(TRAVEL) My first in-person introduction to Freiburg, a popular mid-sized city on the edge of Germany’s enchanting Black Forest, was through a college study abroad trip. After graduating, I returned for a yearlong cultural exchange. I’ve made it back four times for shorter visits since that program ended.

In addition to its charming architecture, proximity to nature and signature miniature canals, the city is known for the well-respected University of Freiburg. During my exchange program, I spent quite a bit of time in the university’s energy-efficient, futuristic-looking library.

The building is known for its troublesome facade (which has been plagued by blinding reflections, falling tiles and even spider outbreaks). It is also the home of the student journalism department, where I did an internship.

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Directly across the street is another, very different structure. Completed in 1911, Kollegiengebäude I (Collegiate Building I or KG I) is one of the institution’s main academic buildings, housing the theology, philology and philosophy faculties, along with many classrooms.

In contrast to the glass walls of the library, KG I’s walls are made of very opaque red sandstone. I’ve always been drawn to this building because of something that’s written there, as it were, in stone.

An unlikely slogan

Carved prominently into the westward-facing facade of KG I and highlighted with golden paint is the phrase, “Die Wahrheit wird euch frei machen,” which translates into English as “The truth will set you free.”

Having grown up attending church in America’s Bible Belt and remaining a believer into adulthood, I was encouraged by this public display of the words Jesus found in John 8:32. It was, however, surprising to see a clearly religious quotation featured so obviously at a state university in a relatively secular nation. In fact, other similar displays of Scripture have become increasingly controversial in German public life.

Over the past several years, it has gradually dawned on me that many Freiburg residents are also surprised to discover that an utterance of Christ is in their midst. I was once on a walking tour through the city when the guide stopped in front of the imposing stone edifice.

“Here we have one of the main buildings of Freiburg’s university,” she explained. “You’ll notice the motto carved into its side. I’m not sure who said it, but I believe it’s been attributed to Immanuel Kant.”

During my next visit, I was walking with a friend who, upon looking up and reading the golden letters, expressed her dismay that the university did not “take down these old Nazi slogans.” It took me over an hour to convince her that this phrase was nothing of the sort. Later, I realized she was probably thinking about another, much smaller inscription around the corner on the building’s south-facing wall.

This one reads, “The eternal Germandom” (“Dem ewigen Deutschtum” in German). In contrast to the words on the western facade, these were actually added during the Nazi era in 1936. It was left there after the war to serve as a memorial.

I had these two frustrating encounters on my mind when I was in Freiburg again earlier this year. Could it really be that the people walking past KG I every day were so oblivious to the Christic origins of the words on its wall?

I decided to conduct a survey to find out. Camping out beside the building, I asked passersby what they knew about the statement above their heads. My sample size was only three — but I ended up with a rather diverse pool of respondents: a student, a recent graduate and an older university employee.

The student didn’t know and couldn’t even guess who the quote was from. When I told him the answer, he laughed. He had been an altar boy in his youth but hadn’t retained much biblical knowledge.

The recent graduate guessed that the slogan came from a philosopher but wasn’t sure which one.

After revealing the answer, I asked what he thought of a religious maxim adorning a secular campus.

“I don’t think it's necessarily a bad thing,” he said. “The truth is also important for a university.”

The older interviewee, who was the only one of the three willing to be quoted by even her first name (Thanks, Uli!), also could not identify the source of the phrase. But she did not find the statement objectionable when I revealed the source, since, as she explained, telling the truth is important for everyone.

My survey was, admittedly, very unscientific. However, the results reflected the findings of a recent, much more rigorous study on Bible engagement in Germany. Researchers at the University of Leipzig found that only 1.6% of Germans read the Scriptures daily. About 3% read from them at least once every week. Almost 55% of respondents said that they never pick up a Bible. These statistics help explain why so few people recognize one of Jesus’ most familiar statements.

The surprising history behind the university’s motto

If asked for a theory on how this phrase came to be the university’s motto, I would have guessed that it was a vestige of a distant, more religious era in European history.

There are other such relics: The university seal, for example, features the boy Jesus teaching in the temple in Jerusalem, an image drawn from Luke 2:41-52. The seal was adopted in 1462 and has remained in use, nearly unaltered, since that time.

