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Darmstadt: About love in difficult times

  • ofJens Joachim

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The former Hessentag pastor Wolfgang Weinrich made a film for Christmas Eve in which sex therapist Ann-Marlene Henning and cabaret artist Urban Priol have their say.

Over the past three decades, Wolfgang Weinrich has repeatedly invited to special church services on Christmas Eve. For twenty years – from 1990 to 2010 – it was the village church in Babenhausen-Hergershausen in the Darmstadt-Dieburg district that provided space for the specially designed format.

“Alone, thoughtful, sad, annoyed, doubtful, lonely … let’s celebrate anyway” was the timeless motto of the premiere in 1990, when more than 250 students from Offenbach’s Theodor-Heuss-Schule took part in the service to talk to the The question: “When was Christmas for me last?”

From 2011 to 2015, Weinrich and his current wife, Pastor Anja Schwier-Weinrich, organized the Christmas Eve services in the Jagdhofkeller in the middle of the old town of the Bessungen district of Darmstadt. And after a break, two years ago in 2018 the couple invited again under the motto “Peace? Now argue “in the cellar vault.

According to Weirich, the idea of ​​celebrating a Christmas Eve church service with a different character arose “because of a personal change in life and the encounter with many young people to whom traditional church services no longer meant anything”. Originally, according to the former pastor of the Hessentags, who retired as a communication expert for the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau (EKHN) at the end of 2017 and is now working as a publicist, the “Christmas Night” was intended as an offer for people “who are currently Difficulty with the traditional family image at Christmas, feeling particularly alone due to changes in life and crises and being sad on this special evening but still wanting to celebrate ”.

Over the years, more and more interested people came to the special church services, to which prominent and less prominent talk guests were invited, who brought their thoughts, hopes and emotions with them.

This year there is a digital version of Christmas Eve for the first time due to the Corona crisis. The motto is: “About love: About love, sex and important things”. The 45-minute film that the retired senior church councilor produced and which can already be viewed on YouTube is about love in difficult times.

According to Weinrich, the film is also about the “eroticism of attraction, sexual love, friendly relationships, political disputes and arguments with love”. According to the theologian, the film should stimulate thought – “Despite Corona!”.

For his “Christnacht Spezial” film, Weinrich also recorded statements by the Hamburg sex therapist Ann-Marlene Henning, his wife, Pastor Schwier-Weinrich, the cabaret artist Urban Priol and the musician Peter Freudenthaler (Fools Garden). They talk about their love experiences and want to “inspire more ‘love'”.

The sex therapist asked Weinrich, for example, how love actually tasted. “After strawberry and champagne – with sometimes a little too much lemon in it, which actually doesn’t belong in there,” is Henning’s answer.

The digital Christmas Eve offer is complemented by musical contributions by the singer Eva Lind, the saxophonist Helmut “Helle” Baum, the DJ Daniel Trabold and the guitarist Tilmann Höhn.

The film was also funded by the EKHN and the Evangelical Dean’s Office in Darmstadt. Weinrich also solicits support for the emergency housing aid of the Diakonisches Werk Groß-Gerau-Rüsselsheim.

“Weinrichs Christmas Night Special” is online at www.wolfgangweinrich.de

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