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   T     T      [  1   U      U      U      U      U      U      U      U      Y     Y      Y      Y  (   Y     Z     [     [  X   F\  0   [                      jT      U        ' (   U      U                      U      U      [      Y      jT      jT      U                      U      Y      Y      Y      U    jT      U      jT      U      Y              F~T  &   T  @   jT      jT      jT      jT      U      Y      Y  )   Y                                                                                            The Rettershof case


1) Requirements for the discussion

The highest echelon of leadership of the Hare Krishna Movement from the time of Schloss Rettershof have either wandered away or left the movement. In any case they have not been acting in a leading position in Germany for a long time. But also among the "simple" devotees there is hardly anyone still around who could speak about the Rettershof court case out of his own experience. Today's members of the Hare Krishna Movement, practically all of whom did not belong to the movement at the time of Schloss Rettershof, do not feel very personally affected (some might even feel not at all affected) by the Rettershof case. Consequently they do not see the necessity to defend themselves, nor to critically reflect upon these events.

Nevertheless this generation of devotees has adopted the opinion of the "older" devotees, who see the behaviour of the prosecuting attorney s office at that time not so much as legal and legitimate exercise of justice, but rather more or less as an campaign, surcharged with prejudice and arbitrary justice and the media's behaviour (at least until after the beginning of the trial) as a rabble-rousing propaganda of gross materialists. It is implied that both - media and the judicial authority - threatened and fundamentally put in question the existence of ISKCON. Although today this defensive attitude so common for the Rettershof generation is, for the stated reasons, less commonly to be seen, the whole subject is even today still emotionally "loaded" in the Hare Krishna Movement.

The above mentioned change of generations and the consequent personal disaffection combine in the present generation to the view of an abstract threat emanating from the Rettershof case. The coincidence of these two factors explains why the Hare Krishna Movement has paid so little attention to the Rettershof case, although it was a far reaching event for the movement in Germany. This constellation has blocked within the Hare Krishna Movement itself a sober and unprejudiced view of the incidents and the question of the role and the involvement of the Hare Krishna Movement in them. It would, however, be necessary to reflect on these topics, if only in order to prevent the repetition of similar events. That we speak today about this  Rettershof case is only possible against the background of a spirit of reform and criticism within the Hare Krishna Movement.



2) Motives and Methods of investigation

In the following pages I will try to reconstruct parts of the events at that time and to re-evaluate them from today's perspective. For my studies I have used the files of the court case, more than hundred newspaper clippings, interviews with witnesses, and letters of Srila Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krishna Movement. 

I am focusing my evaluation on the side of those involved in thease, namely on the side of the devotees. This assessment is furthermore an attempt toward self-critical review. Consequently, the events in and around the Rettershof are presented herein from a limited viewpoint. If only because of the limited time available, I do not intend to present all those events in an all-encompassing and general way. This also means that the self-criticism of the Hare Krishna Movement, although very much needed, cannot lead to a belated legitimation of the opponents. The things which were done or not done by the "other" side play in this analysis only a subordinate role. I prefer rather to be guided by the questions:
*  under what internal and external social conditions the events in Schloss Rettershof are to be classified;
* by what motives and by what self-estimation the persons, especially those in ISKCON, were led;
* what realizations can the Hare Krishna Movement make today and what have they already learnt from these events.



3) The Hare Krishna Movement around 1974


In spring of 1974 the devotees rented and moved into Schloss Rettershof near Frankfurt. Not all other temples were herewith abandoned, but the Schloss was by far the biggest project and became the center of the Hare Krishna Movement as well as the central office of the publishing house of the movement in Germany.

The ISKCON in Germany was headed during the time under discussion by Hamsadutta Das (Hans Kary), who was an American of German origin who had joined the movement in America. He had come with his wife in the early seventies to Germany and had rendered a lot of service in helping to advance the movement in Germany. He was a member of the GBC (Governing Body Commission), the highest management authority of ISKCON (created by the founder of ISKCON himself), and was in charge of other European countries as well. Other important persons tp that time were Sucandra Dasa (Stefan Kess, present spiritual name: Bhakti-bhushana Swami), who was the temple president in Schloss Rettershof and one of the main defendants in the trial before the Landgericht Frankfurt/Main and Cakravarti Dasa (Peter Kaufmann), who was temple president after Sucandra Dasa and during the time of the raid of the police.

In June of 1974 the journalist Hans-Conrad Zander joined the devotees sub rosa and lived in the Schlo for some days. His "disclosure story" in STERN created a sensation and became the instigation for further and more thorough inquiries, which culminated in Dezember 1974 in the raid.

The inquiries before the raid were manifold. It was alleged that persons left Germany with improper identity cards, did not follow laws for tax and social security, falsified documents, had violated the privacy of the post, had committed fraud and further crimes.

