How could we go—how could we do that?” “Sister Kaden,” she said, “this is not right. You leave it up to me; I’ll see to it somehow. I will find a cousin for you in Switzerland.” In about four weeks, I had a cousin.

N. Davis: Another cousin!

Ilse: Another cousin. That was Brother and Sister Litscher. She is Sister Ringger’s sister. The situation was, you had to have a letter from a relative in the West before you could get permission to travel, even if you were retired. The relatives had to say that they would provide for you, and you had to take this letter of invitation to the police. So she wrote me this nice letter: “Dear Ilse, we are so happy that after so many years we will be able to see you once again. It is such a pleasure for us to invite you,” etc. So that was just fine.

But then I went to the travel bureau and ran into another problem: “You can pay from here to Basel with East marks, to the Swiss border. But you have to have West money from there and for the return trip.” “Oh,” I thought, “I had better talk with my husband.” So I called him at his office and said, “Papa, the Ringgers will have to pay for the return trip because we are not allowed to pay for it with East marks. He said, “Well, then we’d better let it go.” But Brother Burkhardt said, “We will not let it go; that’s out of the question.” “Good,” I said, “I won’t give up.”

I went down on my knees to my Father in Heaven. “Let me find a way,” I said. “I want to go to the temple.” I thought about it. Wednesdays there is a different shift on duty at the travel bureau. So back I went, and I was a little bold. I put two marks over the counter and said, “I would like some information.” “Yes, what would you like to know?” “We would like very much to go to Basel, then on to Zollikofen, then on to Zurich, and then home. How can we arrange it so that I can pay for the entire trip myself with our East marks? Is there some way, or do my friends in the West have to pay for us?” “Come a little closer,” he said, “I will let you in on a secret. Go over to the airline office; they have a way.”

So I took my letter and papers and went to the airline office. “Just a moment,” she said. “I’ll see if there is any space available. Yes,” she said, “but you can stay only thirteen days, and it will be rather expensive. You can go there by train, but you will have to fly home and do so one day earlier than you had planned.” “I will have to talk to my husband about it, but please hold our reservations.” “Yes,” she said. “I’ll take care of that for you.”

So I called my husband. I said, “Herbert, she says we can pay for everything ourselves, for the plane, for the train, for everything. Shall I book our travel?” “Of course,” he said. “Do it.” So I went back and booked our travel, and we could pay for the entire trip ourselves. Sister Ringger met us in Basel and drove us to Zollikofen, where we had a wonderful room right by the temple. We went to the temple every day.

The first time we went into the temple, I said, “Herbert, this is where I would like to work someday.” He said, “Here we are in the temple for the first time in our lives. Now you have finally got your wish, and you already want more.” On the evening of the day on which we were sealed, the temple president took us on a tour of the entire temple. We came out about eight o’clock and wanted to do something special on our “wedding day,” but all we had was one apple and a small piece of sausage. We went down to the waiting room, where there were tables. I saw a sister watching us and then talking with the others who were there. I said, “Papa, that woman is talking about us.” Then he said, “Oh, the strange things you imagine.” When we came to the temple the next morning, the temple president handed us an envelope and said, “I am supposed to give you this anonymous gift.” This sister I had seen the night before had taken up a collection for us because she knew we were from the East.

I met her later, and we developed a good friendship. Her name was Sister Jaeger. She had had a husband who would never allow her to go to the temple. After he died, she went to the temple, and in the temple she met a single man from the Erz Mountain region, near where we lived. They married and were very happy together. It was while we were in the temple in Switzerland that we learned we were going to have a temple of our own.

G. Davis: You learned about that in 1981?

Ilse: In Switzerland. No one here knew about it, oh no. And we couldn’t say a word about it, and we didn’t say a word. It hadn’t been announced yet. It wasn’t finished until 1985.

Well, we stayed a week at the temple in Zollikofen and then flew from Zurich to Prague, and from Prague we took the train back to Dresden. And we paid for the entire trip with our East money. That was the only time we were permitted to do that. After that they stopped this practice, and no one else was allowed to travel with their own money. Was that a miracle or not? Just that one time. Many tried after that, but no more.

Herbert: My wife wanted to stay over there in the West.

G. Davis: I was going to ask you why you didn’t stay.

Ilse: I wanted to, but my husband said, “I’ll just say one thing. You have your parents here. You would be so homesick for your parents, and whether they would let us come back again or not, that would be a real question.” We could have done it then. We could have done it later. Herbert could have flown out for the Church. We could have done it. But it was good that we stayed here.

Herbert: I have never regretted it. We have experienced so many things. If all the members of the Church had gone to the West, we would have had no temple, nothing.

Ilse: We would never have had our temple mission. I might never have been a Relief Society president. Over there I might never have had the callings that I could fulfill here. My parents needed me here. And the Church needed us; that was also very important.

G. Davis: But you did get your wish to work in the temple.

Herbert: Yes, I’ll tell you about that. I retired in 1976. I wanted a rest from my professional work. It had all gotten too political, you see. One day Brother Burkhardt, who was in the mission office at the time, came up to me and said, “Brother Kaden, can’t you help us out in the leadership of the mission?” So I worked in the mission office from 1976 until 1982.

Ilse: And I cooked for the mission.

Herbert: But then I was released. I said, “They are going to organize a stake here, and that will be too much work for me.” But when the temple was finished, here came Brother Burkhardt again. “Brother Kaden, wouldn’t you like to work in the temple?” From that time on, we have been working in the temple. I was a temple worker until 1986, and then we were called as temple missionaries until 1988, and then I was called as a counselor in the temple presidency.

Ilse: So all the things I wished for came true. We had to get up early; the train to Freiberg left at five o’clock. We went with the five o’clock train and then had to walk from the train station in Freiberg to the temple. There was no bus.

N. Davis: That is a long walk!

Ilse: Yes, and then at night we had to walk back to the train station and ride back to Dresden on the train and take the streetcar back home. We did that three times a week for the first year and a half, and then we were called to be temple missionaries. Then we lived in Freiberg, in the temple dormitory behind the temple. Our mission lasted for eighteen months, but because Herbert was called to be a counselor in the temple we stayed on longer. How long was that Herbert?

Herbert: Not quite another year.

Ilse: We traded off with the other counselor and his wife. We stayed in the dormitory for a week, and then they stayed for a week. In the meantime, we celebrated our golden wedding anniversary. Just a few years ago, we were called to be temple workers again until last March [1994], when we were released. That made me a little sad. No other release ever made me as sad as being released from our temple work. Of course, we can still go to the temple, but it’s not the same.

Herbert: Our legs gave out.

Ilse: Now we can go only when someone takes us. It is too hard for us to take the streetcar to the train station and then the train to Freiberg and then the bus out to the temple.

We had to tell them that our health wasn’t so good anymore. We just couldn’t travel that far. Well, I can understand it, being released, but it still hurt. That was so wonderful. But it’s such a joy now to see all of your old friends, the brothers and sisters you have known for so many years, the ones you love so much. “Oh, Sister Kaden, we miss you at the temple. Oh, Sister Kaden, when are you coming back?” Oh, those were wonderful days. I treasure them so much now. Our temple is so small, but we have the same ordinances and everything, it’s all the same. We got to know the Swiss Temple and the Frankfurt Temple, of course. That was a nice experience. Well, those were our days, and I would not have missed them. I take every opportunity I can to go to the temple still, if it’s possible. There are so many waiting for their salvation.

G. Davis: So what lies in your future now?

Ilse: The future? We’ll leave that to our Father in Heaven. It will be good if we can stay healthy.

Herbert: Enjoy a little rest.

Ilse: And it’s nice that the children still need us, and the grandchildren. That’s the real fulfillment of life.

G. Davis: What other assignments have you had here in the Church?

Herbert: After 1945, I was a counselor in the district for two years, and then I was in the presidency of the Sunday School for the mission. I can’t remember all the jobs I had.

Ilse: He had a bicycle and was gone all the time.

Herbert: We always had a job in the Church.

