My conversion...

For non-German speakers I have translated my conversion story. I hope, my English is sufficient to understand what led my to the Faith.


I was born in 1980 in Thuringia / Germany. I am the only brother in a family of five sisters. My grandparents are all non-religious, only some anti-catholic biases have remained.

Because I am from former East Germany, it took a long time to find my way to the faith. Though my family was not actively atheist, I was told absolutely nothing about religion. In school, we ridiculed people who still used to go to church. Due to those circumstances, I could not perceive the few traces of faith which where there during my childhood. Additionally, my father was a PhD. of Marxist history at a local university.

The first contact with a Catholic priest I had when I was in Grade 6 (twelve years old in Germany). Some Christian teachers wanted to teach us about the true meaning of Saint Nicholas Day and invited a priest from a nearby parish. He came in full liturgical vestment and told us about the life of this Saint in a very moving way. Even though I did not know then, today I can say: This priest was holy.

In Grade Nine, when I was fifteen, I felt a deeper curiosity about this „Mysterious One”. Being still an adolescent, I tried to do with the Bible what I did with all my books, reading it entirely and at once. In my naivety I equated God with a human being and was naturally astonished about the adoration he claimed from Mose and the Israelites. I came till the fifth book of Moses and gave up. Until then I had not even read the New Testament.

Despite this experience, I decided to visit a Sunday service in the Cathedral of Erfurt. I had only once before been in a Church building, so I did not understand what “this guy at the table” was doing.

Friends brought me in contact with a priest from a small parish in Erfurt and I decided to go to Catechesis. It was the very priest who had visited us in school in Grade 6. Due to my atheist basis, he really had to start from scratch. He used a real Catechism and not some introductory book with some hippies on the cover. My question what God was and whether he could explain it to me in five minutes was answered by a deep smile. Sadly, this impressive priest who had been serving his Church so long died from cancer of the throat after a few months. Two months later, a pupil from my class whom I had chosen as my godfather, died in an accident. I continued to go to Church service but I did not participate in Catechesis any longer.

In school, we had to decide between ethics and religion as optional subjects. I chose both but cancelled religion two months later, when I found out that I learned more about faith in the classes of my ethics teacher, a Catholic who had not been to Church for ten years, than in the classes of my religion teacher, an “active” protestant minister.
The whole time, I had a longing, a feeling that I lack something.

Two years later I began reading History and American Studies at Leipzig University. At the end of my first term, I spontaneously went to the priest of a nearby parish, a missionary of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. When I told him my story he decided to baptise my during Easter Vigil.

I was asked very often why I decided to be baptised. I always answer that it was not my decision but God’s. His gift was there the whole time. I only needed to accept it! And God has this gift for everyone else who has not been baptised.
Thank you, Lord, for your grace!