Parents had introduced legal proceedings on the grounds of bodily injury and coercion. Additionally there were two spectacular cases where minors were hidden from their legal guardians. In one case the at that time 16-year old Nikhilananda Dasa (Nikolai Jankowsky) did not return to his mother from a visit of several weeks to the Schloss (as originally permitted by his mother). Attempts by the mother to find out the whereabouts of her son substantiated the suspicion that the devotees helped the son to hide from his mother. The other case was that of the at that time 2-year old Vishaka. The wife of Sucandra Dasa (Stefan Kess) moved with her daughter, Vishaka, to relatives in Hamburg, after leaving her husband and the Hare Krishna Movement. At that time both parents had custody of the child. After his wife had left, the father had taken the child back and hidden her at an unknown place. Upon her application and the ensuing trial custody was given solely to the mother. At the time of the raid on Schloss Rettershof the police were still looking for the child. This circumstance received a lot of interest and coverage in the media. Shortly after the raid, while Sucandra Dasa was in detention awaiting trial, he revealed the hiding place of his daughter and made sure that she could return to her mother.

In Dezember 1974 a big police detachment raided Schloss Rettershof and simultaneously other rooms belonging to ISKCON, e.g. the temple in Berlin. During the raid the police found two pistols and two rifles with proper munition in possession of the temple president Cakravarti Dasa . The weapons had been illegally imported to Germany and kept in the Schloss. The disclosure of the weapons immediately received a lot of interest and coverage in the media. Cakravarti Dasa took sole responsibility for the weapons and was convicted in 1978 by the Landgericht Frankfurt/Main to a suspended sentence of 6 months with probation, which was the minimum penalty. The court granted that his intention was only to defend himself and that the devotees had been threatened before.

Though the alleged kidnappings und the disclosure of weapons fascinated the media right after the raid, the question of collected money and collection methods were forced more and more into the public eye. First of all due to practical reasons, because the charge of kidnapping had to be dropped by the prosecuting attorneys office after some days during the main hearing.And the charge of illegal weapon holding was dropped. Only one individual devotee was found responsible for this crime and the Hare Krishna Movement as a whole was rehabilitated.



4) Collections and collection methods

From the beginning of the existence of the Hare Krishna Movement the distribution of literature was understood as the central medium for spreading Krishna consciousness, which in turn was the goal and content of the Hare Krishna Movement itself. Already at a young age the founder of the Hare Krishna Movement was requested by his spiritual master Bhaktisiddhanta Swami Prabhupadan at their first meeting to translate Krishna consciousness into the English language, and he had indeed made this request to his life mission.
In the beginning days of the Hare Krishna Bewegung, however, book distribution had yet no major significance. There were hardly any books, and the existing ones were not sold in a significant number.

Under the supervision of the founder of the movement, Shrila Prabhupada, the movement was able to attain worldwide growth to the amazement of all, more and more members were recruited, the movement took hold in more and more countries und founded numerous new temples, farm communities, schools and other institutions. Shrila Prabhupada personally started many ambitious projects in India. The financing of such projects - charities as well as temple projects - was only possible by the help of the comparatively rich West. Shrila Prabhupada often used himself the analogy of the seeing, but lame India and the blind, but strong West: helped by the strong West, the lame India could advance. And the blind West would, led by the enlightened India regain its power of vision. Before the background of this vision of a East-West constellation the German devotees founded in the seventies the the hunger-help project, officially registered at Schloss Rettershof in April, 1974. A bank account for donations was opened and a record was produced (carrying the printed notice that the profit of this record would go to this charitable project) and distributed on the street. On demand, donation receipts were also given.

Independently of this development, the sales of books on public streets and places had, especially in Germany, begun to greatly increase. Not only the need for money, but also the actual amount of money transferred increased. In a parallel development the leadership of the Hare Krishna Movement in Germany as well as the book distributors on the street began to emphasize more and more help for "hungry children in India", even in book distribution, which was originally not primarliy intended for collecting of donations, but rather for spreading of religion. They appealed with this shift of emphasis to the willingness of the passers-by, after recognizing that one could in this way collect more money (and ultimately distribute more books at the same time).

