• Austria
    1989 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses

    • Branch Arrangements

      On August 1, 1965, Lowell L. Turner, who had recently graduated from Gilead School’s special ten-month organizational training course, was assigned the responsibilities of branch overseer. After nearly ten years in his assignment of oversight, Brother Turner left Austria in July 1975 for a new assignment in Luxembourg. Since January 1976 a committee of several brothers has been caring for the branch in Austria.

      Extensions of Branch Facilities

      The Society’s branch offices all over the world have been enlarging their facilities to care for the needs of the constantly growing number of praisers of Jehovah. Has it been any different in Austria? Certainly not.

      In time the building purchased in 1957, located in one of the garden districts of Vienna, became too small for a branch office. So during the years of 1970 and 1971, it was enlarged to provide more room for the Shipping Department and for a Kingdom Hall. But in a few years, the need for further expansion became evident. Jehovah’s hand in the matter was felt when one of the neighbors offered his piece of land for sale. While construction of new buildings was getting under way in 1983, another plot of adjoining land was also offered for sale to the branch. With the dedication of the new facilities in the summer of 1987, an additional 53,820 square feet [5,000 sq m] of space became available, which more than quadrupled what was there before. Was all of this really necessary? The number of Witnesses being served by this office had already tripled since the former building was purchased, and the brothers in the office were working in very cramped quarters.

      Before the project was completed, many modifications in layout of the facilities were required in order to meet the objections of neighbors. This required a lot of additional work. However, the branch office acknowledges: “At the end, almost all necessary changes proved to have been to our benefit. In many cases, the brothers had to admit: ‘Now it is better than we intended it before.’”