Divinity Atlas

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Germany

Also Known As German
Europe

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Germany is religiously split between a historically Catholic south and west and a historically Protestant north and east, a divide traceable directly to the Reformation, which began when Martin Luther posted his theses at Wittenberg in 1517 and produced a German translation of the Bible that shaped the modern language itself. The country's Jewish communities, once among Europe's largest and most intellectually significant, were destroyed by the Holocaust, and Germany's postwar religious landscape includes a rebuilt but much smaller Jewish population alongside a large Muslim community formed mainly through twentieth century migration. Germany was also a center of Christian mysticism through figures such as Meister Eckhart and Jakob Boehme, and of nineteenth century esoteric and Theosophical activity that later fed into occult and racialist movements the atlas treats with care given their subsequent misuse. Formal religious affiliation, split roughly evenly between the two major Christian confessions, has been declining for decades.

Facts
Law and State
Establishment Status
Privileged Never Established 3
Article 140 of the 1949 Basic Law incorporates Articles 136 to 139 and 141 of the 1919 Weimar Constitution, under which there is no state church, but a religious body may petition for status as a Koerperschaft des oeffentlichen Rechts (corporation under public law), which the Roman Catholic and the EKD-member Protestant churches hold and which is what confers the right to levy church tax through the state's own tax offices.
State Funding Mechanism
A religious body holding Koerperschaft des oeffentlichen Rechts status may levy church tax (Kirchensteuer) on its registered members, collected by each Land's own state tax office (Finanzamt) as a surcharge on income tax, typically 8 or 9 percent of the income tax owed depending on the Land, and remitted to the church net of an administrative fee retained by the state. A member's liability ends only on formal deregistration from the church with the state civil registry (Kirchenaustritt), an in-person or notarized declaration, not a decision the church itself can record. 3
Apostasy or Blasphemy Law
Germany criminalizes religious defamation, not personal insult to a deity, under Section 166 of the Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch), which punishes publicly or through media defaming the religion or ideology of others, or a church or other religious or ideological association within Germany, its institutions or its customs, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace, with a fine or up to three years' imprisonment. A 1969 reform narrowed the article so that insulting God or a prophet directly is no longer, by itself, punishable; the disturbance-of-public-peace element is now the operative test. Germany has no apostasy statute. Enforcement is rare relative to the maximum penalty: 25 criminal cases were adjudicated under Section 166 in 2013, the most recent year for which the campaign source reports a figure, producing 12 convictions and, in turn, one suspended prison sentence and 11 fines, a pattern German secularist groups including the Giordano Bruno Foundation have cited in calling for the article's repeal. 4
Registration or Recognition Regime
Religious communities may apply for status as a corporation under public law (Koerperschaft des oeffentlichen Rechts) under Article 137 of the Weimar Constitution, carried into the Basic Law by Article 140. The status requires a constitution and a membership large enough to promise permanence, and a community holding it is legally competent to levy its own church tax through the state's tax offices and to organize under public rather than private law. The Catholic Church, the member churches of the Evangelical Church in Germany and a number of Jewish communities hold it, and several states have extended it to smaller communities including Jehovah's Witnesses and the New Apostolic Church. A religious community without the status remains free to organize as an ordinary registered association (eingetragener Verein) under the civil code, with no state role in its finances or governance. 3
Ban or Official Watchlist
Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the country's domestic intelligence agency, placed the Church of Scientology under nationwide observation beginning in the 1990s after German reunification, tracking the organization for what it described as totalitarian aims incompatible with the free democratic order. On 15 May 2026 the agency announced it would end Scientology's standing as a separate, nationwide intelligence target, citing the group's declining relevance at the federal level and a redirection of resources toward espionage, sabotage and terrorism; it stated it would continue investigating specific activities against the constitutional order on a case by case basis rather than monitoring the organization as a whole. 5
Concordat Basis
The Reichskonkordat, signed in Rome on 20 July 1933 by Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, for the Holy See and Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen for the German Reich, and ratified on 10 September 1933, remains formally in force in Germany today. Neither the Federal Republic nor the Holy See has ever renounced it, and its Article 21 guarantee of Catholic religious instruction as a regular subject in state schools still underlies German practice. The later Land level concordats and the church tax arrangements that fund Germany's recognized religious bodies build on the framework it set rather than replacing it. 6
Government
Capital
Berlin 2
Government Type
federal parliamentary republic 2
Sovereignty Status
Sovereign UN member state 2
Established Year
1871 2
18 January 1871 (establishment of the German Empire); divided into four zones of occupation (UK, US, USSR, and France) in 1945 after World War II; Federal Republic of Germany (FRG or West Germany) proclaimed on 23 May 1949 and included the former UK, US, and French zones; German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany) proclaimed on 7 October 1949 and included the former USSR zone; West Germany and East Germany unified on 3 October 1990, with all four powers formally relinquishing rights on 15 March 1991; notable earlier dates: 10 August 843 (Eastern Francia established from the division of the Carolingian Empire); 2 February 962 (crowning of OTTO I, recognized as the first Holy Roman Emperor)
Demographics
Religious Composition
About 24-26% Catholic and 24-26% Protestant; religiously unaffiliated now the largest single group at over a third; Muslim minority near 5-6%, chiefly of Turkish descent (Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020). 1
Geography
Latitude
51.2 degrees north 2
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.
Longitude
10.5 degrees east 2
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.
Status
Legal Status
The 1949 Basic Law preserves a Weimar-era arrangement under which the state collects a mandatory church tax from registered members of recognized religious bodies on the churches' behalf; strict laws prohibit Holocaust denial and religious incitement. 3
Location
Location of Germany Afghanistan Albania Algeria Angola Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Federated States of Micronesia Fiji Finland France French Polynesia Gabon Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Guam Guatemala Haiti Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Ivory Coast Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Laos Latvia Lebanon Libya Lithuania Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Mali Malta Mauritius Mexico Moldova Mongolia Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nigeria North Macedonia Norway Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands South Africa South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tanzania Thailand Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vatican City Venezuela Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe
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Religion and History in Germany