After collecting of donations and missionary activity by the same persons had thus begun, also the separation of the collected money according to (the giver's) intentions disappeared, if such separation was actually ever intended. Not only for the devotees, but also for the bookkeepers appointed by the court was it impossible to decide later what proportion of the money was received from book sales and what part from collections for Hunger Help. In the decision of the state court dated 28 April, 1978, is stated, "As all movements of money took place through the local ISKCON chapters, it was impossible to establish any independent economic activities of the Hunger Help."
	The failure to divide the intake according to purpose was not however the only book distribution problem in those years. The book distributors had in the months before the police raid at Rettershof already become unwelcome in many places. Citizens complained increasingly of rude and deceptive methods, newspapers printed warnings against the book distributors, in many places the police forbade the sellers the right to carry out their activities and the devotees had to pay more and more fines. The Hare Krishna Movement had applied in several cities for collection permission. However this was denied by the authorities because there was no clear control of the collected monies, or permission was given under the condition of sealed collection boxes and donor lists with receipt of the money's reaching the intended goal, which conditions were refused by the devotees. "Nothing was done by the devotees to counteract the added requirements connected with collection permission, but rather the position was taken that no official permission was needed for the sankirtan tours", as the state court says in the decision of 28 April, 1978. Considering this massive resistance it seems hardly imaginable that the devotees were not aware of their precarious situation. A witness states even, "In many conversations (with members of the Hare Krishna Movement) I have had the experience that according to the opinion of the Krishna sect the begging cannot go on this way much longer." Nevertheless I have found no indications that the leadership of the Hare Krishna Movement had drawn the consequences. Could they not do anything to stop the impending danger, or did they just not want to?
	I believe there were several things that converged to cause this remarkable lack of action. The leaders were obviously not capable of understanding the situation, not to speak of responding effectively. 
	Against this psychological and social background the devotees had developed from arbitrarily arranged official statements appropriate "Krishna-conscious" defense mechanisms to support these partly morally inacceptable and partly illegal activities. For example there was the idea that everyone who gives the Krishna devotees a donation is blessed, for the devotee uses this money for Krishna and the donor therefore becomes indirectly also a devotee, even if he knows nothing of the purpose of the donation. And the greater the donation, the greater the profit for the donor. On the other hand, this money only leads to suffering and ignorance for the donor, if it is not used in Krishna's service but instead wasted for material sense gratification. So in both ways it was good and desirable to take as much money as possible from the pockets of the people. Popular morality and law could be disregarded if necessary as materialistic illusions in contrast to the "true" morality of Krishna-consciousness. Justified in this way, the devotees felt no need to keep books on the intended end of the collected money, for what they were doing was already true charity, as long as they used the money only in Krishna's service, whether for the distribution of Prasadam (holy food) to the needy or for the production and distribution of transcendental literature.
	Besides, the devotees seem to have had rather optimistic expectations on how long it would take for the whole of society to become Krishna conscious, thus legitimatising the methods at least retroactively. Finally, the devotees seem to have comforted themselves with the idea that Krishna would protect those who had devoted themselves to His service from possible negative reactions, thus no earnest danger would incur upon the devotees from the state and legal authorities despite their breaking the law.
	Hamsadutta dasa was already well established in the eyes of the devotees as the only legitimate representative of Srila Prabhupada and thus he was able to stamp his own personal style upon the Hare Krishna Movement. Intoxicated by his own imaginary power, the disrespect he already felt for law, order and society became ever greater. The other leaders - as well as the majority of the corps devotees - seem to have been either too credulous or too weak to change the direction in which they were being led. In addition the Hare Krishna Movement recruited its members mainly from social drop-outs rather than from more conservatively oriented persons and therefore they were also probably able to gain some pleasure from anarchic provocation of society.


4)_	 Consequences

	When the police raided Schlo Rettershof on December 15, 1974, and took the DM 800,000 in custody (which was never again to be returned), the devotees began to wake up to reality. The shock was so great that even years later many devotees maintained an irrational fear of the police and legal authorities. Because it was not clear to them the extent to which they had caused their own problems, they believed that the police and legal authorities had come with no provocation and therefore something like the Rettershof trial could reoccur any time to the Hare Krishna Movement. This kind of "coming to grips with the past" only clouds one's view for objective and impartial study of the subject in question and is of no use in protecting against the repetition of such events. When we talk today about the Rettershof trial, this is therefore also the expression of renewal within the Hare Krishna Movement itself.
	What can we learn today from those events? The central cause of that development within the Hare Krishna Movement is not to be attributed to individual persons or conditions. The real problem is not that individual persons or conditions had a negative tendency - things of this type will never be completely avoidable - but that this tendency could become manifest largely without checks and balances. This was also in my opinion facilitated or even made possible by the fact that the Hare Krishna Movement was relatively strongly isolated from the social environment. Extensive contact with the outside world did exist - already the number of books distributed makes this clear - but these contacts rarely led to real dialogue. Thus things could occur in the "isolation" of the Hare Krishna Movement which otherwise would have been impossible. The dialogue refusal tactics in respect to the outside world also were carried over into the Hare Krishna Movement itself by means of strongly hierarchically structured communication, which led to the situation that important problems were also not mentioned within the group.
	From the side of the Hare Krishna Movement it is mainly the responsibility of the ISKCON devotees themselves to establish the preconditions for dialogue with society at large. A main message of this conference is that we intend to advance further on this path. Communications and leadership styles have changed within the Hare Krishna Movement itself, last but least through a complete change in management personalities, and the preconditions have been established for a dialogue which would not have been possible in earlier days on this basis. Society, the churches, the politicians, the media may (now hopefully) be expected to establish the preconditions for dialogue from their .
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     ,=                                            ՜. +,0            H      P      \      d      l      t      |                    BBT     R                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  