Friedenskapelle

Elleringhausen (51.340862 | 8.538253)

Thanks for life

Gratitude is closely related to amazement. It lifts us out of our everyday consciousness, in which we hardly notice all that life gives us.

Suddenly something flows through you, joyful, electrifying, overwhelming, and you realize what a gift you have been given. Through another person, through a stroke of luck or simply through the joy of being alive. It becomes particularly intense when gratitude is not only felt, but also expressed.

It is this intensity that I feel as I stand in the small chapel on the Ruthenberg near Elleringhausen. It only exists because its builders, all men from the village, have sought their own way of communicating something to the world. Of the suffering they experienced, of their gratitude for having escaped with their lives. They returned home from the war. Some had been captured by American soldiers in the village itself; white flags hung from the houses prevented more people from dying. Others returned from captivity years later, some only in their late fifties. The atrocities they had experienced and committed themselves silenced the men. They were later referred to as the "silent generation". They withdrew into themselves, brooded, despaired, tried to repress. Words were not their thing. They preferred to act. The chapel, which they built themselves stone by stone, high above the village: that was their language.

I can see small clay tablets on the walls. On them are place names that are deeply engraved in the collective memory of the Germans: Verdun, Stalingrad, Narvik, Sedan, Ysselstein, el-Amain. They stand for battlefields, cannon fodder, cadaver obedience, mass graves. A number of crosses on each plaque: the number of fallen. Even then, Elleringhausen only had a few hundred inhabitants, 41 of whom perished in the Second World War, an unusually high number. One family lost four out of six sons; this is inscribed on one of the two death plaques to the left and right of the altar.

While still in the prison camp, one of the men, Josef Isenberg, vowed that if he survived all this, he would build a chapel to the Mother of God. He found returnees who shared his feelings and wanted to join in. However, it took years for them to recover from the shock of the battles and get down to work. One contributed the architectural plan, another the building materials, some collected money for a bell and the community donated the square. Sorrow and consolation seem to be the inner foundations of the chapel in equal measure. It was consecrated in 1967. Since then, the statue of the Virgin Mary has stood in the center of the dimly lit room. She radiates silence. Peace of heart, kindness of heart. A couple from the village provide fresh flowers up here; they too have lost relatives in the war.

For the mourning and grateful men, Mary was the "Queen of Peace", a title they painted on the wall above the altar. Feminine softness as healing for hardships suffered. That touches me as a visitor, even today, in very different times. How often I am hard on myself, with negative self-judgments, with relentless demands on myself. The quiet hour in the small chapel loosens something in me, softens something, makes me feel grateful too.

The men found a few words after all. In the rough local dialect, the following is written at the entrance: "Väy Heimkehrer und ne Masse Guttwilliger buggern der Mutter Guades vam gurren Friän tatum Danke dütt Kapelleken im Sumer 1967." As someone who doesn't speak Low German, I can understand this expression of gratitude and goodwill. I think I can read another message between the lines: the wish never to have to go to war again.

Author: Michael Gleich