• Switzerland and Liechtenstein
    1987 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses

    • The branch overseer, Martin C. Harbeck, was a dynamic person able to present the truth in a pleasing manner even to persons in high station. He procured a journalist’s identification card for admittance to certain sessions of the League of Nations in Geneva. Striving hard for an opportunity to speak to some of these men, he got a chance to hand literature to Anthony Eden of England, to the German statesman Gustav Stresemann, and to Maksim Litvinov of Russia​—all of them representing their countries at the League of Nations. Their attention was thus directed to the real means of uniting people of the nations in peace and justice, God’s Kingdom by Christ.

      Another effort to reach influential persons, as well as leaders of the nations, was made in 1932 during the Disarmament Conference in Geneva. In accord with what was written long ago in Psalm 2:10-12, a copy of the booklet The Kingdom, the Hope of the World was mailed to them, as well as to leading clergymen, with a card enclosed urging them to pay the greatest attention to this message. In this way, a witness was given to 292 of these politically powerful ones of the earth.

      A ROTARY PRESS FOR RUSSIA?

      In Germany, Hitler had come to power in 1933, and the work of Jehovah’s Witnesses there was soon banned. Brother Harbeck went to see about the Society’s property in Magdeburg. However, he was arrested; he obtained release after ten days, only on condition that he leave the country immediately.