From Chancellor Olaf Scholz to President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, passing by the local football club Saint Pauli and by the various religious authorities of the country, the reactions were numerous the day after the shooting which left eight dead – including that of the assailant – on March 9 among the community of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Hamburg.
As usual, the representatives of this community, on the other hand, avoided any contact with the media. Only a short press release confirmed that they were praying for the families and friends of the victims and bringing them “the comfort of the Bible”. “We pray and are confident that Jehovah, the God of peace, will continue to prove himself a safe haven in these times of trouble,” can we read in this short message.
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Only rare former members spoke. This is the case of comedian Oliver Pocher, who left Jehovah’s Witnesses at the age of 18. A situation similar to that of the author of the shooting who had voluntarily left the group a year and a half ago but “apparently not on good terms” according to investigators. “It’s a situation I know well”told Oliver Pocher, on Instagram. “There was no doubt a lot of frustration (…) The treatment of outcasts among Jehovah’s Witnesses is very rigorous (…). We are isolated, which is a difficult situation. But this is obviously not a reason to commit such an act.” , he added.
Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany, the largest group in Europe
With 170,000 members, Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany represent the largest group in Europe and have a complex history with the country. “At the beginning of the XXe century, the German Empire had a large number of new religious communities”, recalls Mélanie Hallensleben, of the Protestant Center for Questions of Ideology and author of a report on Jehovah’s Witnesses. “Charles Taze Russell, the founder of this religious movement, himself traveled to the German Empire in 1891 for several weeks to preach, among other things, the advent of the Millennial Empire”, she recalls.
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“First community to be banned in 1933” by the Nazis, Jehovah’s Witnesses were later suppressed by the East German communist regime. In the wake of reunification, intense legal debates broke out on their subject before being settled, in 2000, by the federal constitutional court. This opens the way to official recognition by the State by deciding that Jehovah’s Witnesses are faithful to the law – an essential condition – despite their refusal to vote or do their military service. Since 2017, they have been legally recognized as a community under public law in all Länder, which allows them to levy church tax and found their own schools. But they don’t.
A community under public law
Unlike France, Jehovah’s Witnesses are not officially classified as a sect in Germany. “There is only recognition as a community under public law, nothing moreexplicitly Melanie Hallensleben. In general, the state does not warn against so-called sects and must remain neutral towards them. »
However, the debate on the movement’s sectarian tendencies exists across the Rhine. The questions of the treatment of former members and a rule requiring that sexual abuse be confirmed by two people before being punished justify, according to some associations, that this group loses its status as a public law group.