A Christian café in Germany had to close down due to continuous attacks by left-wing extremists.
The Protestant Zeal Church had to permanently close its café “Stay” after 26 attacks by leftist terrorists over the course of about three years.
While the city of Leipzig had previously not admitted that these attacks were an infringement on religious liberty, in an interview with Junge Freiheit in June, a spokesperson of the city said: “The numerous attacks in the past are shameful and intolerable. What makes matters worse is that these attacks constitute violations of the religious freedom guaranteed by the German Constitution [Grundgesetz].”
Pastor René Wagner, who leads the Zeal Church together with his wife, opened the café in 2023 in the Reudnitz district of Leipzig. According to Wagner, there have since been two incidents of broken windows—including an attack involving “78 hammer blows”—as well as numerous paint attacks and two attacks involving butyric acid.
In the first attack, in early 2025, the perpetrators injected the acid through the keyholes. In the second, on Christmas Eve 2025, they drilled a hole in a window and poured “at least 1.5 liters of butyric acid” into the café. The police have not been able to identify a perpetrator for any of the 26 attacks.
The consequences of the two butyric acid attacks alone cost the congregation 35,000 euros, Wagner said. Following the butyric acid attacks, the café remained closed for a total of three months. “We simply ran out of money. We can still pay our employees this June, but after that it would no longer have been possible. As a church, we’re left with 150,000 euros in debt from the café,” Wagner explained.
In anonymous letters posted on the far-left platform Indymedia, the attackers accused Zeal Church of homophobia because the church does not perform weddings or blessings for same-sex couples.
Wagner denied the accusation of homophobia and said that “we stand by our theology and ethics which supports marriage between a man and a woman and the traditional family.”
Wagner pointed out that similar incidents targeting Christians are rarely noticed by the public. In May, there was already the third paint attack in four years on the “House for Life” of the Kaleb Pro-Life Association in Chemnitz. Also in May, shots were fired at a Catholic church in Hanau during a Sunday Mass.
“One reason for this is that Christians are not perceived as a minority by the general public—even though professing Christians, that is, those who regularly attend church services, are an absolute minority in Germany. Politicians must recognize this and protect us as a minority,” Wagner demanded.
The executive director of OIDAC Europe, a monitoring organization for discrimination against Christians, expressed her horror in a statement given to Tichys Einblicke. “It is appalling that a Christian institution in Germany has to close due to repeated extremist-motivated violence,” Anja Tang said.
Despite the closure, the congregation intends to remain true to its mission, Wagner said: “We will not retaliate with violence, we will not throw stones back, and we will not march in demonstrations where we hurl insults at our opponents.”
The Zeal Church intends to continue reporting every single attack to the authorities. Wagner cited the right to freedom of religion enshrined in the German Constitution. “We Christians must exercise this right and protest loudly wherever it is violated,” he said.