HOME / the gist: A cheat sheet for the news.

Germany vs. Scientology

By Michael Page-EnglishPosted Saturday, Jan. 18, 1997, at 3:30 AM ET

By Michael Page-English
(1,111 words; posted Saturday, Jan. 18; to be composted Saturday, Jan. 25)

Members of the Church of Scientology and their celebrity supporters have alleged in full-page newspaper ads that the German government is persecuting Scientologists in that country. The ads, which have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, and other publications, compare Germany's treatment of Scientologists to Hitler's oppression of Jews in the 1930s. Pushing the comparison, one ad even juxtaposes an imperial eagle with a Nazi swastika. Is the German government persecuting Scientologists? Why does Germany fear the Church of Scientology? Are the historical parallels between the Scientologists and the Jews valid, or just agitprop?
Relations between the Scientologists and the government reached a flash point this year when 1) The youth wing of Chancellor Helmut Kohl's ruling Christian Democratic Union called for a boycott of Mission: Impossible because its star, Tom Cruise, is a Scientologist; 2) A CDU official proposed banning the Church of Scientology from Germany; 3) The Bonn government published a booklet warning of the dangers of Scientology; 4) The German state of Bavaria announced it would require all public-sector employees to fill out a questionnaire detailing their ties to the Church of Scientology; 5) The CDU passed a resolution banning Scientologists from public-sector jobs nationwide and called for federal surveillance of the church as an extremist organization; and 6) Kohl announced the creation of a new government office to coordinate the fight against Scientology.

One reason behind Germany's suspicions of Scientology--and all new religions--is that most of its residents are Christians. More than 55 million of the country's 88 million people belong to a Christian church (28 million Protestants, 27 million Catholics). The proliferation of religions, so common in the United States, is alien to the German experience. The Church of Scientology, which established its first German offices in 1970, claims membership of 30,000 in Germany and 8 million worldwide; the German government, however, maintains that there are no more than 20,000 Scientologists in the country.
The German Constitution--The Basic Law, adopted in 1949 and reaffirmed upon the reunification of the country in 1990--stresses the right to the free practice of religion. There is, however, no strict separation of church and state in Germany. Churches may levy taxes on their members, which are collected by the state and distributed to the churches. Clergy are trained primarily at state institutions. The state partially finances various church establishments, such as parochial schools. Beyond that, the state has no administrative control over churches.

Other minority religions, such as Judaism, Islam, and Mormonism, are currently recognized by the German government. The Church of Scientology covets official recognition because of the tax exemptions and constitutional protections that come with the designation. Having failed in German courts to win status as a religion, the German Church of Scientology operates primarily as a nonprofit community organization. Scientology is not alone in its failure to gain recognition as an official religion in Germany: The Bonn government issued a cautionary booklet Dec. 17, 1996, about the dangers of the Unification Church, founded by Sun Myung Moon. Moon had been banned from entering Germany in 1995.
What are Scientology's core beliefs? Founded by the late science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s, its theology includes interplanetary civilizations and tyrants who roam the universe. Scientology holds that each person is a powerful spirit, or "thetan." (Thetans were banished to Earth 75 million years ago by a cruel galactic ruler named Xenu.) A thetan encounters negative experiences, or "engrams," during its many incarnations. An individual can identify engrams through the use of an electronic device called an "E-meter." A Scientologist, by pursuing e-meter therapy and following an extensive and costly series of self-improvement courses, then tries to clear out the engrams (a process called "auditing") and become a fully realized thetan. Many students of Scientology begin their studies by reading Hubbard's book Dianetics.

German government officials say that Scientology is a cult devoted to money, expansion, and the domination of German society. They say that once Scientologists gain toeholds in government institutions, they will use their official position as teachers and bureaucrats to proselytize. Although there are isolated examples of Scientologists proselytizing while working for the government, much of the paranoia seems to be linked to Germany's Nazi hangover, to fears that a small, well-organized, and secretive organization, if left to its own devices, could undermine the country's democracy.
By most accounts, Scientology's emphasis on money and control over its believers is significant and real. Each self-improvement lesson leads to the next, and the price tag for the entire course of lessons for the devoted practioner, as well as the hundreds of goods and services offered by the Church of Scientology, can wander into the six-figure range. Critics, both in Germany and the United States, have often accused the Church of Scientology of brainwashing its members and depleting their assets.

The church has fought bitter court battles with both the U.S. government and its former members. In the early 1980s, 11 Scientologists, including Hubbard's wife, were convicted of burglary and wiretapping after they infiltrated private and government agencies in an effort to thwart investigations of the church. In the early 1970s, the Internal Revenue Service documented that Hubbard himself was skimming millions of dollars from the church and stashing it in Swiss bank accounts. By 1985, the IRS was seeking an indictment of Hubbard for tax fraud. The government dropped its case when Hubbard died in 1986.
Despite the controversies, the church has gained increasing credibility in the United States. The recruitment of Hollywood stars such as Cruise, his wife Nicole Kidman, John Travolta, Chick Corea, Mimi Rogers, Kirstie Alley, and others, has helped rehabilitate its image. Even the U.S. government is changing its tune on the Scientologists. First, the IRS granted the church tax-exempt status in 1993 after a decades-long battle. Then, the State Department acknowledged in three separate human-rights reports incidents of apparent discrimination against Scientologists in Germany. Last year, members of Congress--including Democratic Sens. Chris Dodd and Carol Moseley-Braun--asked then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher to investigate religious discrimination of Scientologists in Germany.
Yet, no German court has found the German government guilty of violating the basic human rights of Scientology members. And the inflammatory ad comparing Germany's treatment of its Scientologists to the Nazis' treatment of the Jews has not, perhaps, had quite the desired effect: German Jewish leader Ignatz Bubis has called it an affront to the millions who suffered and died in the Holocaust.

Links

Read the open letter to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl that added fuel to the Scientology-vs.-Germany fire last week. To get a taste of Scientology, and an idea of just how prolific the church's Web team is, visit the Scientology home page. No one is accusing Scientologists of subtlety in their dispute with Germany. This Scientology site, Hatewatch Germany: 1996, "has been erected to provide information and documentation of officially sanctioned discrimination against religious minorities in today's Germany." Scientology critics abound on the Internet. Tilman Hausherr's home page is a one-man crusade against the organization. For general information about Germany, see this Germany page.

Michael Page-English is a writer living on Whidbey Island in Washington state.