Paul Schäfer Schneider (4 December 1921 – 24 April 2010) was a German-Chilean Christian minister, convicted sexual offender, and the founder and leader of a sect and agricultural commune of 300 German immigrants called Colonia Dignidad ("Dignity Colony", later renamed Villa Baviera) located in Parral in southern Chile, about south of Santiago from 1961 to 2005. Schäfer was strongly influenced by the teachings of William Branham.
Aside from human rights abuses against members of Colonia Dignidad, including rape and sexual and physical abuse (including torture) of young children, Schäfer maintained a relationship with Pinochet's military dictatorship (1973–1990) and was involved in weapons smuggling and the torture and extrajudicial killings of political dissidents. After the end of Pinochet's government, increased public awareness of the activities of Colonia Dignidad, following testimony from former victims, led to the issuance of a warrant for Schäfer's arrest. He fled Chile and lived underground in Argentina for eight years. Following extradition back to Chile and a conviction for sexual abuse, he spent the last five years of his life in prison in Chile. He was convicted of homicide and other felonies in several trials that followed his initial conviction.
Early life and education Schäfer was born in Bonn as the third child of Jakob and Anna (née Schneider; later Schmitz) Schäfer. He was raised Lutheran in the Ortschaft , part of Troisdorf. At age six, Schäfer accidentally stabbed his right eye with a fork while attempting to undo a knot in his shoelace. The eye had to be removed and was replaced with a glass eye. Already the target of frequent bullying, he acquired the nickname "Glass Eye" (German: Glasauge) following the accident. Schäfer's parents divorced in 1932, after which he never saw his father again. He grew resentful of his mother for her remarriage the following year to Peter Schmitz. During his school years, he was described as a poor and clumsy student who had to repeat two grades in a row. In 1933, when Schäfer was eleven or twelve years old, he joined the , a German YMCA sports group. He refused to attend mandatory Hitler Youth meetings. Schäfer left school at age 14 while still in the sixth grade and began an apprenticeship at a munitions factory operated by Dynamit Nobel AG. At 18, Schäfer moved to Siegburg, near Bonn.
World War II In October 1940, he was conscripted into the Reich Labour Service. On 6 February 1941, he was drafted for military service in the Replacement Army, with duty as a medic. Due to his impaired sight, he was not deployed to the front lines. He received basic nurse training in Münster and spent the majority of his service carrying wounded soldiers on stretchers in a German field hospital in occupied France. Schäfer claimed later in life that his glass eye was the result of a war wound and that he believed his father and two older brothers were killed in action while serving in the Wehrmacht. Researchers have investigated Schäfer's potential involvement in German war crimes, specifically possible stationing at forced labour camps for Dynamit Nobel in Troisdorf or at a HASAG-run subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp, but none could be confirmed by government records.
Postwar life After the end of the war, Schäfer moved back with his mother and stepfather. He was frequently unemployed and found occasional work as a carnival worker through a former classmate. In 1946, he was named the leader of the youth group "Leubelfing" in Troisdorf, as the previous head, Schäfer's brother Walter, was killed during World War II. He expanded greatly on the choir and theatre projects of the group and by the end of the year, Schäfer made contact with the Evangelical Free Church at a YMCA convention. Between 1947 and 1949, Schäfer lived in Benroth, near Waldbröl, on the grounds of an Evangelical bible school, owned by . According to later investigations, Schäfer may have committed his first known acts of child molestation at the school, where he was known to invite boys into his living quarters for what he called "private prayer".
Cult leader
Early preaching and religious leadership Schäfer relocated to Gartow, where he worked at a Diakonie-run retirement home and as a youth warden at the , but was terminated from both positions for "negative influence on youths and cult-like behaviour". One father complained that his 13-year-old son had lost a considerable amount of weight. He further alleged that they would sneak out of the house in the evening and return at 4:00 in the morning, claiming to have prayed and sung hymns with Schäfer and other youths in the forest. Following his dismissal, Schäfer reportedly spent several days living in the forest, later claiming to have encountered Jesus there. He subsequently founded and ran his own Christian youth clubs in Gartow as a lay preacher, occasionally speaking at Pentecostal events in the area, until leaving the area in the summer of 1952. For the next two years, while continuing to operate his own groups, Schäfer worked as a youth leader for several Christian organizations in Heidenheim, Brilon, and Mönchengladbach. All eventually expelled him, officially because of his teaching methods, although by this point local church communities were also circulating allegations of child sexual abuse, which were never reported to police.
Willi Georg, who frequently attended Schäfer's night-time sermons as a child, recalled that Schäfer once declared, "We serve the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus is me." According to Georg, Schäfer was occasionally accompanied by other adult preachers. Schäfer instructed the boys to obey his teachings and encouraged them to report disloyalty, which was punished by beatings carried out by the older boys. Schäfer openly talked about his misogynist views, saying that "women have nothing to say and ought to keep silent", and describing relationships with women as "lust of the flesh" and "devil's stuff". Romantic relationships and other forms of disobedience were severely punished. Punishments included forced medication with psychiatric drugs, electric shocks, and group beatings to "drive out the devil", as well as multi-day fasts.
