page_title: Prussia
section_title: Religion
hierarchical_section_title: Prussia / Demographics / Religion
context_page_description: Prussia was a historically prominent German state that originated in 1525 with a duchy centered on the region of Prussia on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It was de facto dissolved by an emergency decree transferring powers of the Prussian government to German Chancellor Franz von Papen in 1932 and de jure by an Allied decree in 1947. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organised and effective army. Prussia, with its capital first in Königsberg and then, in 1701, in Berlin, decisively shaped the history of Germany.
  In 1871, most German states united to create the German Empire under Prussian leadership. In November 1918, the monarchies were abolished and the nobility lost its political power during the German Revolution of 1918–19. The Kingdom of Prussia was thus abolished in favour of a republic—the Free State of Prussia, a state of Germany from 1918 until 1933. From 1932, Prussia lost its independence as a result of the Prussian coup, which was taken further in the next few years when the Nazi regime successfully established its Gleichschaltung laws in pursuit of a unitary state.
context_section_description: The Duchy of Prussia was the first state to officially adopt Lutheranism in 1525. In the wake of the Reformation, Prussia was dominated by two major Protestant confessions: Lutheranism and Calvinism. The majority of the Prussian population was Lutheran, although there were dispersed Reformed minorities in central and western parts of the state especially Brandenburg, Rhineland, Westphalia and Hesse-Nassau. In 1613, John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg and Grand Duke of Prussia declared himself for the Reformed creed and transferred the Berlin Cathedral from the Lutheran to the Reformed church. Lutherans and Reformed congregations all over the kingdom were merged in 1817 by the Prussian Union of churches, which came under tight royal control. In Protestant regions, writes Nipperdey:
  Much of religious life was often conventional and superficial by any normal, human standard. The state and the bureaucracy kept their distance, preferring to spoon-feed the churches and treat them like children. They saw the churches as channels for education, as a means of instilling morality and obedience, or for propagating useful things, just like bee-keeping or potato-farming.
  Prussia received significant Huguenot population after the issuing of the Edict of Fontainebleau by Louis XIV of France and the following dragonnades. Prussian monarchs, beginning with Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg opened the country to the fleeing French Calvinist refugees. In Berlin, they built and worshipped at their own church called the French Cathedral on Gendarmenmarkt. Time passed by, and the French Reformed assimilated into the wider Protestant community in Prussia. East Prussia's southern region of Masuria was mostly made up of Germanised Lutheran Masurians.
  After 1814, Prussia contained millions of Roman Catholics in the west and in the east. There were substantial populations in the Rhineland, parts of Westphalia, eastern parts of Silesia, West Prussia, Ermland and the Province of Posen. Communities in Poland were often ethnically Polish, although this is not the case of eastern Silesia as the majority of Catholics there were German. During the 19th-century Kulturkampf, Prussian Catholics were forbidden from fulfilling any official functions for the state and were largely distrusted.
  Prussia contained a relatively large Jewish community, which was mostly concentrated in large urban areas. According to the 1880 census, it was the biggest one in Germany with 363,790 individuals.
  In 1925, 64.9% of the Prussian population was Protestant, 31.3% was Roman Catholic, 1.1% was Jewish, 2.7% was placed in other religious categories.
caption: The Berlin Cathedral c. 1900
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