Atheists to save historic German church plank by plank AFP/Stiege, Germany Filed on December 20, 2020 View of the Stabkirche, a stave church built in 1905 as part of the 'Albert House' sanatorium for patients with lung diseases, in a wooded area outside the town of Stiege, Saxony-Anhalt, eastern Germany. The wooden church, complete with dragon ornaments on the roof, built in the Nordic style in 1905 Ask Hans Powalla if he is a believer and the immediate response is a firm “no”. Yet he and other villagers in and around the German town of Stiege have embarked on the Herculean task of saving a picturesque church by moving it from the middle of a forest into the centre of town.