As a preacher and activist, Christiane Schulz helps organize demonstrations for democracy in Neuruppin. She wants understanding across borders.
Christiane Schulz’s apartment is welcoming and laissez-faire. This is also reflected in the bookshelf Photo: Julia Baier
Hippos are her favorite animals. Why? “Because I also like to be in the water,” says Christiane Schulz.
Outside: Neuruppin is one of those small towns in Brandenburg that are whitewashed in the plain. Located on the Ruppinermeer. Fontane passed by here. The houses are two stories, three stories, sometimes more. A bit of classicism and traces of the simple GDR aesthetic. Christiane Schulz lives with her husband in an old building on Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße. The street explodes with lush pink Japanese cherry trees in bloom. It appears to be a tribute to the socialist who was murdered by right-wing Frei Korps soldiers.
Inside: Anyone sitting on the balcony of the Scandinavian simple apartment has Japanese cherries right in front of their noses. “It’s just a brief moment,” says Schulz. Previously they would have bloomed in May, now in April. “Climate change makes it possible.” The apartment is invitingly laissez-faire. A look at the bookshelf shows this as a flash of light. The metronome is based on the book “An Omelette Like the Rich People” by Sholem Aleichem, who some call the Jewish Mark Twain; The anatomy atlas features a plush sheep, a hippopotamus figure next to airy angels and the book “Plain Text on Integration”.
World Care: Angel and Integration are two pillars that form the arc that encompasses Christiane Schulz. Yes, she has a thing for the church, and yes, she is the kind of person who gets affected by worldly things. And the aspects that hurt: poverty, exclusion, racism, loss of democracy, flight. The Bible is about people in the world. She is concerned with the breaking points of people in the world. “Where it is not possible for people to live a good life.” Global care instead of pastoral care. That’s why she also helps organize the pro-democracy demonstrations that take place in Neuruppin every first Sunday of the month ahead of the EU elections. What worries them is that division is being sown.
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Born in the GDR: Her father, like her, was a preacher in the GDR. Church people in socialist Germany were mainly monitored by the state. “It probably was,” says Christiane Schulz. She was 13 and the eldest of three sisters when the family was able to leave the GDR in 1974 and move to West Berlin. The grandparents lived there. She cannot remember state reprisals. However, there were only two weeks between the exit permit and the prescribed departure date and the whole family was in a state of excitement.
Time of experiments: When asked how she followed in her father’s footsteps and became a minister, she says her involvement in religion made sense to her. She is concerned with enlightenment, not enlightenment. It’s about twisting and turning the why, the where from, and where to, while keeping an open ending. Also in the search for answers to the question of what is good and what is evil.
She is currently very concerned about whether members of the AfD party should hold church offices. “Are we the good guys and the bad guys?” Or, and this is now more mundane: whether she can continue to have her car repaired by the mechanic, since she knows he is with the AfD. She does not like the idea that a blockage arises in this way. “That just creates bad blood. Communication is the bridge.” Yet she has no answer. She hopes the car won’t break down for a while.
Hippos are the pastor’s favorite animals. Because she also likes to be in the water Photo: Julia Baier
Detours: As a teenager, she once had a phase of extreme piety. “It turns out to be nothing. It was way too narrow.” Then she wanted to become an organ builder or restorer. ‘These are all crazy ideas. I simply have less talent when it comes to craftsmanship.” Her creative skills lie in communication. She then chose theology. “I studied for a long time,” she says. Also because she had to do things on the side: “I was in the AStA, I was a squatter, something like that.” Thanks to her father, she knows that as a pastor all doors are open to her in this area.
In the village: She was a village priest in Brandenburg for ten years – responsible for three congregations – before taking over the leadership of the diaconal work ESTA, “Insertion instead of Expulsion”, in Neuruppin in 2005. At the same time, she was also a religious teacher and worked with refugees. How do you introduce her as a village pastor? “Hands-on,” she says, summing up: “Men’s work at the skat table. Neighborhood initiatives, church renovations.” She also received boats for the communities. “I really like being by the water.”
What she saw: As a pastor in the East, she had an idea of the wounds that the reunion had caused and that it would not remain without consequences. “The triumph of the West,” she says, has belittled the people of the East. The positive was not passed on. “What worked well, what people could be proud of, was destroyed. This is related to the bad image that democracy has today. This has not yet been resolved.”
Changes: And then she criticizes the shortages in education. “There are a lot of people who are frustrated. They see changes that they don’t understand.” In one of the villages where she was a pastor, there were mainly agricultural workers. “School education in the sixth grade.” These people would need a different approach to understanding complex connections. That was left of right. And anyway: “Why wasn’t the craftsmanship appreciated? Why did everyone have to study?” If things had gone differently, many people’s self-esteem would have stabilized and they would have seen themselves integrated into society differently. “Such blind spots are now coming back like a boomerang.”
To ask: She doesn’t just stop complaining and blaming. “I grew up asking my parents this question: why did you allow this?” So war and destruction. “There was such a swollen chest on our part. I am cured of that.” In Neuruppin there are many who turn to the AfD, but do not feel that they are on the right. “If society produces fascism, then it is something that affects us too. So How are we involved in making this happen?”
She has no answer. But at least she can ask the questions – also as co-director of the Diaconal Association with a hundred employees. He does child and youth work and refugee work. Asylum advice, pathways to education and the labor market, living instead of managing, building neighborhood structures are key words. “If people don’t arrive traumatized, we will compensate for that with all the obstacles that stand in the way of refugees and the endless wait,” she says. And because what she does is never enough, she has now put herself on the Green Party’s list for the local elections.
Connectedness: She has long been associated with the group ‘Neuruppin remains colorful’, which is currently organizing the demos for democracy in the city. The action alliance was founded in 2007 in response to the then strong NPD. “We just thought about what we could do next. Then we thought about the Sunday demonstrations.’ She feels responsible for Neuruppin’s cosmopolitanism, indeed, she even feels that she comes from Neuruppin. She is surprised that she has lived in the province for so long. She sees the great advantage of being able to exert influence. Her father always said, “Everyone doesn’t want to be just an idiot, but an important idiot.” It’s easier in a small town.
And love: When she went to the parish office they asked her what she thought about getting married, she lived with her partner. “Oh, you know, I don’t really like getting married.” Then she married in 1995. “I understood that there are no fairytale princes.” Her partner became a househusband. Especially because a daughter was also born. “The most important thing is that you love the people you live with,” she says.