Christianity is the largest religion in Germany. It was introduced to the area of modern Germany by 300 AD, while parts of that area belonged to the Roman Empire, and later, when Franks and other Germanic tribes converted to Christianity from the fifth century onwards. The area became fully Christianized by the time of Charlemagne in the eighth and ninth century. After the Reformation started by Martin Luther in the early 16th century, many people left the Catholic Church and became Protestant, mainly Lutheran and Reformed. In the 17th and 18th centuries, German cities also became hubs of heretical and sometimes anti-religious freethinking, challenging the influence of religion and contributing to the spread of secular thinking about morality across Germany and Europe. Around half of Christians in Germany are Catholics, mostly from the Latin Church; Catholicism is stronger in the southern and the western part of the country. Nearly half belongs to the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) that is stronger in the northern regions, and the rest to several small Christian denominations such as the Union of Evangelical Free Churches in Germany, the Eastern Orthodox Church or the Jehovah's Witnesses. Estimations for the percentage of Muslims vary between 4.7% while much smaller religions include Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism and Yazidism. In a Eurobarometer survey from 2010, 44% said that they believe there is a God, 25% said that they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force and 27% said that they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God or life force. 35% of residents identify with their religion or belief.
Nearly half of Germans have no religion. Demographics of religion in Germany vary greatly by region and age, with sharp divides that reflect both the country's history as an Enlightenment hub and its later experiences with post-war communism. Non-religious people typically represent the majority in Germany's major cities, including Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, Munich and Cologne, as well as in the eastern states which used to be East Germany between 1949 and 1990. By contrast, rural areas of the western states of what in the same period used to be West Germany are more religious, and some rural areas are highly religious.
History
Paganism and Roman settlement (1000 BC–300 AD)
thumb|Martberg [[Romano-Celtic temple|Gallo-Roman temple dedicated to Lenus, rebuilt in Pommern, Rhineland-Palatinate|207x207px]]
Ancient Germanic paganism was a polytheistic religion practised in prehistoric Germany and Scandinavia, as well as Roman territories of Germania by the first century AD. It had a pantheon of deities that included Donar/Thunar, Wuotan/Wodan, Frouwa/Frua, Balder/Phol/Baldag, and others shared with northern Germanic paganism. Celtic paganism and later Gallo-Roman syntheses were instead practised in western and southern parts of modern Germany, while Slavic paganism was practised in the east.
Late Roman and Carolingian eras (300–1000)
In the territories of Germany under the control of the Roman Empire (the provinces Raetia, Germania Superior and Germania Inferior), early Christianity was introduced and began to flourish after the fourth century. Although pagan Roman temples existed beforehand, Christian religious structures were soon built, such as the Aula Palatina in Trier (then the capital of the Roman province Gallia Belgica), completed during the reign of Roman emperor Constantine I (306–337).
During the Carolingian period, Christianity spread throughout Germany, particularly during the reign of Charlemagne (r. 768–814). Religious structures built during the Carolingian period include the Palatine Chapel, Aachen, a surviving component of the Palace of Aachen built by architect Odo of Metz during the reign of Charlemagne.
Pre-Reformation period (1000–1517)
Territories of the present-day Germany, like much of Europe, were entirely Roman Catholic with religious break-offs being suppressed by both the Papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor.
Reformation, Counter-Reformation and the Thirty Years' War (1517–1648)
thumb|left|[[Martin Luther (1483–1546) was responsible for the Protestant Reformation.|190x190px]]
Roman Catholicism was the sole established religion in the Holy Roman Empire until the advent of the Protestant Reformation changed this drastically. In the early 16th century abuses (such as selling indulgences in the Catholic Church) occasioned much discontent, and a general desire for reform emerged. In 1517 the Reformation began with the publication of Martin Luther's 95 Theses detailing 95 assertions which Luther believed showed corruption and misguidance within the Catholic Church. The Reformation demonstrated Luther's disagreement both with the way in which the higher clergy used and abused power, and with the very idea of a papacy. In 1521 the Diet of Worms outlawed Luther, but the Reformation spread rapidly. Luther translated the Bible from Latin to German, establishing the basis of the modern German language. A curious fact is that Luther spoke a dialect which had minor importance in the German language of that time. After the publication of his Bible translation, his dialect evolved into what is now standard modern German.
