28 In the Valley of the Naive

When guests sit down to a meal at the home of Manfred Schwabe and Elke Schwabe, they are asked to join hands around the table as the blessing is asked. This practice illustrates the unity and love that permeates the lives of this couple and that is evident in the following interview.

Manfred: I came into the Church through two neighbors who first took my sister with them to the branch.

G. Davis: Your parents were not members?

Manfred: No, my parents were not members; my parents were divorced. There were five children in the family; my mother raised us alone. At first we made fun of my sister for going to church because we didn’t know anything about it. I was maybe fourteen years old at the time. Then we decided that it might be interesting for us, because in those days the Church took a great interest in the youth, and by and by we began to attend MIA. I ought to add that we had to walk about half an hour to get to the branch house. In those days, MIA was held during the week, and on Sunday we had Sunday School in the morning and sacrament meeting in the afternoon. So we had to do a lot of walking when we walked half an hour to church in the morning and half an hour home again and repeated this in the afternoon.

I wasn’t baptized for quite a long time. I was seventeen years old when I was finally baptized, but I had been active in the branch activities all that time. We had a fairly large branch for those days. In 1956, I moved to Leest and continued to be active in the Church.

G. Davis: What positions did you have in the Church?

Manfred: That’s hard to say now. I don’t really remember. You see, in a small branch everyone has to do something, so I must have also done something, but that was all too long ago. I don’t remember all the things I did in the Church. The history of the Leest Branch is an interesting one. When I arrived, there was this Sister Kolbin. Her maiden name was Bade. Her mother was very instrumental in building up that branch. She had the missionaries come.

Elke: Two missionaries came, and they taught this Sister Bade. She became a member of the Church and made her home available for meetings. Things were rather primitive in those days. There was no running warm water. She did have electricity but not much room.

Manfred: She just turned over the main floor of her house.

Elke: She tore out a wall of the house, and out of the two rooms—a bedroom and a living room—she made one large room, which was then used for the Church meetings.

Manfred: This was the meeting place of the Church until the new ward building was completed.

Elke: By then both of the parents had died, and the only one left living in the house was a daughter-in-law.

Manfred: She remodeled the barn and lived in the barn.

Elke: We continued renting this house until the new chapel was completed.

Manfred: Old Brother Kolbin was a Russian POW who had been captured during World War I and was working here in Germany as a POW when he met this Sister Bade.

G. Davis: So Kolbin is a Russian name.

Manfred: Yes. His son was the branch president; that was about 1960. His counselor, Brother Richter, was then branch president for a long time until his son took over the branch.

That was a nice life in such a small branch. There were thirty members, maybe thirty-five, and we all worked together. In a small branch, everyone helps one another more than in a large branch. It took us a long time to get used to living here in the Dresden Ward with 150 to 200 members.

But this Sister Kolbin, she was the sister who brought our family into the Church in Naumburg. She was born in Naumburg and lived just a few houses down from us. Through her family, my sister came into the Church. She married one of the Kolbin sons, and they moved to Leest.

From the very beginning, my mother thought our joining the Church was fine. She had only asked us that we first all be confirmed into the Evangelical Lutheran Church. In my case, I did this but then left the Evangelical Church and was baptized in the LDS Church. I was baptized in the Saale River. It was in October, and the water was plenty cold, but I was so full of enthusiasm.

Nowadays it is no big thing to step down into the baptismal font with the warm water. Back then they used to baptize in a lake. It didn’t matter how cold the water was. We were just talking about that recently. There are some members who want to baptize their children where they were baptized here in Dresden, in the Briesnitz Lake. Now they can baptize them in the font at the ward house, but the children say, “No, Papa. We want to be baptized where you were baptized.” So they go out to Briesnitz Lake and baptize their children.

Elke: Would you like to hear my story?

G. Davis: Yes, let’s hear about your family and how you came into the Church.

Elke: Well, my grandmother, Martha Gebauer, and my mother, Hedwig Gorczychowski, were taught by the member missionaries in the Leest Branch. I think it was Sister Anna Meier. I don’t remember who her companion was, but they taught Grandma and Mom about the gospel. They taught them for a long time until they understood everything about the gospel, and then they were baptized. Dad was never baptized during his lifetime. He was Evangelical Lutheran and was determined to remain Evangelical. Of course, it was often pretty hard for Mom to maintain the proper balance. When both husband and wife are not in the same church together, it can be rather difficult.

