Anyone in the German-speaking world who has had a near-death experience often finds themselves surprisingly alone with it. Doctors rarely know what to make of the report, family and friends react with helplessness or disbelief – and the experience itself will not let go. For exactly this situation there has been an address for more than twenty years: Netzwerk Nahtoderfahrung e.V., Germany's near-death experience network. The association keeps appearing in the margins of our articles – here we finally introduce it in its own right.
How the network came about
The association was founded in 2004, and the founding constellation is telling: an experiencer and a scientist.
Alois Serwaty had a near-death experience himself during a medical procedure and has engaged intensively ever since with the scientific and philosophical questions the experience raises. He led the association as chairman from 2004 to 2016 and co-edited several conference volumes.
Prof. Dr. Günter Ewald (1929–2015) was a professor of mathematics who taught in the United States and at the Ruhr University Bochum. After retiring in 1994 he devoted himself to near-death research in the wider context of science and religious worldview and wrote several books on the subject, among them Auf den Spuren der Nahtoderfahrungen (On the Trail of Near-Death Experiences). A natural scientist, then, who took the phenomenon seriously without rushing to interpret it – and this dual nature of experience and science has shaped the association to this day.
What the association wants
Its self-understanding has two halves, and both matter equally: the association wants to inform the public about near-death experiences in a sober, factual way – and it wants to offer people who have had a near-death experience a protected space in which they can talk with other experiencers. The association is a registered charity and currently has around 310 members from Germany, Austria and Switzerland – experiencers, relatives, interested laypeople and scientists alike.
Nor does the network stand alone: it sees itself as part of the worldwide family of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) in the USA – the organisation that researchers such as Bruce Greyson helped build to put near-death research on a scientific footing.
What it offers experiencers
The practical heart of the association are its contact persons: people you can turn to with questions about near-death experiences, after-death contacts, or the religious and spiritual aspects of what happened. Added to this are regional groups where experiencers meet in person, plus newsletters, reading lists, videos and podcasts.
Why this is needed has been described by the neurologist Prof. Wilfried Kuhn – today the association's deputy chairman – in a long-form interview: a near-death experience changes people. They become more spiritual, less materialistic, they reweigh their lives – and precisely this frequently leads to conflict with partners and the social environment, in documented cases up to divorce. What research knows about these after-effects and transformations is summarised in a separate article. The association was expressly founded for this as well: as a point of contact, for counselling – and to refer people to psychotherapists who are familiar with the phenomenon and do not reflexively pathologise it.
Annual conferences and conference volumes
Since its early years the network has regularly held annual conferences bringing together experiencers, pastoral workers, physicians and researchers. A few milestones:
- In spring 2007 a conference at the Landvolkshochschule Freckenhorst produced the volume Nahtod und Transzendenz (Near-Death and Transcendence – An Approach from Science and Experience).
- In 2011 the conference papers appeared under the title Nahtoderfahrungen – Impulse für das Leben (Near-Death Experiences – Impulses for Life), edited by Alois Serwaty and Joachim Nicolay.
- The 2018 annual conference in Freckenhorst was devoted to Near-Death Experience, Religion and Christian Faith.
- In March 2025 the association held a symposium at the Benediktushof with the programmatic title Near-Death Experience – A Challenge to the Materialist Worldview.
There is also a YouTube channel with interviews and lectures. One of these conversations we have already covered in detail: the interview with the Aachen-based physician Prof. Walter van Laack, who explains there why, as a natural scientist, he is convinced that consciousness continues.
Scientifically grounded
A glance at the people involved shows that this is no esoteric circle. The chair is held today by the psychologist Dr. Joachim Nicolay, who has published on consciousness phenomena near death for many years. His deputy is Prof. Dr. Dr. Wilfried Kuhn, head of neurology at the Leopoldina Hospital in Schweinfurt – a clinician who knows the phenomenon from everyday intensive care. The board is supported by a scientific advisory council.
This mixture is the network's real value: it takes the experiencers' accounts seriously without giving up scientific care – and it keeps the question of interpretation open instead of deciding it one way or the other. Kuhn himself puts it this way in the interview: neither the organic thesis nor the thesis of brain-independent consciousness is proven – the possibility is completely open.
Context
Around 310 members – that sounds small, given that representative surveys suggest roughly four percent of the population have had a near-death experience at some point. In Germany alone that would be several million people. The vast majority of them stay silent – for fear of being thought mad. That since 2004 there has been a place where no one has to stay silent, where neurologists, psychologists and experiencers sit at the same table, is therefore more than a footnote in the German landscape of registered associations. It is a piece of infrastructure for a phenomenon that to this day is virtually absent from universities and schools.
Source: The association's website, netzwerk-nahtoderfahrung.org (in German: the association, board, conferences; membership figures as of 2026), supplemented by the conference volumes linked there and our articles on Wilfried Kuhn and Walter van Laack.
For more, see our curated knowledge collection – it links to further material from NDE research (among them Wilfried Kuhn, Walter van Laack and Bruce Greyson).