The Best Gift is a Book!

Tbilisi

The working group of Hans-Joachim Kiderlen, Kristina Hummel, Pastor Irina Solei and Elena Ilinets worked hard to prepare for the 200th anniversary of our church. On April 8 I had the honor of presenting a publication in which articles were gathered about the history of Swabian settlers from 1817 to 1991. The authors told in an accessible and interesting way why the Swabians immigrated, about the foundation of their colonies, their everyday lives, the tragedies and triumphs of this hard-working people,  as well as their cultural and religious life. In this memorial publication the deportation of Germans in 1941 and the re-birth of the Lutheran church in the 1990s are also reflected.

Usually when you hold a book in your hands you don't think much about what a difficult and long path it takes to publication. Our working group walked that path. The first issue of our “Church News” in 3 languages was printed in July 2001. It looked very primitive, but with time our working group creatively developed and improved our skills in publishing. With time the monthly “Church News” publication steadily transformed into a higher quality product; we've also published brochures and booklets.

And now the chance came along to try out printing a book. Of course it wasn't easy and it was even a bit scary – do we have the skill and strength enough to meet the challenge of printing something of professional quality? It took time to prepare for printing; as usually, we didn't have enough of it. It took us two months to prepare the publication while usually books in such a format take significantly longer to prepare for publication.A three-language publication is not by any means an easy thing! The translation always needs stylistic corrections since we hold to the norms of literary translations.

Having received and edited the translations we were able to start with the design, with the choice of font and finding photos that fit in terms of theme and quality. 

I want to first and foremost thank the authors who responded to our call and made a contribution to this anniversary publication – the Bishop of the Evangelical Church in Wurttemberg  Frank Otfried July, the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Georgia Heike Paich, the chair of the foundation for the assistance of the ELCG, Juergen Helwig, Christina Hummel, Bishop Hans-Joachim Kiderlen, lector Temuri Bardavelidze, Pastor Irina Solei, Pastor Garri Azikov, the President of the Association of Germans of Gerogia Garri Augst. Vera Nesterova and Natalia Bairamova from the Church of the Savior in Baku, and Architect-Restorer Nestan Tatarashvili.

We would also like to thank the translators and editors and all who contributed to the design. Shamil Somhishvili in particular suggested an interesting idea for the cover and made it himself – a circle made of portraits of pastors (including the first pastor, Johann-Bernhart Saltet and the last pre-Revolutionary pastor, Richard Maier) and bishops of the ELCG around the Luther rose. It ended up being a wonderful symbol that unites the past and present of our church.

For me it was especially interesting to do something with such a high degree of responsibility – publishing a book. How well it worked will be for our readers to decide.

Elena Ilinets