Religion and Space: Dimensions of Religious Re-Territorialization of Santeria in Germany

The article deals with Afro-Cuban Santeria in Germany and its religious practices developed under diaspora conditions. The aim is to demonstrate that Cuban priest and their multinational following represent a notion of religious space that differs from most of the established religious denominations in Germany. Instead of temples and localized sanctuaries Santeria devotees explore and redefine natural and urban spaces relating them to specific deities of the Oricha pantheon in order to make ritual use of them. Since ritual uses of public spaces is uncommon in the host country it provokes misunderstanding or incomprehension as the article demonstrates by means of several empirical examples.