With the protestation of the Lutheran princes at the Imperial Diet of Speyer (1529) and rejection of the Lutheran "Augsburg Confession" at the Diet of Augsburg (1530), a separate Lutheran church emerged.
thumb|right|270x270px|Religious fragmentation at the outbreak of the [[Thirty Years' War in 1618]]
From 1545 the Counter-Reformation began in Germany. Much of its impetus came from the newly founded (in 1540) Jesuit order. It restored Catholicism to many areas, including Bavaria. The Holy Roman Empire became religiously diverse; for the most part, the states of northern and central Germany became Protestant (chiefly Lutheran, but also Calvinist/Reformed) while the states of southern Germany and the Rhineland largely remained Catholic. In 1547 the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V defeated the Schmalkaldic League, an alliance of Protestant rulers. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 brought recognition of the Lutheran faith. But the treaty also stipulated that the religion of a state was to be that of its ruler (cuius regio, eius religio).
In 1608/1609 the Protestant Union and the Catholic League formed. The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), one of the most destructive conflicts in European history, played out primarily in German lands, but involved most of the countries of Europe. It was to some extent a religious conflict, involving both Protestants and Catholics.
Post-Thirty Years' War period and Protestant church unions (1648–1871)
thumb|right|269x269px|Glass window in the town church of [[Wiesloch with Martin Luther and John Calvin commemorating the 1821 union of Lutheran and Reformed churches in the Grand Duchy of Baden]]
Two main developments reshaped religion in Germany after 1814. There was a movement to unite the larger Lutheran and the smaller Reformed Protestant churches. The churches themselves brought this about in Baden, Nassau, and Bavaria. However, in Prussia King Frederick William III was determined to handle unification entirely on his own terms, without consultation. His goal was to unify the Protestant churches, and to impose a single standardised liturgy, organisation, and even architecture. The long-term goal was to have fully centralised royal control of all the Protestant churches. In a series of proclamations over several decades the Evangelical Church of the Prussian Union was formed, bringing together the more numerous Lutherans and the less numerous Reformed Protestants. The government of Prussia now had full control over church affairs, with the king himself recognised as the leading bishop. Opposition to unification came from the "Old Lutherans" in Prussia and Silesia who followed the theological and liturgical forms they had followed since the days of Luther. The government attempted to crack down on them, so they went underground. Tens of thousands migrated to South Australia and the United States, where they formed the Missouri Synod. Finally, in 1845 the new king, Frederick William IV, offered a general amnesty and allowed the Old Lutherans to form separate free church associations with only nominal government control.
From the religious point of view of the typical Catholic or Protestant, major changes were underway in terms of a much more personalised religiosity that focused on the individual more than the church or the ceremony. Opposing the rationalism of the late 18th century, there was a new emphasis on the psychology and feeling of the individual, especially in terms of contemplating sinfulness, redemption, and the mysteries and the revelations of Christianity. Pietistic revivals were common among Protestants. Among Catholics there was a sharp increase in popular pilgrimages. In 1844 alone, half a million pilgrims made a pilgrimage to the city of Trier in the Rhineland to view the Seamless robe of Jesus, said to be the robe that Jesus wore on the way to his crucifixion. Catholic bishops in Germany had historically been largely independent of Rome, but now the Vatican exerted increasing control, a new "ultramontanism" of Catholics highly loyal to Rome. A sharp controversy broke out in 1837–38 in the largely Catholic Rhineland over the religious education of children of mixed marriages, where the mother was Catholic and the father Protestant. The government passed laws to require that these children always be raised as Protestants, contrary to Napoleonic law that had previously prevailed and allowed the parents to make the decision. It put the Catholic Archbishop under house arrest. In 1840, the new King Frederick William IV sought reconciliation and ended the controversy by agreeing to most of the Catholic demands.
Kulturkampf and the German Empire (1871–1918)
thumb|270x270px|Between Berlin and Rome, Bismarck (left) confronts Pope Pius IX, 1875.
thumb|275px|The religious situation in the German Empire about 1895. Tan, purple, and pink areas are predominantly Protestant, lilac and blue areas predominantly Catholic.
