Censored family life

The Humboldt Laboratory is showing a children’s Bible with passages from Colonia Dignidad pasted over / It is one of 38 special individual objects hanging from the ceiling.

Surrounded by animals, Adam and Eve stand under trees. Eve is feeding a deer while Adam strokes the mane of a lion. This seemingly harmless depiction of paradisiacal life is one of the passages in the children’s Bible ‘Shield of Faith’ that the sect leader Paul Schäfer had censored. Everything to do with love and family was banned from everyday life in Colonia Dignidad in Chile, which was founded in the early 1960s and was based on psychological terror, torture and abuse.

The Humboldt Laboratory in the Humboldt Forum is displaying one such censored Bible, which belonged to a former cult member who was himself a victim of physical and psychological abuse. ‘The children’s Bible is a testimony to a system of extraordinary brutality and lawlessness,’ emphasises Dr Gorch Pieken, curator of the exhibition. The inconspicuous book has it all: it opens up a view of the harrowing history of Colonia Dignidad, but also of the threats to democratic order.

A system of brutality and lawlessness

During the military dictatorship under Pinochet, the colony served as an operational base and torture centre for the Chilean secret service, among other things. The Federal Republic of Germany also played its part in allowing a system in which sect members were suppressed and children raped to exist for decades. Paul Schäfer used his contacts in his home country to supply weapons to the military dictatorship, among other things. ‘The embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Santiago de Chile handed over fugitive sect members to Schäfer again. Why did the German ambassador break the law in favour of the cult leader?’ asks Gorch Pieken.

Colonia Dignidad: evidence of the internal contradictions of liberal democracies

The Chilean military coup in 1973 against the elected president Salvador Allende was also supported by a democratic system: the USA. ‘The protecting power of modern democracy betrayed its own values in return,’ emphasises Gorch Pieken. The Children’s Bible thus also relates to current scientific research. The Berlin Cluster of Excellence ‘CONTESTATIONS OF THE LIBERAL SCRIPT (SCRIPTS)’, whose research projects the Humboldt Lab provides insights into, is focussing on such internal contradictions of liberal democracies.
To illustrate the political contexts, a kind of organisation chart will be shown alongside the children’s Bible, providing an insight into the network of dependencies and relationships at Colonia Dignidad.

The children’s Bible was loaned to the HU by former sect member Robert Matthusen. As a child and teenager, he did not have his own copy because the books were kept under lock and key. In the evenings, the person who was responsible for the children would read from the children’s Bible, Matthusen recalls in an interview with the Leipzig production company LOOKSfilm, which is working on a documentary series about Colonia Dignidad.

He particularly liked the stories of Noah and Moses. He later read ‘The Shield of Faith’ to his own children.

In Schäfer’s day, no one talked about the fact that some of the pictures and text passages had been pasted over. It was only when Matthusen later got his hands on an uncensored Bible that he understood what was going on. Everything to do with family or sexuality had been censored – passages such as: ‘And God said to Eve: I will give you pain and sorrow when you become a mother.’

Paul Schäfer claimed that children came directly from the arms of God, Matthusen reports. Men and women had to live separately, love relationships and family life were not allowed. If a woman in the colony was pregnant, she had to hide. ‘That’s why none of us had any idea how a child would be born.’ Schäfer used his version of Christianity to make people compliant. He misused the Bible to ‘bind the conscience’, says Matthusen. He censored the Holy Scriptures that the sect leader referred to himself. ‘Anything that ran counter to his own interests was simply pasted over and crossed out,’ says Birgit Rasch from LOOKSfilm.

The entire history of the colony is highlighted in the multi-part documentary series by LOOKSfilm, which was broadcast on 10 March on ARTE and on 16 and 23 March 2020 on Ersten. The film team draws on historical film footage from Colonia Dignidad, current footage and more than 40 interviews with people who were involved with the colony. ‘We tell the story of Colonia Dignidad from the inside out,’ emphasises Birgit Rasch. Like the children’s Bible, the documentary also refers to the many unresolved questions associated with the colony’s reign of terror.