The History of Unitarian Universalists Rhein-Main
Wiesbaden Fellowship Revived: The Keating-Malone Years | 2013 - 2016
Wiesbaden Fellowship Revived: The Keating-Malone Years | 2013 - 2016
By John Keating
Elizabeth and I had moved to Wiesbaden from Vicenza, Italy, in the fall of 2012. We had been living there in Italy for eight years, having lived before that for 19 years in the area of Kaiserslautern, Germany. While in Italy, EUU was our spiritual home, with the retreats twice a year, and the winter solstice celebration in Costabissara that brought so many EUU friends to us. But all that time we had never tried to form a fellowship there, even though as it turned out there were several people who would have been interested.
So when we moved to Wiesbaden, we chided ourselves and goaded each other, but to no avail for that first year. Then in the spring 2013, we were at the EUU retreat in Mittelwihr, Alsace, France, with Mark Morrison-Reed as the speaker and minister for Sunday service. I was looking across the large room at the EUU banners that were hanging on the wall, the one that included symbols from all the historical fellowships that had participated or were participating in EUU. One symbol looked strange; I had always thought that perhaps it was a series of cascading Tibetan bells or something like that. With a shock of recognition, I finally realized that someone had sewn a handmade image of the beautiful fountain placed in the promenade in front of the Wiesbaden Kurhaus. Wiesbaden UU was one of the original fellowships that banded together to form what became the EUU, although it had not existed for many years by this point. (For a historical record of that fellowship, read the piece by our beloved friend Dudley Strasburg, who was there at the time.)
That was the turning point, when Elizabeth and I decided that we would put the energy into re-forming the group that had so much history behind it. We felt sure it could be done, having helped the Kaiserslautern fellowship for so many years, before we moved to Italy. We took the opportunity to invite friends of EUU to hold their summer Coordinating Committee meeting in Wiesbaden, and to celebrate the summer solstice with us in a service at our rooftop apartment overlooking the city, and then in the City Park for poetry reading and Prosecco. See Service Bulletins June 30, 2013. We advertised the event, found local interest, and so it began.
We coordinated with the local American military base, retracing the steps that the fellowship had originally taken. In those early days, the group was associated with helping to counsel conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War. Now, the chaplaincy was pleased to support a group with such a strong record of supporting LGBTQ communities, since it was now part of their responsibility to serve the openly gay and lesbian couples who now could serve in the military with open asking, and open telling.
The fellowship has grown, hosted several EUU events, and its history continues to be written. Elizabeth and I returned to the States, to Washington DC, where we are now members of All Souls Church Unitarian. But we remain EUU members, and we will always feel a part of the Wiesbaden/Rhein-Main fellowship, whatever its name.
(25 February 2019)
Elizabeth and I had moved to Wiesbaden from Vicenza, Italy, in the fall of 2012. We had been living there in Italy for eight years, having lived before that for 19 years in the area of Kaiserslautern, Germany. While in Italy, EUU was our spiritual home, with the retreats twice a year, and the winter solstice celebration in Costabissara that brought so many EUU friends to us. But all that time we had never tried to form a fellowship there, even though as it turned out there were several people who would have been interested.
So when we moved to Wiesbaden, we chided ourselves and goaded each other, but to no avail for that first year. Then in the spring 2013, we were at the EUU retreat in Mittelwihr, Alsace, France, with Mark Morrison-Reed as the speaker and minister for Sunday service. I was looking across the large room at the EUU banners that were hanging on the wall, the one that included symbols from all the historical fellowships that had participated or were participating in EUU. One symbol looked strange; I had always thought that perhaps it was a series of cascading Tibetan bells or something like that. With a shock of recognition, I finally realized that someone had sewn a handmade image of the beautiful fountain placed in the promenade in front of the Wiesbaden Kurhaus. Wiesbaden UU was one of the original fellowships that banded together to form what became the EUU, although it had not existed for many years by this point. (For a historical record of that fellowship, read the piece by our beloved friend Dudley Strasburg, who was there at the time.)
