Deutsche Demokratische Republik: Religion

Religion in West Germany

Introduction

This week we focused on the German Democratic Republic and what life was like under its government. The film The Lives of Others gave great perspective on how surveilled the population was. The great lengths that the Stasi went in order to gather information about people who could possibly be against the state was astounding. Then, when we were together we looked at documents showing how a person was categorized based upon their appearance. A simple hairstyle and favorite type a music was enough to make a person an automatic threat to the government. I did find it fascinating though that this film, as well as the next film we watched, Goodbye, Lenin!, touched base on religion. I found this interesting because religion is typically used to define people even more than a hairstyle or music preference would. For this reason. I wanted to focus on religion during this time.

Religion

It is typical when talking about European history that religion is an important topic. Religion has been the driving force for so many conflicts throughout time, but it also has a way to bring groups of people together. The holocaust involved the killing of millions upon millions of different groups of people, but most notably those of Jewish faith. Though East Germany was not directly an extension of Nazi Germany, its citizens were controlled and monitored in similar fashions. Thus, examining the role in which religion played in the lives of the citizens is crucial.

At the start of East Germany, a very large portion of the population was religious. At the beginning of the German Democratic Republic 85% of the population was Protestant, 10% was Catholic, and only 5% were unaffiliated. These numbers would be very comparable to West Germany at the time. Yet, by the very end of the German Democratic Republic Protestantism was down to 25%, Catholic 5%, and unaffiliated was all the way up to 70%. Initially, the new government made no attempt to ban religion, they instead tried to use it to promote their agenda. In the mid 50's, the rising tension of the Cold War changed this. This is when East Germany adopted state atheism which is the incorporation of atheism into political regimes, especially concerning the Soviet Union.  While most citizens became disaffiliated, the stance of the church also changed in this time. Before, the church was much more hostile to the new socialist party because they did not support the church, but they then shifted to develop into a more neutral stance accommodating conditional loyalty to the state. This then led to the relation between the two to becoming more neutral. It is interesting to think though that if so many Eastern Germans hadn't become atheist, would the state still have this neutrality with the church or would they still push further for atheism. 

Click for a short video about religion in Germany today.

-Chloe Soncrant