Ilse: I was, let’s see, first I was a teacher in the Primary. After half a year, I was the Primary president. After the Primary, I was the Relief Society president for nine years. Then I was with the Young Women. And I was a counselor in the Relief Society again, and after that we started working in the temple. Oh, yes, and once I was even a counselor in the Sunday School.

Herbert: We were never lacking for a job in the Church.

G. Davis: To say nothing about all the work you did with the youth conferences.

Ilse: Oh, that was the most fun of all, the cooking for the youth conferences. Sometimes we had as many as 150 young people. Oh, that was fun. The whole bunch were here. At first Brother Krause did the cooking. Then one day he said to me, “Ilse, wouldn’t you like to help me with the cooking?” “Gladly,” I said, “gladly.” So then we cooked together for all the youth conferences. Brother Krause was so popular with the young people that he wasn’t in the kitchen much after that; he was out with the young people.

N. Davis: So, what did you cook?

Ilse: Stews in a giant pot, meatballs, roasts.

N. Davis: And where did the young people come from?

Herbert: From everywhere in the GDR.

Ilse: We either put them up in our own apartments, or they slept out there in the branch house. I remember one time we had ten young people staying with us in this little apartment—six people slept in the living room there, two here in the dining room, two outside.

N. Davis: Outside, in the yard?

Ilse: Yes, right out there. It was like a barracks here. I had to warn them to keep quiet so they wouldn’t wake up the people in the other apartments. Herbert had to go to work early, and so I had to see to it that they all got up. I said, “When I start cooking breakfast, you all have to get up.”

Herbert: And our children were still with us then, too.

Ilse: There was a Brother Kohlhase who slept right over there. He came in the kitchen and said, “Sister Kaden. You’d better have a look in your children’s room; they have all broken out with black pockmarks.” Blackpocks is a very serious illness. So, of course, I went right in and about died laughing. He had taken shoe polish and had put black marks on their faces, a mark here and a mark there. And my laughing woke the others. Oh, how funny they looked; I couldn’t stop laughing, it was so funny. Then the others came to me and said, “Sister Kaden, help us play a trick on Brother Kohlhase.” I was always ready for some kind of nonsense, so I said, “OK, I’ll help you, but I won’t tell in advance what I am going to do.” Oh, they were excited.

At the Post Office square, we had to change streetcars, and there was always an ice-cream wagon right there. I had sewed up Brother Kohlhase’s pockets, here, behind, and here, in his jacket, so that he couldn’t get to his billfold or to his money. So, when we got to the Post Office square, I said, “Brother Kohlhase, be a sport and buy us all an ice cream.” He was always very generous, so he said, “Of course, all of you come over here, and I’ll buy you all an ice cream.” So, now we all had our ice cream, and I said, “So who’s going to pay, Brother Kohlhase?” He couldn’t get into his pocket here; then he tried here and couldn’t get in. Everyone standing around the ice-cream wagon broke out in a roar of laughter. “What are you all laughing at,” he said. “What’s the matter with my pocket here?” We left him there, and he came along later, after he had paid for the ice cream.

All day long at the church, in every meeting, someone was saying to him, “Brother Kohlhase, would you buy me an ice cream?” That was so much fun. It helped relieve the tension. We were younger then and could work at the youth conferences from six in the morning until ten or twelve at night. We spoiled the young people a little in those days. We would have more ice cream after the meetings and then a dance. Always something going on. That was something wonderful!

Herbert: I don’t regret that I stayed here instead of going to the West.

G. Davis: Another question. How do you feel now about the political changes and how they have affected the Church?

Herbert: Well, if you look at the promises of Brother Monson when he dedicated our country, you can see that everything, literally everything, has been fulfilled.

G. Davis: You have a temple. And new chapels.

N. Davis: You have all the blessing of the Church now.

Herbert: Yes, and we used to be behind the rest of the Church in everything. We were not recognized by the State, but today we are known everywhere and are looked up to.

G. Davis: And today the young people can go on missions again; they can even leave the country.

Herbert: Yes, that’s just wonderful. And it’s a great support to us to have full-time missionaries in our ward again. All the promises have been fulfilled.