Reflections on a Week Spent in the Best Dressed Country in Europe (The Belltower LCM newsletter spring 2011)

My sole regret about our trip to Germany is that we saw no more than *zero* Germans wearing lederhosen.  I was sorely disappointed, so the "Best Dressed" might have been meant sarcastically. Probably.  Although Germans do have an impeccable sense of fashion.

Now that may’ve been a little disappointing, but the rest of our time in the marvelous land of bratwurst was anything but.  Not only did I have an amazing time exploring Eastern Germany with 49 close friends, learning about Martin Luther, seeing all kinds of historical monuments and beautiful cathedrals, climbing all over the walls of an old castle, and celebrating my 19^th birthday with a 4:00 AM win against Duke, but I also learned a lot about Lutheranism, as well as my own personal faith.  

We toured nearly all of the historic sites from Martin Luther's life, and we gained a lot of insight into Luther's perspective and his ideas about Christianity.  What I got the most out of, however, was not learning about Lutherans in the 16th century, but seeing Lutherans today.  On our first Sunday there, we worshiped at the Augustinian Cloister in Erfurt, where Luther had first become a monk.  Barely any of them spoke more than a few words of English, but I instantly felt a sense of community and kinship with the other worshippers around us.  Even though we came from completely different cultures and didn’t speak the same language, we were all there for the same purpose, and that was more than enough.  This was only one of several times that we got to meet and worship with other Lutherans.

Strangely enough, some of the strongest memories of the week that I have were made in a place not directly related to Lutheranism at all.  This place was the Buchenwald concentration camp, which we visited for an afternoon on our first Saturday in Germany.  There's no way I can adequately describe this experience and what it meant to me in this limited space, but I will do my best.

We arrived at Buchenwald in the early afternoon, after eating lunch in Weimar. Soon after arriving, we watched a short film about the events that occurred there, and then split up into small groups to wander the remains of the camp.  There were only a few buildings still standing, including the gatehouse and its fence, the disinfection facility, the crematorium, and a few other random barracks.  Most of this area, however, consists solely of rows and rows of rubble.  The remains of the many buildings that housed prisoners so many years ago.

Now for a while, I took care to walk around these tall piles of old building materials, but eventually I began to question my reasons for this.  Why walk around these monuments to memory when I can just as easily walk all over them?  I began to do just this, walking directly on top of the rubble.  I didn't try to stop myself from thinking about what these buildings represented as I worked my way through and over them, but instead I made sure to recognize this.  With every step I took, I acknowledged the reality -- the brutal reality -- of all the pain, death, and hate built up beneath my feet.  This was immensely gratifying and thought provoking for me.  I wasn't carefully walking around these memorials, quietly paying my respects; I was taking care to walk on and above them, and I could see much farther and clearer because of that. 

Another powerful experience from our time there occurred at the very end.  Right before we left, the 50 of us gathered near the entrance of the camp, in a circle around a special plaque.  This is a famous plaque, adorned with the names of the many different ethnicities and nationalities of the people who died here, and kept at a constant temperature of 98.6 degrees.  After each of us had knelt down to touch this living memorial to so much death, we crowded together, tightly gathered around the plaque.  Then we all put our arms around each other and said a prayer over it. This was an incredibly powerful and moving experience for me.  I don’t know if it was the sanctity of that spot, the power of the memorial and what it stood for, or the fact that we were a community from far across the sea, coming together closer than ever before to mourn the lives of these people we had never met.  What I do know is that I don’t want to forget that moment, and I don’t think I will.