Germany
Germany possesses an increasingly secular society and a thoroughly organized religious sector, with the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches as its largest denominations. Since the Protestant Reformation (1517-1648), the German nation has been divided along confessional lines, with Catholics concentrated in the south and west and Protestants in the north and east. German reunification in 1990 greatly increased the country’s non-religious population, a legacy of the state atheism of previously Soviet-controlled East Germany. Christian church membership has decreased in recent decades, particularly among Protestants. Germany has a small but thriving Jewish population, with a considerable number of émigrés from the former Soviet Union. The Basic Law of Germany guarantees religious freedom and lays out the general structure of church-state relations. Religious communities may organize into “statutory corporations” in order to receive tax privileges and give religious instruction in public schools. There is a growing Muslim community as a result of decades of immigration, mainly from Turkey, which still lacks full state recognition.
ESSAYS ON GERMANY
Religious Politics in the Holy Roman Empire
Germany endured a series of devastating religious conflicts during its early history. German King Otto the Great (936-973) was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope John XII (955-964) in 962, but disputes over who held ultimate authority soon emerged between pope and emperor. These became particularly severe during the Investiture Controversy (1075-1122), a conflict that deeply weakened imperial authority. A small but vibrant Jewish community existed in medieval Germany, but suffered significant persecution and discrimination throughout most of this period. In 1517, Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation by challenging the excesses of the medieval Catholic Church. Over the following decades, many German dukes and princes adopted the new creed, igniting a violent conflict with the emperor. The 1555 Peace of Augsburg allowed local rulers to choose either Lutheranism or Catholicism as the religion of their lands. In 1618, a Protestant revolt in Bohemia grew into the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), which devastated Germany and crippled the Empire’s political viability. The Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, further expanded freedom of worship for Catholics and Protestants and weakened the centralized rule of the Empire over its internal principalities. Over the next century, Catholic Austria and Protestant Prussia emerged as the dominant powers in Germany. The Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) brought an official end to the Holy Roman Empire, but the Congress of Vienna in 1815 created a new German Confederation that included much of Austria and Prussia.
Unification, World Wars, and Nazism
The wars of German unification (1864-1870) produced a German Empire under Prussian hegemony with a Protestant majority and a sizeable Catholic minority. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1871-1890) attempted to curb the power of the Catholic Church in Germany. The ensuing cultural struggle, or Kulturkampf, lasted throughout the 1870s and included a variety of discriminatory policies against Catholics. Resistance from the Center Party and other Catholic organizations eventually pressured Bismarck into easing his stance. The defeat of Imperial Germany in the First World War (1914-1918) led to the formation of the Weimar Republic, but subsequent periods of hyperinflation and political polarization made the Republic highly unpopular. The global economic catastrophe of the 1930s further weakened the Republic, and the National Socialist Party, led by Adolf Hitler (1933-1945), rode the ensuing wave of radical nationalism and anti-Semitism to power. The Nazis implemented brutal discrimination against Jews and clamped down on religious freedom, briefly attempting to nationalize worship by forming a Protestant Reich Church. Protestants reacted by forming the underground Confessing Church, led by prominent theologians like Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The racist ideology of Nazi Germany culminated in the murder of six million Jews and millions of other religious minorities and political dissenters in the Holocaust during the Second World War (1939-1945). Following the defeat of Nazism, Germany was occupied and partitioned, with Western powers controlling the west while the Soviet Union held on to the east.
After the Second World War
West Germany and East Germany took radically divergent paths in the post-war era. West Germany was formed in the Western democratic mold, with religious freedom guaranteed to its citizens. It moved to normalize relations with Israel, including the payment of reparations for the crimes of Nazi Germany. East Germany remained a Soviet satellite state and engaged in a series of policies during the 1950s intended to weaken religion in the country. These were largely abandoned by the 1960s, but secularization remained the dominant pattern. Church-state relations were largely characterized by mutual toleration, and Lutheran churches were able to obtain concessions from the Communist government to ease discrimination against Christians. By the 1980s, religious groups had become increasingly critical of the regime. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 led to reunification, but the religious atmospheres of the two regions have remained distinct. While non-believers now account for over 20 percent of the population, they enjoy disproportionately greater representation in the east. However, secularization is a nationwide trend, and mainstream Protestant denominations in particular have lost a significant number of members. Immigration has led to the emergence of a sizeable Muslim population, particularly from Turkey. Efforts to establish a representative umbrella organization for Muslims, such as those available to most Christians, have been complicated by the diversity of the Muslim community. This has impeded negotiations on issues, including bans in several German states on the wearing of headscarves by teachers.
