Dada and Religion

The "Church of Euthanasia" in Germany

by Haimo Schulz Meinen

With only a few hundred members, including some Germans, the "Church of Euthanasia" founded in the USA in 1992 is not a significant religious community, but the slogans with which the weird Dada cult draws attention to itself are all the more provocative. "Eat people, not animals!", "Real men wear skirts", "Teach masturbation!", "Sterilization of men prevents abortion!", "Eat a fetus, that makes Jesus happy!" - these are just a selection of slogans that the "Church of the Beautiful Death" distributes on buttons. Imaginative happenings, sermons on the Internet (www.churchofeuthanasia.org) and song lyrics criticize overpopulation, provoke anti-abortion activists and propagate vegetarianism and procreative sex. Church founder Chris Korda, born in New York in 1962 as the son of the writer Michael Korda, has released two CDs of techno-trance and also performed at the Berlin Love Parade in the summer.

"We recommend swallowing an overdose of sleeping pills and tying a large plastic garbage bag to your head," advises the "Church of the Beautiful Death" in its information brochure "What is the best way to kill me?" Anyone who joins the church beforehand will become a saint "without any additional paperwork." On March 19, 1997, the "Church of Euthanasia" celebrated its first successful conversion: 21 women and 18 partially castrated men from the "Heaven's Gate" group freed themselves from their "containers" near San Diego in California to embark on a UFO journey into space (see connection 7-8 / 97).

In Hanover, where the German branch of the church is based, the experience is more disappointing: "Church of Euthanasia, founded in the USA in 1992, now also in Germany: non-congenital, sex-friendly, vegetarian, non-violent. Code xy," is what the classified ad should read, reports euthanasia supporter Martin D. However, the Hannoversche Allgemeine refused to publish the ad. Martin, 35 years old and a newspaper delivery boy by profession, cannot compare with the founder of the church, Chris Korda, in terms of media agility. The good-looking Bostonian Chris Korda is often seen in women's clothing and is such a leading figure in the movement that no one can imagine the church without him. And certainly not himself.

With over a thousand email contacts and several hundred holders of elaborately designed membership certificates, the "Church of Euthanasia", which has been officially registered as a church since 1994 and is even tax-exempt as a non-profit organization in the state of Delaware, is an activist organization that knows how to combine serious concerns, religious exaltation and anarchic humor. Even the founding myth is a skilful self-parody with quotes from other religious foundations: In a dream, founder Chris Korda encountered an alien intelligence called "The Being". The ecosystem was destroyed, said the apparition, but the leaders of the people denied it. Why did so many people believe these lies, "The Being" wanted to know. Korda woke up drenched in sweat and groaned as he shouted the church's first slogan: "Save the planet - kill yourself."

There are too many people

The "Church of Euthanasia" attributes the environmental crisis to one main cause: a single species lives in vast numbers and in abundance: humans. "The current population is 5,954,997,508, but Kevorkian is catching up..." is what it says on its website, alluding to the most controversial euthanasia practitioner in the USA, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who is also the namesake of the church's own record label. With its actions, the church wants to bring about a "massive leap in consciousness". Humanity should become aware of itself as an anthropoid and reduce its numbers. The main commandment for the followers is therefore not to have children. Korda sold his "Kill Yourself" badges at the Democratic convention and was punched when he pretended to be a Republican. His church carried giant abortion pills through the streets of Boston, met anti-abortion demonstrations with crucified sex dolls and life-size male pinups, and set up a pink 13-foot penis at the entrance to a sperm bank. The bank, however, "refused to give up its sperm," the church chronicle reports, "and the church was forced to slaughter sperm on the front steps." A suicide hotline was set up and then banned. A human grill was set up outside a supermarket, human flesh was offered for sale and people were invited to a cannibalistic taste test.

"Demons in my head" was Korda's first CD on Kevorkian Records in 1993. In August 1997 he released "Save the planet, kill yourself" on Munich's International Gigolo Records. In Germany, explains his producer Josef Eschker, Korda "discovered his love of producing." Last July, the maxi-CD "Sex is good" was released.

Procreation is murder, sex is good

Supporters in Hanover only have contact with Korda by email. But Martin is full of hope. His German branch of the "Cult of the Beautiful Death" should "become a place of refuge for people who cannot accept the existing rules and constraints. We have only one principle: to live a life without procreation. All worldviews should fit into this, whether vegetarian or meat-eating." There are countless groups that want to abolish the consumerist madness. They just need to join forces and be more tolerant of each other, then they will be stronger.

"For me, fathering a child is practically murder." Newly conceived children are an existential threat to people and animals already living, explains Märtin. Instead of receiving child benefit, people with more than one child should pay a penalty. At the top of its website, the church propagates the four basic principles of the good life: suicide, abortion, cannibalism, and sodomy. All of these activities are useful or fun without producing more children. Cannibalism is the consumption of meat that the church allows incorrigible meat-eaters, namely the consumption of dead human bodies. It would be better, however, not to eat meat at all. Sodomy, on the other hand, the church explains idiosyncratically, is any form of sexuality that does not serve the purpose of reproduction. Practices such as anal and oral sex are still forbidden in many countries - but it, the "Church of Euthanasia", approves of these practices.

