New York Times, 10/13/94 p.A4

"Officials in Germany Denounce Sect as a Menace to Democracy"

Leading members of the German Government and oppostition parties 
have attacked the American-based Scientology movement as a danger 
to democracy, and called on the next government to ban it.

The interior ministers of the 16 German states last spring called 
Scientology "an organization that combines elements of business 
crime and psychological terror against its own members with 
economic activities and sectarian traits, under the protective 
cover of a religious group."
On Tuesday, Renate Rennebach, a member of Parliament from the 
opposition Social Democratic Party, asserted that Scientology 
was not a religion but a conspiratorial movement with global 
political aims.

"At present Scientology is misusing international concern about 
right-wing radical attacks in the Federal Republic to cause 
serious damage to the reputation of the country abroad, with 
an advertising campaign in influential American newspapers," 
Mrs. Rennebach said.

Full-page advertisements paid for by the British-based International 
Association of Scientologists appeared in The New York Times 
and The Washington Post last month.  The advertisements recounted 
the rise of militant right-wing violence against foreign asylum-seekers 
and immigrants in Germany since unification four years ago and 
said "fascism is on the rise again, condoned and encouraged 
by the German Government."

Labor Minister Norbert Blum denounced the advertisements today 
as a campaign of defamation against the German Government, which 
has strongly condemned the attacks against foreigners and since 
1992 has outlawed five neo-Nazi parties that it maintained had 
inspired the attacks.

"Scientology is not a church or a religious organization," Mr. 
Blum said.  "Scientology is a machine for manipulating human 
beings."

Asserting that the movement's real aims were political and transcended 
national boundaries, Mrs. Rennebach, her party's spokesman on 
sects, said the new German federal government that will be elected 
next Sunday should put the group under surveillance.

With an estimated two million members in Germany alone, Scientology 
has aroused considerable controversy since it first came here 
in 1970 and stimulated the production of at least six books 
denouncing it for defrauding adherents of their savings, threatening 
opponents with violence and seeking to infiltrate companies 
and entire branches of commerce, such as commercial real estate, 
in major German cities.

Ursula Cabertha, who heads a department of the Hamburg state 
Ministry of the Interior that is devoted exclusively to dealing 
with complaints about Scientology, supported Mrs. Rennebach's 
call to outlaw the movement here and said the Hamburg authorities 
would pursue legal action against it all the way to the German 
supreme court.

"Scientology is by far the most dangerous and the most widespread 
of these psycho-technical groups," she said.

Scientologist documents made available by Mrs. Rennebach today 
included a "Call-to-Arms Germany" complaining of bomb threats 
and violence against Scientology churches.  "We can prove beyond 
any doubt that this is the exact same pattern which was used 
to start the hate campaign against the Jewish people in 1935," 
said the document, signed by Klaus Buchele, from the group's 
office of special affairs.