“A New Era,” Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Volume 3, Boldly, Nobly, and Independent, 1893–1955 (2022)
Chapter 39: “A New Era”
Chapter 39
A New Era
On Tuesday, September 6, 1955, Helga Meyer boarded a train for West Berlin. She and other members of the Neubrandenburg Branch had recently learned that the Tabernacle Choir was coming to the city to give a concert. The choir had been touring Europe since mid-August, performing in cities from Glasgow to Copenhagen ahead of the dedication of the Swiss Temple. It was the choir’s most momentous undertaking since its performance at the Chicago World’s Fair six decades earlier. For many who attended the concerts, hearing the choir sing was the experience of a lifetime.1
It had long seemed impractical to bring over 350 choir members across the ocean, but President David O. McKay believed it was time for the choir to venture beyond North America. “There is no more potent force for missionary work than the Tabernacle Choir,” he had said when plans were announced.2
The entire tour was the product of much work, preparation, and prayer, but the choir’s presence in West Berlin was especially remarkable. High-level negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union had taken place to allow such a large group of Americans to travel through the German Democratic Republic into the western sector of the city.3
Once Helga and other East German Saints heard about the choir’s upcoming visit, they sought and received permission to travel to West Berlin. While the choir would perform for a paying audience in the evening, it would also give a free “rehearsal concert” in the daytime for residents of the GDR and East German refugees who now lived in West Germany. The Meyers did not have much money, but Kurt’s fishing business and Helga’s work as a kindergarten teacher had brought in just enough income for her to travel on her own to West Berlin and purchase a ticket for the evening concert.4
When Helga’s train arrived in West Berlin, she exited the station and made her way to the spacious Schöneberg sports arena for the free afternoon concert. The auditorium was nearly full of people, but she was able to find a seat near the stage.
Helga, Kurt, and their children had spent many evenings huddled around the radio, listening to Tabernacle Choir broadcasts. Since the program came from the United States, the family kept the volume low so that no one on the street would overhear the music and report them. But today she could listen without fear, letting the words and music flow all around her.5
The choir began with music by famed German composers Bach, Handel, and Beethoven. Then the concert transitioned to the beloved Latter-day Saint hymns “O My Father” and “Come, Come, Ye Saints.” Helga did not understand the English words of the hymns, but as the singers’ voices filled the space with joyous sound, her heart soared.
These were her people, Helga realized, come from far away.6
A few hours later, she returned to the hall for the choir’s evening concert. This time West German Saints, American servicemembers, and government officials occupied most of the seats in the packed hall. The concert was being recorded so that Radio Free Europe, an American-sponsored station in West Germany, could broadcast it to the people living in the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and other communist countries in central and eastern Europe.7
Once again, Helga was delighted as she listened to the music. The Spirit of the Lord enveloped her, and she and those around her could not stop the tears from flowing. It felt like heaven on earth.
After the concert, the choir exited the hall and began boarding their buses. Helga and a group of German Saints followed them outside and sang “God Be with You Till We Meet Again.” They waved handkerchiefs in the air until the last bus was out of sight.8
A few days later, on Sunday, September 11, 1955, President McKay pulled into a crowded parking lot on the outskirts of Bern, Switzerland. For the past several years, he had followed the progress on the two European temples from afar. Recently, he had broken ground for the temple in London. And today he had arrived to dedicate the newly completed Swiss Temple.9
It was a triumphant moment for President McKay. Europe had been a source of strength to the Church for generations. Both of the prophet’s parents had been born on European soil. His father’s family joined the Church in Scotland, and his mother’s family were among the early converts in Wales. Now European Saints would no longer have to cross an ocean to enjoy the blessings of the temple, as his parents and grandparents had.10
For days, rain had fallen on Bern. But on this morning, blue skies and sunshine greeted President McKay. The temple’s simple, modern exterior stood out against a backdrop of evergreen trees. The building was cream-colored, with rows of white pilasters and tall windows gracing its sides. A single gilded spire, supported by a brilliant white base, reached high above the brass front doors. And in the distance, clearly visible from the temple grounds, rose the Jura Mountains and majestic Swiss Alps.11
As President McKay entered the temple, he passed beneath large block letters above the door. Das Haus des Herrn, the message read in German. The House of the Lord. For the first time, the words appeared on a Latter-day Saint temple in a language other than English.12
A few minutes later, at ten o’clock, the prophet stood at a pulpit in the third-floor assembly room. An audience of about six hundred people, more than half of them members of the Tabernacle Choir, looked on. Another nine hundred people sat in other rooms in the temple while listening to the proceedings over loudspeakers.13
After singing by the choir and a prayer, President McKay welcomed all who were in attendance and remarked that past presidents of the Church were there in spirit. Among them, he said, was Joseph F. Smith, who had prophesied in Bern a half century before that temples would one day be built in countries across the world.14
Samuel Bringhurst, who had recently been called as president of the Swiss Temple, spoke next. He recounted the difficulty in finding the property and testified of the Lord’s guidance in locating the current site.15
Apostle Ezra Taft Benson followed. He told the audience of his paternal grandmother, Louisa Ballif, whose parents had joined the Church in Switzerland in the 1850s and emigrated to Utah. As a young man growing up in Idaho, Ezra had listened to his grandmother recount her family’s conversion and her affection for the old country.
