Cost of living in Germany

Every now and then, I am asked about the cost of living in Germany. So here are a few items using todays exchange rate of € 1 = $1.5745.

• Gas (both diesel and regular benzine) = $ 9.25 / gallon
• Milk (generic brand) = $ 4.58 per gallon
• Bread (German style loaf) = $ 3.62
• Small Combo at McDonalds = $ 7.86

Of course, all of this is relative. After all, I can't drive to McDonalds and fill up the tank if my car is broken and in the shop (which it is). Two weeks ago, we had a leaky hose that caused a loss in the vacuum (in the motor system) that powers the car. Our local garage charged us only about € 80, or about $125. Thought we had it fixed until we had a second leak last week. And now today a third problem has arisen.

Homosexual Memorial in Germany

Germany, and the rest of Europe for that matter, it its contemporary expression of postmodernism is very much into giving "repressed or supressed" voices of the past a platform for the present. The latest minority group to receive such recognition in the German media is the homosexual community.

What follows below is a news story from Deutsche Welle, the major source of German news outside of Germany. In short, it's a memorial to gays and lesbians who were victims of Hitler's Nazism. While you read the story, pay attention to the tone of the article. It will give you a good picture of the spiritual and moral issues facing the church here.

26.05.2008

Memorial for Gays Persecuted by Nazis Opens in Berlin

German politicians will dedicate a memorial in Berlin this week to the tens of thousands of homosexuals persecuted during the Nazi regime. Gay activists say the memorial is long overdue.

Seventy five years ago Nazis launched a series of raids and public book burnings aimed at homosexuals. It was the start of Adolf Hitler’s crusade against homosexuality which saw an unknown number of gays arrested, tortured and murdered by the Nazis.

The subject of Nazi persecution of homosexuals has long been swept under the carpet. Yet a new memorial which opens Tuesday, May 27 will bring the past persecution and ongoing struggles of homosexuals to be accepted in society to the heart of the German capital.

Showing a forbidden kiss

The homosexual memorial will consist of a grey rectangular block some four meters (13 feet) tall. One side will have a small opening through which viewers will see a black and white art film scene of two men kissing.

"A simple kiss could land you in trouble," says the text which accompanies the memorial.

The memorial was designed by the Danish-Norweigan artistic duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset.

The memorial has a prominent place in Berlin's Tiergarten park, half a block from Brandenburg Gate. The monument sits across from the Jewish Holocaust Memorial. Originally it was debated whether homosexuals should be included in the larger memorial before the decision was made to give homosexuals their own monument. But the design corresponds to the Holocaust Memorial's field of steles, a series of concrete blocks of varying sizes.

While the Nazi persecution of the Jews is well known, for many years there was little public acknowledgement of Nazi atrocities towards homosexuals. Estimates put the number of homosexuals arrested by Nazis at about 54,000 with 7,000 being killed in concentration camps.

"It is not easy for a gay man to live in this country and this society. It's important to remember that this society punished homosexuality for 20 years after National Socialism ended," said Günter Dworek of the Federation of Gays and Lesbians in Germany (LSVD), a driving force behind the project.

Gays making strides

Homosexuality remained illegal in Germany until 1969 and was only formally decriminalized in 1994. It wasn't until 2000 that Germany's parliament first passed a resolution acknowledging discrimination had occurred, Dworek said. The decision to fund the memorial, which cost 450,000 euros ($710,000), happened three years later.

The city's current mayor, Social Democrat Klaus Wowereit, announced shortly before taking office seven years ago that he is gay. Wowereit's legendary outing has given many others courage, Dworek said.

"That opened a lot of people's eyes. You cannot simply assume that politicians who already have a career behind them, like Klaus Wowereit, are by nature heterosexual," Dworek said.

Germany also has a law which allows same-sex couples to register their partnerships. Yet many activists would like to see more, including anti-discrimination laws. Neo-Nazi violence is still a very real threat, said Albert Eckert, head of the gay holocaust memorial committee.

"But at last we have a monument to those who suffered and died under the Nazis," Eckert said.

