The role of Protestantism in the German Democratic Republic (the
GDR) has been strongly disputed since the ‘turn’ and reunification
of 1989/90. Many of the disagreements derive from
different interpretations of the relationship between State, Church and
Society in the GDR. This paper first describes the state institutions
which formulated and executed church policies for the Communist Party
of the GDR (the SED), and then surveys relations between Church and
State, offering an explanation for actions and motivations on both sides.
The thesis advanced is that the decisive phase of the transformation of a
‘bourgeois’ Church into a ‘Church within socialism’ took place between
1958 and 1978, and that the preceding and subsequent periods merely had
the character of ‘past history’ and ‘epilogue’.
A variety of institutions influenced Church–State policies in the GDR.
First, at government level, there was until 1957 a department for
ecclesiastical affairs controlled by the deputy prime minister ; after that
date, there was an official secretary for church affairs, answerable to the
chairman of the government (Ministerrat). At party level in the SED, there
was a working group for church affairs which was part of the secretariat
of the SED's central committee, answerable to the first secretary or the
secretary-general of the central committee. The central committee office
included a member with specific responsibility for church affairs, generally
the second in line after the party chairman. In the Ministry for State
Security (MfS), those involved were the head of the so-called ‘main
department for social superstructure’, together with a representative of
the minister or the minister himself, and the heads of administration in
individual ‘Lands’ or districts.