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck would not tolerate any base of power outside Germany and launched the Kulturkampf ("culture war") against the power of the pope and the Catholic Church. This gained strong support from German liberals, who saw the Catholic Church as the bastion of reaction and their greatest enemy. The Catholic element, in turn, saw the National Liberals as its worst enemy and formed the Center Party.
Catholics, although about a third of the national population, were seldom allowed to hold major positions in the Imperial government or the Prussian government. After 1871, there was a systematic purge of Catholics; in the powerful interior ministry, which handled all police affairs, the only Catholic was a messenger boy.
The German Empire passed the Pulpit Law (1871), which made it a crime for any cleric to discuss political issues, and the Jesuits Law (1872) drove this order out of German territory. In 1873, Bismarck, as prime minister of Prussia, launched further anti-church measures: Public schools and the registration of births, marriages and deaths were transferred from religious authorities (including the Protestant state church) to the state. Germans could now change their religious affiliation through the civil registry. Other German states followed through with similar measures. Nearly all Catholic bishops, clergy, and laymen rejected the legality of the new laws, and were defiant facing the increasingly heavy penalties and imprisonments imposed by Bismarck's government. Historian Anthony Steinhoff reports the casualty totals:
<blockquote>As of 1878, only three of eight Prussian dioceses still had bishops, some 1,125 of 4,600 parishes were vacant, and nearly 1,800 priests ended up in jail or in exile. ...Finally, between 1872 and 1878, numerous Catholic newspapers were confiscated, Catholic associations and assemblies were dissolved, and Catholic civil servants were dismissed merely on the pretence of having Ultramontane sympathies.</blockquote>
The British ambassador Odo Russell reported to London in October 1872 how Bismarck's plans were backfiring by strengthening the ultramontane (pro-papal) position inside German Catholicism:
<blockquote>The German Bishops who were politically powerless in Germany and theologically in opposition to the Pope in Rome – have now become powerful political leaders in Germany and enthusiastic defenders of the now infallible Faith of Rome, united, disciplined, and thirsting for martyrdom, thanks to Bismarck's uncalled for antiliberal declaration of War on the freedom they had hitherto peacefully enjoyed.</blockquote>
Bismarck underestimated the resolve of the Catholic Church and did not foresee the extremes that this struggle would entail. The Catholic Church denounced the harsh new laws as anti-catholic and mustered the support of its rank and file voters across Germany. In the following elections, the Center Party won a quarter of the seats in the Imperial Diet. The conflict ended after 1879 for two reasons: Pope Pius IX died in 1878 and was succeeded by the more conciliatory Pope Leo XIII. Bismarck was also looking for greater parliamentary support after his alliance with the National Liberals ended over Bismarck's tariff changes and Social-Democrats emerged as new threat. Following negotiations with Leo XIII, peace was restored: the bishops returned, and the jailed clerics were released. Laws were toned down or taken back (Mitigation Laws 1880–1883 and Peace Laws 1886/87), but the Jesuits Law and the Pulpit Law were not repealed until 1917 and 1953, respectively. The changes concerning schools, civil registry, marriage and religious disaffiliation remain in place today. The Center Party gained strength and became an ally of Bismarck, especially when he attacked socialism.
Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany (1918–1945)
thumb|Religion in the 1925 census|269x269px
The national constitution of 1919 determined that the newly formed Weimar Republic had no state church, and guaranteed freedom of religion. Earlier, these freedoms were mentioned only in state constitutions. Protestants and Catholics were equal before the law, and freethought flourished. The German Freethinkers League attained about 500,000 members, many of whom were atheists, before the organisation was shut down by the Nazis in May 1933.
When Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party seized power in January 1933, it sought to assert state supremacy over all sectors of life. The Reichskonkordat neutralized the Catholic Church as a political force. Through the pro-Nazi Deutsche Christenbewegung ("German Christians movement") and the forced merger of the German Evangelical Church Confederation into the Protestant Reich Church, Protestantism was brought under state control. Following a "gradual worsening of relations" in late 1936, the Nazis supported Kirchenaustrittsbewegung ("movement to leave the church"). Although there was no top-down official directive to revoke church membership, some Nazi Party members started doing so voluntarily and put other members under pressure to follow their example. From 1933, Jews in Germany were increasingly marginalised, expelled and persecuted for a combination of religious, racial and economic reasons. From 1941 to the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, they were actively massacred during the Holocaust.
