COUNTRY
GermanyPOPULATION
81,305,856 (July 2012 est.)GDP PER CAPITA
$38,400 (2011 est.)RELIGIONS
Protestant 34%, Roman Catholic 34%, Muslim 3.7%, unaffiliated or other 28.3%AT THE CENTER
RELATED RESOURCES
ORGANIZATIONS (5)
Buddha House
Coordinating Council of Muslims in Germany
Council on Islam for the Federal Republic of Germany
Coordinating Council of Muslims in Germany
Council on Islam for the Federal Republic of Germany
PEOPLE (8)
QUOTES (8)
Robert Zollitsch on Church and State
February 20, 2009
Angela Merkel on Freedom and the Nazi Legacy at the New School in Berlin
February 19, 2009
Angela Merkel on Mosques in Germany at the Christian Democratic Union Conference
December 4, 2007
February 20, 2009
Angela Merkel on Freedom and the Nazi Legacy at the New School in Berlin
February 19, 2009
Angela Merkel on Mosques in Germany at the Christian Democratic Union Conference
December 4, 2007
PUBLICATIONS (4)
The Challenge of Pluralism: Church and State in Five Democracies
January 1, 2008
Being Jewish in the New Germany
January 15, 2006
German Nationalism and Religious Conflict
January 1, 1995
January 1, 2008
Being Jewish in the New Germany
January 15, 2006
German Nationalism and Religious Conflict
January 1, 1995
Germany
Events (11)
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.
Hosted by the Bochum International Consortium for Research in the Humanities, this event brought together scholars from a variety of fields and specializations to discuss the history of religious interactions between Asia and Europe. "World religions" have developed in interaction with one another, and this conference unpacks that complex history of influence and occasional conflict. The conference placed special attention on the experiences of secularism in Asia and Europe, and the...
This conference dealt with the Axial Age and its consequences for all later history including the present. In terms of Merlin Donald's scheme of cultural evolution, the axial age is the time when the mimetic and mythic culture that had provided the cultural tools for humans since early in the Paleolithc (mimetic) and the emergence of language (120,000-100,000 BCE) was finally joined by theoretic culture, that erupted quite dramatically in four sites in Eurasia in the second half of the first...
The European Muslim Union (EMU), a Turkey-based organization that aims to coordinate the activities of Muslim groups across Europe, had its 2008 annual meeting June 7-8 in Berlin. The theme of the conference was "The Significance of Awqaf in Europe," looking at the role the religious endowments should serve for Muslim minority communities. Speakers included the Ministers of Awqaf from Morocco and Kuwait, and Xhabir Hamiti, the EMU adviser for Kosovo, who spoke on the political situation there...
The European Council of Religious Leaders held their annual meeting for 2008 in Berlin, hosted by Bishop Bärbel Wartenberg-Potter of the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). The meeting focused on the situation in Kosovo, the majority-Muslim territory that had recently declared independence from mostly Christian Serbia, with participation from Muslim, Orthodox, and Catholic leaders of Kosovo. Participants also discussed the situation of...
In this talk, the Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee, David A. Harris, addressed the German Council on Foreign Relations on US-Israel relations. In particular, he responded to the views expressed by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer in their controversial book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007) and when they addressed the Council one month previous. Whereas Walt and Mearsheimer argue that the pro-Israel lobby has adversely affected and...
German-Muslim dialogue website Quantara.de interviewed Wolfgang Heinrich, head of the desk for Peace and Conflict Issues at Germany's Church Development Service, on the ousting of the Islamist courts in Somalia by Somalian government and Ethiopian troops in 2006. Heinrich asserted that by labeling these courts as enclaves for extreme Islamist forces and destroying them, the West may have destroyed a valuable institution for moderation that already had local legitimacy. Heinrich also discussed...
Flemming Rose, the editor responsible for publishing the Danish Muhammed cartoons in 2005, reflected on the controversy and its implications. He was joined by Aiman Mazyek, General Secretary of the leading Muslim organization in Germany. Among the key issues discussed were the origins of the decision to publish in September 2005; the escalation of criticism and violence in early 2006; lessons learned from the controversy; and the place of Muslims in European society today. This event was...
At this event, Jeffrey Peck argued that we must now begin considering how Jews live in Germany rather than merely asking why they would choose to do so. Germany today boasts the fastest growing population of Jews in Europe. The streets of Berlin abound with signs of a revival of Jewish culture, ranging from bagel shops to the sight of worshipers leaving synagogue on Saturday. This revival is spurred by the new energy infused by Jewish immigration from Russia and changes in immigration and...
The "First German Muslim Dialogue" was an initiative of the Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaueble. The meeting convened 15 officials from the German government and 15 prominent representatives of German Muslim communities. The two sides approached the dialogue with different goals. The German government representatives hoped to find a means to better integrate German Muslims into German society, and their Muslim counterparts looked to formalize the representation of the German Muslim community...
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Dutch MP and author of the controversial film Submission, addressed the Georgetown community on the challenges facing Muslim women in Europe. Hirsi Ali, a Member of the Dutch Parliament, is outspoken on issues such as the role of women, immigration, development, and democracy. In her talk, Hirsi Ali combined political and policy analysis with personal anecdote. She related how she avoided an arranged marriage by deplaning in Germany when her Canada-bound airplane stopped to...
The Community of Sant'Egidio's 2003 International Prayer for Peace was held in Aachen, Germany, under the theme of "War and Peace: Faiths and Cultures in Dialogue." This gathering of the Prayer for Peace was larger than any previous gathering, with more than 500 religious representatives taking part in the events and thousands of people attending the forums. The site of the meeting in Aachen, in the heart of Europe, went hand in hand with the Eurocentric topics of many of the panels, which...