25th Anniversary of Milton Keynes – Leipzig-Grünau Link
murdoch mackenzie
While working as Ecumenical Moderator in Milton Keynes, Murdoch and Anne shared in several of the exchange visits between the ecumenical churches in Leipzig-Grünau and Milton Keynes. On the occasion of the celebration of 25 years of the partnership Murdoch was invited to speak at a function in the Church of Christ the Cornerstone in Milton Keynes.
When I was a small boy of 4 years old in the Second World War my mother told me that there were two lots of people in the world whom we couldn’t trust. The one was the Germans and she went on about someone called the Kaiser and how he had broken his promises. I had never heard of the Kaiser and when she talked about Germans I thought it was some kind of disease as the only word like that which I knew was the word germs. The other people she said I couldn’t trust were the Campbells because they had always sided with the English. I didn’t know about the Campbells either but I did know that in the food parcels which my mother’s brother used to send from New York the Campbells tomato soup was delicious. Now, living in Argyll, I am surrounded by Campbells and fine people they are. Tonight I am confronted by Germans whom I would certainly trust – perhaps even more than the Campbells!
As a teenager I won an essay competition organised by the College of Europe in Bruges on the subject of the European Community – in those days it was the SIX – the European Coal and Steel Coalition. School children throughout Europe wrote the essay and the prize-winners gathered in Bruges in August 1957. We visited the battlefields and military cemeteries of Ypres, and received certificates in the Town Hall in Bruges, and then dispersed for 10 days to a European country other than our own. I was selected to go to what was then West Germany and we were guests of the West German Government. Our guide was a refugee – a young student from Leipzig called Bernhard Zeigler with whom I corresponded for many years. The visit saw us travelling to Bonn, Hanover, the Ruhr – Dortmund and Duisburg, Koln or Cologne as we called it, to Hameln, and Munster, where we saw a copy of the Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years War. We also flew along the corridor to Berlin to Templehof Airport and visited Unter den Linden and the Kurfustendamm and we walked quite freely into east Berlin. It was there that I saw my first ever refugee camp and that’s an experience I will never forget. Nor will I forget the ruins of East Berlin inflicted by British bombers. At that time,of course, there was no Berlin Wall.
The whole purpose of all of this was to enable a new generation of young people to work for peace, and for an end to war, and to build together a new Europe. So I became a member of the European Youth Campaign for many years and even today am still in touch with some of the people with whom I travelled on that memorable visit.
Thus, on arrival in Milton Keynes I was delighted to learn of the Leipzig Link and not long after my arrival was invited as Moderator to push the first wheel-barrow of rubble out of the Church of Christ the Vine on its conversion from a pub to a church, whilst the Leipzig Youth Band played their brass instruments in the street outside. I was even more delighted to travel to Leipzig to stay with Lutz Laber and Renata, on two occasions, and to have them stay with us amongst the Campbells in Argyll, and I stayed with them, Renate and Lutz, again last year at the Kirchentag in Dresden. There I helped to erect our Milton Keynes Display with about 10 people from Milton Keynes who were there. Anne and I went with Adrian and the Choir to share in the Commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach on 28th July 2000 and on that occasion we stayed with Monica who was extremely kind to us both.
There are so many reminiscences, such as punting some people from Leipzig on the River Cam in Cambridge, punting from what we in Oxford would call the wrong end of the boat. A lovely sunny day with me in my shorts and Tee shirt and the friends from Leipzig, who had a much more exalted view of the position of the Moderator than I ever had, telling people afterwards that they had been punted by the Moderator! Then in Leipzig itself visiting the former headquarters of the Stasi (the SSD) in what is now the Stasi Museum – the ‘Runde Ecke’ – and seeing what looked like miles and miles of files containing reports on thousands of Citizens of the GDR. It was a chilling experience.
But then visiting St Nicholas Kirche where people had gathered to pray especially on Mondays until on October 30th 1989 some 300,000 people protested in the streets and by 9th November in Berlin itself people climbed the Wall and began to break it down. Our son Iain, who was studying in Oxford at the time, left for Berlin the next day and helped to break it down bringing me a few fragments which I have brought here with me tonight.
