Nonviolent Communication — developed by Marshall B. Rosenberg over decades — is more than a technique. It is a way of being that looks for the human in the other.
Marshall, like us, never liked the abbreviation 'NVC'. When so much is at stake, it is worth calling the child by its full name: Nonviolent Communication.
Before Nonviolent Communication was practised in countless rooms across Germany, a handful of people first carried it here. Klaus-Dieter Gens was one of them.
In 1995, Klaus-Dieter first met Marshall Rosenberg in Berlin. A colleague had experienced Marshall at the 1993 Kirchentag in Munich and was so enthusiastic about his lectures that she invited Marshall to Berlin for a seminar. What began as cautious listening became a school that shaped his life for two decades.
Marshall asked Klaus-Dieter to take responsibility in Germany: to be the coordinator for his visits to Northern and Eastern Germany while Isolde Teschner covered the south. For more than ten years Klaus-Dieter travelled with Marshall, translated for him, organised seminars — and Katarina carried this work alongside him, all of it voluntary.
Out of a wish to make Marshall's work accessible beyond his presence, Conex books and more was born — first a small information hub, today an online shop with over two hundred titles.
In 2003, Klaus-Dieter left the former Centre for Nonviolent Communication Berlin, which he had founded and chaired, and started — together with Katarina — the forum gewaltfreie kommunikation berlin: their own self-employed practice, an umbrella over several associations and partnerships, and the form their work has taken ever since.
Klaus-Dieter Gens was later made an honorary member of the German Professional Association for Nonviolent Communication — a recognition of his contribution to spreading the practice in the German-speaking world.
“Behind every conflict lies a longing for connection.” Marshall Rosenberg taught this. Klaus-Dieter and Katarina carried it into German.
A conversation about meeting Marshall Rosenberg, about old patterns, about the famous stop — and about what remains when you have lived this language for decades.
In 1994 a colleague mentioned it — he had been to a church conference where Marshall had spoken. I was sceptical at first. But when I sat in a workshop myself, I recognised that this stance carried all of my twenty years of youth work. It was like a language I had been looking for without knowing it.
Marshall asked me — for Northern and Eastern Germany, while Isolde Teschner took the south. It was not a job, it was an honour. For over ten years I accompanied him voluntarily — organising, translating, travelling. Katarina carried this with me.
Even after decades of practice, old patterns still surface. But I notice them faster. There is this famous stop — pausing briefly before I respond. With this stop I find my way back to the stance. Sometimes in a second, sometimes after a night's sleep.
Depth. That it is worth devoting yourself truly to one thing — not ten methods halfway, but one fully. Marshall did not like mixing NVC with other approaches. He said: when so much is at stake, let us call the child by its full name. I, too, never liked the abbreviation NVC.
It was a lovely surprise. I had not sought it. But I am glad, because it recognises what Katarina and I together did for NVC in Germany over the years.
That it is lived as a stance, not merely trained as a method. And that people remember: behind every conflict lies a longing for connection.
Condensed and edited for the web. Original interview at the German Professional Association for NVC. Fachverband