I was baptized in the summer when I was eight years old. I was afraid of the water. I had always had trouble with my ears and I was afraid I would get an ear infection. Nothing happened, fortunately. I grew up as one of the young people in the Leest Branch. I had a lot of friends. We put on a lot of productions, and the young people from Berlin often joined us. Because Leest is such a small place, just a little village, there were a lot of woods in the area, and we played there a lot, the kind of games little kids play. I was a Beehive girl and worked on my beehive. I remember my teacher, Ursel Zobel. Later when she got married she was Sister Brünning. She spent a lot of time with us.

In 1954 we had a big youth conference here in Dresden. We camped out in tents. That’s where I met Manfred. We began writing to one another, and then he started coming to visit me on weekends. He often rode his bicycle all the way from Naumburg to Leest, 250 kilometers. He would start out after work on Friday, ride all night, and get to Leest early on Saturday morning. I could never understand it in those days—so much energy, so much courage, and, well, probably a little portion of love. But I was probably too young, too much of a child to really understand it. We were together this way for three years, including our common activities in the Church at the youth conferences.

In 1957 we split up. We somehow thought we didn’t belong together, or maybe we were still too young. I thought, “I’m too young to get married at seventeen.” But then I married out of the Church! There were not very many young men in the Church, and I married out of the Church, and I sorely regretted it.

I realized then what kind of a life my mother had had. Maybe it was even a little harder for me because I couldn’t attend church. I couldn’t take the children to church, and I couldn’t teach them at home. But as long as I lived in Potsdam and Bonnstadt, the members visited me. Then my marriage reached a crisis. There was a divorce, and I could finally become active in the Church again with my daughter. Of our three children, she was really the only one I could teach, and we had wonderful experiences together. The young people in the Church in Leest helped her a lot. She had friends in the Church, and they became her example. She learned a lot from them and decided to be baptized.

It was a very rainy day. I remember thinking, “If it doesn’t let up, how are we going to get from the bus down to the lake?” It was bad. The baptism was to be outside in a lake. But we had a meeting first, and then we drove to the lake, and while we were driving, it cleared up. That was really a testimony for me. The sun came out, and we had a beautiful baptism. It was so lovely. My daughter was so excited. We were just a small group. Many of the members had little children and couldn’t get away, but it was so lovely. There was a wonderful spirit there.

Manfred came to the baptism, and that was a new beginning for us. He had been divorced for some time, and I had just gotten a divorce. My husband really wanted me to come back to him. He made me an offer. I had just gotten my driver’s license, and he said he would buy me a Trabi [a small, East-German automobile] if I would come back, but I had other ideas. Manfred and I married, and from that day on, we have both been active in the Church. We were married in 1982, and we moved to Dresden in 1983. I was the Sunday School secretary; then I went on a stake mission; then I taught Primary. Then we both went on a stake mission, my second mission. That’s my story.

Elke Schwabe and Manfred Schwabe. On their wedding day, July 3, 1982. Courtesy Elke and Manfred Schwabe.

Manfred: Mine is quite different. My first job in the ward here was as president of the Sunday School. That’s an interesting story. Brother Erich Ortlieb had been a missionary in Leest back in 1959 or 1960. The missionaries often came to eat dinner with us. That was quite common then; we always invited them over for dinner. When I showed up in the Dresden Ward, he was the first one to recognize me although to be honest I didn’t recognize him anymore. He was the bishop of the ward, and he asked me what I could do in the Church.

I had very little self-confidence. I had been active again for only a short time, but he said: “How would you like to be the president of the Sunday School?” I said, “No! I could never do that. I’m not qualified. I’m just new in the ward.” “You can do it. You can do it. I’ll support you. You just need a couple of counselors, and you’ll be on your way.” So I was on my way, and I must say I was quite surprised how well things went.

I was president of the Sunday School for a few years, and then we were called on a stake mission. It was just at the time when we had the open house at the temple in Freiberg. There had been so many visitors to the temple, and we helped with the open house. And then suddenly we had thousands of names of people who wanted to know more about the Church, long lists of names. They all wanted to know about the Book of Mormon. We started going through this list of names and giving out copies of the Book of Mormon. After our stake mission was over, Elke became secretary in the Relief Society, and I became the ward financial clerk.