Time would fail me to tell of our visits to Dresden, smashed to smithereens by the British, yet seeing the Frauenkirche being restored to its former glory, to the Cathedral in Erfurt and standing on the very spot where Martin Luther was ordained, to Halle and seeing high and lifted up the organ on which George Frideric Handel once played, to Berlin and seeing the Reichstag and the Reichstag Dome, surrounded by what we were told was the largest building site in Europe, being given new life through Sir Norman Foster’s design, Bible studies of which we had several in Milton Keynes and in Grunau – one of which I remember well where we discussed the disillusionment of many of our Leipzig friends with the results of all this so-called freedom – with unemployment higher than in the days of the GDR, of money flowing in from the West raising the cost of living and buying up the land, young people emigrating to the West, piety decreasing, churches less full, and Monday nights at the Nicholas Kirche a thing of the past.
Above all these reminiscences, perhaps the most important was sharing in Grunau itself with Lutherans and Roman Catholics in worship, in dancing, in music, in eating and drinking and in the midst of it all catching a glimpse of the heavenly vision of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, of the world as it could be and of Europe as it could be, but which at this very moment as we sit here tonight, is tottering on the brink of becoming disobedient to the heavenly vision of the Prince of Peace and of the Peace for which Germans and Campbells laid down their lives in what we call euphemistically the last war. Let’s hope that it will be the last war, although there have been more than a hundred wars across the world since then, some of which are still raging. In June this year, I think it was the twelfth of June, I heard Rabbi Lionel Blue give his ‘Thought for the Day’ on Radio 4 in which he talked about what life was like when he was a boy, and then the years in which we Europeans came together, but he ended up in tears over the situation in Europe today as he literally pleaded and prayed that we would not return to a divided Europe.
Our link between Leipzig and Milton Keynes, just like our ecumenical covenant here in Milton Keynes, is very precious and something which we should not give up lightly. So whilst we are here to reminisce, let us remember one of the most important texts in the Bible in Luke 9:62 where we read these words: ‘No-one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’ So let us look forward, forward in faith to another 25 years of the Milton Keynes Leipzig Link. This we do not for our sake, not for Milton Keynes or Leipzig’s sake, not for Germany or Europe’s sake but for Christ’s sake who died that there might be peace on earth and that it might begin with me and with you.
Murdoch MacKenzie
7th October 2012
When I was a small boy of 4 years old in the Second World War my mother told me that there were two lots of people in the world whom we couldn’t trust. The one was the Germans and she went on about someone called the Kaiser and how he had broken his promises. I had never heard of the Kaiser and when she talked about Germans I thought it was some kind of disease as the only word like that which I knew was the word germs. The other people she said I couldn’t trust were the Campbells because they had always sided with the English. I didn’t know about the Campbells either but I did know that in the food parcels which my mother’s brother used to send from New York the Campbells tomato soup was delicious. Now, living in Argyll, I am surrounded by Campbells and fine people they are. Tonight I am confronted by Germans whom I would certainly trust – perhaps even more than the Campbells!
As a teenager I won an essay competition organised by the College of Europe in Bruges on the subject of the European Community – in those days it was the SIX – the European Coal and Steel Coalition. School children throughout Europe wrote the essay and the prize-winners gathered in Bruges in August 1957. We visited the battlefields and military cemeteries of Ypres, and received certificates in the Town Hall in Bruges, and then dispersed for 10 days to a European country other than our own. I was selected to go to what was then West Germany and we were guests of the West German Government. Our guide was a refugee – a young student from Leipzig called Bernhard Zeigler with whom I corresponded for many years. The visit saw us travelling to Bonn, Hanover, the Ruhr – Dortmund and Duisburg, Koln or Cologne as we called it, to Hameln, and Munster, where we saw a copy of the Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years War. We also flew along the corridor to Berlin to Templehof Airport and visited Unter den Linden and the Kurfustendamm and we walked quite freely into east Berlin. It was there that I saw my first ever refugee camp and that’s an experience I will never forget. Nor will I forget the ruins of East Berlin inflicted by British bombers. At that time,of course, there was no Berlin Wall.
