The Freiberg Germany Temple (formerly the Freiberg GDR Temple) is a temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), located in Freiberg, Saxony, Germany. The church announced the temple in October 1982, ground was broken for construction on April 23, 1983, and the temple was dedicated on June 29 and June 30, 1985. Background Built in what was then the German Democratic Republic, the Freiberg Germany Temple was the first LDS temple in a communist state. After the Bern Switzerland Temple was dedicated in 1955, Latter-day Saints throughout Europe visited it for the Endowment and other temple rites. After 1957, East German governmental restrictions on foreign travel prevented the country's Latter-day Saints—about 5,000 in 1970—from easily obtaining visas to travel to the temple. Church members repeatedly applied for visas, were rejected, then applied again. An attempt in the early 1970s by Henry Burkhardt, the de jure head of the church in East Germany, to present the government with a list of 300 church members interested in visiting the temple almost led to his arrest. The LDS Church appointed Burkhardt as president of the Germany Dresden Mission in 1969 to comply with a new law requiring churches to be led by East Germans. In the 1970s his role gave Burkhardt access to visas to travel to LDS general conferences in Salt Lake City, Utah. Obtaining the visas required him to meet often with East German government officials, whom church leaders encouraged Burkhardt to build relationships with despite his reluctance. In 1973 and/or 1978, H. Burke Peterson of the Presiding Bishopric, suggested to Burkhardt that the church build an endowment house in East Germany as an alternative to a temple. Design In 1978, the East German government unexpectedly suggested building an LDS temple within the country. Doing so would reduce visa requests, and was part of a new government policy to cooperate with churches in hopes of obtaining hard currency through construction. The church emphasized temples' unantastbar ("sanctity") nature to the government, but initially planned for a chapel and an endowment house in one building, so that the latter could be used with the chapel if desecrated. The church intended to locate the building in Karl-Marx-Stadt, a longtime center of Communist ideology, as its LDS congregation needed a new chapel. In 1980 the local government rejected a new chapel within the city despite the national government's support, and