That was the turning point, when Elizabeth and I decided that we would put the energy into re-forming the group that had so much history behind it. We felt sure it could be done, having helped the Kaiserslautern fellowship for so many years, before we moved to Italy. We took the opportunity to invite friends of EUU to hold their summer Coordinating Committee meeting in Wiesbaden, and to celebrate the summer solstice with us in a service at our rooftop apartment overlooking the city, and then in the City Park for poetry reading and Prosecco. See Service Bulletins June 30, 2013. We advertised the event, found local interest, and so it began.
We coordinated with the local American military base, retracing the steps that the fellowship had originally taken. In those early days, the group was associated with helping to counsel conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War. Now, the chaplaincy was pleased to support a group with such a strong record of supporting LGBTQ communities, since it was now part of their responsibility to serve the openly gay and lesbian couples who now could serve in the military with open asking, and open telling.
The fellowship has grown, hosted several EUU events, and its history continues to be written. Elizabeth and I returned to the States, to Washington DC, where we are now members of All Souls Church Unitarian. But we remain EUU members, and we will always feel a part of the Wiesbaden/Rhein-Main fellowship, whatever its name.
(25 February 2019)
Wiesbaden Fellowship: Cradle of EUU in the 1960s
By Dudley Strasburg
Becoming and being a Unitarian Universalist was and is an important part of my life. I don't think it would have happened without the remarkable woman, human being, Joan Breen.
When I came to Wiesbaden, Germany, in early January 1957 with my wife, a little two-year-old boy, expecting another baby son in about seven weeks, we were planning to be here only for one year. Many things changed that, and now it has been fifty-three years - how fast they have gone!
One of the important factors was that I came as the first professional investment counselor for the American communities of Germany, choosing to live in Wiesbaden because it was then one of the several largest American populations in the country. Why? Because it was, since the end of WWII, the U.S. Air Force Headquarters for Europe. Soon after arriving, I discovered that in the middle of this immense complex of buildings, near the center of Wiesbaden, was the largest American library in Europe. This became an important element in my family’s life. The creative and charming director of the library was Joan Breen. We became friends and we stayed friends until she died several years ago in her late nineties.
By the mid-sixties I knew Joan was leading weekly Sunday meetings of a group called "The Unitarians" in a large room in the library. I remember one work day in April 1967, when I was in the library talking to Joan about her group. It was quite an experience for me to hear about the Sunday morning meetings, the remarkable variety of programs, about the members, loyally coming every Sunday.
I had for years been giving talks and presentations about jazz, a lifelong passion for me since I was twelve years old and discovered Duke Ellington. Having heard from Joan about her programs, I told her I would really be pleased to come in and talk about jazz and we chose a date just a couple weeks away.
This turned out to be a life changer for me. The session was nearly two hours and I played records of a number of great jazz musicians, most of whom I had seen, heard, and talked to. The group of twenty or twenty-five men and women, really attracted me - the way they looked, reacted, showed themselves as human beings. I felt lifted just being with them, looking at them, experiencing them. After a decade in Germany, these women and men impressed me more favorably than any I had met up that point in time.
From that time on I was an active member of the Fellowship, being part of every meeting unless I was on one of my trips with my family or on business throughout Europe. Within a year or two I was chosen to be the new leader of the group.
This was at a time in the late sixties, when the Vietnam War was very much, in many ways, a key element in the lives of the scores of thousands of Americans in Germany. Somehow the word got out that our group in Wiesbaden was very much against the war. We could hardly believe what happened: so many young soldiers started coming to our Sunday morning meetings in Wiesbaden, coming by car and by train, sharing their thoughts and feelings with us freely. They felt safe with us, comfortable, trusted us. Some Sundays we were 60, 70, 80, or more at the meetings! It didn’t continue to be quite this way once the war ended.
One of the things I wanted to do was start having annual or semi-annual weekend retreats for our fellowship in beautiful areas. In part, this could bring together Unitarian Universalists, of which there were quite a number, who did not live in the Wiesbaden area or even in this part of Germany.
The first retreats, for several years, were held in American Recreation Centers in Berchtesgaden and Garmisch-Partenkirchen. They were very successful, and well attended by people in high spirits. Then we expanded our vistas and began to hold them in such remarkable places as the Swiss mountains, the Rhine valley and in such wonderful places as Oberwesel, Koblenz, in idyllic spots along the Mosel and the Saar rivers, Trier, favorite places in Belgium and Holland and the marvelous Alsace area with Strasbourg and Albert Schweitzer’s childhood villages and homes.
