Scientology in Germany - Criticism of Germany's Stance

Criticism of Germany's Stance

The United States media, while generally reporting negatively on Scientology in domestic news, has taken an at least partially supportive stance towards Scientology in relation to Germany. Richard Cohen for example, writing in the Washington Post, said in 1996: "Scientology might be one weird religion, but the German reaction to it is weirder still – not to mention disturbing." Alan Cowell, writing in the New York Times, wrote in 1997 that the German response to Scientology – motivated by officials' fear that Scientology "was a totalitarian movement growing, like the Nazi party, from inconsequential beginnings" – was itself redolent of "the Nazi era's authoritarianism".

The U.S. Department of State has repeatedly claimed that Germany's actions constitute government and societal discrimination against minority religious groups and expressed its concerns over the violation of Scientologists' individual rights posed by sect filters. The U.S. Department of State began to include the issue of Scientology in Germany in its annual human rights reports after the 1993 agreement between the Church of Scientology and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, through which Scientology gained the status of a tax-exempt religion in the United States. That decision also marked the beginning of more intense lobbying efforts by the Church of Scientology in Washington, using paid lobbyists. The State Department's 1996 human rights report on Germany, released in January 1997, warned that artists and businesses with Scientology connections "may face boycotts and discrimination, sometimes with government approval." Past targets of such actions had included Scientologist actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta, as well as jazz pianist Chick Corea.

Also in January 1997, an open letter to then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl appeared, published as a newspaper advertisement in the International Herald Tribune, drawing parallels between the "organized oppression" of Scientologists in Germany and Nazi policies espoused by Germany in the 1930s. The letter was conceived and paid for by Hollywood lawyer Bertram Fields, whose clients have included Tom Cruise and John Travolta, and was signed by 34 prominent figures in the U.S. entertainment industry, including the top executives of MGM, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal and Sony Pictures Entertainment as well as actors Dustin Hoffman and Goldie Hawn, director Oliver Stone, writers Mario Puzo and Gore Vidal and talk-show host Larry King. It echoed similar parallels drawn by the Church of Scientology itself, which until then had received scant notice, and was followed by lobbying efforts of Scientology celebrities in Washington.

U.S. Department of State spokesman Nicholas Burns rejected the Nazi comparisons in the open letter as "outrageous" and distanced the U.S. government from Nazi comparisons made by the Church of Scientology, saying, "We have criticized the Germans on this, but we aren't going to support the Scientologists' terror tactics against the German government." Chancellor Kohl, commenting on the letter, said that those who signed it "don't know a thing about Germany and don't want to know." German officials argued that "the whole fuss was cranked up by the Scientologists to achieve what we won't give them: tax-exempt status as a religion. This is intimidation, pure and simple." Officials explained that precisely because of Germany's Nazi past, Germany took a determined stance against all "radical cults and sects, including right-wing Nazi groups", and not just against Scientology. Kohl's Christian Democratic Union party denounced the letter as "absurd" and cited German court rulings stating that Scientology had primarily economic goals and could legitimately be referred to using phrases such as a "contemptuous cartel of oppression".

In February 1997, a United States immigration court judge granted asylum to a German Scientologist who claimed she would be subject to religious persecution in her homeland. In April 1997, John Travolta met personally with U.S. President Bill Clinton at a conference in Philadelphia. Travolta later said Clinton assured him that he would "really love to help" with the "issue over in Germany with Scientology". According to Travolta, Clinton recalled that "he had a roommate years ago who was a Scientologist and had really liked him, and respected his views on it", stating that Scientologists "were given an unfair hand in and that he wanted to fix it". In September 1997, John Travolta, Chick Corea and fellow Scientologist Isaac Hayes were heard by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, also known as the Helsinki Commission), voicing their complaints about the treatment of Scientologists in Germany, and had a briefing with United States National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, whom Clinton had assigned to be "the administration's Scientology point person". The German ambassador responded with a letter to the CSCE stating that the German government had come to the conclusion that Scientology's "pseudo-scientific courses can seriously jeopardize individuals' mental and physical health and that it exploits its members", adding that "membership can lead to psychological and physical dependency, to financial ruin, and even to suicide. In addition, there are indications that Scientology poses a threat to Germany's basic political principles."

A United Nations report in April 1998 asserted that individuals in Germany were discriminated against because of their affiliation with Scientology. However, it rejected the comparison of the treatment of Scientologists with that of Jews during the Nazi era.

In 2000, the German Stern magazine published the results of its investigation of the asylum case. It asserted that several rejection letters which the woman had submitted as part of her asylum application – ostensibly from potential employers who were rejecting her because she was a Scientologist – had in fact been written by fellow Scientologists at her request and that of Scientology's Office of Special Affairs, and that she was in personal financial trouble and about to go on trial for tax evasion at the time she applied for asylum. On a 2000 visit to Clearwater, Florida, Ursula Caberta of the Scientology Task Force for the Hamburg Interior Authority likewise alleged that the asylum case had been part of an "orchestrated effort" by Scientology undertaken "for political gain", and "a spectacular abuse of the U.S. system". German expatriate Scientologists resident in Clearwater, in turn, accused Caberta of stoking a "hate campaign" in Germany that had "ruined the lives and fortunes of scores of Scientologists" and maintained that Scientologists had not "exaggerated their plight for political gain in the United States." Mark Rathbun, a top Church of Scientology official, said that although Scientology had not orchestrated the case, "there would have been nothing improper if it had."

In 2003, Joachim Güntner, writing in the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung, noted that Gerhard Besier, a German Christian theologian, director of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research into Totalitarianism in Dresden and recipient of an honorary doctorate from Lund University, Sweden, for his championing of religious freedom, had been pressured to forego publication of his scientific study of Scientology after having found himself the subject of widespread criticism in the German media for advocating a more tolerant attitude towards Scientology. Güntner concluded that "alarmism" had "triumphed" over science and noted an apparent lack of confidence in Germany's ability to engage in open public discourse on the matter.

The U.S. Department of State's most recent (2011) report on religious freedom in Germany stated that "government agencies at the federal and state levels and some organizations in the private sector established rules and procedures that discriminated against Scientology as an organization and against its members. The federal and state Offices for the Protection of the Constitution (OPCs) in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bavaria, Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, and Lower Saxony continued to monitor the activities of the COS, mainly focusing on evaluating Scientology publications and public activities to determine if they violated the German constitution. The OPCs did not impede the believers’ freedom to practice their religion. In 2010, the OPC report from Baden-Wuerttemberg stated that monitoring by the OPC 'creates considerable problems in recruiting new members for Scientology and has limited their ability to expand successfully,' and that trend continued throughout the year. In response to complaints from Scientologists, the government issued statements which proclaimed all individual members of the Church of Scientology enjoy full religious freedom rights and protection under the German constitution. However, the government stated the Church of Scientology is considered profit-oriented, and as such is not an officially recognized religious group and does not have tax-exempt status."