COLOGNE, Germany — In the latter 1800s, as members of the Church made their way from Switzerland to England and eventually to the United States, they often journeyed along the Rhine River.

The river provided the least expensive means of travel and, along the way, many would spend a night lodging in Cologne, Germany. Among those travelers was John Lyman Smith, Swiss-Italian-German mission president who was there in May 1861 while accompanying 78 members from Switzerland.

Cologne is now a bustling city of just under 1 million residents, making it the largest city in the western province of Northrhine-Westphalia and the fourth largest city in Germany.

Its history is rich, starting in 50 B.C. when the Roman military leader Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa resettled a Germanic tribe from one side of the Rhine River to the other. Around A.D. 210 it became a residence for Roman emperors and was later known as the "Rome of the North."

Here, some of the most renowned Gothic cathedrals were built. By 1796 the area was conquered by the French; by 1815 it was Prussian.

In this setting, Apostle Orson Hyde passed through near the end of June 1841, traveling on the Rhine on his way to dedicate the land of Palestine.

By 1894, branches of the Church had been established in Saargemuend, Frankfurt-on-the-Main, Leipzig, Hamburg, and Liege, Belgium. But it wasn't until the summer of 1898 that a branch was organized in Cologne.

Now, 102 years later, the branch has grown into two wards and is considered the oldest unit of the Church in the Germany Dusseldorf Mission.

Growth of the Church in Cologne came slowly. Leonhard Rueckert, then an elder, left his job in Frankfurt in April 1895 and moved to Cologne. During his first weeks here, he was the only member. He returned to Frankfurt in June with a 19-year-old colleague, Isidor Braun. Two days later his colleague was baptized.

Soon after returning to Cologne, Brother Rueckert met a young tailor named Carl Behle. During the next weeks while Brother Rueckert taught him the gospel, Brother Rueckert wrote a letter to Wilhelm Behle, Carl's younger brother living in a neighboring province. On Aug. 4, 1895, Wilhelm Behle and a friend, Christian Pieper, arrived in Cologne by train. That evening, Homer Frederick Bushman from St. Joseph, Ariz., baptized 19-year-old Wilhelm, 21-year-old Christian Pieper, and 21-year-old Carl. An hour after the baptisms and confirmations, Wilhelm and Christian boarded a return train.

From that humble beginning, the Church in Cologne began to grow. Carl Behle's home became the focal point. By December, members in Frankfurt-on-the-Main and Cologne formed a branch comprised of 23 members.

Brother Behle was ordained a deacon in June 1896, and a priest in the Aaronic Priesthood in November 1897. On May 6, 1898, President Peter Loutensock of the German Mission held a meeting in the apartment of Maria Steubesand, an investigator at the time. She and her father were baptized several weeks later.

On Tuesday, Aug. 23, 1898, European Mission President Rulon Seymour Wells and German Mission President Peter Loutensock met with two missionaries in Cologne and held a branch meeting with members that evening.

The first mention of a branch in Cologne was made following this meeting. In the last quarter of 1923, the Cologne District was formed.

During the next years, the branch moved from location to location. From Hohe Pforte 14 to Roonstrasse 8, to Mozartstrasse 11.

Two pioneers of the branch, Carl Behle and Maria Steubesand, were married Aug. 11, 1900. Carl was ordained an elder the next day.

Church records show that there were 13 members of the Church in 1898, 13 members in 1899, but 29 members in 1900. By 1915, attendance reached 41 members, but by 1919, membership sank to 21.

The missionary effort was often being disrupted. In June 1902, Elder John W. Orton from North Ogden, Utah, came to preside over the branch but was soon turned out of the mission as an "undesirable alien." Elder Orson C. Klienman from Mesa, Ariz., was arrested and held for 24 hours.

On Aug. 31, 1914, one month after the German declaration of war against the Russians, the Swiss-German mission president in Basel, Switzerland, received a telegram from the European Mission president requesting that missionaries board ships bound for Liverpool.

During the next 12 days, President Hyrum W. Valentine of the Swiss-German Mission reorganized branches and found transportation for missionaries.

