In the volunteer editorial team, Volunteers for Chemnitz 2025 publish reports on their experiences, assignments and adventures around the European Capital of Culture.
Danny is 44 years young and was born and grew up in Karl-Marx-Stadt. He emigrated "briefly" to the east of Mallorca from 2006-2007. But then he was drawn back home to Chemnitz. He has been working as a volunteer since April 2024, including at the Hat Festival, the fairground in Tietz, the Kosmos Festival ..
On the Tuesday before the event, there was a briefing with the three ladies from the festival team, where everything was explained and the roofs/sites were allocated to the volunteers. I was given the castle church. The briefing beforehand was very pleasant and many questions were answered. Who, when, where, what.... Perfect. The location briefing was available on paper and also digitally, which I naturally prefer. On the day of the event, I picked up my packed lunch from the Chemnitz2025 office and took a few words of advice from Dirk Zinner, the head of the volunteers programme. When I arrived at the Schlosskirche, I met volunteer Claudia, who organised admission and handed me my shift and explained other tasks.
I was working with 3 other volunteers, Katrin, Claudia and Christian. We did the right thing and exchanged telephone numbers, which made communication within the tower much easier. To be honest, I don't want to have to walk up and down the seemingly endless spiral staircase 30-40 times. I used WhatsApp to ask Christian, who was organising admission and counting people, to send me the next 10-12 people. The whole thing worked according to the "floor principle": at the beginning, the group went up to the first floor of the tower to the roof truss of the nave for a guided tour. When this group had finished, they continued one floor higher to the tower keeper's flat. At that moment, the next group arrived from the entrance.
From the tower keeper's flat, they were "guided" to the clockwork of the tower clock and then into the belfry, where the large bells are located. The group then began the descent to the exit. The principle worked so well that we hardly had any traffic jams or dicey situations. However, there were also people who had to struggle with a spinning worm due to the climb up the spiral staircase or simply had to take a break on the level. No problem for us. As always, I was "lucky" to get into "special" situations as a volunteer. The roof truss you see in the photos above is the roof of the church and from there you can see the vaults of the nave. The guide of this section, Mr Fensch (himself a volunteer), asked me to save his name badge, which had fallen in there shortly before. Sure, no problem! I asked if this area was even accessible, which was answered in the affirmative. So I climbed down the small ladder onto the nave, under a few beams and rescued it. As a reward, Mrs Fensch invited me for coffee and cake in the roof truss. What can I say.... A once in a lifetime experience. After this short break, I signalled for the next group to start their ascent to the roof truss.
We closed the entrance at 17:30 on the instructions of the members of the parish, so that no one was near the belfry at 18:00, as the carillon started at this time. I'm sure you can imagine the volume level involved! Our visitors that day were 99% positive and understood the carillon. However, I also had one person who confronted me with the fact that in other churches it had not been a problem to be present during the carillon. I recalled the de-escalation training I had attended and explained that the church congregation makes the rules of the house and that it is not possible to be present during the carillon. After this brief de-escalating conversation, the person said a friendly goodbye and began the descent to the exit. When the last group had left the tower, all the volunteers had a short chat with the people in charge of the parish. I took a few more photos of the mission, we said our goodbyes and left.
I went on to Puschen on the Kaßberg to round off the evening with friends and some relaxed musical entertainment.