Setanta wrote:The CIA World Factbook page on Germany[/b][/url] lists the population of Protestants in Germany as 34%, with 34% Catholics, 3.7% Muslim, and 28.3% unaffiliated.
The percentages were likely different in 1933 and mere numbers don't say anything about the geographic distribution of the various religions. I would venture that in most parts of Germany either the Catholics or the Lutherans were in the overwhelming majority. Religious minorities within a given regin were likely rare.
You claim that Kass asked for an assortment of concessions from Hitler (who was officially a Catholic). But I don't see where the concessions would have been legally needed.
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/krasel/germany/gg.html
Article 136. (Weimar Constitution)
Civil and political rights and duties are neither dependent upon nor restricted by the practice of religious freedom.
The enjoyment of civil and political rights, as well as admission to official posts, is independent of religious creed.
No one is bound to disclose his religious convictions. The authorities have the right to make enquiries as to membership of a religious body only when rights and duties depend upon it, or when the collection of statistics ordered by law requires it.
No one may be compelled to take part in any ecclesiastical act or ceremony, or the use of any religious form of oath.
Article 137. (Weimar Constitution)
There is no state church.
Freedom of association is guaranteed to religious bodies. There are no restrictions as to the union of religious bodies within the territory of the Federation.
Each religious body regulates and administers its affairs independently within the limits of general laws. It appoints its officials without the cooperation of the Land, or of the civil community.
Religious bodies acquire legal rights in accordance with the general regulations of the civil code.
Religious bodies remain corporations with public rights in so far as they have been so up to the present.
Equal rights shall be granted to other religious bodies upon application, if their constitution and the number of their members offer a guarantee of permanency.
When several such religious bodies holding public rights combine to form one union this union becomes a corporation of a similar class.
Religious bodies forming corporations with public rights are entitled to levy taxes on the basis of the civil tax rolls, in accordance with the provisions of Land law.
Associations adopting as their work the common encouragement of a world-philosophy shall be placed upon an equal footing with religious bodies.
So far as the execution of these provisions may require further regulation, this is the duty of the Land legislature.
You are claiming that Kass asked for things that the Weimar Constitution (if obeyed) already gave him.
Quote:In 1817, King Frederick William III of Prussia forced a "re-unification" of the Lutheran and German Reformed Churches. At that time, many of the "Old Lutherans" left for North America or Australia, which might be what you are referring to.
I am referring to the mass immigration of Protestant Germans to America in the wake of the Thirty Years War in the 17th century. During this war vast regions of southern Germany were routinely devastated by armies on both sides. Something like 1/3 of Germany's population was killed. After the Peace of Westphalia most Protestants in southern Germany took the opportunity to leave.
I have both Lutheran and German Reform ancestry (I have likely had Lutheran ancestors for as long as the world has had Lutherans). My ancestors donated the land on which both the oldest Lutheran and the oldest German Reformed church in western North Carolina still stand. The congregations of both churches are now Lutheran. A traveling preacher, who went through the region in the 18th century, once explained the difference between the Lutherans and German Reformed: One group says Unser Vater while the other says Vater unser. On theological matters there was never any real difference.
Quote:During the Napoleonic Wars, German Catholics had moved freely within those states from which modern Germany would be formed, and which the French had seized from Prussia after defeating them. After the defeat of Napoleon, the Prussians responded with laws outlawing "mixed marriages" of Protestants and Catholics, and requiring that all children of such unions must be raised Protestant. Catholics rioted, and were attacked by Protestant Germans in return, especially in the Rhineland and Westphalia, which had been organized as a separate kingdom ruled by Napoleon's brother Jerome. To quell the unrest, which the Prussian state chose to see as Catholic rabble-rousing, the Archbishop of Cologne was arrested. It was thereafter that the journalist Joseph Görres began the "political Catholicism" movement which called upon Catholics to unite to promote political equality of all denominations. I suggest that you do some reading on Herr Görres, and "political Catholicism." With the accession of Frederick William IV in 1840, the furor died down--he was not the religious bigot that his predecessor was.
Merely the Thirty Years War acts II through VI.
Quote:I referred to ethnic Poles and Alsatians within Germany who were Catholics.
Can you document how many Alsatians were living within Germany in 1933?
Quote:I am not responsible for your inability to understand what i have written clearly.
I understood what you were saying; I was merely questioning the accuracy of what you claimed.