Seize the day, be a nuisance!

"Talk to people, shamelessly recruit members, write letters to the editor and get on the radio or television!" the church urges its followers. "Be a nuisance, cause unrest, offend people, especially your friends who are giving birth. Seize the day!" In Germany, Martin has so far intensively recruited around 15 people. Most of them have responded positively, he reports, but only a few have registered as church members.

Markus S., 27 years old, salesman in a pet food store in Hanover, raised as a Protestant, single, lives alone and describes himself as a "perpetual bachelor." "I don't want to have children. I can imagine a long-term relationship, but not a marriage." Before he found the "cult of the beautiful death," he had gained experience with the Jesus freaks. "Some of my friends are alternative, some are very bourgeois. When I tell them about the 'Church of Euthanasia,' they think we go to the zoo at night and rape the goats." Although he is a vegetarian, because 90 percent of the nutritional energy is lost in a meat-based diet, for example when plant-based food is fed to pigs, he finds little taste in vegetarian dishes. "I don't think tofu is that great. I'd rather eat a piece of meat."

Anarchy of Creativity: Dada

Korda and his followers see themselves in the tradition of Dada. This avant-garde art movement continued the ideas and forms of expressionism between 1916 and 1924 in New York, Zurich, Paris, Berlin (and with Kurt Schwitters in Hanover). With clownish happenings and nonsense poems, Dadaists such as Marcel Duchamp, Hans Arp, John Heartfield and Tristan Tzara propagated the anarchy of creativity and radically questioned art. They celebrated the chaos of life and demanded that the aesthetic sugar coating be removed from the horrific, nonsensical reality.

With its cultic actionism, which is aimed less at art than at changing reality, the "Church of Euthanasia" has a parallel to the early days of Dada. Under the leadership of the poet, fun politician and egomaniac Gabriele D'Annunzio and the yoga politician, piracy and action secretary Baron Guido Keller, 2,500 disorganized soldiers and a wildly assembled group of intellectuals, anarchists and insane asylum inmates conquered the northern Croatian city of Rijeka in 1919 and held it for 16 months to prevent the city from being abandoned by the war loser Italy. They gave themselves an anarchist constitution in which they paid homage to the "beautiful and dignified life" and the "mystical powers of the rising people", financed themselves through piracy on the Adriatic and held excessive orgies and feasts.

If the Church of the Beautiful Death finds a place as suitable for it as its predecessors on the Adriatic, the step to becoming a significant religion could become possible.

Haimo Schulz Meinen (31), now a journalist for a daily newspaper in Hanover, studied politics and religious studies. His doctoral thesis on religious and nature-destroying human rights was approved by the examiners, but the faculty at the University of Hanover rejected it. It will be published by Diagonal-Verlag early next year.

Hands off the foreskins!

The founder of the Church of Euthanasia in conversation with Haimo Schulz Meinen

Meinen: Reverend Korda, you are now 36. That is quite old for someone who calls for suicide to save the earth. When are you going to kill yourself?

Korda: I'm not that old yet. My task is far from complete.

Meinen: What was your last action?

Korda: On Earth Day 1998, we demonstrated with 25 people in Boston and held up our banners: "Save the Earth, Kill Yourself!" We also shocked the crowd with our baby incinerator.

Meinen: Is another event planned?

Korda: We will soon be setting up in front of a company that genetically modifies human foreskins. When is not yet certain. Human tissue for genetic purposes is hard to come by, that's why they do it. I'm against it.

Meinen: Foreskins. Yes, the action suits you. You recorded two of your three CDs in Germany. "Sex is good" was released in July. Did you also sing at the Berlin "Love Parade '98"?

Korda: No. It was a techno performance with dance and electronic equipment. I performed in Berlin, Ulm, Sarajevo and Cologne.

Meinen: How many members does your church have today?

Korda: Hundreds worldwide and six or seven in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. But there are even more in the Netherlands.

My opinion: "Church of Euthanasia" is a bit difficult for German tongues. Do you think that the name is a hindrance to its spread here?

Korda: We'll leave the name as it is. It creates confusion, and that helps us. Of course, there is a Nazi past here, so that euthanasia is not always understood as a self-determined act in Germany. But that's how we provoke.

Meinen: What does Dada mean to you? You write that you spoke to a group of Dadaists in Bochum. Did they call themselves that or was it you?

Korda: That's what I called them, they were very interesting chaos makers. Dada is not a fixed state, it is more like a disturbance, an interruption. Its purpose is to turn people's world views on their head. Dada is progress. Dada must always deal with the current environment.

Meinen: You write that the anarchist Abbie Hoffman inspired you. Who was that?

Korda: You don't know Abbie? Abbie was the founder of the hippies and the author of "Steal Me," an early anarchist and situationist. He once made money rain down on Wall Street. Now he's dead. I'm friends with his children, they live near me, near Boston.

Meinen: Have you already appointed a successor as leader of the church?

Korda (Surprised): No, damn it, we haven't! We were a bit careless.

The preceding is a translation. The original language is here.