ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and explains the state and development of religion, churches and religiosity in Germany. Due to the special situation in Germany, empirical data for West and East Germany will be presented mainly separately but also in relation to each other. The origins of the religious landscape of modern-day Germany reach far back into the past, both in terms of social history and the history of mentalities. The sudden surge of modernization experienced in late nineteenth-century Germany and the tendencies towards industrialization, urbanization and socialization had quite different consequences for the two main denominations. In West Germany, the percentage of Catholics is slightly higher than that of Protestants. It is hardly an exaggeration to characterize the situation regarding traditional, Christian religiosity in Eastern Germany as a culture of unbelief, while this is certainly not the case in the Western part of the country.