Influence of William Branham During the 1950s, Schäfer became a follower and promoter of the teachings of American preacher William M. Branham, one of the founders of the post-World War II healing revival. Branham was also an early influence on Jim Jones. Branham held multiple revival campaigns across Europe during the early 1950s. Schäfer had followed Branham's ministry from Germany and was eager to meet Branham when he visited the country in 1955. Schäfer and other members of his church served as Branham's personal security detail on his 1955 European tour. Branham's teachings promoted a return to what he viewed as a more pristine age of religious and racial purity. He advocated strict adherence to the Bible, taught that wives should obey their husbands, and promoted apocalyptic visions, including the prediction that Los Angeles would sink into the ocean.
Strong ties developed among Schäfer, Branham, and Ewald Frank during Branham's time in Germany. Schäfer was deeply impressed by Branham, not only because of his reported healing abilities, but also because he regarded the Latter Rain doctrine, a central theme in Branham's preaching, as conveying a totalitarian, misogynistic, and apocalyptic message that he believed could strongly influence followers. A sermon preached by Branham during his visit to Karlsruhe on the Pool of Bethesda left a deep impression on Schäfer. In it, Branham taught that all illness and sin were demons entrenched in people's bodies. Schäfer claimed to have experienced a healing during the meeting and afterward began to preach the doctrine that both sin and illness were the result of demonic possession.
Following the 1955 meetings with Branham, Schäfer increasingly put Branham's doctrines into practice within his group and insisted that his followers were the only people truly faithful to Branham's teachings.
Creation of religious community and sexual abuse charges By 1952, Schäfer had gathered a number of followers and in 1953 set up a children's home and orphanage. Schäfer's early followers consisted largely of war widows and their children who had fled Soviet-occupied East Prussia. In 1954, Schäfer and others created the Private Social Mission, as an evangelical free church community based out of Siegburg, Gronau, and Hamburg. In 1959, Schäfer was charged with sexually abusing two young boys. A warrant was issued for his arrest by authorities in Siegburg, prompting him to flee the area. Accompanied by several followers, Schäfer undertook an extensive journey through Spain, North Africa, the Middle East, and Turkey while exploring possible destinations for the emigration of his sect. After returning to West Germany, he came into contact with the Chilean ambassador, who, unaware of the criminal charges against Schäfer, invited him to settle in Chile.
Colonia Dignidad
Early years In January 1961, Schäfer and a small group of followers migrated to Chile, where the government at the time, led by conservative President Jorge Alessandri, had granted him permission to create the "Dignidad Beneficent Society" on a farm outside of Parral. Schäfer purchased a ranch, which he and ten followers began preparing for the arrival of the rest of the congregation. This would become the core of Colonia Dignidad, which would grow larger in later years with additional land purchases. In 1963, 230 members of his congregation traveled to Chile in the first wave of immigrants. Another 15 families immigrated in two more waves in 1966 and 1973. Schäfer may have been influenced to move to South America by prophecies of William Branham, who repeatedly predicted an imminent nuclear war that would devastate Western nations.
According to Colonia Dignidad researcher , with only a few exceptions, members of the cult came from limited educational backgrounds, which Heller argued made them less likely to question Schäfer's teachings. Schäfer kept children away from their parents in a children's house, sometimes relocating them entirely under the guise of a choir trip. He said, "The problems in child education aren't the children; they are always the parents because the parents are responsible for the sins of the children."Colonia Dignidad. Aus dem Innern einer deutschen Sekte. Documentary by Annette Baumeister und Wilfried Huismann. Part 1: Aus dem Paradies in die Hölle . ARD, 16 March 2020.
Proceeds from the sale of the cult's property in Germany financed the purchase of a stone crusher, which Schäfer exported to Chile and used for quarrying. The quarry proved profitable through business with local Chileans. Within six years, the colony harvested its first wheat crop, converted its barracks into houses, and built a hospital. Successful treatment of Chilean children at the hospital brought Schäfer considerable local prestige.
Schäfer was treated in a Santiago hospital for several months following a gunshot accident during a nighttime hunting expedition. Upon his return to the colony, he forbade all festivities, and separated men from women and boys from girls.
In 1966, Wolfgang Kneese, a teenager who had fled from Colonia Dignidad, took refuge in the and later spoke to the press. A lawyer representing the colony subsequently initiated defamation proceedings against him. Schäfer induced another teenager named Hartmut Hopp to accuse Kneese of sexual misconduct. Fearing that he would fall into Schäfer's hands again, Kneese ultimately fled across the Andes to Argentina before returning to Germany. (Kneese's conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court of Chile in 2017.) Schäfer rewarded Hopp by financing his medical education, which also provided a much-needed physician for the colony's hospital.