Shortly after Adolf Hitler came to power, the Cologne Branch moved to Mozartstrasse in February 1934. It was located diagonally across from the new headquarters of the Cologne Nazi Party.

These were unsettled times that tested the faith of the members. Any references to "Zion" or "Israel" in hymns were prohibited. Many members were lured by the ideals of National Socialism, and many youth joined the "Hitlerjugend."

Permission to tract door to door was denied. The Gestapo, or secret state police, made unannounced visits to survey the compliance of the members with government regulations. The branch president was occasionally summoned to appear before the Gestapo to present a written agenda of the worship service. The Gestapo also required a monthly list of the members' names.

On Aug. 25, 1939, German Mission President M. Douglas Wood received a telegram informing him that missionaries were to evacute Germany. About this time, Elder Norman G. Seibold, a large missionary from Idaho who had played football, entered the mission office in Frankfurt. President Wood asked him, "Elder, have you ever carried a message?"

"No," Elder Seibold responded, "but I'm willing to try."

"We have 31 missionaries lost somewhere between here and the Dutch border. It will be your mission to find them and see that they get out," said President Wood.

The elder left the office with 500 Marks and transportation tickets for Denmark and London. He was instructed to rely entirely upon inspiration to find the missionaries.

Elder Seibold boarded the train and, after four hours of traveling, arrived in Cologne. While it wasn't his destination, he felt to disembark. The train station was filled with hundreds of people making it hard to distinguish anyone. He began whistling the hymn, "Do What Is Right."

Tucked away in the corner of the train station was a missionary who was sitting with an elderly missionary couple from the United States. They heard the whistling and made their way to the elder. They had been stranded at the station all day without any food and unable to call for assistance. They boarded the train together and resumed their journey to the Dutch border, stopping where they were impressed to stop, gathering missionaries along the way. There were many challenges, but Elder Seibold was soon able to telegram the mission office that all missionaries had safely evacuated the Deutsche Reich. Brother Seibold currently resides with his wife, Dona, in the Rupert 6th Ward, Rupert Idaho Stake.

During these troubled years, member attendance at Church dwindled. Many were evacuated. Only four members attended one meeting.

In late summer 1943, the district held its last conference in a school in Essen, Germany. The picture of the first branch member to die in World War II was displayed for a long time on a small table in the Church. Gustav Priefler, Jr., died in 1944. Shortly after, Gustav Romboy died in Cologne.

Many members lost their homes during Allied bombing attacks and were evacuated, leaving the branch to continually diminish. The rooms of the branch building were heavily damaged during air raids, but the Cologne Branch managed to survive. By March 4, 1945, the Third Tank Division of the U.S. Army reached the borders of Cologne. German soldiers had destroyed the Hohenzollern Bridge two days earlier, preventing the U.S. occupation of all of Cologne until April.

An estimated 85 percent of the branch members lost their homes during the war. Because of the devastation, there were no buildings immediately suitable for the branch to rent. But by the spring of 1946, the Cologne Branch had rented a classroom in the Hansa High School. One of the walls had a 1-meter wide hole created by an artillery missile.

The branch continued to grow during the next several decades, moving from one rented facility to another to accommodate the growth.

On Sept. 19, 1976, the Cologne Branch became a ward with the creation of a new stake. Sod was cut on Nov. 8, 1977, for the landscaping of the current meetinghouse on Forststrasse 130 in Heimersdorf, a northern suburb of Cologne. By March 18, 1984, the ward had grown sufficiently to be divided. Members living on the left side of the Rhine became part of the Cologne 1st Ward, while members on the right side of the river formed the Cologne 2nd Ward.

Over the years, members in Cologne count nearly 2,000 members who joined the Church and eventually moved away, many to Salt Lake City.

"The youth of the Church here in Cologne are exceptionally strong in the faith," said Bishop Gregg L. Hodgkin of the Cologne 1st Ward. "They're usually the only members in their entire schools, and virtually all active young adult men have served missions. Among the greatest challenges facing the members here are the vast distances separating the members from one another and from the ward building. Both Cologne wards, whose boundaries encompass a geographical area of approximately 1,100 square miles, meet in one building. But for the faithful saints no distance is too great a hindrance in serving and worshiping the Lord."