Download or read book Christian Science in East Germany written by Gregory W. Sandford and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2013-06-09 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christian Science as a religious denomination was banned and persecuted under the Nazis, reinstated under the Soviet Military Administration in eastern Germany after World War II, and then once again forbidden to organize by the new East German state (German Democratic Republic, or GDR) in 1951. Reasons for this decision were first the alleged danger to public health posed by its spiritual healing activities and second its close American connections. Over the following decades, despite persecution by the East German secret police ("Stasi"), small groups of Christian Scientists continued to meet in private homes, disguising their religious gatherings as birthday parties or similar social events. They also found various ways to smuggle in Christian Science literature they needed for informal religious services and to carry on spiritual healing. There were occasional arrests, interrogations, and even rare prosecutions, but these isolated underground activities went on without serious interruption. Efforts by East German Christian Scientists to get the 1951 decision reversed, supported from a distance by the Mother Church in Boston, were repeatedly rebuffed during the 1960s and '70s. Official attitudes began to moderate in the mid-1980s, however, as a result of the evolving international climate, personnel changes in the State Secretariat for Church Affairs, the growth of dissident activities within mainstream GDR churches, and the intercession of the U.S. Embassy in East Berlin. Parallel with more conciliatory policies toward other religious minorities such as Mormons and Jews, GDR authorities came to see Christian Scientists as an inoffensive minority whose toleration might actually improve East Germany's image. With the active support of the Ministry for State Security, they were granted special permission to receive religious literature from Boston in 1985. Later, a week before the Berlin Wall opened in 1989, Christian Science was officially recognized as a legal denomination-the only such recognition ever formally granted by the GDR government to a new religious organization. The concessions made to Christian Science illustrate the degree to which the GDR in its final days was willing to compromise ideology in hopes of gaining stability and legitimacy. Seen objectively, it seems inconsistent for a regime committed to an atheist philosophy to accept spiritual healing as a safe alternative to medicine. The decision to recognize Christian Science appears to have been influenced not only by political considerations, however, but also by the positive impression made by the character and quiet determination of the Christian Scientists themselves. In that respect, the tiny community of Christian Scientists made their own contribution to East Germany's "gentle revolution."
Download or read book A Christian in East Germany written by Johannes Hamel and published by . This book was released on 1960 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Protestants in Communist East Germany written by Wendy R. Tyndale and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of how the Protestants in the GDR struggled to survive while striving to put their theology into practice and remaining true to their vision of what the role of the church should be - a 'church for others' as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it. Having taken the reader from the foundation of the GDR, through the peaceful revolution, to the unification of Germany, the story ends with some reflections on the church's past as well as on the challenges it faces in present-day Europe. Protestants in Communist East Germany makes a unique contribution to existing literature by drawing not only on written sources but on a series of first-hand interviews with theologians, pastors and lay people of different ages whose experiences, views and analyses bring the story to life. The East German church's relationship to the state will probably always remain controversial and the vision for a different socialism in the GDR espoused by those involved in the peaceful revolution may now be considered illusory. Nevertheless, many of the issues raised by the Protestants in the GDR remain as vital challenges to the churches in Europe today. Foreword by Paul Oestreicher.
Download or read book A Christian in East Germany written by Johannes Hamel and published by . This book was released on 1960 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Uprising in East Germany 1953 written by Christian F. Ostermann and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A detailed introductory essay to provide the necessary historical and political context precedes each part. The individual documents are introduced by short headnotes summarizing the contents and orienting the reader. A chronology, glossary and bibliography offer further background information."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Religion and the Secular in Eastern Germany 1945 to the Present written by Esther Peperkamp and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most common explanations view either the socialist past or larger scale processes of modernization to be the cause of eastern German secularization. The volume attempts to discover historically variable reconfigurations of religion and the secular at the local level.
Download or read book The East German Church and the End of Communism written by John P. Burgess and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1997 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on his own research in East Germany and relying primarily on sources published in East Germany itself, author John Burgess demonstrates the roots of the church's theology in Barth, Bonhoeffer, and in the Barmen declaration, which in 1934 pronounced Christianity and Nazi ideology to be incompatible.
