Founder of the Osmanische Herberge in Kall and regional leader of the community is Sheikh Hassan, "the Terrible", as he himself likes to add with a little smile, because this name was given to him by his teacher Sheikh Nazim himself, famous for his humorous nature.

On this page we want to highlight a view stations of the life of Sheikh Hassan's from the Christian born kid of post-war West-Berlin to the Imam of the Mosque and leader of the Sufi-Derga in the Eifel - with the intention of giving a first idea to the curious reader about what is going on in the Osmanische Herberge, and maybe to arouse interest in one or the other in meeting this truely interesting personality.

Sheikh Hassan is no friend of important titles and would more likely refuse to be adressed as "leader of the Herberge", but prefer to call himself someone, who only strives to follow the unreachable example of his teacher Sheikh Nazim, and to fulfil his order to run the center.

As he sais himself, when giving lectures in the Sohbat gatherings:

"The people here like to call me Sheikh, but really I'm someone who hopes to receive good inspirations from my Sheikh about what to say next."

Maybe it's the unique manner in which Sheikh Hassan on one hand takes seriously the belief and lives it, yet at the same time admits the own shortcomings not without self-irony and humour and understands and answers the questions of others, which makes him so liked within the community.

There is room for loud laughter, for instance when he talks about the difficulties of performing ones prayer with the due attention. To this he likes to act a little sequence about how the ambitious student allows his thoughts to stray to matters of daily life during prayer, until he comes to realise after the third bow, that he lost track and doesn't know any longer, if there's one or two more bows left to complete the cycle of the prayer.

With this way of taking seriously the belief, but not himself plus a wealth of funny-educational stories (that he prefers to share over a Mate tea) he manages in a special manner, to open the ears and hearts of the listeners, and to make them look at themselves in a new light.

Nearly everyday he can be found in the Osmanische Herberge to carry out prayers and the Dhikrullah with the community and to answer all kind of requests of the people. In addition he still travels a lot, despite his advancing years, to give seminaries and lectures and invite people to communal Dhikr and to Islam.

For this purpose the trained cellist likes to use music, in order to generate a mutual vibration with the audience, and since many years he tours internationally with his ever changing ensemble "Muhabbat Caravan".

Sheikh Hassan is one of the view imams (head of mosque) of german origin in Germany, where the mosques usually are lead by "imported" imams - which isn't always usefull for the exchange between mosque and german society.

Since Sheikh Hassan studied Arabic, the Quran and the life of the Prophet Mohammed , he's also recognised by Muslims from traditionally islamic countries, so in the Osmanische Herberge Muslims from all imagineable countries can com together for prayer.
This also isn't the usual case in Germany and as a consequence Sheikh Hassan frequentlly adresses the attendees of special events like the Juma (Friday prayer) in German, English and Arabic in order to be understood by everyone.

Sheikh Hassans time is dedicated to the service of God and the community, a "time out" of this task is unknown to him. Thereby he gets supported since 1975 by his wife Hadja Karima, also of German origin, who was student of Sheikh Nazim together with Sheikh Hassan, and whose marriage has been blessed with five kids and countless grandchildren.

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