Contemporary Affairs
Germany currently faces a variety of challenges to its established pattern of religion-state relations, due in part to declining confidence in Christian religious leaders. The Catholic Church’s global sexual abuse scandal spread to Germany in March 2010, when a number of allegations of abuse by priests surfaced. Chancellor Angela Merkel called the scandal a major challenge for German society, and she expressed support for extending the statute of limitations on relevant crimes and providing victims with compensation. Record numbers of German Catholics have left the Church since then, and trust in Pope Benedict XVI has plummeted, in part because his brother, Bishop Georg Ratzinger, is a central figure in the scandal. The Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) also faced criticism when police arrested its head, then-Bishop Margot Kä ß mann, for drunk driving in February 2010, leading Kä ß mann to resign as head of the EKD and as a bishop. She had been elected Chair of the EKD Council only four months earlier, and she was the first woman to hold the post. Efforts to further dialogue and coordination between German Muslims and the government have also faced difficulties. German Muslims praised the government’s promotion of dialogue at the June 2009 meeting of the Islam Conference, a program of the Interior Ministry, but the Second Islam Conference, held in May 2010, was hampered by the absence of two of Germany’s four major Muslim organizations including The Central Council of Muslims in Germany. In May 2012, the historic city of Cologne was engulfed in violent altercations between political right wing activists and members of Germany’s Salafi movement. Due to their forceful promotion an ultra-conservative, fundamentalist Islam, the Salafi sect of Sunni Islam has been linked to several global jihadist organizations, leading the German government to consider banning the movement domestically.
Religious Freedom in Germany
The German system of state support for otherwise independent religious institutions assists all religions equally in principle, but in practice it has been unable to include some minority faiths. The government has granted most of the country’s major religious communities “public law corporation” (PLC) status, the benefits of which include the ability to collect contributions in accordance with rules similar to tax laws, building and tax regulation privileges, and the right to offer denominational religious education in state schools. PLCs also receive funds from the country’s “church tax” – between 8% and 9% of one’s income tax that is paid to the officially recognized denomination of which an individual is a registered member. Traditions that lack a centrally organized national structure – most notably Islam – have had difficulty attaining PLC status and the benefits that come with it. The government has expressed its interest in extending PLC status to Islam once the Muslim community establishes a representative body, but German Muslims have not collectively accepted any one of several Islamic organizations as nationally representative. Regardless of their lack of PLC status, the government protects the right of Muslims to practice their religion freely. Still, Muslims sometimes face hostility in German society, as seen in the controversy in 2007-2008 surrounding the construction of a mosque in Cologne. Scientologists and Jehovah’s Witnesses also face governmental and societal discrimination, though Jehovah’s Witnesses received PLC status in Berlin in 2005.
Religion in the German Constitution
The German constitution, officially called the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, provides for freedom of faith, conscience and creed, and prohibits discrimination on the basis of religious belief. It guarantees the undisturbed practice of religion and the right to conscientious objection to military service. Article 7 enshrines religious instruction as part of the regular curriculum in public schools, stipulating the ultimate authority of each state to supervise its school system, the right of parents to choose whether their children will receive religious instruction, and protection for individual teachers from compulsion to provide religious instruction against their will. Parts of the document also reflect the religious oppression of past German governments. Article 33 explicitly safeguards religious freedom in public life by declaring that the enjoyment of civil and political rights, including eligibility for public office, is not dependent upon religious affiliation, while Article 116 restores the citizenship to anyone who was deprived of it by the Nazi government on religious or several other grounds.
Article 3: Equality Before the Law
(1) All persons shall be equal before the law.
(2) Men and women shall have equal rights. The state shall promote the actual implementation of equal rights for women and men and take steps to eliminate disadvantages that now exist.
(3) No person shall be favored or disfavored because of sex, parentage, race, language, homeland and origin, faith, or religious or political opinions. No person shall be disfavored because of disability.
Article 4: Freedom of Faith, Conscience, and Creed
(1) Freedom of faith and of conscience, and freedom to profess a religious or philosophical creed, shall be inviolable.
(2) The undisturbed practice of religion shall be guaranteed.
(3) No person shall be compelled against his conscience to render military service involving the use of arms. Details shall be regulated by a federal law.
Article 7: School Education
(1) The entire school system shall be under the supervision of the state.
(2) Parents and guardians shall have the right to decide whether children shall receive religious instruction.
(3) Religious instruction shall form part of the regular curriculum in state schools, with the exception of non-denominational schools. Without prejudice to the states right of supervision, religious instruction shall be given in accordance with the tenets of the religious community concerned. Teachers may not be obliged against their will to give religious instruction ...
Article 33: Equal Citizenship; Professional Civil Service
(1) Every German shall have in every Land the same political rights and duties.
(2) Every German shall be equally eligible for any public office according to his aptitude, qualifications, and professional achievements.
(3) Neither the enjoyment of civil and political rights, nor eligibility for public office, nor rights acquired in the public service shall be dependent upon religious affiliation. No one may be disadvantaged by reason of adherence or nonadherence to a particular religious denomination or philosophical creed ...
Article 116: Definition of German; Restoration of Citizenship
... (2) Former German citizens who between January 30, 1933 and May 8, 1945 were deprived of their citizenship on political, racial, or religious
grounds, and their descendants, shall on application have their citizenship restored. They shall be deemed never to have been deprived of their citizenship if they have established their domicile in Germany after May 8, 1945 and have not expressed a contrary intention.