Elke: Then came another stake mission.

Manfred: That’s right. They needed more stake missionaries, so now we are missionaries again.

Elke: We were called just three weeks ago.

Manfred: When we first came to Dresden, we were back and forth between Dresden and Potsdam before we got this apartment. It’s not always been so easy to get an apartment here. In Pilnitz, I had a little apartment which was damp and smelly because the drain system was not working properly. Because of that, we thought we could count on getting an apartment here from the AWG Collective.

G. Davis: AWG?

Manfred: It is called the “Arbeiterwohnungsbaugenossenschaft” [Workers Housing Construction Collective].

Elke: Was called.

Manfred: Yes, now it is called the “Eisenbahnerwohnungsbaugenossenschaft” [Railroad Housing Construction Collective] or just “the Collective.” All of the apartment buildings in this whole area and where Sister Wöhe lives are buildings built by the Collective. The group here, which forms the middle axis, are the so-called communal houses. They belong to the city or to the Communal Housing Authority. There are altogether about fifteen thousand apartments here.

Anyway, the way it was back then, if you wanted to get an apartment, you had to pay a certain amount as a down payment, and then you had to put in a bunch of hours in labor. You had the choice of putting in your labor hours with your business or for the AWG. If you put in your hours with the AWG, you had to do landscaping, etc. We put in our hours at the business. We had to clean out all the old files from an entire archive in the place where I was working at the time.

Elke: The entire floor was covered with all the old files from the old bureaucracy.

Manfred: Clear back to 1910. We spent several weekends on this old dirty floor.

Elke: Yes, covered with dust. I about ruined my elbows. Lots of pain. I had to have X-rays.

Manfred: But that is how we actually got this apartment so quickly.

Elke: We had to put in 780 hours of labor and pay 2,300 marks down. Then we had to pay an additional 1,300 marks to have a kitchen installed, which we never got to see before we moved in. They said: “When you have paid for the kitchen, you can have a key to the apartment.” So we bought the apartment without ever seeing the kitchen. But the most important thing in the whole matter—and this was a real testimony to me—was the way we fasted and prayed that we would get the apartment. I wanted to get out of where I was living. My divorced husband was still living in my apartment in Potsdam, and there was often a lot of friction.

[Marriage and divorce had little to do with housing in the GDR. Because housing was controlled by a state or city housing authority and apartments were assigned solely on the number of occupants, divorced couples were commonly forced to continue occupying the same apartment after their divorce. This does not imply that they were “living together.” Obtaining another apartment was often quite impossible.

Also, newly married couples frequently had to continue living with their own parents, sometimes for a year or more, because they were normally not allowed to apply for a joint apartment until after they were married. It was common for a couple to have one or two children before they could begin occupying the same apartment.]

Manfred had a damp place which was actually just a room and a half. Very small, no water. Not even a washbasin, nothing. So we prayed hard that it would work out.

A co-worker in Manfred’s business who was in charge of apartments told us, “You’ll never get an apartment in less than three years. I’ve put through so many applications and have chased around between so many offices. You can just forget it.”

Manfred: Listen to this. I was allowed to apply for only a two-room apartment. I decided I wanted to apply for a three-room apartment instead of a two-room apartment. My co-worker, the one who worked with the Housing Commission (every business had its own housing commission), the one who oversaw the distribution of apartments in cooperation with our business, said, “You’ll never get it. You’ll never get a three-room apartment. I’ve been all the way up to the city commissioner, argued about this and that. It doesn’t work.” I said, “You know what? I’m going to try it anyway.” “Forget it. No use even turning in the application.”

But we prayed about it and said it had to work. We made an appointment with the head of the collective. We both went. I laid out my problem to him. He took up his pen, crossed out “two-room” and wrote in “three-room.” Did she stare at that, my co-worker! She said, “That can’t be!” As we were going out, she said, “You know what? Either you are very lucky or something. . . . Something’s not going to work out. That can’t be. I could never have pulled that off. And you go in, tell him what you want, and you get it.”

There was another thing. We were supposed to have waited at least three years. But actually, from the moment we were accepted into this collective, the waiting period—with all its red tape—was just exactly eleven months until we moved in. There were three men ahead of me who were supposed to get an apartment. One of them said he didn’t need it at the time. The other one said, “I’m not moving out to Grobitz in that dirt pile.” It was really terrible out here while they were building. We had to wear rubber boots when we went to work in the morning. Then the other one said, “No, I’m not moving out to Grobitz,” and suddenly I was at the top of the list. I couldn’t believe it. Can you imagine that?