Download or read book God and Caesar in East Germany written by Richard W. Solberg and published by New York, Macmillan. This book was released on 1961 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Christian in East Germany Translated from the German by Ruth and Charles C West written by Johannes HAMEL and published by . This book was released on 1960 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book God s Spies written by Elisabeth Braw and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The real-life cloak-and-dagger story of how East Germany’s notorious spy agency infiltrated churches here and abroad East Germany only existed for a short forty years, but in that time, the country’s secret police, the Stasi, developed a highly successful “church department” that—using persuasion rather than threats—managed to recruit an extraordinary stable of clergy spies. Pastors, professors, seminary students, and even bishops spied on colleagues, other Christians, and anyone else they could report about to their handlers in the Stasi. Thanks to its pastor spies, the Church Department (official name: Department XX/4) knew exactly what was happening and being planned in the country’s predominantly Lutheran churches. Yet ultimately it failed in its mission: despite knowing virtually everything about East German Christians, the Stasi couldn’t prevent the church-led protests that erupted in 1989 and brought down the Berlin Wall.
Download or read book Born in the GDR written by Hester Vaizey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The real life stories of eight East Germans caught up in the dramatic transition from Communism to Capitalism by the fall of the Berlin Wall - and what they feel about life after the Wall.
Download or read book East German Dissidents and the Revolution of 1989 written by C. Joppke and published by Springer. This book was released on 1994-11-14 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contrast to the dissident movements of Eastern Europe, the East German movement remained committed to the 'revisionist' reform of the communist regime. This book tries to explain why. It is argued that the peculiarities of German history and culture prevented the possibility of a 'national' opposition to communism. As a result, East German dissidents had to remain in a paradoxical way 'loyal' to the old regime.
Download or read book The East German Church and the End of Communism written by John P. Burgess and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1997-09-25 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the role of religion in the massive political changes that took place in Eastern Europe in 1989. In particular, it examines the role played by the East German church in that country's bloodless revolution. Although some scholars and political commentators have noted that the East German church provided a free space in which dissident groups could meet, they have neither described nor assessed the theology that guided the church's political involvement. Drawing on his own research in East Germany and relying primarily on sources published in East Germany itself, John Burgess demonstrates the roots of the church's theology in Barth, Bonhoeffer, and in the Barmen declaration, which in 1934 pronounced Christianity and Nazi ideology to be incompatible. He explores how the dissident groups drew on church symbols and language to develop a popular alternative theology, and finally shows how the theological tension between the church and the dissidents provided impulses for political democratization.
Download or read book Pro existence written by Elisabeth Adler and published by . This book was released on 1964 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Turning Prayers into Protests written by David Doellinger and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Turning Prayers into Protests is a comparative study of religious-based oppositional activity in Slovakia and East Germany prior to 1989.
Download or read book The Church Beyond the Wall written by James S. Currie and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2019-01-14 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1949 to 1989, Germany was divided into West and East Germany. While West Germany became an ally of Western democracies, East Germany was allied with the Soviet Union and was governed by Marxist Communism. What was it like to be the church in East Germany? Hanfried Muller was a professor of theology and a committed Marxist. Johannes Hamel was a pastor who tried to minister in this environment. How did the two differ? This book examines the contrast between the two men and the struggle many pastors and Christians endured as they lived and worked in a hostile environment. Furthermore, it raises the question of how Christians everywhere deal with the issue of the relationship between church and state and what the Christian's responsibility is in that relationship.
Download or read book Complicity in the Holocaust written by Robert P. Ericksen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-02-05 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In one of the darker aspects of Nazi Germany, churches and universities - generally respected institutions - grew to accept and support Nazi ideology. Complicity in the Holocaust describes how the state's intellectual and spiritual leaders enthusiastically partnered with Hitler's regime, becoming active participants in the persecution of Jews, effectively giving Germans permission to participate in the Nazi regime. Ericksen also examines Germany's deeply flawed yet successful postwar policy of denazification in these institutions.
