Editing East Germany (section)

=== Religion ===
{{Main|Christianity in East Germany|Persecution of Christians in the Eastern Bloc|Irreligion in Germany}}
{{bar box
|title=Religion in East Germany, 1950
|left1=Religion
|right1=Percent
|float=right
|bars=
{{bar percent|[[Protestant]]|DeepSkyBlue|85|85%}}
{{bar percent|[[Catholic Church|Catholic]]|DarkBlue|10|10%}}
{{bar percent|Unaffiliated|LightGrey|5|5%}}}}
{{bar box
|title=Religion in East Germany, 1989
|left1=Religion
|right1=Percent
|float=right
|bars=
{{bar percent|[[Protestant]]|DeepSkyBlue|25|25%}}
{{bar percent|[[Catholic Church|Catholic]]|DarkBlue|5|5%}}
{{bar percent|Unaffiliated|LightGrey|70|70%}}}}

Religion became contested ground in the GDR, with the governing communists promoting [[state atheism]], although some people remained loyal to Christian communities.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Fulbrook |first=Mary |date=January 1957 |title=The Limits Of Totalitarianism: God, State and Society in the GDR |journal=[[Transactions of the Royal Historical Society]] |volume=7 |pages=25–52 |doi=10.2307/3679269 |jstor=3679269 |s2cid=162448768 |number=1}}</ref> In 1957, the state authorities established a [[State Secretary for Church Affairs|State Secretariat for Church Affairs]] to handle the government's contact with churches and with religious groups;<ref>{{Cite web |last=Toth |first=Helena |title=Dialogue as a Strategy of Struggle: Religious Politics in East Germany, 1957–1968 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/EF8B25B6831AAC5687891F10C5BD4646/S0960777320000065a.pdf/div-class-title-dialogue-as-a-strategy-of-struggle-religious-politics-in-east-germany-1957-1968-div.pdf |website=Contemporary European History |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |page=174}}</ref> the SED remained officially atheist.<ref>{{Cite book |last=de Silva |first=Brendan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PAR5nQudwUUC |title=East Germany: Continuity and Change |publisher=Rodopi B.V. |date=2000 |isbn=978-90-420-0579-2 |editor-last=Cooke |editor-first=Paul |series=German Monitor |location=Amsterdam |publication-date=2000 |pages=104–105 |chapter=The Protestant Church and the East German State: an organisational perspective |quote=The SED will refrain from talks with the churches, since it must be seen as an 'atheistic party against the Church'. Thus, negotiations must be led by the State, which is understood to be non-partisan, namely by the state Secretary for Church Affairs. But decisions on Church policies are to be made exclusively 'in the party' [...]. |access-date=21 September 2015 |editor-last2=Grix |editor-first2=Jonathan |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160603024922/https://books.google.com/books?id=PAR5nQudwUUC |archive-date=3 June 2016 |url-status=live |via=[[Google Books]] |issue=46}}</ref>

In 1950, 85% of the GDR citizens were [[Protestants]], while 10% were [[Catholic Church|Catholics]]. In 1961, the renowned philosophical theologian [[Paul Tillich]] claimed that the Protestant population in East Germany had the most admirable Church in Protestantism, because the communists there had not been able to win a spiritual victory over them.<ref>[[Paul Tillich]]. Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions (New York: [[Columbia University Press]], 1963), p. 20.</ref> By 1989, membership in the Christian churches had dropped significantly. Protestants constituted 25% of the population, Catholics 5%. The share of people who considered themselves non-religious rose from 5% in 1950 to 70% in 1989.

==== State atheism ====
{{Further|State atheism|Irreligion in Germany}}

When it first came to power, the Communist Party asserted the compatibility of Christianity and Marxism–Leninism and sought Christian participation in the building of socialism. At first, the promotion of [[Marxist–Leninist atheism]] received little official attention. In the mid-1950s, as the Cold War heated up, atheism became a topic of major interest for the state, in both domestic and foreign contexts. University chairs and departments devoted to the study of scientific atheism were founded and much literature (scholarly and popular) on the subject was produced. This activity subsided in the late 1960s amid perceptions that it had started to become counterproductive. Official and scholarly attention to atheism renewed beginning in 1973, though this time with more emphasis on scholarship and on the training of cadres than on propaganda. Throughout, the attention paid to atheism in East Germany was never intended to jeopardise the cooperation that was desired from those East Germans who were religious.<ref>Fulbrook, ''The Limits Of Totalitarianism: God, State and Society in the GDR'' {{ISBN?}} {{page?|date=September 2024}}</ref>