The university motto, however, was adopted in 1909, when modernist cultural and philosophical trends had already begun to supplant Europe’s more pious past.

Gerhard Kaiser, a Germanist and highly regarded professor at the university, wrote the definitive treatise on this bit of Freiburg yore. In addition to recounting the relevant history, he argued convincingly that another quotation from John’s gospel would have better reflected the spirit of the German academy in the early 20th century. This quote, however, comes not from Jesus but from Pontius Pilate asking, “What is truth?”

The early 1900s were a time of kulturkampf (“culture war”) in Germany. Perhaps nowhere was this more obvious than at the country’s institutions of higher learning. At Freiburg’s university, which had been founded centuries before as a Catholic institution, the theology faculty was regarded with suspicion. One university rector went as far as declaring the department a “foreign body” at the school and suggested that it might be dissolved. More restrained critics questioned the theologians’ commitment to free academic inquiry.

For its part, the theology faculty was split into two camps: conservative supporters of Pope Pius X’s “anti-modernity” campaign and more liberal, reform-minded scholars. This disunity hobbled the department’s ability to play a significant role in the development of university policy, including in the adoption of a motto.

The suggestion to adopt “the truth will set you free” as a motto came from the university’s “academic building commission.” This body (made of representatives from various university departments) was responsible for shaping the appearance and style of KG I, which was still under construction.

This included selecting a phrase to adorn its prominent westward-facing facade. The biblical quotation was chosen and sent to the university senate for approval. Surviving communications from this process indicate that the phrase was well-known and quickly ratified.

It was clear from the beginning that the words from Jesus Christ by way of John the Evangelist were to be scrubbed of religious meaning and biblical context. Instead, “truth” and “freedom” were to be understood as values of rationalism and classical antiquity. One member of the commission wrote that the quotation would go well with the statues of Homer and Aristotle that were to guard the building’s entrance.

The speeches given during the dedication ceremony that marked the building’s completion further illustrate this point. They mainly focused on practical, ethical and intellectual aspects of truth and freedom, ignoring the theological or spiritual.

A Protestant pastor was included among the speakers — but even he seemed reluctant to seriously address a faith-based interpretation of the scriptural quote. He apologetically explained that his sermon would apply “a tinge of religious sentiment” to the new motto. In his essay, Kaiser comments with frustration that giving the words a religious tinge was not necessary since the quote is an objectively religious statement to begin with.

The most obvious measure that the building commission took to secularize John 8:32 was to omit an attribution. Citing the source may have seemed unnecessary; the quote was then certainly more recognizable to the general populace than it is today. More importantly, however, acknowledging the biblical origin could have been understood as showing some level of serious religious allegiance, an impression that the university seemed determined to avoid.

An astonishing and challenging claim

Over 100 years later, it seems that the building commission’s attempt to reinterpret John 8:32 has been a rousing success. The words of Christ are seen through the lens of Kant. Even my “German-on-the-street” interviews illustrated this. Not only did none of the interviewees recognize the quote as the words of Christ, but two people sought to explain its relevance by affirming the importance of truthfulness for academic inquiry. While this innocuous truism is certainly accurate, it is a far cry from the provocative message actually found in Jesus’ words.

The truth that Christ references is not factual correctness or intellectual certainty. Rather, he presents Himself as the ultimate Truth sought and needed by humanity. Only this Truth can set people free from their most onerous bondage.

This bondage is not ignorance, bias or even hubris, as terrible as those things are. Christ reveals Himself as humanity's liberator from the spiritual darkness and consequences of sin. According to Jesus, this is true freedom. In John 8:36, he promises that “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

As Europe and Germany (and increasingly the United States) continue to secularize, it is not surprising that Christ’s words are sometimes repurposed there, much like the West’s many empty churches. However, something valuable is lost when most people in a society are not religiously literate enough to recognize the challenge or the hope offered in renowned verses of Scripture like John 8:32.

Before Jesus’ teachings can be accepted or rejected, they must be known. Maybe it’s time to add a citation to the facade of KG I after all.

James Thompson is an international campus minister and freelance writer. He is pursuing a master’s in intercultural studies at Columbia International University and has undergraduate degrees in journalism and in history from The University of Georgia. His work has also appeared in Christianity Today.