The whole purpose of all of this was to enable a new generation of young people to work for peace, and for an end to war, and to build together a new Europe. So I became a member of the European Youth Campaign for many years and even today am still in touch with some of the people with whom I travelled on that memorable visit.
Thus, on arrival in Milton Keynes I was delighted to learn of the Leipzig Link and not long after my arrival was invited as Moderator to push the first wheel-barrow of rubble out of the Church of Christ the Vine on its conversion from a pub to a church, whilst the Leipzig Youth Band played their brass instruments in the street outside. I was even more delighted to travel to Leipzig to stay with Lutz Laber and Renata, on two occasions, and to have them stay with us amongst the Campbells in Argyll, and I stayed with them, Renate and Lutz, again last year at the Kirchentag in Dresden. There I helped to erect our Milton Keynes Display with about 10 people from Milton Keynes who were there. Anne and I went with Adrian and the Choir to share in the Commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach on 28th July 2000 and on that occasion we stayed with Monica who was extremely kind to us both.
There are so many reminiscences, such as punting some people from Leipzig on the River Cam in Cambridge, punting from what we in Oxford would call the wrong end of the boat. A lovely sunny day with me in my shorts and Tee shirt and the friends from Leipzig, who had a much more exalted view of the position of the Moderator than I ever had, telling people afterwards that they had been punted by the Moderator! Then in Leipzig itself visiting the former headquarters of the Stasi (the SSD) in what is now the Stasi Museum – the ‘Runde Ecke’ – and seeing what looked like miles and miles of files containing reports on thousands of Citizens of the GDR. It was a chilling experience.
But then visiting St Nicholas Kirche where people had gathered to pray especially on Mondays until on October 30th 1989 some 300,000 people protested in the streets and by 9th November in Berlin itself people climbed the Wall and began to break it down. Our son Iain, who was studying in Oxford at the time, left for Berlin the next day and helped to break it down bringing me a few fragments which I have brought here with me tonight.
Time would fail me to tell of our visits to Dresden, smashed to smithereens by the British, yet seeing the Frauenkirche being restored to its former glory, to the Cathedral in Erfurt and standing on the very spot where Martin Luther was ordained, to Halle and seeing high and lifted up the organ on which George Frideric Handel once played, to Berlin and seeing the Reichstag and the Reichstag Dome, surrounded by what we were told was the largest building site in Europe, being given new life through Sir Norman Foster’s design, Bible studies of which we had several in Milton Keynes and in Grunau – one of which I remember well where we discussed the disillusionment of many of our Leipzig friends with the results of all this so-called freedom – with unemployment higher than in the days of the GDR, of money flowing in from the West raising the cost of living and buying up the land, young people emigrating to the West, piety decreasing, churches less full, and Monday nights at the Nicholas Kirche a thing of the past.
Above all these reminiscences, perhaps the most important was sharing in Grunau itself with Lutherans and Roman Catholics in worship, in dancing, in music, in eating and drinking and in the midst of it all catching a glimpse of the heavenly vision of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, of the world as it could be and of Europe as it could be, but which at this very moment as we sit here tonight, is tottering on the brink of becoming disobedient to the heavenly vision of the Prince of Peace and of the Peace for which Germans and Campbells laid down their lives in what we call euphemistically the last war. Let’s hope that it will be the last war, although there have been more than a hundred wars across the world since then, some of which are still raging. In June this year, I think it was the twelfth of June, I heard Rabbi Lionel Blue give his ‘Thought for the Day’ on Radio 4 in which he talked about what life was like when he was a boy, and then the years in which we Europeans came together, but he ended up in tears over the situation in Europe today as he literally pleaded and prayed that we would not return to a divided Europe.
Our link between Leipzig and Milton Keynes, just like our ecumenical covenant here in Milton Keynes, is very precious and something which we should not give up lightly. So whilst we are here to reminisce, let us remember one of the most important texts in the Bible in Luke 9:62 where we read these words: ‘No-one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’ So let us look forward, forward in faith to another 25 years of the Milton Keynes Leipzig Link. This we do not for our sake, not for Milton Keynes or Leipzig’s sake, not for Germany or Europe’s sake but for Christ’s sake who died that there might be peace on earth and that it might begin with me and with you.
Murdoch MacKenzie
7th October 2012