Religion: The Exile

A grim, quiet East German left his house in East Berlin a fortnight ago and made his way to the Praesidium der Volkspolizei for a pass to enter the Western zone. A three-month pass was duly handed over, and he was not surprised, for Dr. Kurt Scharf, 58, is chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany—the highest post in German Protestantism—and his wife and four children live in the Western zone, where he has been visiting them about once a week.

Kurt Scharf crossed the boundary unhindered in his official car. But that evening, at the same check point, his pass and identity card were confiscated when he handed them over for examination, and he was told that he could not return to East Berlin. The ominous and insulting reason: as head of the Evangelical Church Council, he was "the leader of an illegal organization inimical to peace."

Dr. Scharf's exile was an unexpected and brutal blow to German Protestantism, for this determined churchman was the only link between church leaders in West Berlin and 13 million Evangelical Church members under Red dominion. Thus at a stroke this flock was cut off from its shepherd and outlawed as an organization.

In choosing Scharf to succeed crusty Bishop Otto Dibelius last February as head of the Evangelical Church, the synod bore in mind his reputation for dealing with the Reds in a way that won their grudging respect. Said one top Communist official: "Give me Scharf rather than any other churchman. At least I understand what he wants." And in office Kurt Scharf has been uniquely free to attend church meetings across the border—even on occasion to go abroad, as he did for the enthronement of Dr. Arthur Michael Ramsey as Archbishop of Canterbury.

Last week Dr. Scharf stayed quiet, determined not to do or say anything that would endanger his possible return to East Germany at some later time, perhaps after a peace treaty with Russia is signed. Adding to his closemouthed caution was the presence of one of his daughters in East Germany's Potsdam, where she works in a hospital. But the West Berlin Senate, under no such wraps, made a blistering denunciation of this "most infamous form of deportation," calling the outlawing of the Evangelical Church "the last resort of a regime that no longer shrinks from any hypocrisy, distortion, lie, deception or brutality."