Joanna Hartl

Our beloved sister, Joanna, touched the lives of so many of our brothers and sisters. She always looked at the good side of everyone and never hesitated to take into her home those who were in need of help. At the Seonghwa ceremony, her close friend Lari testified to Joanna's generosity and declared that "Joanna was a real angel".

We will miss her bright smile and booming voice, her laughter and her big, big heart.

Joanna was born into a family with 3 older children: Julia aged 15, Simon nearly 13 and me 10. She therefore grew up with much older siblings.

From her birthplace near Henley-on-Thames we moved to Ealing in West London to be nearer to Heathrow Airport, as father was an airline pilot with British Airways.

At school Joanna had no great ambition to succeed academically — she felt that there was more to life than competition. She was so popular with her classmates that on one occasion, when she failed to show up to take an examination paper, the school called us at home to say that the other pupils were refusing to start the examination until Joanna came in to join them (which she duly did)!

Mother was very protective of her and was always worried what Joanna was about to do next. When Joanna moved to the city of York and managed a wholefood restaurant, mother moved from Richmond-on-Thames to York so that she could keep an eye on Joanna. It was there that Joanna met the Movement and moved back to London to take part in the activities at Lancaster Gate.

After participating in a Blessing Ceremony in Seoul, she went to live in Regensburg, Bavaria with her husband Georg. She organised for mother and me to join them and Georg's mother in a trip to Prague, then recently out of the Soviet bloc. She was certainly a good organiser.

Joanna had no difficulty learning the German language. She did this to such a degree that when they went to live in Palau, an island country in the West Pacific, she translated some ancient German documents for payment. She was very resourceful.

When mother became unable to look after herself, Joanna returned to London so that she could take care of her. After a time, Joanna took mother into her own house so that she could manage the situation more effectively. Joanna did this without complaining, and I was very grateful to her.

I'll always remember Joanna as a down-to-earth and determined sister, who cared much for her family and friends.

Joanna Hartl was a force of nature whose generosity reshaped the lives of everyone around her.

She joined the Unification movement as a young woman and served on the Mobile Fundraising Team in the 1980s. Fellow members remember her at Cleve House — always at the front of the group photographs, always smiling, always full of life. She carried that same spirit through every chapter that followed.

Joanna's professional life was care work. She trained as a carer, became a coordinator, and went on to earn a law degree as a single mother in London — using her knowledge to fight for the rights of others and to pass on what she'd learned to anyone who would listen. Her professional life was the visible expression of an inner conviction: that what could be done for someone, should be done.

She lived for a time in Palau in the Pacific, where she ministered to local prisoners with her young daughter Anna tucked under her skirt. Anna — adopted after a series of miscarriages and named "a gift of God" — would later say at her mother's ceremony: "I am only the person I am because of her. She was my only mother and the best mother I could have had."

Her home was always open. When a homeless African family needed shelter, she rented the house to them and slept in a shed in the back garden. When her friend Helena needed help getting her son across London to school, Joanna drove him daily until her health collapsed under the strain — then signed her car over to Helena. When Laraba, a Nigerian woman she met on a Healing street, asked for work, Joanna trained her in care, took her in years later, edited every university assignment, and waited to leave this world only after Laraba had submitted her final paper.

She composed a song — "Oceans of Love" — received during prayer, which was played at her own Seonghwa ceremony. She loved gospel music, poetry, ice cream, and laughter; she kept a separate mini freezer just for ice cream. She was famous for arriving an hour and a half late, driving at twenty miles an hour through London traffic, and never holding a grudge.

She had little patience for self-pity and less for formality. She would say exactly what she thought, then bring you a meal the next day. She nursed her mother through dementia, served as a church trustee in her final years, and fought legal battles to keep a youth ministry alive.

Joanna passed suddenly on 30 May 2022, after a short illness. She left behind her daughter Anna and a wide circle of people she had quietly, stubbornly, and joyfully helped to better lives.