ABSTRACT
During the forty years of communist rule churches were politically oppressed, ideologically stigmatized, and largely excluded from public life in the German Democratic Republic. In assessing the situation of the church in eastern Germany following the Wende, a comparison of church membership in eastern and western Germany can be illuminating. In the western German states, more than 80 percent of the population are members of one of the two major churches, their number being divided almost evenly between the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Churches. The formal level of education of the population in the western German states is higher than that of the eastern German population, and people of a higher educational level are more critical of faith and the churches. In West Germany, the churches enjoyed a position protected by law: they had a say in the running of social organizations, radio stations, and television broadcasting corporations; they had the right to provide religious instruction in schools.
