They Wanted Me to Sign Away My Beliefs

My name is Günter. I was born in northern Germany. I trained as a banker when I was 16. And I then worked in different banks for decades.

In the last bank where I was, it came out relatively quickly through somebody that I am a Scientologist. The board then called my superior and told him, “You got yourself in a mess.” And my boss then called me to see him. He told me that. He asked me, “Günter, can you not leave the Church? Because then you really have a very good career ahead of you. You know I want to make you my successor in a few years.” I looked at it more closely and thought it can’t be true. Because of my belief, which contains nothing bad, I should leave the Church? I said, “No, I won’t do that.”

Then later, when I distributed promotional fliers for the Church, the human resources chief of the bank saw me on the street. I had to, a week or a few days later, report to the human resources department. And the human resources staff member asked me to sign the sect filter. It said that you should not attend courses in Scientology, that you should not use Scientology knowledge. And I said, “Excuse me, you know that I am a Scientologist. Where is the problem? If you want me to sign this, then I would also like you to have all 3,000, or however many, Christians we have in the bank, that they all come here and sign that they will not follow the Ten Commandments. Because that’s exactly what you are asking of me.” And that was the end of it.

Over the years, I received offers from headhunters who offered me interesting positions in other banks. But I played with open cards right away. So I asked the headhunter if it was a problem with the new employer that I am a Scientologist. And after a few days, the headhunter came back and said, “Yes, it is a problem.” That means my career didn’t go any further. But it is a shame that due to prejudices so much discrimination takes place.