Germany is roughly evenly split between Catholic and Protestant Christian heritage, though both have declined sharply in recent decades to around 24 to 26 percent each, with religiously unaffiliated Germans now forming the largest single group at over a third of the population, alongside a Muslim minority near 5 to 6 percent, chiefly of Turkish descent from postwar labor migration, per estimates including Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020.

Germany was the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation, launched when Martin Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses in Wittenberg in 1517, challenging Catholic Church practices including the sale of indulgences and igniting a religious schism that fractured the Holy Roman Empire along confessional lines for over a century, formalized in the 1555 Peace of Augsburg's principle that a ruler's religion determined that of his territory.

The Thirty Years' War of 1618 to 1648, fought substantially along Catholic-Protestant lines though entangled with wider European power politics, devastated Central Europe before the 1648 Peace of Westphalia established a lasting framework for religious coexistence. Germany's Jewish community, a major center of European Jewish culture and Reform Judaism's birthplace in the nineteenth century, was almost entirely destroyed by the Holocaust, and today's much smaller Jewish population is partly rebuilt through postwar immigration, notably from the former Soviet Union.

Church Tax and State-Church Relations in Germany

Germany maintains a distinctive church-state arrangement inherited from the Weimar Constitution of 1919 and preserved in the 1949 Basic Law, under which registered members of recognized religious bodies, chiefly the Catholic and Protestant churches, pay a mandatory church tax collected by the state alongside income tax and transferred to the churches, a system that has driven a sustained wave of formal church exits since exiting membership is the only way to stop paying it, with hundreds of thousands of Germans doing so annually in recent years. This funding model has helped both major churches remain wealthy and institutionally significant, running major hospital, welfare and school networks, even as active religious practice and belief decline.

Germany's reckoning with the Holocaust has shaped its approach to religious minorities and hate speech considerably, including strict laws against Holocaust denial and incitement, alongside constitutionally protected religious freedom, though debate over Muslim integration, headscarf bans for public sector employees in some states, and, since 2015, the arrival of large numbers of Syrian and other Muslim refugees have remained politically contentious, feeding the rise of parties critical of both immigration and Islam's growing public visibility.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Germany directly: "on International Religious Freedom: Germany, the United States Department of State's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor's own annual report, summarizes the 1995 Federal Labour Court holding..."

Source 2019 Report on International Religious Freedom: GermanyUnited States Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor

This source names Germany directly: "Giesel independently obtained it in Germany in 1902 under the name emanium."

This source names Germany directly: "on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany."

Source The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Inc.: Consolidated Financial Statements, Year Ended December 31, 2024The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Inc.; audited by Grant Thornton LLP

This source names Germany directly: "Lowig had prepared it independently in Germany at about the same time but published later."

This source names Germany directly: "Sweden and Martin Heinrich Klaproth in Germany identified it independently in 1803."

This source names Germany directly: "General Council moving to Wittenberg, Germany, for a 5 July 2017 ecumenical service at the Stadtkirche Sankt Marien at which the Communion signed its Association with the Joint Declaration on the..."

Split between a historically Catholic south and west and a historically Protestant north and east since the Reformation.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

This source names Germany directly: "Adler had trained for the rabbinate and studied in Germany before breaking with the Reform Judaism of his own upbringing, and the book reflects that background directly: it argues that a shared..."

Source Creed and DeedFelix Adler

This source names Germany directly: "the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, is Germany's standard national academic biographical reference."

