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In this interview, Frerich Gӧrts discusses how he became involved in government. He offers his perspective on how he faced a moral dilemma while serving in government and how it affected his job. He also cautions people interested in politics to be prepared for intense criticism from others. This interview was conducted on July 10, 2021, by Kellen Everett, a BYU student majoring in political science.

Kellen Everett: Can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Frerich Görts: OK, I would like to do that. I was born in the last year of World War II, and that is important because my family lived in Düsseldorf, which is the capital of one of the sixteen federal states in Germany, of North Rhine-Westphalia, which was founded after World War II as an artificial construction of the Brits and the US. OK, I was not born in Düsseldorf, because all pregnant women at this time were sent by the administration and government into the woods, for safety reasons, and so I was born in Detmold, which is a rural area. And after the bombing of our city, we came back.

So I grew up in Düsseldorf. I went to school there. I took elementary school, took high school, and went to church as well. We had a branch at that time, two branches at that time, there. And then I studied my university studies. I studied law and political science. And then, Marburg and in Geneva, Switzerland, I did some international diplomatic law. And then in Bonn—Bonn was at the time the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany—I did all my studies, then passed my exam and my bar exam there, and then I joined as a civil servant in state administration shortly. That’s my schooling.

My wife, Heidrun, and I have four children—now all grown up. One is a lawyer, another is a businessman, and the third is a TV producer. My daughter’s a teacher. My wife as well. And we have nine grandchildren. That’s it.

I had almost all the callings which are possible. I was a bishop ordained by Thomas Monson, and then stake president set apart by Thomas Monson. And so he was, at that time, a very young apostle. And my last calling—international calling—was being an area seventy. I was a sealer in the temple. And now, I’m a high councilman.

Kellen Everett: Did you join the church as a child?

Frerich Görts: Yes, my mother and my grandparents were members of the church and joined the church in the 1920s. There weren’t many young men for my mother, and so she married a man outside of the church. He was very fine. I’ve got a very fine father. He pressed my mother, said, “You have to grow up the two boys.” I have another brother in the church. So I never had a problem with that. But there was no way to make a mission, and that was even at that time—it was in the sixties—it was not very common for German boys to go on a mission.

Kellen Everett: When did you first become interested in politics or government?

Frerich Görts: Well, it came with my business. I was a civil servant in a rather high position of infrastructure telecommunications, postal services, and state banking. These were all state units. Here I changed from a regional level, top level, to the central, which was in Bonn, and that was in a ministry. What we call ministry, you may call in your administration a department. And it was headed by what we call a minister, and you call a secretary. Now they have become much more interested in politics, particularly in foreign politics.

Because I spoke a little bit of English, and my French was a little better than my English, I could do negotiations in French- and English-speaking countries. I served first as a staffer, then the chief of cabinet of a minister, and at the very end I became what we call staatssecretaris. That is, in the British organization, it’s a state secretary, or permanent secretary. I suppose, in the American administration, you may call it undersecretary. That is, I hope that is right. Because some people say, “Oh, you were a secretary of state,” I said “No, I never,” because in the German language that would be the foreign minister, but I was not. I was just one level below. Undersecretary.

Kellen Everett: What motivated you to accept that position?

Frerich Görts: First of all, I was never an elected person, only appointed. I made just a normal career of a civil servant. And my duty as a secretary was to deregulate into three companies in Deutsche Telekom, then DHL, and the postal banking service. I did it with large teams, and I was the head of it. The minister always is a plain political office, hired and fired by the chancellor—you may call him president or prime minister. I represented continuity in this organization.

Kellen Everett: What political or religious leaders have influenced you in your career?

Frerich Görts: Well, religious, as I told you already, Thomas S. Monson became part of our family a little bit. There were also some seventies. I worked with Elder Bruce Hafen and Marion Hanks. Then, it was Bruce Porter, the international man you had, and your distinguished Professor [Cole] Durham. And they all learned, these gentlemen, as missionaries in Germany, door-to-door and, later on—well, they impressed me how they handled church matters. Dieter Uchtdorf—he’s one of my buddies. He’s two or three years older than I. We were at the same time stake presidents and so on. So we know each other very well, and we learned from all the other American brethren.

Kellen Everett: Have there been political leaders that have influenced you?

Frerich Görts: Yeah. One was our state president. You know we have this system of state president and chancellor. State president is the notary of the state and that was von Weizsäcker. I learned from him a lot. He is a very Prussian, strict Protestant, and noble—from an aristocratic family. I loved his discipline, and how he had seen our history. You know, we have a very, very, very complicated and, in some way, horrible history in the last hundred years. And my minister, Dr. Schwartz-Schilling, was not a politician in the beginning. He studied Sinology, Chinese studies. He knows Mandarin and he became a businessman. He was a very Christian-oriented person. And we made some trips around the world. I brought him to Hawaii. I showed him the Polynesian Cultural Center; then we continued for Salt Lake City. And I’ve shown him the center of the city, the tabernacle, the temple, and so on. So he knew who I was.

