In the same year Journalist Constanze Elsner received numerous anonymous telephone calls at night after a critical radio show on Scientology she had produced was aired. The male voices told her she would be killed the next day. The Munich Post Office later found out that the calls came from the office telephone of Hermann Brendel, spokesperson of the GO. His office was also used as the "Press Information Center" of the Scientology Church in Munich.
The Guardian Office was also busy on spying critic Friedrich-Wilhelm Haack, a Lutheran priest who consulted Ex-Scientologists. He was surveilled by a prvate investigator and a false psychology student with name Jacobi who tried to infiltrate his private area. At the same time the successor of Hermann Brendel, Martin Ostertag, tried to discredit Haack by saying publicly that he would sell doctor titles. Meanwhile the chairman of a Munich Medical Association, Mr. Jürgen Bausch, critized the medical claims of Scientology. Promptly he got visits by a PI and the plant Jacobi.
Ostertag condemned all the critical statements made by Haack, Bausch, Elsner and Mantell and made a psychiatric conspiracy responsible for all the bad press on Scientology in Germany.
After the Scientologists had allegedly found that out through a journalist from Berlin, they started to launch their most massive legal attack against its critics up to this day. The Church of Scientology Germany and foreign Scn-organizations filed immediately individual suits in Munich, Bonn, Cologne, Amsterdam, London, Copenhagen, Los Angeles, New York, Washington and Toronto against the following persons and institutions:
The Max-Planck-Institute,
the director of the Max-Planck Institute
for Psychiatry,
the Federal Republic of Germany,
the president of the Federal CID (BKA) Dr. Horst Herold,
two other named officials of the BKA,
the Federal Minister for Youth, Family & Health,
the Federal Minister
for Domestic Affairs,
the magazine "Neue Revue",
the journalist Fred Koenig,
and last but not least the presidents of Scotland Yard and Interpol.
Scientology's main interest was of course to silence all federal critics of their organization and to prohibit the publication of the BKA-report.
To my knowledge, noone from the above parties was ever sentenced by a court in that litigations. At least the critical BKA stayed confidential until the end of the seventies when a non-profit organization for consumer rights from Stuttgart (ABI) finally succeeded at a Superior Court with the right to quote from that report.
Two sub-organizations of Scientology were founded in that early years: The "KVPM" (the German "CCHR") in 1972 and the "Commission for Police Reform", headed by Martin Ostertag. The staff of these organizations consisted mainly of GO-staff like Ostertag and GO-FSMs.
Also in 1973 a young man started his carreer at the Scientology Church in Munich. He was the son of an Austrian post office worker. His name was Kurt Weiland.
During the trial the court found out that in 1974 Wolf had sent various cash remittances to the defense commissioner Heinz Weldhoff and had filed simultaneously an anonymous report at the local CID about Weldhoff, accusing him of accepting bribe money. It was also found out that Weldhoff became the target of Wolf after he had denied the applications of two Scientologists for exemption from military service.
Meanwhile the Guardian's Office continued its war against critic Friedrich-Wilhelm Haack. In an leaflet GO staff Kurt Weiland called Haack "an inquisitor of the 20th century" and accused him of publishing a woman's seal of profession in the German sex-magazine "Praline". On October 29th the higher District Court Munich I released an interim order against Weiland.
In Stuttgart the non-profit organization for consumer protection "ABI e. V" started legal actions for unfair competition against the local Scientology-organization, because of their aggressive way of selling books on the streets of Stuttgart. Scientology-Stuttgart and -Munich sued back and involved ABI in 8 different lawsuits. The CoS especially tried to prohibit various allegations the ABI chairmen Eberhard Kleinmann and Ingo Heinemann had published about Scientology in their ABI-newsletter. All of these lawsuits were finally lost by the CoS. Among others Kleinmann and Heinemann had further the right to say that "Scientology is the world's biggest organization of unqualified people".
Scientology also organized two pickets in Stuttgart against ABI accusing the organization of violating the freedom of religion. One participant of the picket was the then president of Scientology Germany Sepp Hasslberger.
The GO also founded another suborganization, the "Commission for Citizen's Security against Data Abuse". It was headed by the Scientologists Rolf Sieb and attorney Dr. Ulrich Buehler. Its main purpose was the establishment of a German-type "Freedom of Information Act".
On June 23rd Weiland was sentenced to pay all the court- and attorney-costs.
Few months later Weiland had also to endure a criminal trail at the Lower District Court following for the same facts. On November 16th a juvenile judge finally sentenced him (age 21) to pay 100 DM to an orphans' home.