Source Deutsche Biographie: Johann ThalHistorische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften

This source names Germany directly: "body of Catholic Caritas in Germany, founded in 1897 and recognised by the German Catholic bishops, coordinating and setting standards for a network of diocesan Caritas associations, hospitals, care..."

Source Deutscher Caritasverband e.V.: Jahresabschluss und Lagebericht fur das Geschaftsjahr 2024Deutscher Caritasverband e.V.; audited by RSM Ebner Stolz GmbH and Co. KG

This source names Germany directly: "regional and free churches in Germany, founded in 1954 and based in Berlin, working with local and national partner organizations in around forty countries to respond to wars, displacement..."

Source Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe: Jahresbericht 2024 (Annual Report 2024)Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe (Evangelisches Werk fur Diakonie und Entwicklung e.V.)

This source names Germany directly: "of a Buddhist monk in Bavaria, Germany, identified as "Hans D." under German privacy law (the atlas identifies him fully below from Wikipedia's biographical article, source 7, which names him)."

Source Fox News (AP): Buddhist Monk Convicted of Abusing Children in GermanyAssociated Press (wire, no individual byline shown)

Fought across the German-speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire in 1524 to 1525, peasant and town militias organized around the Twelve Articles against the Swabian League and the territorial princes and lords.

This source names Germany directly: "Germany Ends Decades-Long Surveillance of the Church of Scientology, published by KTLA in 2026, is contemporary journalism reporting Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution's..."

This source names Germany directly: "in Hamburg, its 1933 flight from Nazi Germany to London, and its subsequent standing as a center for the study of the classical tradition and cultural memory."

Source History of the Warburg InstituteWarburg Institute

The empire's core was the German lands, and its confessional settlement of 1648 left the map of German Catholicism and Protestantism much as it stands today.

This source names Germany directly: "Anne's Church in Augsburg, Germany."

This source names Germany directly: "associated with central and southern Germany."

This source names Germany directly: "Schloss Friedenstein in Gotha, Germany; a related tempera panel of similar composition, 72 by 88.5 centimeters, is held at the National Gallery in Prague, and a later version by Cranach and his son..."

Source Wikipedia, "Law and Gospel (Cranach)"Wikipedia contributors

This source names Germany directly: "Headquartered in Cologne, Germany, Malteser International's membership consists of the national associations and priories of the Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic lay religious order, and it carries..."

Source Malteser International (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Germany directly: "He held conducting and teaching posts across Germany, most notably three seasons as conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society, 1880 to 1883, and taught composition at the Berlin Hochschule fur..."

This source names Germany directly: "in the United States, Herrnhut in Germany and Gracehill in the United Kingdom, joining the already-inscribed Christiansfeld in Denmark."

This source names Germany directly: "the resulting ban on his music inside Germany that held until the regime's defeat."

The German state under National Socialist rule from January 1933 to the surrender of May 1945.

This source names Germany directly: "the Bavarian village of Oberammergau, Germany, in fulfillment of a vow the community made during a plague outbreak in the winter of 1633."

Source Oberammergau Passion Play (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Germany directly: "Reliable for the movement's scale in Germany before persecution, almost 20,000 active preachers counted by 1933, and for the persecution that followed, targeting Witnesses for refusing loyalty oaths..."

This source names Germany directly: "after its appropriation by Nazi Germany made the symbol's continued use untenable for them."

Source Proclamation renouncing the swastika, signed at Tucson, ArizonaRepresentatives of the Navajo, Hopi, Apache and Tohono O'odhamthe holders' own account

This source names Germany directly: "first woman ordained as a rabbi, in Germany in 1935."

Source Regina Jonas (reference article)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Germany directly: "grown to include most of Protestant Germany, defeating its forces at the Battle of Muhlberg in April 1547 and capturing its leading princes, John Frederick I of Saxony and Philip of Hesse."

Source The Reformation: A History (MacCulloch)Diarmaid MacCulloch

This source names Germany directly: "III and preached across France and Germany by Bernard of Clairvaux after the Crusader County of Edessa fell to the Muslim ruler Zengi in 1144, the Second Crusade brought the kings of France and..."

Source God's War: A New History of the CrusadesChristopher Tyerman

Germany under National Socialism began the war in Europe and perpetrated the Holocaust under its cover.

Source The Second World War: A Complete HistoryMartin Gilbert

This source names Germany directly: "stated account of its adoption by Nazi Germany and later use by white supremacist groups; a claim about the symbol's older meaning in Bronze Age or medieval European ornament needs a source produced..."

Source Sonnenrad (Hate Symbols Database)Anti-Defamation League
Taranis, Deities

This source names Germany directly: "form of his own, are known from Gaul, Germany and Britain, showing the identification with Jupiter was current among worshippers themselves and not only a literary gloss."

Source The DruidsRonald Hutton

This source names Germany directly: "Lewy's The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, published by McGraw-Hill in 1964, was among the first scholarly studies to examine the German Catholic hierarchy's conduct under the Third Reich using..."

