Abstract
The article seeks to contribute to millennial studies, especially to studies of millennial failure. The Grail Movement, a new religion founded by German businessman Oskar Ernst Bernhardt in the 1920s, is viewed as a good example of possibilities how a religious community can cope with millennial failure.
The millennial expectations conveyed by Bernhardt's lectures and other texts, published under his spiritual name Abd-ru-shin, were at their peak in the middle of the 1930s. At that time, the final judgment was expected to be imminent among Bernhardt's adherents.
The judgement should have been followed immediately by the Millennium. Contrary to all expectations, Abd-ru-shin could not play his role of the usher of Millennium, as he was arrested by German authorities as early as 1938 and died in 1941.
Without its leader, the movement had been disintegrated and its members suffered from great disappointment. - The article concentrates on four steps (or communication strategies) that made the renewal of the movement in the post-war period possible. The millennial failure has been overcome (1.) by means of rational explanation of the reasons of the failure, (2.) by means of modification of the original millennial concept, (3.) by means of weakening the importance of the coming Millennium for individuals, and (4.) by means of preventing millennial expectations to be restored without supervision of the movement post-war leadership.