Germany
During the 1870’s a considerable number of Germans had come to a knowledge of the Faith outside Germany, principally in the United States and Australia. It was an Australian-German who first mooted the idea of producing literature in German, but little was done until a German brother Albert Maier, converted at San Francisco, became the first Christadelphian missionary to Germany in 1890. From Hamburg he moved to the district where his childhood had been spent, near Stuttgart. His early gallant efforts brought no mushroom success. He had been acquainted with a small sect in Wurtemburg called the Temple Company, but his efforts to instruct them further appeared to be barren. More than two years were spent in unrewarding witness, and then in 1893 he decided to translate into German “The Millennium” by Bro. Porter. During 1893 Bro. Maier had some encouragement. He made the acquaintance of a young Lutheran, who had been expelled from the ministry for holding and preaching unorthodox views. He commenced a journal called “Truth,” and invited Bro. Maier to contribute an article on Christadelphian views. This was an excellent witness as the paper circulated among the intelligent, devout church-folk, dissatisfied with the local established church.
Real reward came six years after Bro. Maier’s arrival in Germany, when he was able to assist a young ex-socialist, and later his own mother, to put on Christ. Bro. Maier stayed to see a small number of others follow suit, but had to return to the United States in 1899. Others were later able to build on the foundation which he had laid, and he himself was able to rejoice at the increase, when he returned to Germany later to consolidate and extend the work, especially during the 1920’s, about which time Bro. Maier brought a number to the faith. The elderly brethren and sisters who preponderate in the present ecclesias bear witness to his labor. They are the survivors of those converts, who have come through the nightmare of Hitler’s days.
An evil cloud covered Germany from 1933 to 1944, but faithful men endured the evil, and Gustav Bogner, one of them was able to rally the bewildered flock, and re-establish the ecclesias in Stuttgart and Esslington. Only first hand acquaintance with the trials which these brethren and sisters endured can bear proper testimony to the work of Bro. Bogner and others in reviving ecclesial life in Germany.
A new ecclesial magazine, “Purfet Alles,” was strated in 1948, and records the blessings of the years immediately after the war; fifteen baptisms are recorded during the intervening period.
The sufferings of the brethren go far beyond what we like to think of here, and reached their worst in 1941, when Bro. Albert Merz was executed for refusing to take up arms. In making known the sentence, his counsel wrote: “All is not lost for you; although this grave sentence has been passed on you, it can still be rescinded, if you will only be convinced, at the eleventh hour as it were, of the error of the views which you have held up to now and will declare that you are willing unconditionally to do military service . .” Brother Merz’s answer is implicit in what he wrote to the brethren next day: “You all know my belief and my hope. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain,’ so do not weep over me, even if the supreme punishment comes upon me, but rather be strong and of good courage . . . If my time is now at an end I must die, then remember that it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgement.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One