“I assure you,” the apostle said, “I loved Switzerland long before I ever saw it.”
Elder Benson then reflected on his mission to the Saints in Europe after the Second World War. He mentioned going to Vienna and Zełwągi. And he remembered fondly the kindness of Swiss government officials who helped the Church distribute aid.16
After Elder Benson sat down, President McKay returned to the stand to dedicate the house of the Lord. “O God, our Eternal Father,” he prayed. “On this sacred occasion, the completion and dedication of the first temple to be erected by the Church in Europe, we give our hearts and lift our voices to Thee in praise and gratitude.” He thanked the Lord for the restored gospel, for modern revelation, and for the Swiss people, who had for centuries honored the right to worship as conscience dictated.
During his prayer, the prophet seemed burdened by the unbelief of people in lands where the gospel of Jesus Christ could not now be preached. “Bless the leaders of nations,” he pleaded, “that their hearts may be cleared of prejudices, suspicion, and avarice and filled with a desire for peace and righteousness.”
President McKay closed the morning dedicatory session by leading the assembly in the Hosanna Shout.17 During the service, he asked Ewan Harbrecht, a young soprano with the Tabernacle Choir whose German-born grandmother had been an early member of the Cincinnati Branch, to stand and sing.
Everywhere they had performed in Europe, Ewan and the choir had been greeted to loud applause. But in the Haus des Herrn, a peaceful reverence befitting the occasion settled over the room. “Bless this house,” she sang.
Bless the people here within
Keep them pure and free from sin
Bless us all that we may be
Fit O Lord to dwell with thee.18
The following Thursday, Jeanne Charrier entered the Swiss Temple to attend the last of the nine dedicatory sessions. Surrounded by fellow Saints from the French Mission, including Léon and Claire Fargier, Jeanne was honored to be in the Lord’s house, numbered among the Europeans who would soon make eternal covenants.19
President McKay spoke, as he had done at each of the previous sessions. Jeanne felt a special connection to the prophet, whom she had met at a conference in Paris during his 1952 European tour. She had been a member of the Church for only a year at the time, and the pain of being rejected by her parents was still fresh. President McKay had paused to ask about her baptism and what her life had been like since. Rather than simply shaking her hand, he had given her a warm, grandfatherly hug, helping to dispel her inner turmoil.20
As President McKay welcomed the Saints of the French Mission to the temple, his words were translated by Robert Simond, a longtime Swiss member of the Church who served in the mission presidency. “This dedication marks an epoch in the history of the Church,” the prophet told the Saints. “In several ways it begins a new era.”21
He then spoke to those who would soon be receiving the initiatory and endowment ordinances. He wanted them to be prepared to comprehend the great principles of life contained in the temple experience.
“Seeing or visualizing the glory of the temple work is somewhat like obtaining a testimony of the divinity of Christ’s work,” he said. “To some, the glory of the truth of the restored gospel comes immediately. To others it comes more slowly, but surely.”22
The first endowment sessions in the Swiss Temple were scheduled to begin the following week. But after learning how many Saints needed to return to their home countries before then, President McKay asked Gordon B. Hinckley if his team could work through the night to ready the temple for endowment work Friday morning.23
On Friday afternoon, Jeanne returned to the temple with other French-speaking Saints. The first two endowment sessions of the day had been in German, and since the endowment was a new experience for most participants, everything took longer than expected. By the time the French session began, the sun had set, and there were sessions in other languages to follow.24
After listening to apostle Spencer W. Kimball speak at a special meeting in the temple chapel, Jeanne and other French Saints participated in the initiatory and endowment ordinances. Together in one room, they watched the new French-language temple film and learned more about the earth’s creation, the Fall of Adam and Eve, and the Atonement of Jesus Christ. They made covenants with God and in turn received the promise of great blessings in this life and in the life to come.25
When Jeanne’s session finished, it was the middle of the night. Saints from Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway went on to receive their endowment in sessions that continued around the clock until late Saturday night.26
Having participated in the ordinances of the temple, Jeanne understood it was a place of faith and hope that would prepare her to someday enter God’s presence. And although her earthly family was not yet ready to hear the gospel message, she was eager to do work for deceased ancestors who were waiting to receive temple blessings.
