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1800s  1900-20s  1930s  1940s  1950s  1960s  1970s  1980s  1990s  2000s

1853 - Orson Spencer and Jacob Houtz travel to Prussia. They wish to speak with Kaiser Friedrich Willhelm, but the Kaiser's Minister of Religion is sent to them. They discuss Mormonism, but more specifically the church's doctrine of polygamy. The two men, and consequently the church, are banished from Prussia.
1869 - "Der Stern" is first published.
1876 - The first missionaries, Theodore Braendli und Rulon S. Wells, arrive in Berlin. 90 people attend their information meetings, and about 18 people are baptized that year.
1877 - The first ward is established in Berlin.
1880 - The first German conference is held in Berlin. William Budge, president of the European Mission, presides.
1880 - Later that year, Berlin police break-up a ward meeting. Everyone present is arrested, and all foreign missionaries and the mission president, President Serge L. Ballif, are banished from the city of Berlin.
1884 - The first Relief Society in Berlin is established on August 23rd.
1898 - As of December 3rd, there are 107 members of the first Berlin ward.
1900 - Because of increasing persecution in Hamburg, the German Mission moves its office to Berlin.
1902 - A second ward is established in Spandau.
1904 - Increased persecution of missionaries in Germany forces the German Mission to move its office to Zurich, Switzerland.
1918 - Berlin belongs to the Swiss-German Mission. 300 people are baptized in the mission.
1920 - More wards are established in Moabit, Charlottenburg, East, and Schöneberg.
1921 - In Berlin, ward records state that church meetings are visited by more investigators than there are members.
1924 - 1,795 baptisms in the entire Swiss-German Mission--145 of those take place in Berlin.
1927 - Church membership reaches 1,000 in Berlin.
1928 - The Swiss-German Mission is split--Each new mission keeps the same name but have headquarters in different cities. One in Dresden (which will later move to Berlin), and the other in Frankfurt/Main.
1933/4 - The National Socialist Party (Nazis) becomes distrusting of every close community. Branch presidents must report every branch activity to the Gestapo. Scout activities in the church are forbidden and songs about Zion, Judah, or Israel are also forbidden. Certain church books are banished as well.
1936 - The Olympic Games in Berlin. Four American missionaries are appointed as referees in the basketball tournament. They train the German national team. On this occasion Adolf Hitler and other leaders of the Third Reich are presented with literature from the church.
1937 - The two German speaking missions are split and renamed. Berlin belongs to the East German Mission.
1939 - All foreign missionaries are evacuated. The Second Word War begins.
1940 - Brother Klopfer--a German--is called as the new mission president.
1943 - In November the mission home is destroyed in a bombing raid. All reports that were not already sent to Salt Lake City burn. The mission office is then moved to the Langheinrich family apartment.
1946 - On the 20th of March, Ezra Taft Benson, an Apostle of the Lord, arrives in Berlin. He travels nearly 10,000 kilometers throughout Germany during the next ten months to visit and strengthen the members.
1946 - New mission president in Berlin: Walter Stover.
1947 - Dutch members donate 60 tons of potatoes to the Berlin Saints. The German members were doubly grateful. First, they were protected from starvation during the winter and, second, because, with the saved seed potatoes, now they ``could have welfare projects of their own.'' (LDS Church News Archives, Saturday, July 11, 1998).
1949 - The Berlin Airlift.
1951 - Again a new mission president in Berlin: Arthur Glaus.
1946/52 - The Berlin members have special contact to the mission president. Because he lives in Berlin, the president is able to visit the wards often.
1952 - President David O. McKay travels through Germany and dedicates two new wardhouses in Berlin -- Charlottenburg and Dahlem.
1953 - Yet another new mission president in November: Harald L Gregory.
1953 - President McKay donates $10,000 to Ernst Reuter, Berlin's mayor, to help the city with its refugee problem.
1953 - The church is officially recognized by the West German government.
1957/8 - The East German Mission is renamed as the North German Mission, but the boundaries of the mission are not modified. Emigration wave into the United States! More than 5,000 German members leave their homeland. Division of the city in four sectors. The mission president is rarely permitted to visit the wards in the GDR.
1959 - A special copy of the Book Mormon is given to Burgermeister Willy Brandt.
1961 - 13th of August! Die Mauer! A city is torn apart! The wards in the East no longer have contact with the wards in the West. Particularly affected are the Friedrichshain Ward in East Berlin and the North Ward in West Berlin.
1961 - On the 10th of September the Berlin Stake is created. It is the first stake in Germany and the 344th of the Church. With only 1,061 members, it is the smallest stake in the Church.
1961 - New wardhouses are built in Lankwitz and Spandau.
1963 - The wardhouse in Neukoelln is dedicated.
1964 - German is added as a formal language taught at the training mission.
1966 - The stake grows. At the end of the year there are already 2,100 members. A new building is dedicated in North Berlin.
1971 - Berlin is a city of baptisms. Approximately 50% of all baptisms in the North German Mission are in Berlin.
1973 - The stakehouse in Tiergarten is finished. There are now five wards with their own meetinghouses in Berlin.
