Paul Schäfer (sect founder)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paul Schäfer (born December 4, 1921 in Bonn , † April 24, 2010 in Santiago de Chile ) was the founder of the Christian sect and totalitarian religious community Colonia Dignidad in Chile . On May 24, 2006, Schäfer was found guilty of the sexual abuse of children in 25 cases by a Chilean court and sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment and payments totaling 770 million pesos (over 1 million euros) to eleven young people.

Life

Paul Schäfer grew up with his two older brothers in Troisdorf . He repeated two school years. In his childhood he lost an eye in an accident, which was replaced by a glass eye and was the reason for the withdrawal from the army. He was a member of a Christian YMCA - "Oak Cross" group. Contrary to media and personal reports, Schäfer was never an officer in the Wehrmacht or a member of National Socialist organizations, but a nurse and took part in the Second World War as a medic in France .

First fields of activity

After the Second World War , Paul Schäfer initially worked as an unskilled worker at fairs before he found employment as a youth worker for both Catholic and Protestant organizations and, most recently, YMCA youth leaders in Troisdorf. As the leader of a tent camp, Paul Schäfer showed his inclination to sadistic practices as early as 1947, according to witnesses :

“One day the food was accidentally burned. The boys in the camp should eat it anyway. Eating anything else was considered disobedient and threatened with draconian punishment. One of them couldn't stand it and ate a piece of windfall. He had to strip naked, was led to the edge of the site by the camp elders and then had to run the gauntlet with blows from a stick . "

For a while, Schäfer worked as a youth educator at Diakoniewerk Bethel . In 1947 he was dismissed without notice because of homosexual relationships with his underage protégés.

When the rumors increased that Schäfer was mistreating and sexually abusing children and young people entrusted to him, his discrete dismissal from church service took place around 1949/50, so that no criminal proceedings were initiated.

After his release, Schäfer started his own business as a lay preacher. His field of activity was initially separated Protestant circles, which opened up to him largely without criticism. There he also met Hugo Baar , who at that time was still a preacher in a Baptist church . In Schäfer and Baar, a strong leader and a rhetorically skilled preacher came together, who knew how to bind many people to themselves when they appeared together. Baar, who broke away from Schäfer in the last years of his life, came under the - according to Baar - "demonic" influence of the former youth carer and became a slave to him. At the end of 1959 he was removed from his ministry and resigned from the Baptist Church.

Schäfer and Baar pretended to serve the idea of ​​an early Christian way of life based on the community of property of the early Jerusalem community . With apocalyptic teachings, they spread horror scenarios among their listeners. Security from the coming catastrophes is only possible in the security of their community and under the guidance of Paul Schäfer, appointed by God. At first they expected only a tenth of their income from their followers . Later - when a closed society was formed from among the supporters - they demanded the entire wealth of their members. Inheritance, life insurance and pension rights had to be transferred to Schäfer. Schäfer and Baar invested the money in various residential and business projects.

Projects in Germany

In Lohmar-Heide , Schäfer built for his Private Sociale Mission e. V. owns a community house with its supporters. Outwardly, the sect gave the impression of being a happy community. She secured her income through the state-approved operation of a children's and youth home. Schäfer also proved to be enterprising in other areas. For example, he leased grocery and tobacco shops. He demanded that his sect members work hard and free of charge.

Over time, Schäfer demanded more and more clearly that his followers had to limit their family ties to the outside world to the minimum. It is best to give them up completely, because - according to Schäfer - "a free Christian can serve God better". By compulsory confession he was able to assert his influence on the individual more and more. Most intimate thoughts and actions had to be spoken before him. Draconic corporal punishments were imposed on him. While Schäfer demanded sexual asceticism from his followers , he sexually assaulted children, and exclusively boys.

Activities in Chile from 1961

When two cases of raped boys became known in Siegburg in 1961, the Bonn public prosecutor applied for an arrest warrant. Schäfer immediately went into hiding with the help of friends and fled to Chile . The prosecution witnesses, around 150 children in the home, were brought to Chile in a night-and-fog operation on a charter plane. His now more than 200 followers - most of them came from Hamburg , Gronau and Siegburg, some from Graz / Austria - followed him over the next few months. Schäfer lured them with an "early Christian life in the promised land". He threatened those who were hesitant and fearful with the claim that a Soviet invasion of apocalyptic proportions would destroy all opportunities for life in Germany.