Well, that was a testimony to me that prayer helps. My co-worker had said, “It can’t be done. It can’t be done. If I hadn’t seen that with my own eyes. . . . You come in, tell your story, and he takes his pen and changes the two-room into a three-room.” She said, “And I’ve fought and fought and fought a dozen times with that same guy. He never changes a policy. Never!” Well, he did!

N. Davis: Did I hear you say that your former husband was still living in your apartment in Potsdam with your family after you were divorced?

Elke: Yes, I was living in Potsdam, and my former husband was still living in the apartment. He had one room to himself, but we had to share the kitchen.

Manfred: Kitchen and bath.

Elke: He always had to come through my room to get into the kitchen. It was a little difficult. Besides, the apartment had been tacked on to make it larger, for a doctor’s family I believe. There were actually five or six rooms. Two families lived on that floor. The back part was divided off. We had the back part, and another family lived in the front. There was only one bath for both families, and it was just divided off by a curtain. It was a little complicated. We had divided the bath off so that we could have a kitchen. At first there was no kitchen in our apartment. The kitchen was then about two square meters, I think.

Manfred: About like this one.

Elke: Well, I think this one is a little larger. You see, my daughter Petra wanted to come with us, and the boys stayed in Potsdam. The older boy was about finished with his schooling, and the younger one wanted to stay with his father. But Petra wanted to come with us, and a two-room apartment would have been too small. That’s why we tried to change the two-room apartment into a three-room one. I have a few pictures here of the muddy swamp we lived in at first. It was interesting.

G. Davis: What were your happiest times in the Church?

Manfred: When I was growing up.

Elke: I would say so, too.

Manfred: We had very little money, so there were not many possibilities. But we traveled. We traveled by bicycle. On Saturdays we worked until noon, and then we jumped on our bicycles. We rode out to see the Fuchs family. They had seven boys. They belonged to the Naumburg Branch. They lived about twenty kilometers away. If there was someone there, we took them along. We went on to Jena. Sister Kolbin’s sister, Anna Rose Bock, lived there. After visiting her, we went on to Weimar. That was another twenty kilometers. That makes forty, sixty kilometers on a Saturday afternoon. Oh boy, the members in Weimar were happy to see us. “Man, we were just going for a bike ride, over to Badberger. Come with us. We’ll make a picnic out of it.” Of course, we went along.

We had a good relationship with the members in Weimar, and they always invited us over to the National Theater. They got good tickets for us, and the Naumburgers and the Weimarers went to the theater together. I can still remember as well as if it were yesterday, seeing my first great opera performance, Tannhäuser. It was organized by the Church. Well, there was always something going on. We were always going somewhere. There was no TV. We didn’t have that problem, yet, of sitting in front of the TV. And we put on plays or did a little scene or just spent the evening talking. At MIA there was always something, but we had to do it ourselves. Oh, that was a lot of fun. Everyone brought out whatever talent he or she had. Everyone did what he or she could. One person set up the stage and decorated it a little. The others put on the play. There were many, many, many beautiful hours that we spent together.

Elke: And my childhood and growing up in the Church was the most beautiful time of my life, too. I learned many, many wonder- ful lessons during those postwar days—mostly from the older members, as I think back. I would go out with my mother and grandmother into the fields to glean some wheat or some leftover potatoes. Or after we had eaten the evening meal, our neighbors, members, came over to visit with us, and we sat around the kitchen table by candlelight and listened to them tell stories about their lives. Those were the most impressive times for me.

Or there were the youth conferences we held when the Berliners came out to visit us. Our mothers in the Leest Branch got together and donated what little they had and made a potato salad, and one donated some sausages and another something from their kitchen. The parents prepared this for us, and we had a wonderful afternoon. We did that at least twice a year, in the spring and in the fall. The Berliners lived in the big city, and they liked to come out to see us. Those were beautiful times.

