This church, my dear Reader isn't situated, as you probably assumed, in faraway Russia

No, you'll find this church less than 50 miles north of the outscirts of Berlin, on German soil, in an area called the "Uckermark".

But we don't want to get lost in the history of this particular church or village, where it is sited. No, we want to take this rotten and deserted church as a symbol. As a symbol characterising a situation, you'll find all over the north-eastern parts of the former "DDR" (Communist East Germany):

The "3rd Reich", the following time of Soviet occupation and 40 years of "DDR" sozialism left deep traces in the for a long time protestant orientated area of the Uckermark and Vorpommern. The fall of the wall implemented in this mainly agricultural orientated area besides a lot of very positve facts a very high rate of unemployment. This again leads to a great loss of social structures and a reduction of specially the young population, moving away to bigger cities in the West or South.

"Volkskirche Strukturen", a protestant and eventuelly catholic church in each village, high reputation of the pastors, reaching almost all population is a fact of the PAST. Nowadays many church buildings, which survived the communist times, have to be given up. As most of them are surrounded by the village-graveyard, nothing else can be done with them. Often single pastors pastor areas of more than 15 miles in diameter. The structures of the churches are reduced, the number of paid church workers is decreasing from month to month. So groups fade away, as there are not enough volunteer workers left over to run the small remnants.