A tribute to Hirschfeld

Eckert said he was also happy that the dedication was close to the birthday and death day of Magnus Hirschfeld, who died in exile in southern France on May 14, 1935.

A Jewish homosexual, Hirschfeld was a medical doctor who dedicated his life to the scientific study of homosexuality and lobbied the German government to repeal laws which outlawed gay sex. The word "transsexual" was coined by Hirschfeld to describe the phenomenon that he argued was a natural extension of human sexuality.

For his work, the Nazis targeted Hirschfeld as an example of decadent Bolshevistic/Jewish influence infecting the purity of the German people, luring the Aryan race into impure and destructive perversity. His institute was ransacked and his books were burned in rallies on May 10, 1933.

It wasn't long before gay men were being rounded up and sent to mental hospitals or concentration camps.

"We have no idea how many thousands died in concentration camps because many were also Jewish or were Communists. We know that many were left in prison after the war when post-war courts upheld the Nazi jail sentences against them," Eckert says. "Anyone who was gay was automatically a criminal. This monument is for all of them."

Making an international statement

The parliament decided on December 12, 2003 to fund the homosexual memorial. It was a nice birthday present for the Green Politician and well-known Gay activist Volker Beck who turned 43 that day.

Beck felt the memorial was especially important because the laws used to prosecute homosexuals continued long after the Nazis had been defeated. And persecution still exists in many countries today, making the memorial as important as ever, Beck said. He cites 80 countries which criminalize homosexual acts between consenting adults and 12 where the death penalty can be handed down.

Beck believes Germany's memorial "sends an important signal that in this country, where in the past (homosexuals) were also systematically persecuted, we now have constructed a symbol against this human rights violation."

But homosexuals are still not fully accepted in society, Beck said. He worries about the refusal of some conservative Christians and Muslims to accept homosexuality. Beck said he doesn't have any problem with the memorial's design, which has come under criticism, particularly from women. The first scene will portray men kissing, but later it will show women.

Dworek said he is "downright happy" with the memorial's design and likes the idea that the kissing scene will switch every two years.

"This will keep the memorial fresh. There is always be something new," Dworek said. "It will be a dynamic memorial."

Graduation in Moscow

I just got back from a week in Moscow. By far, the highlight of the week was Saturday's graduation and homecoming celebrations. As you can see, we had 11 graduates. (Actually, I thought there were twelve, but I can't think of who the missing person is.) One of the special things about this group is that several of them have been commuting from the Caucasus region to our "Moscow extension" program for over five years and have finally made it to graduation.

Since this year marks the 10th anniversary of the seminary, we also held a special homecoming celebration. So we went all out to make our former students feel at home. The alumni response was a bit disappointing - several people dropped out just a couple of days before graduation. But it still was a very fun day for everyone.

We shot lots of pictures and are working on a video of the events. Hopefully we can put them on the web (e.g., YouTube) before too long -- but it would all be in Russian.

Getting reading for graduation in Moscow

Tomorrow we will hold our graduation and homecoming ceremonies in Moscow. As you can imagine, it's been a very busy and hectic week. Here are some highlights of the week and some tidbits of information.

• ETSM (Eurasian Theological Seminary in Moscow) first began 1998. Because of the limited facilities, ETSM only trained one cohort (consisting of 26 students) during the first three years. (I.e., we didn't take in a new group of students during the second and third years - there simply was no space for a second classroom). The initial cohort held its graduation service in 2002.
  
• When ETSM moved into its present facility in 2002, ETSM started with their second cohort and, subsequently, has taken in a new group of students every year since.
• Since 1998, ETSM has trained 98 students in its full-time program. There have been an additional 68 students enrolled in our "Moscow extension" - a program designed for those who take up to four intensive courses a year on our campus.
• These numbers do not include the extensions and seminars that we have held in Siberia, Ukraine, Armenia, and Kaliningrad. I don't have these number on hand, but we're talking about another 85 people involved in our training programs.
• We have a great faculty, most of whom were trained at our denominational seminary in the States.
  
