ABSTRACT
The peaceful revolution and German reunification in 1990 marked the end of scientific atheism in Germany. In the three decades of its existence, the discipline had undergone significant changes in content, moving from aggressive opposition to religion to arguments about the need for dialogue with believers. It has to be said that the “positive” content promoted under the label of “scientific atheism” remained fairly weak. It struggled to keep atheism relevant in the face of growing indifference to both religion and atheism. Faced with this challenge, religion became a potential ally, based on a political perspective in which religious institutions, practices, faith or other dimensions were secondary. In so doing, scientific atheism had a hard time in the German Democratic Republic and experienced its own trajectory, different from that of other Eastern Bloc countries.
