The Swiss Roger Schutz developed a vision of a better way during the Second World War. And that he then began to walk consistently – in a small, seemingly insignificant village in Burgundy.
The founder of the Taize community, the Swiss Frere Roger Schutz (1915-2005), wanted to find a new way in Europe's darkest years. During World War II, he chose the hill of Taize in Burgundy to live communion in a new way: Brotherhood and connectedness, between generations, peoples, but also between denominations.
In the summer of 1940, Roger Schutz found the dilapidated wine village of Taize near the former reform monastery of Cluny; a run-down, spiritually orphaned spot. Only a few kilometers from the demarcation line between the Nazi-occupied zone and the so-called free Vichy France. Here he hides Jewish and political refugees. But in 1942 he was denounced and had to return to Switzerland.
Finally, in 1944, what was to become a surprising world success and one of the most exciting spiritual journeys of the 20th century took place in Taize. In the mid-nineteenth century: a Protestant brotherhood emerges, a kind of Protestant monastic order.
Barren soil – successful idea
Times are hard after war, need is great. One of the brothers cuts down the acacia trees in front of the house in winter to make fence posts – one of the few sources of income. But it is probably precisely this meager breeding ground that should make the idea of Taize so successful. The friars take care of German prisoners of war from the surrounding area and share their meals with them: a thin soup of nettles, but offered like a feast.
For the Council Pope John XXIII. (1958-1963) Taize is a "little springtime" and Frere Roger a motor for the ecumenical movement. Already in the 40's there are first stays of young people on the hill; many stay their whole life long. From 1969, Catholics were also accepted: the first ecumenical religious community in the history of the Church and a magnet for more and more young people from all over the world.
"Always looking ahead"
One of the unwavering convictions of Taize founder Brother Roger, who put hospitality above all else and made time for every person in need great and small, was to be free of all baggage: no possessions, no titles and privileges, no archives and balance sheets, no torpor or complacency. Searching, best in conversation with the youth – always looking for the good way anew in trust in the one to whom this search is meant: God.
Frere Roger studied Western monasticism intensively – and in the end ied the slogan: always look forward, never backward. Do not freeze, do not own anything, but always listen anew and renew yourself, so as not to be rolled down one day by your own success and thus lose your spiritual roots.
Number of Taize pilgrims still increasing after 2005
Between the restless longhairs of the 1960s in the still quite solid Christian milieu, the "Children of the 80's" between Helmut Kohl and Joan Baez, the post-communist Wende youth and the "social networkers" of the 21. There are fundamental differences between the two churches in the first half of the twentieth century without institutional ties, and not only in terms of their religious and political grounding or their attitudes toward sexuality. But the number of Taize pilgrims has increased rather than decreased since the death of Brother Roger in 2005.
The God-seeker Frere Roger never understood his earthly life and work as an end in itself, but as a daily opportunity to go one step closer to his neighbor and thus to God. Or, in the words of the author Manfred Hinrich, who died in 2015: "The sea has no meaning – shipping has a meaning.