Cold War and contemporary period (1945–present)
thumb|Road signs inform visitors about the usual timing of church services.|200x200px
In the aftermath of World War II, two states emerged in Germany in 1949: West Germany under the aegis of the Western Allies, and East Germany as part of the Soviet bloc. West Germany, officially known as the Federal Republic of Germany, adopted a constitution in 1949 which protected freedom of religion and adopted the regulations of the Weimar Constitution; consequently, secularisation in West Germany proceeded slowly. East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic, had a communist system which actively tried to reduce the influence of religion in society; the government restricted Christian churches and discriminated against Christians. In the 21st century, eastern German states, including the area of the former eastern capital, East Berlin, are less religious than western German states. This initiative began after the day had been held as a nationwide holiday in 2017, due to the 500th Reformation anniversary of the Reformation, and also due to the fact that the northern German states have significantly fewer holidays than the southern ones.
In 2019 the Catholic News Agency reported that the Catholic church in Germany had a net loss of 216,078 members the previous year. The Protestant churches in Germany had a similar net loss of membership of about 220,000 members. While the total of Catholic and Protestant church membership stands at 45 million or 53%, demographers predict that based on current trends it will fall to 23 million by 2060. In 2020 it was reported that the Catholic church in Germany had a 402,000 loss in membership, the largest ever single year decrease up to that point. The Protestant churches in Germany also had a large drop in membership of about 440,000. Falling membership means empty churches. Consequently between 2000 and 2024 the Catholic church deconsecrated 611 church buildings while the Protestant church decommissioned around half that number. The buildings are used in various ways for example as housing, sporting facilities or cultural amenities. Some are demolished or in rare cases house another christian church.
Demographics
[[File:Konfessionen Deutschland Zensus 2022.png| upright=1.3|thumb|right | Majority religious affiliation according to the 2022 census. Light colors indicate a simple plurality instead. Slanted lines indicate a +75% supermajority.
]]
As per the most recent census (May 2022) Catholics are predominant in the south and west, while unaffiliated people are concentrated in the east, where they make up the majority of the population, and are also significant in the north and west of the country, were they make up the majority of the population in metropolitan areas. With the decline of Christianity in the late 20th and early 21st century, accentuated in the east by the official atheism of the former German Democratic Republic, the northeastern states of Germany are now mostly not religious (70%), with many of the people living there being agnostics and atheists. Most Muslims are Sunnis, but there are a small number of Alevis, Shi'a and members of other minority sects. Moreover, Germany has Europe's third-largest Jewish population (after France and the United Kingdom).
Censuses
In modern Germany, several censuses have been carried out. From the reformation until the 1960s, the majority of the German population was Protestant (mainly Lutherans belonging to the Protestant Church in Germany) while approximatively one-third of the population was Catholic. The source for the years in italics is the church membership count.
!rowspan="2"|Religion
!colspan="2"|1910
!colspan="2"|1925
!colspan="2"|1933
!colspan="2"|1939
!colspan="2"|1946
!colspan="2"|1950
!colspan="2"|1960s
! colspan="2" |1990
! colspan="2" |2001
!colspan="2"|2011
|-
!Number
!%
!Number
!%
!Number
!%
!Number
!%
!Number
!%
!Number
!%
!Number
!%
!Number
!%
!Number
!%
!Number
!%
|-
| style="background:#E0E0FF;" |Christianity||align=right|63,812,000||align=right|98.3||align=right|60,208,000||align=right|96.5||align=right|62,037,000||align=right|95.2||align=right|65,127,000||align=right|94.0||align=right|59,973,519||align=right|94.9||align=right|65,514,677||align=right|94.7||align=right|65,455,144||align=right|89.4
