How Missionaries Entered East Germany : The 1988 Monson-Honecker Meeting
Dialogue : A Journal of Mormon Thought
Winter 2006
39
no.4
2006
107-137
In October 1988, Thomas S. Monson met with Erich Honecker, chairman of the German Democratic Republics's State Council and General Secretary of the Socialist Union Party. In this meeting, permission was granted for the Church to send missionaries into East Germany, hold youth conferences, and call missionaries from the German Democratic Republic to serve in other parts of the world. Kuehne traces the events that led up to this meeting, reactions of Church members to this decision, and results of this meeting. He also discusses whether the Church compromised itself by meeting with Communist leaders as some people, including Church members, thought, and gives possible explanations for why Honecker agreed to the Church's requests.