I was the only—excuse me for the short expression—Mormon or Saint at these times in the federal government. And my appointing to the position of our state secretary had to be discussed with the chancellor and the minister. And the chancellor had only one question: “Is that man OK?” That was all. [laughs] And my minister said, “Yes, I trust him completely.” And so I was called. There was not a big political discussion at my appointment situation.

Kellen Everett: Did your religion affect your decision to begin a career as a civil servant?

Frerich Görts: I learned very fast that I have to live two lives, and you have to learn to stand discrepancies between the one world and the other world without compromising or corrupting your ideals and your values. Better learn very, very fast. I said, “OK,” because there were a lot of parties, “I belong to the Christian Democratic Union of Germany.” I say this very frankly, open, because it’s a fact. But for Americans that will be difficult to understand, because the Christian Democratic, in comparison to the American parties, that would be more left than the Democratic Party, and it is our most right party, you know, conservative. So the range of parties is very difficult to compare, but for Germans or European conditions, the Christian Democratic Union is a conservative party. So I knew that things will go against my values, and I have to live with it.

Kellen Everett: You mentioned serving in different church callings. How did you balance your church callings with your government offices?

Frerich Görts: Yes, it’s interesting. But that was not a question: “How do you balance it with your family?” Isn’t that interesting? [laughs] Is that my purpose, that you have not asked that? You know, that is interesting. I mean, this is an interview for church callings and politics, but the question—no, there was not a problem, but with the family it was a problem. Because the family shows much more need, and I have to apologize after the longest time and the high tide of my being in politics for ten to fifteen years. And with the church callings it was pretty easy. I was bishop already. I was in the calling of a stake president. So, at the end of my calling as a stake president, my counselors did a lot. But then my bishops, stake president, they all understood the burden. I had always this infusion of the Spirit, once a week in sacrament.

Family is something else, truly, because there are weeks where you don’t see your family. You come home always at ten or eleven o’clock in the evening. That is a challenge. That is a challenge, and I apologize to my children, but they said, “No, Daddy, you were always there!” I know for sure I was not. [laughs] But they didn’t feel like that, OK.

Kellen Everett: And did you ever seek inspiration regarding decisions on public policy?

Frerich Görts: Mostly I decided by my feeling and by thinking, by analyzing problems. There was very rarely a conflict where I did say, “I don’t know what to do.” Yes, there was the conscience. We are very clear and said very clearly what I should do and what I should not do.

There was only one point where we needed a decision. In 1989–90, when we made in Germany the reunification of the two states. I was in charge to unify around two or three hundred thousand people from East Germany in our organization completely. I had an office in Berlin, and I was the head of many, many thousands of people, and responsible for them, for taking over. And here we come to a situation where I knew that quite a lot were members of the secret service of the GDR. And that was difficult for me, because I did not know what they did in that time. If they did, really, if they were only members of the GDR [German Democratic Republic Communist] party or informal members of the secret service, or if they did really bad things. And this was the time when I tried to find guidance. Particularly, I had to make some personal decisions of people, to say kick them out, they stay, they go, and so on.

I was counseled. I had a team and staff who presented propositions and life bios of those people and the position of them—what they could decide and what not. But here, this was a very delicate matter. That was a time where I struggled because analyzing was not enough, and so I made decisions about individuals. But I’m not sure if I made it right or good.

Kellen Everett: Thank you for that insight. What do you think the role of religion should be in politics in general or for public officials?

Frerich Görts: You know, we Saints, we would like to have a theocracy. There’s the king, who is just. He is called by the Lord. And that’s what we would like to have—a just man as we find them in the Book of Mormon. We had that construction in Germany for over fifteen hundred years. Germany was called Deutsche Reich, and all kings were anointed, and even the emperors. But we’ve seen how bad this system is, so we tried to learn democracy. The first democracy we had was after World War I. It didn’t work very well. Then we got the horrible Nazi Reich, which led us to the catastrophe of World War II. And then the Americans, the Brits, and the French came and taught us, particularly the Americans. I learned democracy by the Americans.

But they didn’t teach us about religion in democracy and politics. But we learned that religion was an integral part and not an outspoken part—it was integral, the values were in it. And that is my philosophy still today. When religion as organization becomes an important playing role in politics, then no, that’s not good at all. But we are not a laical state like France is. The French have completely abolished all religious attitudes in the public and political life. It is almost impossible that a French president will say a prayer or will go to church publicly. [Emmanuel] Macron did it, when he had seen this burning Notre-Dame, and he said, “We will build it up.” But Notre-Dame, the church, is not property of the Catholic Church; it belongs to the state. So that is very different thinking.

In Germany it’s a question of values. That’s all, and that is what I prefer as well. Keep religion and state completely separated but take your values into the politics and live by this. That is seen by everybody, and if you make a mistake and you stumble, they see it and they will say, “Hey, listen, you’re a Mormon. What are you doing?” [laughs]

And here we are at the most important part: I will tell you what is my greatest challenge. The challenge to differentiate between loyalty versus truth. Let me explain it. You are in a political system. You are in a hierarchy. You’re bound in a clan of politicians or the program and have certain goals you want to reach. And then you work on that and then comes the very critical moment where you have to lie. You have to say something which is not true, only to keep the goal going. And if you don’t do it, you’re in a mess. And here you are challenged; you are really challenged. Very often, you could be quiet. You don’t talk. But sometimes, you have to. You have to go into negotiations, and you represent facts, goals, false facts, and so on, and you know it. And you just say to yourself, “Hey, what about truth?” That is the biggest challenge. It was for me. And I tried to avoid such situations. But here, and this is a conclusion of it, this is my motto: “Don’t go into the kitchen if you cannot stand the heat.”

