It all begins in the birthplace of the National Socialist Movement in Germany, in Munich, directly following the Second World War. Young people from the Catholic youth movement are gathering around Traudl and Herbert Wallbrecher and a priest, Aloys Goergen. They are driven by the question of how to continue as Christians after the tragedies of the Holocaust and the war. – Auschwitz demands a reform of Christian thought, life and works.
In the midst of the eventful times in church and society, artists and craftsmen, students and families join the young group. With their own hands and their own money, they transform a little mountain cabin into a bigger house to meet for the liturgical feasts – Easter, Pentecost, Christmas. They study writers, philosophers, Jewish and Protestant theologians. They experiment with new songs and texts, written by themselves, they perform the works of Beckett and Sartre, and seek new liturgical forms. Everything is questioned. Naturally, this emphasis on experimentation must also lead to crises. And they discover something new and unexpected: Christianity is not some ordinary religion, but rather an enlightening faith, which we owe to the Jews, because Jesus was not a Christian, but a Jew.
The challenge “How to practice Christianity in everyday life” is no longer a theoretical question. Beginning in 1964, the group meets in Munich to celebrate Sunday Mass, to give lectures, to write and print their own publications. They come as a group from the mountains into the city – from feast day to everyday life. For several years, they publish a journal, “Die Integrierte Gemeinde” (The Integrated Community), which is how they got their name.
They pay for everything by themselves and intentionally place themselves outside of conventional church structures (church tax, parish centres), to remain free and independent, in order to live and act entirely in the world and entirely in God at the same time. – How does that work?
In 1978, the Cardinals Joseph Ratzinger of Munich and Freising and Johannes Joachim Degenhardt of Paderborn legally recognize the Integrated Community as an association within the Catholic Church.