I think it is probable that the coming to the retreats of so many Unitarians from other parts of Germany is what, in part, led them to want to build the first fellowships in Zweibrücken, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Munich, Heidelberg and Kaiserslautern. It is a very rewarding part of my own history and life that I was able to see and contribute to this, which I think will continue long after I am gone.
This article originally appeared in the March 2010 issue of the Unifier.
Becoming and being a Unitarian Universalist was and is an important part of my life. I don't think it would have happened without the remarkable woman, human being, Joan Breen.
When I came to Wiesbaden, Germany, in early January 1957 with my wife, a little two-year-old boy, expecting another baby son in about seven weeks, we were planning to be here only for one year. Many things changed that, and now it has been fifty-three years - how fast they have gone!
One of the important factors was that I came as the first professional investment counselor for the American communities of Germany, choosing to live in Wiesbaden because it was then one of the several largest American populations in the country. Why? Because it was, since the end of WWII, the U.S. Air Force Headquarters for Europe. Soon after arriving, I discovered that in the middle of this immense complex of buildings, near the center of Wiesbaden, was the largest American library in Europe. This became an important element in my family’s life. The creative and charming director of the library was Joan Breen. We became friends and we stayed friends until she died several years ago in her late nineties.
By the mid-sixties I knew Joan was leading weekly Sunday meetings of a group called "The Unitarians" in a large room in the library. I remember one work day in April 1967, when I was in the library talking to Joan about her group. It was quite an experience for me to hear about the Sunday morning meetings, the remarkable variety of programs, about the members, loyally coming every Sunday.
I had for years been giving talks and presentations about jazz, a lifelong passion for me since I was twelve years old and discovered Duke Ellington. Having heard from Joan about her programs, I told her I would really be pleased to come in and talk about jazz and we chose a date just a couple weeks away.
This turned out to be a life changer for me. The session was nearly two hours and I played records of a number of great jazz musicians, most of whom I had seen, heard, and talked to. The group of twenty or twenty-five men and women, really attracted me - the way they looked, reacted, showed themselves as human beings. I felt lifted just being with them, looking at them, experiencing them. After a decade in Germany, these women and men impressed me more favorably than any I had met up that point in time.
From that time on I was an active member of the Fellowship, being part of every meeting unless I was on one of my trips with my family or on business throughout Europe. Within a year or two I was chosen to be the new leader of the group.
This was at a time in the late sixties, when the Vietnam War was very much, in many ways, a key element in the lives of the scores of thousands of Americans in Germany. Somehow the word got out that our group in Wiesbaden was very much against the war. We could hardly believe what happened: so many young soldiers started coming to our Sunday morning meetings in Wiesbaden, coming by car and by train, sharing their thoughts and feelings with us freely. They felt safe with us, comfortable, trusted us. Some Sundays we were 60, 70, 80, or more at the meetings! It didn’t continue to be quite this way once the war ended.
One of the things I wanted to do was start having annual or semi-annual weekend retreats for our fellowship in beautiful areas. In part, this could bring together Unitarian Universalists, of which there were quite a number, who did not live in the Wiesbaden area or even in this part of Germany.
The first retreats, for several years, were held in American Recreation Centers in Berchtesgaden and Garmisch-Partenkirchen. They were very successful, and well attended by people in high spirits. Then we expanded our vistas and began to hold them in such remarkable places as the Swiss mountains, the Rhine valley and in such wonderful places as Oberwesel, Koblenz, in idyllic spots along the Mosel and the Saar rivers, Trier, favorite places in Belgium and Holland and the marvelous Alsace area with Strasbourg and Albert Schweitzer’s childhood villages and homes.
I think it is probable that the coming to the retreats of so many Unitarians from other parts of Germany is what, in part, led them to want to build the first fellowships in Zweibrücken, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Munich, Heidelberg and Kaiserslautern. It is a very rewarding part of my own history and life that I was able to see and contribute to this, which I think will continue long after I am gone.
This article originally appeared in the March 2010 issue of the Unifier.
