On a Saturday night in Treuenbrietzen, a tiny town of less than 8,000 people about an hr southwest of Berlin, the sound of bass shakes the fieldstone and Gothic brick masonry of St Mary’s Church, which dates back to the 13th century. Strobe lights flicker across its circular arches, sweep over its pillars, and glide across the celebrated Wagner organ. At the altar, before a crowd of music enthusiasts, a female with long black hair and a clerical collar takes the microphone. As the DJ fades the beat, Pastor Simone Lippmann-Marsch reminds the crowd that they have not gathered to escape the world, but to remember that hope can inactive sound louder than fear.
Lippmann-Marsch, 42, is not the kind of pastor most people expected. Tattoos run down her arms; a silver ringing flashes at her lip; her voice cuts through the rhythm of the music. She does not ask her listeners to be pious, she asks them to listen: to each other, to themselves. This scene could unfold in Berlin’s nightlife, yet it happens here, in Brandenburg – the sparsely populated state that encircles the German capital like a patchwork of increasing commuter towns and fading villages. In many agrarian areas beyond Berlin’s commuter belt, villages are emptying, shops have closed, and buses arrive erstwhile an hr if at all. In the space left behind, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, or AfD) has built its strongest bastions. In any counties, more than a 3rd of voters support a organization now monitored by Germany’s home intelligence agency as extremist.
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