• We have been blessed with a great building. Okay, I sometimes get irritated by the relatively small chapel. But we have the best building for any evangelical seminary in Moscow and throughout most of Russia. (Lots of thanks go to my predecessor Rodolfo Giron who was an architect before entering the ministry.)
  

What goals do we have for the future?

• We're so close to amending our status from "religous organization" to also that of a licensed educational institution.
  
• We're seriously looking at applying for state accreditation for the Russian "state standard" diploma - something that was evasive for religious organizations until this spring.
• We're candidates with the regional evangelical accrediting association. Perhaps we can finish the self-study and inspection during the next year.
• ETSM is one of six evangelical schools in Ukraine and Russia that is forming a consortium for online education. We are scheduled to go online in September 2009. If all goes as planned, we will be the first pentecostal/charismatic school to offer an accredited online education in the Russian language. For a sneak peak at the consortium website, click here (Warning, you need to brush up on your Russian.)
  

Pentecost Weekend in Germany

This past weekend, Germany observed Pentecost Sunday and Whit Monday. And although I would love to have spent all of the weekend with the family, we had to share our time together.

I spent most of Saturday hanging out in Schwetzingen, a town just south of Mannheim, with Erich Schneider (our national bishop in Germany) and Douglas Leroy (one of my bosses with Church of God World Missions). It was a beautiful day to take in the Schwetzingen Palace. The palace is here is only a small summer residence of Elector Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria. But it has a large, and very beautiful castle grounds. Then we went to an Italian Eiscafe in Ketsch.

On Sunday, our family attended the "Pentecost Conference" - a gathering of most of our churches from Germany. This year's meeting was held in Waiblingen -- just a 20 minute drive from our
home. The guest speaker was, as you may have guessed, Douglas Leroy. (Did anyone really think that he just came to Germany in order to take in a castle and followed by coffee and cake?) Parallel to our meeting, the kids were in a Kinderlobpreis with Thomas Klein.

Leadership - discipline with love

We just completed our last week of exams at ETSM and final exams will begin next week. In one week, we will have our graduation exercises with hopefully 15 people walking across the stage. This is our highest amount since the initial cohort that began in 1998 (and graduated in 2002). The faculty has already begun to read the "senior papers" written by interns who are about to graduate. Their defense will be next week.

However, the anticipation of next week's joy has been dampened by a couple of students who we had to discipline. Three third year students (who normally would begin their 1-year practicum after the exams next week) were caught in blatant plagiarism. It was more than quoting from a commentary and not giving credit. Instead they had actually taken old term papers from previous students and simply put their name at the top of the paper. And a couple students had done for three different term papers.

So we held an emergency faculty meeting. Actually, I was in Germany and we held a video conference concerning the matter. Of course, the normal discipline measure for this offense would be dismissal from the school - that's true in just about any college. Sadly, we have to discipline these three promising young men.

However, it was interesting how things went in the final chapel service. In a small school, the interpersonal dynamics are very much like that of a family. The students in question offered an apology (although one of them still smiled the whole time) to their classmates. This prompted a compassionate response among the students who in turn questioned our decision to dismiss two of the students. (There were special considerations in the case of the third student.) "Can't you change your mind? That is too strict!"

Actually, we were lenient. We are allowing the students to complete their final exams. They must "rewrite" their papers. They are "suspended" for one year after which they can re-apply and be admitted into their internship. If they are diligent, they could still graduate by 2010.

Of course, the faculty and administration were also aware that any decision we made is in itself an act of teaching. And the lesson is: leadership is doing the right things.

Historical Week in Russia

This has been an historical week here in Russia. Yesterday, Russia inaugurated its third president and head of state - Dmitry Medvedev. Today, Vladimir Putin assumed the role of prime minister (head of government). Below is a YouTube clip of the inaugural ceremonies with all the pomp and circumstance.

Tomorrow will be another history making day here. For the first time since the demise of the Soviet Union, there will be military parade passing through the Red Square - or as one American put it, "to take the old hardward out for a spin."

Back at the section of town where the seminary is located, there will be a fireworks display along the Moscow river. Although I won't be there this year, I've seen it in the past and it is quite the show.