But like I said, with the older members, that was also beautiful, out in the fields and then together in the evenings. We had a lot more time for one another than we do today. We don’t have so much contact with one another today, and maybe even less here in the large ward in Dresden. Of course, the members here in Dresden are all very nice and dear brothers and sisters, and there is no one I don’t like. But still, the togetherness was much more evident in our small branches. There were only a few men and maybe only thirty or thirty-five members all together.

Right after the war, significantly more people came out because the Church took care of them. We had food packages and used clothing, and things went better for us. But there were many who later left, who had come to us just because they were hungry. But this togetherness has given me so much, where there were so few of us, and we had so little, and we had to help one another with what little we had.

I remember that Mom used to make “spinach” out of other leafy garden plants, and sometimes we ate it with a few potatoes. We didn’t have meat very often. We had a garden, and Dad used to try to grow grain, and we had rabbits and small animals, chickens, and a few ducks. Once we had a goat for milk.

Manfred: And a sheep.

Elke: Yes, later we had a buck sheep. Anything, so that we could have a little meat. After the war, we had to have ration cards for food. You could have a certain amount of sugar and a certain amount of flour. And you got your meat and milk according to your card. Those who had children got considerably more. But you had to watch how you went through your food supply. The rich people who had a lot of material things—they could say, well, I’ll just trade my jewelry with a farmer for some food. Lots of people came out of the cities to trade with the farmers.

Manfred: People traded rugs. Yes. The farmers were all rich. They could have carpeted their cow barns.

Elke: Those were hard times. Many people were starving.

G. Davis: But I have heard others say that in spite of the hard times, those were also the happiest times in the Church; everyone supported one another and stuck together.

Manfred: Yes, that’s right. In 1954, when we had the youth conference here in Dresden, when we got acquainted, we slept on straw. You couldn’t imagine such a thing nowadays. Brother Bory, who is dead now, worked for the racetrack here in Dresden, took care of the horses. He arranged it so that we could sleep on straw. The girls slept somewhere else.

Elke: We slept in the chapel. A few had air mattresses, but we slept on straw, too, for the most part, with just a blanket over us. Usually upstairs, above the large hall—that’s where we slept.

Manfred: Once we joined with the West Berliners and took a bus over to Webitzburg near Paderborn.

Elke: That was in 1957.

Manfred: We went to West Berlin and went across the border with them.

N. Davis: That was before the Wall.

Manfred: Yes. We went to the Teutoburger Forest in Westphalia, near Paderborn. There is a small youth hostel there, and that’s where we had our youth conference. I can still remember when we crossed the border: the West Berliners just sat in the bus, but we East Germans had to get out of the bus and go through a passport control. We were traveling in a West Berlin bus, and they wanted to know what we thought we were doing. We had official authorization to go out of the country, but they had to check everything over. Back then if anyone had permission to travel to the West, they looked you over very suspiciously.

G. Davis: Were there other difficulties with the government?

Manfred: After the political change [“Wende,” i.e., the reunification of East and West Germany], I was able to look at my personal files, including letters of recommendation, which I had not been permitted to see up to that time. In the files was a report on my “civic reliability” from 1959. It stated that I had been a good worker but that I had been dedicated member of a religious sect in Leest. That was in my files.

Elke: And that is the reason you were not allowed to go to the university.

Manfred: Yes, I think that’s right. Back then I had made an application for a program in what they called “Socialistic Industry.” That was a program different from the program for craftsman, which wouldn’t have helped me anyway because I could not have gotten a job with a craftsman degree in a government-owned firm [Volkseigener Betrieb]. Anyway, I was turned down. That was in 1959.

I was forced to continue in the craftsman department where I was. I could not advance because I could not get the technical training I needed. That cost me a lot of money over the years. If you owned your own shop, a craftsman degree would be fine, but that was impossible for me. So, I could learn the theoretical things, but I could not get a degree because I was not permitted to do the practical side. I ran up against the same problem later when I wanted to study engineering. There was no way in. And they really needed trained engineers who could take over important positions in industry.

As it turned out, I was often given assignments in our firm for which I should have had an engineering degree, but, as I said, I had not been allowed to get one. Some time later, when I was older, I gave it another try and was accepted! But then I developed some health problems and couldn’t finish. I just couldn’t do it. I was over forty then. Trying to do it on the side while working full time—that was the problem. I had to take at least one day a week away from my job and let my own work go. Then, of course, when I came back the next day, I had twice as much to do. And then I had my homework on top of that. My health just wouldn’t take it. I had to give it up after two years. I just couldn’t do it. If I had had a job without a lot of responsibility, I might have been able to do it, but when one has a responsible position, doing an engineering degree on the side is impossible.

