Catholics and Protestants in Germany

Abstract

According to statistics lately published and confirmed through investigations made among prisoners-of-war, ninety-three per cent, of the German people are still members of Christian denominations. Whilst it is hardly necessary to discuss the political aspects of this fact, I should like to make a few points regarding practical religious life in Germany which might contribute to an appreciation of that figure.In justification of my venture, I may say that I am an off-spring of a family which for several generations past has played a prominant part in German Protestant church life and scholarship. I myself, through the study of Protestant theology, have become a Catholic. Educated in a purely Protestant part of Germany, I lived and worked for the last seven years previous to my emigration in one of the Catholic centres of the country. Living as I do at present in, I daresay, fairly close contact with Catholic life in these countries, I feel that perhaps the most important point in appreciating the religious situation in Germany is an understanding of the relations between Protestants and Catholics in that country. I must confine myself to some points which incoherent in themselves are all still up-to-date.Roughly speaking and from a merely statistical view-point, Germany can be subdivided into a Protestant North and a Catholic South and West. However, whole provinces of Southern Germany, such as Wiirttemberg and the Palatinat, are predominantly and most actively Protestant, whilst Miinsterland, Ermland and Silesia have been, especially during the last twenty years, leading centres of Catholic life in Germany.