Moments in Munich- Part 1, Easter

Munich's Olympiaberg, a grassy hill, curving and undulating like the coils of a sea monster up to a domed top, is one of the highest elevations in the city. Beneath the deceptively gentle slopes lie the jagged rubble and refuse of the city in wartime. At the end of the Second World War, the remains of bombed buildings and roads were heaped up here and covered mercifully with earth. A serene and lovely park now blossoms above the broken stones and twisted metal of a world in chaos. At the top, an aluminum cross stands as a memorial to the civilians killed in Munich during the war.
Before dawn on Easter Sunday, my first morning in Germany, I found myself climbing the sinuous track up the Olympiaberg, snow falling like sprays of white flowers, starring the ground and lighting in our hair. Moving all about me through the dim gray light were dark clad, bundled members of my friend's German congregation, huddled beneath black umbrellas. Fog flirted through the trees and along the curves of the hill. The air was damp, and mistily cold.

When we reached the dome, we formed a shivering circle. Johannes, one of the young men from the church, brought out a tiny keyboard, which he managed to play with cold-stiffened fingers, keeping it partially sheltered from the still falling snow in its case.

And we sang.

The voices were frail- muffled by the snow and fog, quavered through chattering teeth. Below us, all around, the hill fell away until it melted into the sleeping city, shrouded in white. With the cross a stark silhouette in the mist beneath us, and the death and madness of a terribly recent nightmare rolling beneath us, we sang of life.

'Welch Gnad! Er stand auf vom Tod... Welch Gnad! Err kommt zurück...'

'What grace! He rose from the grave... What grace! He's coming again...'

'Er hat den Tod besiegt für alle Zeit. Der König lebt, preist ihn, der uns befreite! Er regiert in alle Ewig keit...'

'He has conquered Death for all time. The King lives, praise Him who freed us! He reigns over all eternity...'