Religious Instruction in East Germany: Reflecting on the “Secular” World

Abstract

In June 1991 the last meeting of the East German Commission for Church Work with Children and Youth, an organization originally set up within the federation of Protestant churches in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to observe and reflect on church and state educational activities, was held. A discussion between Raimund Hoenen, a professor of Protestant theology at the church university in Naumburg (East) who had fostered longstanding contacts with the West, and Götz Doyé, secretary of the same commission, clearly exhibits the differing positions regarding the introduction of religious instruction in the public schools in the Eastern part of Germany following the country’s unification in 1990.