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When the East German government collapsed, the evangelical minister welcomed Erich Honecker into his home for 10 weeks.
For Uwe Holmer, the question wasn’t simple. But it was clear.
Did he believe what Jesus said?
The East German dictator Erich Honecker was asking for his help. Honecker had long been an enemy of the church, a powerful ideological opponent of Christianity who had worked to suppress and control people of faith in the German Democratic Republic, and he had personally harried and harassed Holmer’s own family for years.
But now the Communist leader had been pushed from power, driven from his home, turned out of a hospital onto the street—and he was asking the Lutheran church to take him in.
Holmer had to decide what he believed.
He knew what the answer was.
“Jesus says to love your enemies,” he explained to his neighbors at the time. “When we pray, Vergib uns unsere Schuld, wie wir vergeben unseren Schuldigern”—forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us—“we must take these commands seriously.”
The evangelical minister accepted the deposed dictator into his home in January 1990 and cared for him and his wife Margot for two and a half months. The action shocked Germans, East and West, as the 40-year division of the country suddenly collapsed. As the Cold War came to a surprising end, the German people didn’t know what was going to happen next or how they should treat those on the other side, now that the political and military barriers were gone.
The until-then unknown pastor offered one bold answer: forgiveness and hospitality. Hate, Holmer said, is “not a good starting point for a new beginning among our people.”
Holmer, known in Germany as “the man who Honecker lived with,” died on September 25. He was 94.
“Uwe Holmer was ...
from Christianity Today Magazine
Umn ministry
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