Staatssekretariat für Kirchenfragen und Militärseelsorgevertrag: Anmerkungen zur Geschichte eines Amtes

The claim that it was the signing of the Military Chaplaincy Agreement (between the West German government and the German Churches) in early 1957 which led the East German government to alter its policies towards the churches, to establish the Secretariat of State for Church Affairs, and to seek to...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Boyens, Armin 1924-2012 (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:German
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Published: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1993
In: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte
Year: 1993, Volume: 6, Issue: 1, Pages: 211-235
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Summary:The claim that it was the signing of the Military Chaplaincy Agreement (between the West German government and the German Churches) in early 1957 which led the East German government to alter its policies towards the churches, to establish the Secretariat of State for Church Affairs, and to seek to detach the eastern sections from the nation-wide German Evangelical Church, can no longer be maintained. Following the collapse of the East German regime, newly-found documents prove this was only a pretext -as critical observers at the time suspected - and nothing more than a propaganda move by the Communist Party. The fact was that the Politburo of this party was obliged by Stalin's successors in the Kremlin to revise their party line towards the churches in East Germany. From 1953-57, the Communists adopted a new 'hard-line' approach, which led to systematically sharper administrative repression of the all church activities, and to a skilful surveillance, infiltration and subversion by agents of the Ministry of State Security.
ISSN:2196-808X
Contains:Enthalten in: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte