The Words of the Koch Family

National Report on Austria

Peter Koch
October 31 -- November 2, 1970
Second European Conference
Essen, West Germany

The Austrian Family has three large centers in Vienna with 40 members in the third one which has just been redecorated. There are four other centers, two at Linz and Graz. The Graz center being a detached house and two other smaller centers in smaller towns. Recent campaigning has changed the ratio of three girls to one boy to an equal number of boys and girls. This year has seen a lot of work spent on restoring centers and by the end of the year we shall be opening another center at the western end of Austria.

Our method of witnessing is strictly person to person. We use lectures at the Universities to introduce people to principle but we do not teach Principle in these lectures directly. If we did this half would be bored or baffled because of their different stages of growth. These lectures are used to make personal contact for personal teaching later. In this way they are successful.

The bottleneck in Austria is the financial situation, and we plan to open businesses in centers. For three months a team of seven, boys worked in Lichtenstein on a building site to earn money for the blessing. This was so successful that we shall repeat it next year, blessing or no blessing. The physical labor brought the boys much closer together. Owing to this physical work our spiritual training was cut down. But we stress the necessity of each person gaining a deep understanding of the Principles.