G. Davis: So, you had these difficulties in your profession. Were there other troubles because of the Church?

Manfred: No. No. No. When one makes a firm decision for the Church, when one makes it clear where one stands, they watch you pretty closely. You are not looked up to like those who join the party. That much is clear. The party comrades had their own circle, and I was not a part of it. And whatever was decided by the party leadership became the law in our firm. Consequently, there was not much of an opportunity to influence what was done. But, all in all, when you did your work, there were no major problems.

There were disadvantages, however. Your “social contributions” were also evaluated, and when it came to bonuses, you would have to figure that you would earn considerably less money in comparison to those who belonged to the party or who went along with the party. That was normal procedure. I might have done just as much work as the person next to me, who was a member of the party, but we both knew that when our “social contributions” were evaluated, we who did not belong to the party would be rated lower and consequently would be left out when the bonuses were distributed. It made no difference how hard you worked. The other guy could be a terrible worker, but if he belonged to the party, he would get just as much as you. That’s the way it was.

G. Davis: Did you participate in the demonstrations?

Manfred: Basically there were two demonstrations. There was one on the first of May. You had to participate in that whether you wanted to or not.

Elke: That was obligatory. If it came on a weekday, we had to make up the work on Sunday. On this day, everybody marches, and so we had to march. That’s the way it was arranged.

Manfred: In the last few years, it was sometimes possible to say, “I can’t come to work on Sunday.” If I had a particular assignment in one of the meetings, for example, I might just say I couldn’t come. “I’m very sorry, but I have an assignment at church.” They grumbled but accepted it.

G. Davis: That is interesting. So these demonstrations were organized by your firm.

Manfred: No. The firm was told what to do. They were told how many of their workers had to participate. It was all organized from higher up.

G. Davis: Did you participate in any of the political demonstrations against the government at the time of the big political upheaval [in 1989]?

Manfred: The Monday demonstrations. Yes, I participated just to see what was going on. But for those officially orchestrated demonstrations, you had no choice. When we were still in Potsdam and an official government delegation came into Berlin, we had to stand at the Potsdam train station and wave and wave and clap and clap. Each firm had to produce so many wavers and clappers, but we got off work to do it.

Elke: They just came to where we were working and pulled us off. Sometimes we were taken into Berlin in a bus.

Manfred: In those cases, there wasn’t much you could do about it. But, as I said, more recently (at least it worked for me once) I just said, “Today is Sunday, and I have something to do at Church. I’m sorry, but I can’t join you. Normally, I go along, so please don’t take it the wrong way, but this time I can’t go to the demonstration with you.” So!

N. Davis: But you did participate in the demonstrations of 1989?

Manfred: Yes, I went a few times, yes.

Elke: You went by yourself.

Manfred: Yes, but we followed the development of events for sure. When we were in Potsdam, we had the possibility of receiving West German TV. Here in Dresden, it was at first a little hard. Dresden was known as the Valley of the Naive and Out-of-Reach Dresden. That was just a little joke because Dresden was beyond the reach of the ARD—the West German television transmitters. Everyone in East Germany could pick it up except Dresden. But what happened was that the whole housing project was connected to a cable system and fitted up with a satellite dish. That was in 1987 or 1988.

Elke: The cable was already installed.

Manfred: Yes, the cable was there, but then it was fitted up to the satellite dish so that we could pick up western TV in this entire housing area. Then it came into all the new housing areas because the people were so furious that everyone else could pick up western TV and they couldn’t. So, eventually we here in Dresden also got a look at western TV. But there were still problems. There are two systems in Europe and a third in America. The GDR had the French SECAM system. We were lucky. We brought our TV from Potsdam that had both European systems built into it.

I was in Leest for two weeks without an antenna and didn’t know it. I only noticed that one evening when I was switching the GDR channels to pick up an old movie. They always showed an old movie on Monday evenings—one from the 1950s, or even earlier. I liked to watch them. Then I noticed that I didn’t need an antenna. I could see the West Berlin TV tower when I looked out the window—right in front of my nose. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen kilometers away. So I could pick it up.