Source The Catholic Church and Nazi GermanyGuenter Lewy

This source names Germany directly: "more than a thousand miles from Germany, the window depicts stylized rice and wheat representing the food staples of the Eastern and Western world, with clear glass arcs suggesting the physical..."

Source Community of Christ, "Independence Temple Self-Guided Tour" (west entrance window)Community of Christthe holders' own account

This source names Germany directly: "Rita Chin's history of West Germany's guest worker program, which recruited foreign labor, most visibly roughly 867,000 Turkish workers by 1973, under a program running from 1955 to 1973, and of the..."

This source names Germany directly: "Against the rise of Nazism in Germany and a large wave of Eastern European immigration that did not share the founding generation's assumptions, it repudiated the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform's..."

Source The Guiding Principles of Reform Judaism (The Columbus Platform)Central Conference of American Rabbisthe holders' own account

Conceived, ordered and administered by the German state of 1933 to 1945.

Source The Destruction of the European JewsRaul Hilberg

This source names Germany directly: "pushback from other historians of Nazi Germany, some of whom argue Steigmann-Gall overreads sincere belief into what was calculated political rhetoric, and the debate over how genuinely religious..."

The Kulturkampf, Wars & Conflicts

Fought by the government of the newly unified German Empire, concentrated in the Kingdom of Prussia.

This source names Germany directly: "war ended, eight million of them in Germany, and that by late September 1945 some 1.2 million refused repatriation and became known as the last million."

Fought mostly on German soil; the German lands lost around a fifth of their population, and their confessional map was frozen at 1624 lines.

This source names Germany directly: "founded in 1741; Herrnhut in Saxony, Germany, founded in 1722; and Gracehill in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, founded in 1759, to Christiansfeld in Denmark, founded in 1773 and already inscribed..."

This source names Germany directly: "in 1939 to help refugees fleeing Nazi Germany."

This source names Germany directly: "the United States, France and Germany, and Vice Chairman Zhang Gaocheng's description of the World Federation of Daoism's founding as a landmark event in the religion's history."

This source names Germany directly: "Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Russia, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and historian Micheal Clodfelter's reference compilation for its noncombatant death estimate."

Source World War I Casualties (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Germany directly: "Times bestselling author, born in Germany and raised in Tasmania, formerly a journalist and television producer."

Source Yasmin Boland (official site)Yasmin Boland

This source names Germany directly: "about page, recording her birth in Germany, her upbringing in Tasmania, her background in journalism, and her Moonology book and oracle deck line built around lunar astrology."

Source Yasmin Boland (official site)Yasmin Boland

Contains

Cologne, Cities
Constance, Cities

Constance stands on the lake of the same name on the German side of the Swiss border.

Source Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 volumesNorman P. Tanner (ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Magdeburg, Cities
Marburg, Cities

Marburg is on the Lahn in Hesse, in central Germany.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Its own text: "a Benedictine abbey in the Rhineland."

Trier, Cities
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Worms, Cities

Namesake Of

Darmstadtium is named for Darmstadt, the German town of the GSI heavy ion laboratory. Made at GSI in 1994 and named in 2003.

Germanium is named for Germany, the country of its discoverer Clemens Winkler. Winkler named the element in 1886 after isolating it from argyrodite, and it filled the gap Mendeleev had predicted as eka-silicon.

Hassium is named for Hassia, the Latin name for the German state of Hesse. Named for the state in which the GSI laboratory at Darmstadt stands.

Rhenium is named for Rhenus, the Latin name for the Rhine. Named in 1925. It was the last stable element to be discovered.

Originated Here

Germany is medieval Ashkenaz itself, root of the rite, the customs and the Yiddish language.

Source The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern EuropeGershon David Hundert (ed.)
Franks, Cultures

Born at Dessau, the son of the poet Wilhelm Muller.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Saxons, Cultures

Spread Events Here

Wittenberg in Electoral Saxony, and the princely territories that adopted the Augsburg Confession across the Holy Roman Empire, mapped to modern Germany as the nearest real match to those historical territories.

Source Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700Diarmaid MacCulloch
Source Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of JustificationLutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unitythe holders' own account
Sources
1. Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020
Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2025View the Source
2. The World Factbook (Central Intelligence Agency)
Central Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence AgencyView the Source
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
4. End Blasphemy Laws Project: Germany Country Page
End Blasphemy Laws (Humanists International coalition)View the Source
5. Germany Ends Decades-Long Surveillance of the Church of Scientology
KTLA, KTLA (Nexstar Media Wire), 2026View the Source
6. Reich Concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich (20 July 1933), Text
German Historical Institute Washington, German History in Documents and ImagesView the Source
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source
International Religious Freedom Report
United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom, US Department of State, 2023View the Source
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