“It is my understanding that in East Germany, the churches lost a lot of their membership following reunification because of the legal requirement that declared church members pay a tax to the church to which one belongs to. “
I believe this is true, though, of course, Bavaria, which is the subject of my earlier post, was not in East Germany. I have read – can’t recall where – that even in the former West Germany many decided to stop paying the church tax to offset the new tax burden that resulted from Helmut Kohl’s policy choices in integrating the former East. “ And isn't it still the case that in German universities, the departments of theology remain under the control of the churches? I seem to recall the case of a theology professor losing his post at a state university because he had publicly avowed his loss of faith in Christianity.
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Uta Ranke-Heinemann may be the person you are thinking of, after she wrote a book called Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, which the Catholic Church didn’t like. The jacket copy of the book reads as follows:
“Uta Ranke-Heinemann holds a Ph.D. in Catholic theology. She qualified as a university lecturer at the University of Essen, West Germany, in 1969, the first woman ever toy do so in the field of Catholic theology. In 1970 she became a professor of Catholic theology. She lost her chair in New Testament and Ancient Church History at the University for interpreting Mary’s virgin birth theologically and not biologically. Since late 1987 she has held the chair for the History of Religion at the University of Essen.”
I.E. she had to move from a church-dominated department to a regular academic history department.
All this kind of thing goes back to the time when, after the thirty years war, the various German states adopted the principle of cuius regio eius religio, in other words that the local head of state could determine the state religion, and faith was legally established. As time went on there came to be formal tolerance of other religious bodies, each of which got the right to receive state support, through taxes, in which each subject, later citizen, designated the ecclesiastical recipient of his/her contributions.
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema
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