==== Protestantism ====
{{Main|de:Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR|l1=Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR}}

[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-W0613-039, Sitzung des Martin-Luther-Komitees.jpg|thumb|right|A 1980 meeting between representatives of the BEK and Erich Honecker]]

East Germany, historically, was majority [[Protestant]] (primarily [[Lutheran]]) from the early stages of the [[Protestant Reformation]] onwards. In 1948, freed from the influence of the [[Nazism|Nazi-oriented]] [[German Christians (movement)|German Christians]], [[Lutheran]], [[Calvinism|Reformed]], and [[united and uniting churches|United churches]] from most parts of Germany united as the [[Protestant Church in Germany]] (''Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland''; EKD) at the Conference of Eisenach (''Kirchenversammlung von Eisenach'').

In 1969, the regional Protestant churches in East Germany and East Berlin{{efn|The Eastern churches were the [[Evangelical Church of Anhalt]], [[Evangelical Church in Berlin, Brandenburg and Silesian Upper Lusatia#Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg]] (EKiBB, East Ambit, for East Berlin and Brandenburg), [[Evangelical Church of Silesia|Evangelical Church of the Görlitz Ecclesiastical Region]], [[Pomeranian Evangelical Church#Evangelical Church in Greifswald|Evangelical Church in Greifswald]], [[Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg]], [[Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Saxony]], [[Evangelical Church of the Church Province of Saxony]] (KPS), [[Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia]] and [[Evangelical Church of the Union]] (East Region, for EKiBB-East Ambit, Görlitz, Greifswald and KPS, and since 1970 for Anhalt too).}} broke away from the EKD and formed the ''{{ill|Federation of Protestant Churches in the German Democratic Republic|de|Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR}}'' ({{langx|de|link=no|Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR}}; BEK); the [[Moravian Church|Moravian]] ''Herrnhuter Brüdergemeinde'' also joined in 1970. In June 1991, following the German reunification, the BEK churches remerged with the EKD.

Between 1956 and 1971, the [[leadership]] of the East German Lutheran churches gradually changed its relations with the state from hostility to cooperation.<ref>Martin Onnasch, "Konflikt und Kompromiss: Die Haltung der evangelischen Kirchen zu den gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen in der DDR am Anfang der fünfziger Jahre," ["Conflict and compromise: the position of the Protestant churches with regard to social changes in the GDR at the beginning of the 1950s"], ''Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte / Halbjahresschrift für Theologie und Geschichtswisseschaft,'' 1990, Vol. 3 Issue 1, pp.&nbsp;152–165.</ref> From the founding of the GDR in 1949, the Socialist Unity Party sought to weaken the influence of the Church on the rising generation. The Church adopted an attitude of confrontation and distance toward the state. Around 1956 this began to develop into a more neutral stance accommodating conditional loyalty. The government was no longer regarded as illegitimate; instead, church leaders started to view the authorities as installed by God and, therefore, deserving of obedience by Christians. Still, churches reserved their right to reject state demands on matters that they felt were not in accordance with the will of God. There were both structural and intentional causes behind this development. Structural causes included the hardening of Cold War tensions in Europe in the mid-1950s, which made it clear that the East German state was not temporary. The loss of church members also made it clear to church leaders that they had to come into some kind of dialogue with the state. The intentions behind the change of attitude varied from a traditional liberal Lutheran acceptance of secular power to a positive attitude toward socialist ideas.<ref name="Stephen R. Bowers 1982, pp 73-86">{{Cite journal |last=Bowers |first=Stephen R. |date=Spring 1982 |title=Private Institutions in Service to the State: The German Democratic Republic's Church in Socialism |journal=[[East European Quarterly]] |volume=16 |pages=73–86 |number=1}}</ref>

[[Manfred Stolpe]] became a lawyer for the Brandenburg Protestant Church in 1959 before taking up a position at church headquarters in Berlin. In 1969 he helped found the {{lang|de|Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR}} (BEK), where he negotiated with the government while at the same time working within the institutions of this Protestant body. He won the regional elections for the Brandenburg state assembly at the head of the SPD list in 1990. Stolpe remained in the Brandenburg government until he joined the federal government in 2002.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2020-12-29 |title=Startseite - Manfred Stolpe |url=https://manfred-stolpe.de |access-date=2024-10-07 |language=de-DE}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Augustine |first=Dolores L. |date=2004 |title=The Impact of Two Reunification-Era Debates on the East German Sense of Identity |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4140983 |journal=German Studies Review |volume=27 |issue=3 |pages=563–578 |doi=10.2307/4140983 |jstor=4140983}}</ref>