On November 18th (two days after!) Kurt Weiland and two other GO-staff (Moyses, Stoffel) attended an information event about cults held by catholic priest Loeffelmann in a church in Munich. During an open discussion with Loeffelmann about Scientology Weiland told in front of all attendees again that Haack had violated the seal of confession. Another court litigation series followed...
During that year the German CCHR, the KVPM e. V., continued its war against psychiatric institutions. Its first attacks had started against the District Hospital Gabersee/Wasserburg in Bavaria in 1973 and had its end in a court litigation at the Higher Regional Court in 1975. The Chairman of KVPM, Georg Mesmer, had been finally sentenced to an injunction and a retraction. Mesmer had alleged that the hospital would produce "six deaths on one healed".
Its new target in 1976 was the District Hospital in Haar near Munich. In the local press KVPM reported among the usual psychiatric atrocities about an elderly lady who wasn't able to recognize her relatives after she had received a shock therapy in Haar. An independent investigation of the district parliament in Southern Bavaria followed and its findings were issued in an extensive report. It refuted all the allegations of KVPM. Nevertheless KVPM issued another atrocities report in "Freedom"-magazine, talking again about electro shock treatments, human rights abuses and "soul operations" in Haar.
At the same time KVPM started in the state Baden-Wuerttemberg similar actions. Psychiatric hospitals, like the PLK in Winnenden near Stuttgart, were visited by the "Commission" headed by GO-staff Matthias Kromer. Insistently he called for a general reform of psychiatry, after KVPM ended its visits.
In November 1976 the first raid on a Scientology organization in Germany was conducted. A District Attorney from Hamburg personally led the raid in Munich organization to get a hold of certain documents he needed for a penal suit. The Guardian's Office answered the raid in its own peculiar way: About a dozen criminal complaints by "single Scientologists" were filed against the DA and Freedom magazine supported the action by highlighting the "high criminality rate", the drug problems and the prostitution, the city of Hamburg has to endure and that this particular DA wasn't doing anything against it.
Haack was included in a criminal complaint the CoS filed against the board of the non-profit organization "ABI e. V", which had published his newest newsletter No. 59 with critical information about Scientology.
In Berlin journalist Jochen Maes investigated and disclosed the financial funding of about 1,5 Million DM of Narconon by the city of Berlin and the channelling of the money to Scientology. Maes' findings and reports caused a major scandal and while Narconon's president Peter-Uwe Krumholz fled uproad, the GO tried to silence the journalist with their usual means: anonymous phone calls at night, legal motions for interim orders and personal visits by GO officials. All combined with threats.
A tv reporter team ("Report") who planned to film a documentary about the Narconon scandal had to take his share too. Fred Marek and Peter Mezger were slapped in the face, threatened with being beaten up and of course with legal steps while they were trying to interview staff at the Narconon Center.
On April, 5th the Higher District Court Munich I sentenced GO spokesman Kurt Weiland to pay 750 DM for the repeated slander against Scientology-critic Friedrich Wilhelm Haack. At the end it was the fifth court judgement against Weiland in a series of civil suits and criminal procedures practically over the same accusation made by Weiland.
On January 25th, newly appointed GO-staff Helmuth Bloebaum had its first major public appearance. Accompanied by Kurt Weiland he attended a hearing at the state parliament in Nordrhein-Westfalen. The hearing took place on request by several petitioners due to the activities of Scientology in that state and the installment of a mission at the city of Gelsenkirchen. Right at the beginning Weiland took the stand and attacked the present hearing members and accused them for having placed him and Bloebaum under a nazi-like "Public Court of Justice" ("Volksgerichtshof") at this hearing. He then gave a lengthy description about Scientology, in which he described the aim of his religion as "trying to live without sin, but not in a Christian context".
Asked for the circumstances regarding the employment of the Scientology-staff and the treatment of leaving members, he nevertheless openly lied: "All staff have a medical insurance and a pension scheme," and, "Everyone can freely leave the Church at his own will." Two days later, on January 27th, the non-profit organization "ABI e.V." won its 9th legal victory over Scientology since 1975. The Higher District Court Munich I granted the organization the right to maintain the claim that "Scientology is a serious threat to society" and that "Scientology is the world biggest organization of unqualified people." Thereby the court in Munich followed the same decision the Higher District Court in Stuttgart had ruled earlier.
On July 26th the Higher District Court Munich I dismissed another suit started by Scientology against the publication of Haack's book "New Youth Religions". Yet that court ruling didn't end the legal war of Scientology and its critics in that year, as the Guardian's Office filed a suit at the Constitional Court in Karlsruhe against the Federal Ministry for Youth, Family and Health for the publication of a critical booklet about Scientology. More civil suits were announced because of the booklet, including a 500,000 DM-action for damages.