Well, getting back to the political developments; they began coming to a head in 1989. You could see from the economy how things were developing. There were a lot of people who were saying openly that we were returning to a “natural” economy, that is, an economy based on the barter system: you give me that, and I will give you this in exchange. Money had become useless, you see.

The system was I need this and that for my firm, and if you can get that for me, I can provide you with this in return. One firm needed heaters, and the other firm needed heating elements. One firm had the elements, and the other had the heaters, or he knew where he could get them—from a guy who needed something else. The whole economy was being run by this method. You needed something for your work and you had to get it one way or another and that was usually by knowing someone who needed something you could supply. The whole thing was very official, no deception, no smuggling. We called it “mutual socialistic assistance” [gegenseitige sozialistische Hilfe].

Here’s how it worked. I go to a firm from which I need something, and he gets from me a piece of paper which says, “We request in the form of mutual socialistic assistance the following,” and then we declare that we are prepared to exchange this thing or the other. In that way, each firm had a bill, and the bill was marked “paid in full.” The value of the goods was immaterial; it was just a formality. It was just our goods for your goods.

Elke: Well, that’s not the whole story. There were plenty of times when the goods you needed were simply not available. I would also like to add that there were a lot of things that were available only to certain firms but not to the people. Many things were very hard to get.

Manfred: That’s right. Basically the economy had come to a dead-end, and everyone was saying it couldn’t go on like this. It was an economy based on central planning, and everything ran according to the plan. But there are plenty of things you simply can’t plan. You see, if I know that I have to plan two years in advance what material I am going to need to produce something—makes no difference what—but I don’t yet know what I’m going to be producing two years from now, then what’s to plan? It doesn’t make sense. And when you see the whole picture, you can see that very often we had to operate right on the border between what was legal and what was illegal in order to keep the plant going.

Officially, maybe it was forbidden. So, they made a deal with the plant. They would say: “Now look. You put your people on vacation, see. Then you make us this or that machine. We will pay you, not officially through the firm, but we will pay the workers individually, on the side.” They called it the New European Way. That was going on. It was legal, but you could never do it officially! At that moment, the whole production of the plant broke down. Something had to be done.

Elke: I would like to say that there was a positive side to all of this political business and that was the social side. Everyone had a job, and it was guaranteed. No one had to worry that he or she would have to go looking for work, unless they had really messed up. Otherwise they had a job, and mothers, too, and pregnant women.

Manfred: And women with little children.

Elke: They had their jobs. And they knew very well that if I am going to have a baby then I will have a certain amount of time in which to recuperate, and I know that my job is secure. I know I am not going to be thrown out in the meantime. I will get my job back, and I can keep working. That’s not the case anymore. I think some things have gotten worse, especially for us older people.

Manfred: But sometimes they took this too far. If a man in your company was an alcoholic, for example, the collective in your department would have to worry about him and would have to try some way, well, to keep things going, to help out. Actually, there were many, many things at the plant that were just pushed aside. The State should have taken some action.

Elke: But there was no unemployment, was there? And there were no homeless, not one. We didn’t have that. The State saw to it that people in jail had a place to live when they got out, that they had a roof over their heads. The State provided at least a minimum of furniture and took care of them, so to speak. They worked them back into some business or firm so that they had a place to live, and they had work so that they could pay their own way. That wouldn’t be possible today.

Manfred: Yes, and there are plenty of people today in the GDR who are ending up in jail because they can’t make it out there. But that’s another matter.

G. Davis: Have you had much success as stake missionaries?

Manfred: Some, some.

Elke: Well, convert baptisms? In that sense, we haven’t had too much success, but we have taught a lot of lessons.

Manfred: You know what I really like, what’s really beautiful about our second stake mission, is giving the fellowshipping discussions after the baptism. You can do a good work by helping the new converts take their first steps in the ward. I find this really helps the new members. You know from your own experience where the little cliffs are, where the little problems lie. If you build a trusting relationship with the people you are teaching, it stays. They come back to you again and again because they know they can rely on you, that what you tell them is right.

You know what? As a stake missionary, you learn more than the people you teach. We learned this on our first stake mission. You suddenly know things that you didn’t know you knew. The influence of the Holy Ghost—even if you can’t describe it, you can feel it the moment you start talking with investigators or with other people. On our first stake mission we worked with the lists of temple visitors. We were often invited to speak to groups: Catholic groups, Evangelical groups, and so on. Then came the questions. I can honestly say that in such a situation you know things, things you get directly from the Spirit, because you really didn’t know them before that moment.

