When Faith Makes History: The Peaceful Revolution Started with the Churches

The author shows that a scant thirty years after the turning point of 1989 the peaceful revolution in East Germany would not have been possible without the churches. Though the government pursued an openly repressive politics against religion, the two large confessions offered the freedom to keep alive alternative notions of law, justice, solidarity and human dignity. In this context the Christians in the GDR benefitted from a multifaceted educational system. Critical impulses - for example from literature - here were taken up, pondered and reinforced. Thus became possible a new way of thought that put an end to the rule of the SED.