“No one will be forgotten,” she thought.27
It had been quite a week for Gordon B. Hinckley. Once the endowment film cleared customs, he had overseen the installation of the temple’s projection and sound equipment, synchronized the sound and film in each language to assure that they were working properly, and trained the new temple engineer, Hans Lutscher, who would take on the full-time responsibility after he was endowed himself.28
Gordon and his team enjoyed a brief reprieve from their hectic schedule during the five days of the dedication, but as soon as President McKay announced his desire to begin ordinance work in the temple immediately, they went right back to work.
Since early Friday morning, Gordon had spent nearly two days operating the projector and sound system. Sleep was hardly an option. And Bern’s damp fall climate had aggravated a case of the flu Gordon had caught. His eyes and nose would not stop running, his head felt heavy, and his body ached.29
Still, as the sessions went on hour after hour, Gordon was amazed by how well the filmed endowment functioned. The temple workers experienced few problems with the new process, despite the challenges of accommodating people from so many different countries. Watching the ordinance unfold, Gordon realized how difficult it would have been to present it in seven languages in the traditional manner.30
When the final endowment session ended late Saturday, Gordon was exhausted. But beyond his red eyes and sore throat, he felt a rush of something far more significant. Since coming to Bern, he had seen hundreds of Saints from the nations of Europe enter the temple. Many of them had made great sacrifices to come to the dedication. Some of them, he could see, were very poor. Others had borne the loss of family and other loved ones during the two world wars. They shed tears as they received the endowment and witnessed their families sealed together for eternity.
More than ever before, Gordon knew with certainty that the Lord had inspired President McKay to bring temple blessings to the women and men of Europe. Seeing their joy was worth all the long nights and stressful days Gordon had experienced over the past two years.31
Like most Saints living in the GDR, Henry Burkhardt was not able to go to Bern for the temple dedication or the first endowment sessions. Instead, he was preparing an attic room in his parents’ house where he and Inge would live after their upcoming wedding. He had applied for an apartment of his own, but he had no idea when or if the government would grant one. He decided they could make do in this small, unheated space, which he hoped Inge would find a little more cheerful after he put up new wallpaper.
Henry and Inge had seen each other only a few times in the nine months since their engagement, usually when Henry was near Bernburg for a district conference. They planned to have a civil wedding on October 29, and they were determined to be sealed in the temple as soon as possible after that.32
Although the East German government allowed its citizens to travel to West Germany, Henry and Inge could not alert anyone that they were traveling out of the country together, since authorities might assume that they were leaving permanently. They secured their visas to West Germany in different cities and worked with the mission office in West Berlin to obtain their visas to Switzerland. According to the plan, the Swiss visas would be sent to the West German Mission office in Frankfurt. If the papers failed to arrive, the couple would have to return to the GDR without being sealed.33
The day after their wedding in Bernburg, Henry and Inge traveled without incident to West Germany and found their visas to Switzerland waiting for them. They soon purchased round-trip tickets to Bern and spent some time with friends in West Germany. Everywhere they went, people were polite and friendly to them. They marveled at how wonderful it felt to move around freely without any restrictions.34
Henry and Inge arrived in Bern on the evening of November 4 and spent the last of the money they had saved for the trip to rent a small room near the train station. The next morning, the couple ascended the steps to the temple doors and entered the Lord’s house. Soon they sat in the temple’s endowment room and received the ordinance as the German-language film flickered on a screen in front of them.
After the ordinance, they entered a sealing room and knelt across the altar from one another. They learned of the glorious promises given to those who entered into the sealing covenant. Then they themselves were joined together forever.35
“How beautiful it is to now belong to each other for eternity,” Henry reflected. “What a great responsibility, with many blessings, has been given us.”36
The next evening, Henry and Inge walked to the train station for their trip back to their attic room in the GDR. They knew they did not have to return there if they did not want to. They had friends who could help them stay in West Germany. They could even try to emigrate to the United States, as so many other European Saints had.
The couple did not want to leave their homeland, though. Life in the GDR was not always easy, but their families were there, and God had work for them to do.37
The train soon came, and they climbed aboard. Leaving Switzerland, neither Henry nor Inge had any idea when, or if, they would be able to return to the temple. Yet they trusted in God to guide their future. Bound together for time and eternity, they were more committed than ever to serving Him. And they knew He would never leave them.38