In connection with the following exodus, the house of the sect community in Heide was sold to the federal government . It brought in proceeds of 900,000 DM . With this money, Schäfer acquired a run-down finca on a larger scale near the town of Parral - about 350 kilometers south of Santiago de Chile . He called it Colonia Dignidad - Colony of Dignity (officially Sociedad Benefactora y Educacional Dignidad - Charitable and Educational Community Dignity , since 1988 Villa Baviera - Villa Bavaria ).

Schäfer and Baar told the Chilean authorities that they wanted to look after Chilean orphans there . The intention was to bring “familyless” offspring to the Colonia.

In the unity of the Colonia Dignidad he managed to develop his mechanisms of oppression further. He demanded total submission from his followers and enforced this by force. The working day in the “Colony of Dignity” was 16 hours. Rest days, church services and prayer times that had existed before were abolished as "pointlessly wasted time". The bondage of the cult members became so strong that all power to resist was extinguished. There were strictly separate houses for women, men and children. Private conversations were gradually and strictly forbidden. Violations resulted in severe penalties. Everyone had to fear being denounced, everyone could be an informant .

The colony was developed into a kind of fortress. Palisade fences with watchtowers and trip hazards as well as armed guards ensured that a dictatorship , hermetically sealed from the outside, emerged.

Economic success and political contacts

In just a few years, constant forced labor gave rise to a large-scale agricultural business with a fenced-in area of ​​around 15,000 hectares, which the media called a “model estate”. Schäfer had his sect members build roads and bridges and set up mines to mine gold , uranium and titanium . The hospital, in which the poor population of the surrounding area was treated free of charge, was the flagship of the colony.

Chilean boys were given food and training at the Colonia Dignidad boarding school . This boarding school also served to recruit new sect offspring. The children's complaints about mistreatment and abuse were initially not taken seriously by the parents and were therefore not pursued by the state authorities.

Schäfer had negotiated with the Pinochet regime. Since the coup in September 1973 , there has been close cooperation between the Chilean military dictatorship and the colony. As part of this, the isolated area of ​​the sect colony was used by Pinochet's secret service Dina as a quarters for the imprisonment, torture and murder of opponents of the regime. The full extent of the actions in the colony became the subject of police investigations from 2005.

Several German politicians visited Schäfer's colony, including the later Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss in 1977 when he received an honorary doctorate from the Universidad de Chile during Pinochet's time . Schäfer had the protective support of the German embassy in Santiago, whose building was renovated inside by craftsmen from the Colonia Dignidad, among others . Attempts to get family members out of the sect colony with the help of the Foreign Office also failed because members of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany went in and out there. Ambassador Erich Strätling maintained close and friendly contact with Schäfer, among others . Former sect members complain that they were sent back to Colonia by the German embassy after trying to escape.

In April 2016, Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier admitted that the Foreign Office and the staff of the embassy at the time had neglected to say that: "From the 1960s to the 1980s, German diplomats looked the other way at best - at least they did too little to protect their compatriots in this colony" . The sect leader succeeded in conveying a positive image of “German creativity” abroad even after the end of the Pinochet dictatorship.

Investigations by the German judiciary

In the 1980s and 1990s, three preliminary investigations were initiated against Paul Schäfer and other members of the Colonia Dignidad in Germany. These investigations did not lead to a trial or an arrest warrant against Schäfer.

According to the Packmor couple concerned before the Bonn investigative committee, investigations into bodily harm and deprivation of liberty against Paul Schäfer began in the mid-1980s .

In 1991, a Frankfurt lawyer filed a complaint against Paul Schäfer for participating in the killing of opposition Chileans in Colonia Dignidad . A third method began in late April 1997. "After a detailed report in the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , we have ex officio initiated an investigation against Paul Schaefer of sexual abuse of young people in Chile," said Paul Iwand, spokesman for the Bonn public prosecutor.

Arrest and convictions

On March 10, 2005, Schäfer was arrested in Argentina after being in hiding for eight years. Two days later he was handed over to the Chilean public prosecutor. In March 2005, the Chilean authorities charged kidnapping in connection with the disappearance of dissident Alvaro Vallejos . In November 2004, Schäfer was found guilty of the sexual abuse of 27 children in absentia by a court in Chile. Another indictment was brought against Schäfer in December 2005 after the former head of the Colonia clinic, Gisela Seewald, had confessed to torturing children with electric shocks and subjecting them to unnecessary “psychiatric treatments” to make them compliant. In the indictment, Schäfer and Seewald are accused, among other things, of snatching eight children of German origin from their parents and of severely mistreating them. On May 24, 2006, Schäfer was finally found guilty of child abuse in 25 cases by Judge Hernán González of the court in Parral, Chile, and sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment and payments totaling 770 million pesos (CLP) (converted $ 1.5 million (USD) = 1.22 million euros ) were sentenced to eleven youths whose representatives had filed a lawsuit.