|57,947,000
|73.2
|52,742,000
|64.1|| align="right" |53,257,550|| align="right" |66.8
|-
| style="background:#E0E0FF;" |<small>–EKD and Free Churches</small>||align=right|39,991,000||align=right|61.6||align=right|40,015,000||align=right|64.1||align=right|40,865,000||align=right|62.7||align=right|42,103,000||align=right|60.8||align=right|37,240,625||align=right|59.0||align=right|40,974,217||align=right|59.2||align=right|39,293,907||align=right|53.7
|29,422,000
|37.2
|26,454,000
|32.2|| align="right" |25,266,470||align=right|31.7
|-
| style="background:#E0E0FF;" |<small>–Catholicism</small>||align=right|23,821,000||align=right|36.7||align=right|20,193,000||align=right|32.4||align=right|21,172,000||align=right|32.5||align=right|23,024,000||align=right|33.2||align=right|22,732,894||align=right|35.9||align=right|24,540,460||align=right|35.5||align=right|26,161,237||align=right|35.7
|28,525,000
|36.1
|26,288,000
|32.0|| align="right" |24,869,380||align=right|31.2
|-
| style="background:#E0E0FF;" |<small>–Eastern Orthodox Christianity</small>||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-
| –
| –
| –
| -|| align="right" |1,050,740||align=right|1.3
|-
| style="background:#E0E0FF;" |<small>–Other Christians</small>
| –
| –
| –
| –
| –
| –
| –
| –
| –
| –
| –
| –
| –
| –
| –
| –
| –
| –
| align="right" |2,070,960
| align="right" |2.6
|-
| style="background:#E0F0FF;" |Judaism||align=right|615,000||align=right|1.0||align=right|564,000||align=right|0.9||align=right|500,000||align=right|0.8||align=right|222,000||align=right|0.3||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-
| –
| –
| –
| -|| align="right" |84,430||align=right|0.1
|-
| style="background:#F0E0F0;" |Other||align=right|498,000||align=right|0.7||align=right|1,639,000||align=right|2.6||align=right|2,681,000||align=right|4.0||align=right|3,966,000||align=right|5.7||align=right|623,956||align=right|1.0||align=right|752,575||align=right|1.1||align=right|1,089,673||align=right|1.5
| –
| –
| –
| -|| align="right" |4,137,140|| align="right" |5.2
|-
| style="background:#F5F5F5;" |No religion||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|-||align=right|1,190,629||align=right|1.5||align=right|2,572,369||align=right|4.1||align=right|3,438,020||align=right|4.9||align=right|7,459,914||align=right|10.2
| –
| –
| –
| -|| align="right" |22,223,010|| align="right" |27.9
|-
! Total population||align=right|64,926,000||align=right|100|| align="right" |62,411,000||align=right|100|| align="right" |65,218,000||align=right|100|| align="right" |69,314,000||align=right|100|| align="right" |63,169,844||align=right|100|| align="right" |69,187,072||align=right|100|| align="right" |73,178,431||align=right|100
!79,112,831
!100
!82,259,540
!100|| align="right" |79,652,360|| align="right" |100
|}
Church figures and other estimates
German major religious bodies publish yearly updated records of their membership.
Only certain religious group publish updated figures on their official membership, and this kind of data is collected in order to levy taxes on the registered membership of those churches, which corresponds to 9% of the total income tax (8% in Baden-Württemberg). According to a study, nearly 29% of the persons who unregistered from their church in 2022 did so in order to avoid paying the church tax. According to a 2017 study by the Pew Research Center, around 20% of people who are not registered to any church nonetheless considered themselves Christians.
According to these church stats, Christianity is the largest religious group in Germany, with around 39.8 million adherents (47.7%) in 2024 of whom 19.8 million are Catholics (23.7%) and 18 million are Protestants (21.5%).
|61
|30
|24
|2
|5
|30
|4
|0
|0
|4
|-
|Eurobarometer (December 2018)
|66.1
|29.5
|26.6
|2.2
|7.8
|27.6
|3.7
|0.1
|0.7
|1.8
|-
|German General Social Survey (2018)
|63.2
|29.1
|31.9
|1.5
|0.7
|33.3
|2.9
|0.1
|0.1
|0.3
|-
|International Social Survey Programme (2017)
|63.5
|30.1
|31.1
|1.7
|0.6
|33.4
|2.5
|0.1
|0.1
|0.3
|-
|Politbarometer (2017) entitled to vote only
|66.1
|32.4
|33.7
| colspan="2" |included in "others"
|29.9
|2.2
|0.04
| colspan="2" |1.6 (incl. other Christians)
|}