Apart from the Protestant state churches ({{langx|de|link=no|label=none|[[Landeskirche]]n}}, united in the EKD/BEK) and the [[Catholic Church]], there were a number of smaller Protestant bodies, including Protestant [[Free Churches]] ({{langx|de|link=no|label=none|Evangelische Freikirchen}}) united in the {{ill|Federation of the Free Protestant Churches in the German Democratic Republic|de|Bund Evangelisch-Freikirchlicher Gemeinden in der DDR}} and the {{ill|Federation of the Free Protestant Churches in Germany|de|Bund Freier evangelischer Gemeinden in Deutschland}}, as well as the [[Evangelical Lutheran Free Church (Germany)|Free Lutheran Church]], the [[Old Lutherans|Old Lutheran Church]], and [[Federation of the Reformed Churches in the German Democratic Republic]]. The [[Moravian Church]] also had its presence as the {{lang|de|Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine}}. There were also other Protestants such as [[Methodism|Methodists]], [[Adventists]], [[Mennonites]], and [[Quakers]].

==== Catholicism ====
{{See also|Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin}}

[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1987-0710-035, Dresden, Katholikentreffen.jpg|thumb|[[Katholikentag]], Dresden, 1987<br/>(left to right) Bishop [[Karl Lehmann]] and [[Cardinal (Catholicism)|Cardinals]] [[Gerhard Schaffran]], Joseph Ratzinger (the future [[Pope Benedict XVI]]) and [[Joachim Meisner]]]]

The smaller Catholic Church in eastern Germany had a fully functioning episcopal hierarchy in full accord with the Vatican. During the early postwar years, tensions were high. The Catholic Church as a whole (and particularly the bishops) resisted both the East German state and Marxist–Leninist ideology. The state allowed the bishops to lodge protests, which they did on issues such as abortion.<ref name="Stephen R. Bowers 1982, pp 73-86"/>

After 1945, the Church did fairly well in integrating Catholic exiles from lands to the east (which mostly became part of Poland) and in adjusting its institutional structures to meet the needs of a church within an officially atheist society. This meant an increasingly hierarchical church structure, whereas in the area of religious education, press, and youth organisations, a system of temporary staff was developed, one that took into account the special situation of [[Caritas Germany|Caritas]], a Catholic charity organisation. By 1950, therefore, there existed a Catholic subsociety that was well adjusted to prevailing specific conditions and capable of maintaining Catholic identity.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Schaefer |first=Bernd |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=96QzpCRH2agC |title=The East German State and the Catholic Church, 1945–1989 |publisher=[[Berghahn Books]] |date=2010 |isbn=978-1-84545-852-2 |access-date=14 October 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160603062014/https://books.google.com/books?id=96QzpCRH2agC |archive-date=3 June 2016 |url-status=live}} ch 1</ref>{{Page needed|date=January 2014}}

With a generational change in the episcopacy taking place in the early 1980s, the state hoped for better relations with the new bishops, but the new bishops instead began holding unauthorised mass meetings, promoting international ties in discussions with theologians abroad, and hosting ecumenical conferences. The new bishops became less politically oriented and more involved in pastoral care and attention to spiritual concerns. The government responded by limiting international contacts for bishops.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Webb |first=Adrian |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=omjBEYM3IK4C&pg=PA185 |title=Routledge Companion to Central and Eastern Europe since 1919 |publisher=[[Routledge]], [[Taylor & Francis]] |date=2008 |isbn=978-0-203-92817-2 |page=185 |access-date=14 October 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160427110838/https://books.google.com/books?id=omjBEYM3IK4C&pg=PA185 |archive-date=27 April 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref>{{request quotation|date=September 2015}}

List of apostolic administrators:
* [[Roman Catholic Diocese of Erfurt|Erfurt-Meiningen]]
* [[Roman Catholic Diocese of Görlitz|Görlitz]]
* [[Roman Catholic Diocese of Magdeburg|Magdeburg]]
* [[Apostolic administration of Schwerin|Schwerin]]