Die Stadt im Spiegel: Roman (German Edition)

The process of alienation is well advanced, and it would be a mistake to treat it as merely a problem for Germany's few remaining churchgoers. In fact, it potentially affects millions of Germans. The church is involved in many areas of society, including kindergartens, schools, hospitals and nursing homes.

It is the second-largest employer in the country, after the government. It dictates the kind of life its doctors, educators, teachers and cleaning women are allowed to lead. It determines how children are raised. And it also decides -- on its own authority -- how patients are to be treated or, in some cases, turned away. The Green Party politician is a member of the Central Committee of German Catholics, a forum in which she wants to see the incident addressed.

The so-called "morning-after pill," a drug that can be administered to rape victims to prevent pregnancy, lies at the center of the controversy. On December 15, a year-old woman came to an emergency medical facility in the Nippes neighborhood of Cologne, claiming that she had been raped. The doctor on duty, Irmgard Maiworm, treated the victim.

She notified the police and prescribed the morning after pill. Maiworm then informed the nearby St. Vincent Hospital, which is run by the Cellitine order, that she was transferring her patient there for evidence-gathering purposes.

But her Catholic counterparts refused to help. The Hospital of the Holy Spirit, also run by the nuns, likewise turned down Maiworm's request. The doctors at the church-run hospitals told her that their ethical guidelines required them to reject the patients. The Catholic doctors' reluctance is in keeping with the policies of Joachim Meisner, the conservative archbishop of Cologne.

Victims' rights groups are protesting. Anette Diehl of Frauennotruf Mainz, a women's emergency hotline, also wants to see a change in church policy. She can't simply be turned away for religious reasons in the middle of treatment and consultation. Catholic organizations run some hospitals throughout Germany.

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In their employment contracts, their roughly , employees are generally required to comply with the guidelines of bishops and the heads of religious orders. In fact, in some areas, the Catholic Church exerts a strong influence on the social welfare state. The church even has a monopoly in some rural areas, where it controls many facilities, from kindergartens to hospitals to nursing homes. This complicates things for church employees.

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Since doctors, educators and caregivers often have no alternative to working for Catholic organizations, they are forced to comply with their guidelines. Paradoxically, although the number of churchgoers has been shrinking for decades, the influence of bishops has been rising. In , excluding ministers and members of religious orders, both the Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany had , civilian employees, a number that has jumped to over a million today. What's more, Germany has gradually entrusted the churches with large parts of its social welfare system.

This results from a philosophy of streamlined government that encourages private organizations to acquire public assets, such as municipal utilities by international investors and hospitals and kindergartens by churches. What this policy has ignored, however, is that both financial managers and church officials pursue their own agendas rather than the objectives of the public sector.

The consequences are often enormous for church employees. For instance, an employee who gets a divorce can quickly lose his or her job. Bald wird sie ganz nach New York ziehen. Und irgendwie ist es verwunderlich, dass diese Frau ein Jugendbuch geschrieben hat. Ein sehr kompromissloses Jugendbuch allerdings, und das passt dann doch wieder. Schon der Titel ist eine Provokation.

Mitte der neunziger Jahre war das. Ein Verleger rief sie an, fragte, ob sie nicht auch mal ein Kinderbuch schreiben wolle. Sie wusste nicht recht.

Deshalb lohnt es sich nicht, irgendetwas zu tun. Das habe ich gerade herausgefunden. Der Junge ist eigentlich gegen alles, er lehnt alles ab, aber er ist auch ein Philosoph.

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Teller hat ihm diesen ausgefallenen Namen gegeben, damit kein Kind, das dieses Buch liest, vielleicht denselben Namen hat und sich zu sehr mit dem Charakter identifiziert. Und so ist das mit allem.