page_title: History of the Catholic Church in Germany
section_title: Catholicism in the German Democratic Republic
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Catholic Church in Germany / Catholicism in the German Democratic Republic
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. CDU-Bundesparteitag in Düsseldorf Konrad Adenauer
context_page_description: The history of the Catholic Church in Germany should be read in parallel with the History of Germany as the Church was progressively confused, in competition with, oppressed by and distinguished from, the state. The long history of Roman Catholicism in Germany can also explain much of the History of the Roman Catholic Church, especially in the period of the Middle Ages, under the Holy Roman Empire.
context_section_description: After World War II the Catholics in the zone occupied by the Soviet army found themselves under a militantly atheist government. Many parishes were cut off from their dioceses in the western part of Germany.
  The Soviet zone eventually declared itself a sovereign state, the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The GDR's constitution proclaimed the freedom of religious belief, but in reality the new state tried to abolish religion.
  Most of the people in the territory of the German Democratic Republic were Protestants. With exception of the Eichsfeld, a small Catholic region in the northwestern part of Thuringia, which was a former property of the archdiocese of Mainz, Catholics were a small minority right from the start of Communist rule. In contrast to the Protestant churches, the Catholic Church endured the Communist order relatively unscathed. In 1950, 13% of the population were Catholics (versus 85% Protestants). Although about 1.1 million citizens, half of East Germany's Catholic population, left the GDR, in 1989 there were still about one million Catholics, about 6% of the population (versus 25% Protestants). The circumstance of being a tiny minority proved to be a substantial advantage. In the government's view, the population of Protestants was high enough to potentially endanger the atheistic state if it were to mobilize itself. Therefore, the system's main efforts to fight religion concentrated on Protestantism. As a result, the majority of atheists and agnostics registered in Germany today (29.6% in religion in Germany) are in the former East Germany.
  The Protestant churches drew strong repression for a historical reason as well. The Protestant churches had had strong connections to most of the former political states (empires, etc.) that had over the centuries ruled one or another part of the territory of the GDR, while the Catholic Church had kept its distance from them (and they had kept their distance from the Catholic Church, as seen during the kulturkampf). The Catholic Church was thus used to existing without the help and even against the hostility of the state.
caption: Konrad Adenauer, a practicing Catholic, based the political program of his centrist Christian-Democratic party CDU on a blend of the liberal-democratic tradition and Catholic social teaching.
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