A controversial new Scientology center that opened two weeks ago in one of Berlin's upscale neighborhoods won't be open on Sundays like Christian churches in the German capital – the government considers the group a business rather than a church and, as such, it falls under the country's rigid Sunday closing laws, Der Spiegel reports.
The 43,000-square-foot center, located in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district, is just the latest effort by the Los Angeles-based Church of Scientology to make inroads into Germany.
Scientologists have been under surveillance for years by the domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, and numerous court challenges to the monitoring have been made....