|
|
Article: Putting old wine into new bottles: the East German Protestant Church's desire to reform state socialism, 1989-90.
- Article from:
- Journal of Church and State
- Article date:
- September 22, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 J.M. Dawson Studies in Church and State. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
The most striking image of state socialism's collapse throughout Eastern Europe remains the sight of East and West Berliners triumphantly scaling the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. The fall of the Berlin Wall proved to be the most dramatic event of the Wende, or "the turn": the rising up of the East German people and the collapse of the dictatorship exercised by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) (1) that is hailed as Germany's first successful peaceful revolution. (2) Many have argued that the East German Protestant Church, to which approximately six million of East Germany's seventeen million citizens nominally belonged, (3) played a crucial role in bringing ...