27 We Couldn’t Have Church Literature

We interviewed Peter Menzel and Doris Menzel on the balcony of their apartment in Leutewitz, not far from Sister Wöhe’s home (see chapter 25). The Menzels are a quiet, unassuming couple with many talents. Brother Menzel is currently serving as bishop of the Dresden Ward.

Doris: My grandmother joined the Church in Breslau, and in 1945 we were evacuated from Breslau to Halle. My grandmother was the first one in our family to come into the Church.

G. Davis: And your mother?

Doris: She came to see a play my older sister was in. She just wanted to see what was going on, and she stayed. The thing my grandmother liked best about the Church was that she could do work for the dead and that she could live with her husband again. I think that was the major point, that she would see him again. So, I grew up in Halle, and that is where I met my dear husband, at a Church program in Halle. But that was a long time ago.

Peter: That was in 1960.

Doris: Then in 1965 we moved here to Dresden.

G. Davis: Were your parents already members of the Church, Peter?

Peter: No, none of my family were members. When I was eight years old, my mother took me for some medical treatment. The man who was treating me asked me what I had done the preceding Sunday, and I told him that I was chopping wood. He said that there were better things to do than chop wood on a Sunday and invited us to come to church. That was in Bischofswerda, and that is what brought my mother and me into the Church. The following Sunday, we attended church, and it wasn’t long before we were both baptized.

G. Davis: Where did you learn to play the piano and the organ?

Peter: I started learning at home when I was twelve years old. I took lessons for about six months, and then there came a time in the branch when there was no one to play for them anymore, so I had to play.

Doris: Halle was a very small branch; there were about forty-five members on the records, and there were usually about fifteen or twenty in attendance.

G. Davis: Why did you come to Dresden?

Peter: I grew up in a small town, and my wife grew up in a large city. She said she wanted to live in a large town, so we came to an agreement that the first one to get an apartment, that’s where we would live. I had just started my studies here in Dresden and got an apartment. That was the deciding factor. We moved to Dresden, and here’s where we have stayed, much to the distress of my wife, who at first wanted to go back to Halle. Now she doesn’t want to go back there anymore.

Doris: No, that’s not entirely true.

N. Davis: So what was the Church like when you first moved to Dresden, in the former GDR?

Doris: To be honest, I have to say that I liked it better then than I do today. We were all so close to one another. I am not trying to say that I have anything against the new converts, quite the contrary. I think it is marvelous that the ward is growing. But in those days, everyone knew one another, there were not so many of us, everyone watched out for one another, and we all knew one another’s problems. I find that with so many new members things are a little helter skelter.

Peter: There were many who came to the Church because they had problems, and when they saw that the kind of problems they had would not be solved by the Church, they stopped coming. Only a small percentage of the new converts are still active.

Doris: That’s the way it is when things are not going so well, when we don’t know what is coming next. There were many like that who were very receptive to the gospel but who now that things are going better would rather relax at home on Sunday. We used to have two hundred visitors when we had an open house; now very few show up.

Peter: When we have an activity, ten investigators may be there, not more. Last Saturday we had a concert. It was very nice, but the attendance was not good. That’s the way it is now with all of our activities. People’s interest has really dropped off.

Doris: They are oversaturated. Everyone is trying to work two or three jobs just to get along. I think it is too much. They have to really work hard nowadays, and they say that when the weekend comes they have to rest or do the housework.

G. Davis: It seems somewhat paradoxical to me that at the time when atheism was officially taught in the schools there was an interest in religion, but now that the people have freedom to think as they will, there is less interest in religion. Is that correct?

Doris: No, I don’t think so. There was not much interest in religion in the GDR times. That came only during the transition period, when the people were so anxious about everything. They didn’t know where to turn or what was going to happen. Some of them looked for an anchor in the Church.

Peter: Toward the end of the GDR, anything that was new attracted a lot of interest. There was an enormous number of visitors at the open house for the temple in Freiberg and also here in Dresden when we opened our new chapel. That was still during the GDR time, September 1988. There were a lot of people who came through the building. We had an activity every month. That was before the missionaries came, but there was a lot of curiosity and interest.

Doris: There were many people who stood in long lines at the temple up to four hours in order to get in and also at our new chapel. We had tours through all the rooms.