Elke: There were a lot of people who wanted information, but we didn’t actually bring any of them into the Church. We gave the discussions. We had many very interesting discussions with people who were, I would say, quite open-minded. But the last step was somehow lacking. Maybe I should say we lacked the courage to help the investigators overcome that last hurdle.

G. Davis: But what Manfred was just telling us is when you learn something yourselves that is also a form of success.

Manfred: You know, Garold, we have invited colleagues or neighbors in and have invited the missionaries to meet them, but usually they liked to listen and then that was all. Or we have made appointments, and sometimes the missionaries didn’t keep them.

Elke: Yes, and then the missionaries changed off with one another. And then they were transferred somewhere else, and the whole thing fell through. That was certainly the case with us once. We had an appointment with a colleague of mine. We spoke to her later, and she was still interested. She wanted to learn, but the children were . . .

Manfred: Were against it. That was back before the big political change. But it is true. When you are active in the Church and work hard, I have learned that no matter what, the end result is that you benefit the most. It doesn’t matter what calling you have. We are just talking about missionary work because that is what we have done the most of. I say this in spite of the many disappointments, and we have had some disappointments.

Elke: Many times I went out the door crying.

Manfred: You know, when you have been with some investigators and you are going back one evening and you are thinking to yourself, “I hope, I hope . . .” And then they open the door, and say, “Na. We’re not interested anymore.” So, you turn around. What else can you do. But all in all, you experience tremendous spiritual growth—you really feel the workings of the Holy Ghost. I have to say that. Many a time when we came home from doing missionary work, we just looked at one another and said, “How were we able to discuss this or that with the investigator?” Sometimes it was so strange.

We had an investigator once who lived out here in Grobitz, and we had a program at the ward building, the old one. We didn’t have a car at the time, so he brought us home in his car. We parked on the corner, and then came one question after another. After an hour, we were still sitting in the car. There were things that came up that, I must admit, that I had never known before. I would have said to myself, “You can’t answer that question.” But I did, because in that moment I felt the guidance of the Spirit.

Elke: I would like to say that that is part of missionary work as such, whether you are a stake missionary or not. When we have been on vacation, we have run into people who wonder why we don’t drink coffee or alcohol.

Manfred: That is usually the opening. Why don’t you drink alcohol?

Elke: We give them a direct answer. There was someone in our tour group who came to the church and brought us some information about his club. But he was interested. He wanted to see the building, and after the meeting, we gave him a tour. We answered his questions and invited him to come back, you see. There are some members who will misconstrue this. I don’t always go up to the front at testimony meeting and bear my testimony before all the congregation, but when I am asked in this way, an answer is always there. To be honest, I’ve always been that way, whether I am a missionary or not. Every member is a missionary.

Manfred: You know, this is how it is. I can say so from my own experience. There was a time after my divorce when I did not come to church. Everything was in a turmoil. But then there comes a time when you say to yourself that life can not go on like that, because you have been used to something else, because you have known something better. You realize how things are going, but God is always guiding you. When you have turned away from the Church and from the members and don’t attend anymore, you have to notice that something is missing from your life.

I had come to this point when everything was coming together. But as soon as I made my decision to go back to church, I had the feeling that stones were being thrown in my path to hinder me. I really had the feeling that Satan was trying to hold me back with force. It was just exactly at this same time that Elke and I met one another again. When I was beginning to feel a little better about myself, suddenly there was Erich Ortlieb to bring me into full activity. And there I was. You just can’t imagine what it was like. For years I was inactive, and suddenly I was the president of the Sunday School.

Well, I have to repeat it; when you work in the Church and always try to do what there is to do and what they ask you to do, you grow. You grow, and you don’t notice it, and then suddenly you see that you have come a little further, a little further. You have gained a little more understanding.

But you have to maintain your relationship with the members so that you feel good about yourself. We had a few problems in the large ward at the beginning, as I said. But now I find I can’t stay away. You really miss it when you can’t be at church on Sunday. That’s why when we are on vacation somewhere and have the opportunity to go to church, we always take it.

Elke: To sum it all up, when we met the second time, I said to myself, “If I ever marry again, then only in the Church. Only in the Church.”