25 years, more than 540 meetings, tens of thousands of sandwiches: Pastor Thomas Römer, 65, has been offering breakfast for the needy in the Matthäuskirche since 1997. Every second Thursday, the poor, the lonely and the homeless meet in the parish hall of the evangelical church at Sendlinger Tor. The so-called Matthew breakfast is financed by donations. “We live in a city that has a heart for the poor,” says Römer.
SZ: Mr. Römer, you are making a breakfast for the homeless in the parish hall of the Matthäuskirche…
Thomas Roemer: … we’re not talking about a homeless breakfast, because there are some there, but not all of them are homeless. I would say: the needy or the poor come, and these poor people also include people who are lonely. I remember a former judge who used to come to our breakfast and say, “I have no fellowship, I’m always so alone.” The greatest poverty in Munich is loneliness. When we started breakfast 25 years ago, the idea was for people from different backgrounds and social backgrounds to sit together at the table. The table community is an important point for me. When you sit at the table, you are at eye level. All are welcome.
And it’s volunteers who prepare the breakfast?
Yes, and they will also sit at the table. And it’s good for me to be there too; to be poor in a place where I don’t have to do anything and where I don’t have to show anything, where I’m safe with my sometimes depressive moods. There is give and take at this breakfast. When I started 25 years ago, my father said: “Oh, Thomas, you’ll like that. People are all the same – it’s just that the lacquer isn’t that thick with them.” There is a quick, immediate encounter here.
How many people come to your breakfast?
At the moment there are between 65 and 85 people.
How old are you?
Mostly 50+. But there are also 25- or 30-year-olds. Some have been coming for years, some irregularly. One has moved to Kempten, but always travels there because he loves breakfast so much.
We currently have the Ukraine war and the so-called energy crisis, which is why some people in Germany are short on cash. Do you feel that at your breakfasts – are more people coming now?
Newcomers are people from the Ukraine. By the way, when we started 25 years ago, many people from Bosnia or Serbia came to our breakfast; People who fled because of the Balkan war. Some are with us to this day. Even with the wave of refugees in 2015, the number of people who came to us increased.
And people who are currently in need because of rising energy prices?
They’re not coming yet. There is arguably shame in accepting free food. We have to wait and see over the next six months whether these people will accept offers of help.
Beyond breakfast, do you do anything with your guests or friends, as you call them?
Some people don’t really get out of the city, and that’s why we take a trip every two years to Lake Starnberg, Lake Tegernsee or Lake Ammer. And in the years in between we have summer parties. And we offered – before Corona – a Matthäus-Café in the community hall once a month on Fridays.
And at Christmas there was dinner again, wasn’t there? It was last canceled because of the pandemic.
We always did the Christmas dinner in the parish hall of the Matthäuskirche, but in different forms because of Corona. During the pandemic we gave out lunch bags. This time it was again in the usual form: first there was a service at 11:30 a.m., which I did, and at 12 p.m. there was a meal for the more than 200 people at tables: roast pork, dumplings, red cabbage. After that, the whole church smelled of red cabbage for a few hours (laughs).