Peter: I remember one day we had an open house on a Saturday afternoon and had over five hundred visitors. That was back in the GDR time. We took people through the building, answered their questions, and told them about the basic doctrines of the Church and things like that. And we had a lot of visual material out. We had different rooms decorated to represent the various organizations—the Primary, Young Women, priesthood. We also showed some videos that attracted a lot of interest.

G. Davis: Was there any problem with the government because of the large crowds?

Peter: At the end of the GDR time, there was no problem. Of course, in the earlier years, this would have been out of the question.

Doris: There were hard times until the temple was built, and they allowed the temple to be built because that brought in hard currency. They could do nothing else.

Peter: The temple was built in 1985.

Doris: Then they became more generous.

Peter: The temple came first, and then approval was given for several new chapels.

G. Davis: Now young people are able to go into foreign countries on a mission.

Doris: Yes, the first missionaries that were called went to America; that was during the GDR time. Now that we can travel wherever we want, there is not so much interest in going abroad. Many are happy to stay here in Germany on their missions.

Peter: Well, that decision is made by the First Presidency. No one knows where he or she will be called.

G. Davis: What other interesting experiences have you had in the Church?

Peter: I remember a very interesting experience we had. One day we were in the branch house cleaning up. . . .

Doris: We were cleaning up in the coatroom.

Peter: We had just finished cleaning up, and suddenly the mission president came up to us and asked us if we would like to have a patriarchal blessing. We put away our brooms and rags and went into the office with the mission president for an interview and then directly into a room with the patriarch, where we received our patriarchal blessings. It was in 1971, and the patriarch was Brother Karl Ringger. He had just come to Dresden for a short visit and wanted to give some patriarchal blessings. It was our good fortune that we happened to be in the branch house doing some cleaning.

Doris: No one ever dreamed that a patriarch would come to visit our country.

Peter: That was unheard of at the time.

Doris: Unheard of. They wouldn’t let anyone come in.

N. Davis: When did Brother Krause become a patriarch?

Peter: That was several years later. First Brother Ringger came in; then there was Brother Percy Fetzer. He came now and then, and a few had a chance to receive a patriarchal blessing. Then later Brother Krause was called to be a patriarch.

G. Davis: Had you ever been to the temple before 1985?

Peter: No.

Doris: But I had saved some money because my patriarchal blessing said that I would go to the temple one day and that I should prepare myself. I had saved two thousand marks. Two thousand marks was a lot of money for me at the time, and I saved it just to go to the temple. It would never have been enough, but I thought that with two thousand marks I was almost a millionaire.

G. Davis: You were saving your money to go to Switzerland.

Doris: That’s right, but they wouldn’t let us go.

G. Davis: What did you think when you heard that you would have a temple here in the GDR?

Doris: You could have knocked me over with a feather!

Peter: But that told us a lot. It drew attention to the fact that the GDR was so desperate, and since the temple would be built with dollars, they saw their chance. I mean, our Father in Heaven was directing things, that’s understood, but hearts softened when they saw the hard currency; that smoothed the way.

N. Davis: Perhaps we could say that our Father in Heaven makes use of what is available.

Doris: Yes, that’s clear. That was the only way we could ever have had a temple. The saddest thing about those days was that we couldn’t have Church literature. I was at home in those days because I had three children, and I spent a lot of time copying teaching manuals with a typewriter and carbon paper. We didn’t have copy machines or computers then. I tried to make eight copies at once.

N. Davis: And if you made a mistake, you had to correct eight copies?

Doris: No way, we left the mistakes alone. There weren’t so many mistakes, and if there were a few typos, that wasn’t so bad.

N. Davis: That must have been a lot of work.

Doris: A lot of work! It was permitted to make copies of things for your own use, and no one ever went looking for the originals.

Peter: We had so few Church books, just the triple combination and a songbook.

Doris: There was a time when they told us we had to destroy our old copies of the Stern, copies we had from our grandparents that were thirty or thirty-five years old.

Peter: Everything we had from right after the war that had been brought in up until about 1950 or so had to be destroyed.

Doris: It was so wonderful when someone with permission to travel to the West would bring something back with them.

Peter: Everyone was so happy back then to get a magazine or a book, and now that you can get anything, there are plenty of people who have no interest in such things. When you don’t have it, you try to get it, and when you have it, you don’t use it.