Raymond M. Kuehne

RAYMOND M. KUEHNE was born of German immigrant parents and served an LDS mission in Germany. He majored in history at the University of Utah and studied on a Fulbright Fellowship at Marburg University, Germany, for a year. After a year at tke University of Virginia, he opted out of an academic career path and went to work at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland1 . Presently retired in St. George, Utah, he writes a monthly column for the local newspaper. A mission call to the Freiberg Temple for him and his wife, Genie, provided a new opportunity to pursue history. After researching the origins of the Freiberg Temple, he has begun (with the help of Karlheinz Leonhardt, a local German member) to compile a history of the LDS Church in the German Democratic Republic, 1945-90.

The Freiberg Temple: An Unexpected Legacy of a Communist State and a Faithful People

Articles/Essays – Volume 37, No. 2

On April 23, 1983, a groundbreaking ceremony for the only temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built behind the Iron Curtain was held in the city of Freiberg, in the German…

How Missionaries Entered East Germany: The 1988 Monson-Honecker Meeting

Articles/Essays – Volume 39, No. 4

On Thursday, March 30, 1989, eight missionaries and their new mission president, Wolfgang Paul, were driven from Hamburg, West Germany, to the German Democratic Republic (GDR). They expected a delay of several hours at the border but were amazed when the guards waved them through without the usual search of the cars. President Paul said, “After we crossed the border our joy was beyond description. President Schütze could hardly contain himself. He honked the horn, blinked the headlights, shouted and cried for joy because after fifty years missionaries were again in his country.”