The Hindu Business Line : A prayer for Germany's churches

TEN YEARS ago, it was the chorus of hymns that emanated from the Elias Church in East Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district. But when I visited it recently, the merry laughter of children greeted me. The Elias Church, with its red-brick arches and towering spires, is no longer a church, but a children's museum!

In Hamburg, the St Stephanus church, which was recently deconsecrated in a special service, has caught the eye of the celebrity cook Tim Maelzer, who is considering making it his restaurant. One 19th century church in Berlin has become home to a suite of high-end offices. In Cologne, an architect friend has redesigned a former church into a luxurious private residence. And two millennia after the Bible says Jesus threw the moneychangers out of the temple, a branch of Germany's Savings Bank (Sparkasse) has moved into a Protestant chapel in the Brandenburg village of Milow!

Houses of worship have become victims of the deepening financial crisis engulfing Germany's large churches. And so Germany's doing what would have once been considered unfathomable. Due to dwindling church attendance, falling revenue from Germany's "church tax" and increasingly expensive maintenance costs as church buildings age, parishes across the country are forced to sell their real estate to businesses. These days, in Germany, taking care of people's souls can cost a lot of money, and Germany's Catholic and Protestant churches, funded mostly by taxes, are joining the nation's 4.25 million unemployed in praying for economic recovery.

While the number of atheists doesn't necessarily increase when times are tough, the number of people contributing to church coffers drops. In Germany, the Catholic and Protestant churches rely on taxpayer's contributions to keep them afloat. In 2004, they received a total of euro 7.0 billion in "church tax" revenues — that is 6 per cent of the income tax that Germans pay the state. Income from church tax, which was euro 8.5 billion in 2003, has been dropping steadily for one year, and officials expect the trend to continue. The church's decreasing income and increasing expenses have led to a clear deficit. In the past 14 years, the number of members has plunged, from 28 million in 1990, to 22 million, at present. The Catholics lost over two million members between 1990 and 2004; almost double that number walked out of organised Protestants church. Because the amount of money the Church receives from taxes is based on the number of its members, a dwindling figure means less money in the coffers. That, combined with tax reform has forced churches it to make a difficult choice: Either divest themselves of real estate holdings, or lay off personnel and terminate some of their social programmes. And since German pews are rarely occupied on Sundays — outside of Christmas or Easter — the church is deciding to give up some of its bricks and mortar.

It is a difficult decision for some parishes to give up a beloved building, even more difficult to watch it being used for commercial purposes. But economic realities mean churches are often happy if they can find a suitable buyer. For some commercial operations, setting up shop in a former church lends just the kind of exotic cachet they're looking for. Hip restaurants that always want to stand out from the crowd, often express interest in buying church buildings, which are often available for little more than a song. Religious congregations around Germany are getting smaller and smaller. Even though weddings, funerals and baptisms and other religious ceremonies can only be performed in churches, if those involved are tax-paying members.

Dwindling funds mean church officials are looking for new ways to make money. The Catholic Church estimates that every third church in eastern Germany needs to be renovated — and many of them suffer from structural damage that needs major renovations. More and more churches are hiding cell phone towers in their spires and selling advertising space on scaffolding as ways to help fill the collection basket. But mostly their efforts aren't enough to match needs. In 2003, Germany's Catholic Church published a list of alternatives for churches facing financial difficulties. Offering space for concerts and other non-religious events, moving religious ceremonies to other churches to save on expenses and selling the church to secular organisations or, individuals were all ways to keep churches from being torn down.

Selling the church can only be the very last option. Even when churches need to be closed for financial reasons, officials would rather see a church turned into an architect's office that keeps the spire standing — as happened to the Church of the Three Kings in the Bonn suburb of Rondorf — instead of a parking lot, which was the fate of Berlin's Martin Luther Church.

Investors in Germany have good reason to take a closer look at holy ground. Whether massive metropolitan cathedrals or village chapels, some 30,000 church spires rise above Germany's towns, and the buildings cover some 7 billion sq metres of land, parts of which sit in highly profitable city centres.

The churches could sell euro 150 billion worth of real estate if they wanted. It is estimated that the churches have a total of between euro 350 billion and euro 500 billion in assets. Though it is unthinkable that the Catholic Church would sell the 750-year-old Cologne Cathedral or, that Protestants would agree to closing the Wittenberg Castle Church where Martin Luther set off the Reformation, both the Catholic and Protestant churches, which have 1.2 million people working for them, are Germany's largest non-state employers. They are now following the footsteps of the German corporate sector — downsizing and letting go of staff to save money! After the German Ministry for Labour and Economics lowered its 2005 growth forecast, saying a prayer and lighting a candle might be all that's left for the churches' recently unemployed. Several dioceses in Germany are looking for ways to trim costs even further as funds dry up and parishes become too expensive to run. The Archdiocese of Berlin, as well as dioceses in Hamburg and Trier, have all announced drastic cuts.

Aachen, one of Germany's bigger dioceses, is the latest to join the list of churches struggling to make ends meet. In Aachen, the church is unable to offer a full spectrum of programmes, and a lot of facilities and services have been stopped. A third of the diocese's staff has been cut as part of downsizing plans aimed at stopping up the hole in the church's coffers. Aachen diocese alone has to save euro 60 million a year in structural costs by 2008.

Both Muenster and Osnabrueck have already commissioned the management consultant McKinsey to find a remedy for the Church's running financial woes. Today, the Catholic Church in Berlin, which is reported to have some 155 million euros in debt, has also turned to McKinsey for help.

The church in Essen was pulled down. Here too, the Catholic Church had commissioned management consultant McKinsey to find a solution for its financial difficulties. McKinsey's research showed that in one community, churchgoers and members had dwindled to such an extent that there was no reason for maintaining the local church. It was pulled down to prevent further loss of revenue. Once again, in Germany, about 500 years after Martin Luther, soul-searching Germans are turning their back on the church and are demanding for a new awakened spirituality and, a new metaphysics of the mystery of life. The Church, for them, is clearly not filling the void.

As corporate chains rush to turn derelict churches into plush offices, is the Church another bulwark to crumble under Germany's continuing recession?

(The author is former Europe Director, CII, and lives in Cologne, Germany. Feedback may be sent to mohan.murti@t-online.de)

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