Germany

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Learn about Scientology history and controversies in Germany.

Germany in the News

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October 30, 1996Bavaria Asks Disclosure of Scientology Ties The southern state of Bavaria said today that it would require all state employees to fill out a questionnaire detailing any tie to the Church of Scientology. The state chancellery said all applicants for state jobs, including teachers and police officers, would not be hired if they refused. Those already employed would face disciniplary measures if they declined. The move is part of a long-running effort by German authorities to stifle the influence here of the Scientologists. German authorites have charged that the group is a profit-making scheme and have denied it the tax breaks normally given churches and charities.
September 25, 1995Code Name: Snow White The Scientology sect is fighting for its position in Germany. With the most lavish PR campaign to date, the psycho-concern blasts its opponents with its hardest attack yet. A defector reveals why: Sect founder L. Ron Hubbard himself had early declared Germany to be enemy number one, he feared that German psychiatrists wanted to murder him.
January 11, 1996German Official Calls for Security Surveillance of Scientologists In the long-running duel between the German authorities and the Church of Scientology, a senior Government official urged today that it be placed under surveillance by the same internal security agency that tracks terrorists and political extremists. The official described the church as "one of the most aggressive groups in our society" and said she would "oppose the Scientology organization with all the means at my disposal."
October 1, 2006German Police Told To Target Scientologists Germans are being warned of the 'danger' of Scientology amid growing concerns over the numbers of after-school tutoring programmes springing up across the country. The government has told internal security forces to step up their scrutiny of the movement, claiming that the Scientologists, which they label a cult, are seeking to take advantage of Germany's ailing education system as a means to recruit children. It has prompted US embassy officials to lobby the German government on the sect's behalf.
December 8, 2007Germany Prepares To Ban Scientology Erhart Korting, Berlin's Interior Minister, who chaired the meeting, insisted afterwards: "All ministers present were unanimous in their view that Scientology is an organisation not compatible with the constitution." He said steps would be taken to implement a ban. Hamburg's Interior Minister, Udo Nagel, the chief proponent of the ban, described the organisation as a "psycho-ideology" which aims at the "total suppression of the individual".
November 30, 1997Germany vs. Scientology To explain the furious hostility between Germany and the Church of Scientology, German officials might point to the story of a young man from Braunschweig named Jurgen Behrndt. In Behrndt's first year of membership, Scientology officials visited his parents with him seeking a DM 75,000 ($50,250) loan toward his activities. By the time he broke from the group in 1995, Behrndt had spent some DM 200,000 ($134,000), was unemployed and emotionally ravaged: "Many days I saw no reason to even get up."
December 19, 1996Germany Wanting Scientologists Out Germany created a government office Wednesday to coordinate its fight against the Church of Scientology and to keep people who are affiliated with the group out of key public jobs. Federal and state governments will work together to try to keep companies and people with links to Scientology away from jobs involving teaching and counseling, Kohl said in a statement. The German government claims Scientology is largely a money-making organization - with some traits of organized crime - that seeks world domination.
November 13, 1997Germany: Scientology Stand To Be Explained The Los Angeles-based Church of Scientology is - in Germany, at least - more of a business concern than a religion, and accuses it of exploiting the insecurities of its members for economic gain.
November 14, 1997Letters To The Editor on Scientology How can the U.S. government criticize Germany for regarding Scientology as a business and not a as tax-exempt religion, a legal ruling the United States held for 25 years? Could it really be possible under U.S. immigration law that, by the mere act of not being given tax-exempt status, German Scientologists would be allowed to seek asylum in the United States for religious persecution? Above all, why must Germany subscribe to the same religious definitions as the United States?
November 4, 2000Microsoft Deletes Scientology An insurance company has sued a branch of the Church of Scientology, alleging it was underpaid for a workers' compensation policy. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. claims in a lawsuit filed Monday that the church's Flag Service Organization owes $378,873 in premiums and fees assessed after an audit turned up employees who had been covered under the policy but were "not yet paid for."
April 10, 1997Scientologists Lose Case Against Germany The European Commission of Human Rights today threw out a discrimination case brought by the Church of Scientology against Germany on grounds that the sect had not exhausted domestic legal channels. Scientologists complained that the Government considers their church a commercial enterprise, rather than a religion. The church has also asserted that several German states have banned Scientology members from some jobs.
October 18, 1996Scientology Ad 'Insults Jews' Germany's Jewish community accused the Church of Scientology of insulting this country and victims of the Nazis in an advertisement in The New York Times.
November 7, 1994Scientology and Its German Foes: A Bitter Conflict It would take something like an invasion of space aliens - maybe something out of an L. Ron Hubbard science fiction novel - to match the climate of fear and mutual suspicion that prevails between the Church of Scientology that Mr. Hubbard created and its frightened opponents in Germany. "Fear is part of their system - it's a totalitarian organization that seeks to control everybody else, a dictatorship," said Ursula Caberta y Diaz, who heads the four-member working group that was set up four years ago by the Hamburg government to combat the Scientology movement and that has tried to get the courts to declare it a criminal conspiracy.
April 7, 2000Scientology Increasing Activities - Looking At Driving Schools With massive financial support and personnel from the USA, the Scientologists are again increasingly active in Hamburg. It is primarily the organization's intelligence service, the "Office of Special Affairs (OSA)" which has significantly increased its activity in recent times, reports Ursula Caberta. It is reported that organization opponents are being increasingly spied and eavesdropped upon and harassed. After they have been partly squeezed out of the real estate business, the Scientologists in Hamburg currently have their sights set on driving schools, among other things, according to Caberta.
October 5, 2000Scientology Organization Sues Interior Agency and "Sect Commissioner" The Scientologists are showing that they are lawsuit-happy. They intend to prohibit the Hamburg Interior Agency from letting their sect commissioner Ursula Caberta continue her research and information work on the Scientology Organization. A cease-and-desist application was filed yesterday by Munich attorney Wilhelm Bluemel in the Hamburg Administrative Court to that effect, verified court spokeswoman Angelika Huusmann.
September 25, 1995The Empire of Evil Robert Vaughn Young: I spent almost 21 years in the sect, primarily as a staff member and later as a member of the inner circle. I know the secret language of the sect, its internal structure, its greed, its strengths and weaknesses. I know of the punishment camps, the beatings, of dubious sources of money and mysterious deaths. The organization is a totalitarian system that knows only one goal: Control over the planet. Only Hubbard's ideas are true, all others are forbidden. Every criticism is stamped as "criminal," critics are declared as "fair game."
April 2, 1998U.N. Derides Scientologists' Charges About German 'Persecution' A United Nations special investigator today rejected charges by the Scientology movement that the German Government is using Nazi tactics of persecution and ill treatment against it. "This comparison between modern Germany and Nazi Germany is so shocking as to be meaningless and puerile," the investigator said in issuing his report. The report counters criticisms made by Scientologists, and by the United States State Department in its annual human rights report.
November 8, 1997U.S. Immigration Court Grants Asylum to German Scientologist A Federal immigration court judge has granted asylum to a German member of the Church of Scientology who claimed that she would be subjected to religious persecution had she been required to return to her homeland, the woman's lawyer and a Scientology official said today. While few details of the case were available, it is believed to be the first time the United States has given asylum protection to a Scientologist.
December 26, 1994Why Germany Warns About Scientology Many sociological studies have been done on the Scientologists that show that although this sect is not on the lunatic fringe, it still causes family breakups and emotional hardship to its victims. The German Government today is acting responsibly by trying to heighten awareness of a public menace.