ABSTRACT
The Chair of Scientific Atheism at the University of Jena, which operated between 1963 and 1968, started work with extensive, vague and ill-defined plans. In the Soviet Union, scientific atheism was already undergoing a process of questioning and reorientation in the mid-1960s, and could not provide a single subject or method, but drew inspiration from many disciplines. Olof Klohr’s chair could not hope to do as much. After starting work on a few themes that were quickly abandoned, two directions were to prove characteristics of East German scientific atheism. The first was the opposition between natural sciences and religion, which Klohr had started developing before 1963. This very aggressive strand was the most visible one at the university chair’s creation. As early as 1964 however, the “sociology of religion and atheism” gained priority. Both specialisations had parallels in other Eastern Bloc countries. An analysis of content shows how East German scientific atheists defined religion and atheism, and identified their causes and favourable factors to make East Germans increasingly embrace atheism.