This is my answer to young Latter-day Saints considering involvement in politics. That’s what I say, always when I’m invited to a young single adult conference and so on, they ask me. What I say, “Don’t go in the kitchen if you cannot stand the heat.” There is another world. And then I say, read Mormon. Read Moroni. Read all these generals and the genocides. That was a difficult life, they had to kill, but they didn’t want to kill. They had, maybe, to lie to protect people, families, or whatever. So you learn in politics to weigh the values. They have different weights. They’re not of the same importance in certain moments. You cannot say that loyalty and truth is on the same level. No, sometimes it goes up and down, and that is where you need the Spirit.

And you need courage. For me, it was hard. That’s what I learned as a deacon, as a teacher, as a priest. I had not to forget, but I had to be flexible, to learn some flexibility in it, without compromising yourself. And some members will never understand it.

Kellen Everett: What we want to ask is if your religious faith or practice, or the things you do because of your religion, has ever come into conflict with what other people wanted you to do as a government official.

Frerich Görts: Yes, an incident happened. That happened once in my life, and then you have to stand. And if you do stand, then it’s gone. OK, it did cost my job, but nevertheless. When we privatized these huge state units, we had to establish a balance sheet. And a balance sheet where we had to show the values, the physical and economical values of the companies. And the values were not enough, they should have been a little bit higher for going public. And so there were some great and very important consulting companies, international. I will not quote the names. And they exaggerated and overvalued the real estate in a dramatic way of billions. And here I said, “Hey.” You know, it’s sometimes difficult to value real estate, you know, there is a flexibility in it, or the value of it—5 or maybe 10 percent, you never know how you can sell the property. But this overestimating was sometimes more than 100 percent and 200 percent or 300 percent. That is a crime. I said, “Yes, I’m in politics, we want to come to an end, to change, to deregulate, to change the companies into public from a private company, and so on.” And here I took this proposal of the balance sheet and went to the politicians and to the CEOs and said, “Gentlemen, not with me.” Because, you know, I was still a civil servant, which means I have taken an oath of the state. I said, “It is property of the Federal Republic, and there are other values.”

You know, there was a long discussion, it took more than a year. And there was great pressure on me to sign it, but I refused. And at the very end, I wrote a letter to the gentlemen and made it very clear, maybe that was a little bit too rough, but made it very clear that this is something I wouldn’t do. OK, in the very end, I was still a political appointee, appointed person and so on. They released me. It was the end of my career. There was a huge explosion in the media—public prosecutor looked into it. The company got a big fine to pay, but then everything was gone, and nobody wanted to hear about it, but that was the end of it.

So what did I learn? That you can have a wonderful time in politics, all the time, but maybe the Lord one time, he will challenge you, and maybe he wants to know if you are standing and keeping what you have taught and what you have learned. And there was only one time in my life. OK, I had a good feeling, I mean it was a catastrophe to my family first. It didn’t kill my economical situation, and during this whole mess of political discussions, there was an attempt by a company to bribe me. Hey, [laughs] that was even more ridiculous. But then the attacks come from all sides and I’m not proud of how I managed it. Maybe today I would do it in a little more relaxed and careful way and come to the same conclusion. But you have to know where you stand, and you have to stay to it.

Kellen Everett: OK, I believe that’s the last of the questions that we had planned out. Is there anything else that you would like to discuss or to add on that we haven’t already talked about today?

Frerich Görts: I think we have covered the whole range of the most important questions, between life as a member and politics. When I was an area seventy, I was at the same time in Germany the director of public affairs in the church. I was invited always in springtime in the public affairs committee of the church, that is Sunday morning, nine o’clock in the Joseph Smith Building to a breakfast. Two apostles were there. President [Henry B.] Eyring—he was there, I remember. And he asked the question, and he said, “Hey, brother, we are losing more and more people out of politics. They don’t go into politics as mayors, as representatives, in city councils, and so on.” The church leaders wondered, and they were concerned about it.

And Elder [James E.] Faust had a very good overview. He said, “Yes, we know, it’s not the brothers. They would go.” It was the bishops and stake presidents holding them back; they need them in the church.

And I said to myself at that time, “Yes, that’s the same in Germany as well.” This is a real big problem. To go into politics, it’s better you don’t have children. [laughs] There will be this thing in school and everywhere they are. And you need a wife who has nerves like steel ropes [laughs], because that is a very harsh thing. And I think the incivility is not as much with the politicians, it’s with the media.

We have not many people now in the church who are in politics in Germany. We have some delegates in some parties; most of them are on a local level. In the federal level, we have none, not at all. I was the only one with the highest position in their governmental job in Germany ever. It was a blessing; it was a blessing.