On May 14, 2009, Schäfer was sentenced to a further three years imprisonment in Santiago de Chile for bodily harm in eight cases. The victims were children who had been tortured with psychotropic drugs in the settlement's hospital between 1970 and 1980.

In addition, there was still another process pending for illegal weapon possession.

death

Schäfer died of heart disease on April 24, 2010 at the age of 88 in a prison hospital in Santiago de Chile. He was buried in the Parque del Recuerdo Cordillera cemetery in the Puente Alto district of Santiago. At the funeral, which took place amid popular protests, only seven people are said to have been present - including one member of Schäfer's family, the adopted daughter Rebecca.

literature

  • Gero Gemballa : Colonia Dignidad. A German camp in Chile . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg, 1988, ISBN 3-499-12415-7 .
  • Ulla Fröhling: Our stolen life. The true story of love and hope in a cruel sect . Bastei-Lübbe paperbacks, 2012, ISBN 3-404-61660-X .
  • Friedrich Paul Heller : Lederhosen, bun and poison gas. The background of the Colonia Dignidad . Butterfly Verlag, 4th edition, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-89657-096-3 .
  • Ingo Lenz: Away from life. 36 years imprisonment in the German sect . Ullstein Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 3-550-07613-4 .
  • Claudio R. Salinas / Hans Stange: Los amigos del "Dr." Schäfer. La complicidad entre el Estado chileno y Colonia Dignidad. Santiago de Chile 2006, ISBN 956-841006-6 .
  • Klaus Schnellenkamp: Born in the shadow of fear. I survived the Colonia Dignidad , Herbig Verlag 2007, ISBN 978-3-7766-2505-9 .
  • The pistol was always at hand . In: Der Spiegel . No. 33 , 1997 ( online interview with two victims about child abuse in Colonia Dignidad).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Susanne Bauer: Psychological treatment options for religiously traumatized people using the example of the Colonia Dignidad sect ; Henning Freund: Religion as trauma and coping aid using the example of the totalitarian religious community Colonia Dignidad. both In: Michael Utsch (Ed.): Pathologische Religiosität. Genesis, examples, treatment approaches. Kohlhammer Verlag 2011, pp. 67-101 and pp. 106-137.
  2. ↑ Bernd Berggur: Colonia dignidad: Outlines of a German colonization project in Chile . In: BABYLON 5, Contributions to the Jewish Present, June 1989, p. 130.
  3. ^ Friedrich Paul Heller: Lederhosen, Dutt and Poison Gas. The background to Colonia Dignidad , Schmetterling Verlag Stuttgart 2006, p. 13.
  4. ^ Claudio R. Salinas, Hans Stange: Los amigos del "Dr." Schäfer: la complicidad entre el estado Chileno y Colonia Dignidad , Debate 2006, p. 51.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Wolfgang Kaes: The devil from Troisdorf . General-Anzeiger (Bonn) , February 7, 2016, accessed on December 4, 2016.
  6. ↑ Retrospect 1997 Part 1: The history of Colonia Dignidad begins in Siegburg. Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , November 23, 2004, archived from the original on June 13, 2013 ; Retrieved December 4, 2016 .
  7. ↑ After almost ten years the boss of the Colonia Dignidad was caught: the end of a long hunt . In: The world . Volume 60, No. 60 , March 12, 2005, p. 6 : "As early as 1947 [...] [...] Schäfer from Diakoniewerk Bethel was dismissed without notice for homosexual relationships with his underage protégés."
  8. ^ Sect settlement in Chile: Steinmeier confesses German mistakes in Colonia Dignidad . Der Tagesspiegel , April 26, 2016, accessed on December 4, 2016.
  9. ↑ Argentina deporta a Chile al nazi Schaefer elpais.com, from March 13, 2005 (es)
  10. ↑ Ex-boss of the torture settlement "Colonia Dignidad" died . APA report on DerStandard.at , April 24, 2010, accessed on December 4, 2016.
  11. ^ "Colonia Dignidad": Paul Schäfer: Protests at funeral . epd message in the Stuttgarter Nachrichten , April 26, 2010, accessed on December 4, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Shepherd, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sect leader, founder of the "Colonia Dignidad" in Chile
DATE OF BIRTH 4th December 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Bonn
DATE OF DEATH April 24, 2010
Place of death Santiago de Chile