1973 - The first area conference of the Church held in Europe convened Aug. 24, in Munich, Germany, according to the Aug. 25, 1973, Church News. President Harold B. Lee presided over the gathering for members from Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria and Italy.
1977 - A tour of seven European countries by President Spencer W. Kimball began in Switzerland on Aug. 13, 1977. Continuing his tour, President Kimball met with members in Padova, Rome and Catania, Italy; London, England; Berlin, Germany; Warsaw, Poland; and Dresden, Germany.
1978 - On June 7th the first Regional Conference is held in Berlin. Attending the conference are the Berlin, Hamburg, and Hannover Stakes and the Bremen and Schleswig-Holstein Districts.
1985 - The members in the GDR have their own temple. On June 28th the first temple in Germany is dedicated in Freiberg.
1987 - A telephone-connected computer information service about the Church is made available on a national basis by the Berlin Stake. The computer received 900 requests during the year. Seventy-nine of the calls were to request missionaries. Other calls were for information about the Church, including such things as location and meeting time for wards and branches in Germany, special upcoming events, and radio and television shows of interest. About 200,000 people subscribe to an information network that links them to the computer.
1988 - During his visit from Oct. 24 to Oct. 28, President Thomas S. Monson met with top Germam Democratic Republic Officials, Including Erich Honecker, Chairman of the State Council (chief government leader of the nation), and Kurt Loeffler, State Secretary for Religious Affairs.
During meetings with the government officials in Berlin, the Church was granted the right to conduct missionary work in the German Democratic Republic (DDR) and to permit Latter-day Saints from there to serve as missionaries both in their native country and elsewhere in the world.
1989 - On March 31st the first foreign missionaries are allowed behind the Wall for the first time in 50 years.
1989 - The 9th of November! The Wall falls!
1989 - December 31 the new mission reports 569 convert baptisms for the year 1989.
1990 - The Reunification of Germany on the 3rd of October!
1990 - On October 21st a Regional Conference takes place in the ICC in West Berlin. The northern wards and branches of the Leipzig stake are transferred to the West Berlin stake. The West Berlin Stake is assigned to the Germany Dresden Mission.
1991 - Division of the Dresden Mission. Beginning June 26th Berlin is its own mission. President Manfred Schütze takes over the mission as president.
1992 - Magdeburg and Prenzlau are organized as independent branches.
1993 - Frankfurt/Oder is organized as an independent branch. Groups in Eberswalde, Eisenhüttenstadt, and Schwedt/Oder are established.
1993 - Missionaries enter Bernau in March, Rathenow in April, and Demmin, Jarmen, and Pasewalk are opened to missionary work in November.
1994 - Establishment of groups in Demmin and Greifswald.
1994 - The Neubrandenburg District is split from the Berlin Stake in March. Wismar and Schwerin are added to the Neubrandenburg District, and Magdeburg and other cities in Sachsen-Anhalt are now part of the Leipzig Stake.
1994 - New mission president in Berlin: President Walter Wunderlich.
1995 - August 15, Holger Detlef Rakow, of the Dahlem Ward, is called as a new Area Authority. (Self-employed in insurance; stake president, former stake president's counselor and bishop; married Stephanie Hildegard Broich.)
1996 - President Gordon B. Hinkley visits five European nations including Germany. On June 15th he traveled to Berlin for his longest day yet, speaking twice at length to priesthood leaders during a four-hour leadership meeting, then to missionaries.
On June 16th he is interviewed by representatives of two of Berlin's major newspapers, "The Gazette" and "Die Welt", before speaking to about 3,722 at the Berlin Regional Conference.
1997 - August Schubert, from Salzburg, Austria, is called as the new mission president in Berlin.
1999 - At October General Conference, President Manfred Schütze, former Berlin Mission president, is called to the Third Quorum of the Seventy and Europe East Area.
2000 - Richard Clark, from Salt Lake City, Utah, is the new Berlin Mission president.
2001 - The Spandau Ward House is structurally damaged by a 20-year old arsonist in January. Damage is so extensive to the Bishop's office and Cultural Hall that is decided to tear down and rebuild the building.
2001 - July 14th, a bronze statue of Karl G. Maeser, the first president of BYU, was unveiled on the grounds of the Dresden Germany Stake Center by President Thomas S. Monson, first counselor in the First Presidency.
2002 - In August, The Church's Humanitarian Service donated $635,000 to assist in the clean-up efforts caused by the worst flooding in a century of record keeping in central Europe. The funds were used in nine cities: Steyr and Krems, Austria; Passau, Regensburg, Eilenburg, Dessau, Magdeburg and Dresden, Germany; and Prague, Czech Republic.
2002 - On September 7th, the Freiberg Germany Temple, originally dedicated in 1985, was rededicated by President Hinckley in one session. The temple had undergone extensive remodeling that resulted in nearly doubling the size of the temple.
2003 - In July, the Leipzig Mission is merged back to the Berlin mission. The Berlin Mission now covers the following stakes and districts: Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig and Neubrandenburg. Erich W. H. Kopischke, from the Nürnberg Stake, is called as the new Berlin Mission president.