Talk:Religion in Germany/Archive 1

"sole religion" to "sole established religion"
I have added "established" because clearly there were non-Catholics in Germany in the Middle Ages, at least Jews. The intention here is obviously the subsequent effects of the Reformation; I'm not sure if my word ("established") is the best. Sukkoth 06:07, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Baptist families from Paderborn
The article tells something about Baptist families from Paderborn: The parents refused to send their children to school. Here are some more information: This Baptists were "Evangeliumschristen-Baptisten". This movement is very, very religious. All members of them came from Russia, Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan. Here are living lots of them. These Evangeliumschristen keep to old German-Christian customs and that´s why they think the school system is Satanic... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.169.249.124 (talk) 15:20, 31 December 2006 (UTC).

The German confessional lutheran church is the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany!
I believe it should be mentioned several more times in the article that the German confessional lutheran church is the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany. In case anyone doesn't know: The German confessional lutheran church is the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany! --87.169.2.42 12:57, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I beg to differ. Regarding the the IELCG only makes up for about .05% of the population of Germany, I fail to see the significance of the group. It should definitely not be explicitly mentioned in the lead. I'm German and have never heard of it. --Gadrick 20:20, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism
Some funny chap has changed the text so now we have funnies like "Most German Prostetutes" and "In total more than 180 billion people officially belong to a Christian nation, although most of them have no life except at such events as weddings and funerals. Sunday strip bar attendance as reported annually by the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches has raised to about 95 percent in 2005"

What is the best way to get these additions undone. Ruud64 22:27, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

This article needs some more references (e.g., what's the source of the 2001 religious figures?) Gwimpey 23:39, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

Could someone direct me to a source of figures for confessional adherence in the regions of germany (that is, the proportion of catholics and protestants in each region), either current or historical (ie, before 1918)? Adam 11:52, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Both the EKD and the Catholics have on thier websites regional adherence data. The links are http://dbk.de/zahlen_fakten/statistik/index.html

and

http://www.ekd.de/statistik/download.html Ruud64 22:27, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

The data is not correct. There are today 2006 more catholics than Protestants in Germany! The given data is not given out by the "Statistische Bundesamt", which is the offical authority in this question!


 * Actually the catholic church is the one giving the figures as found on http://dbk.de/zahlen_fakten/statistik/index.html
 * and it does show that overtime the number of catholics is actually larger than the number of EKD members as the EKD is showing on their webpage, see further the religion in germany page where I have added a rather large number of up to date (as for end of 2009) references after another user flagged that he wanted to have references added. Futhermore, the Statistische Bundesamt is actually referring to the EKD and the catholic church as the sources for their data.
 * Ruud64 (talk) 20:05, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it's tue many people are officly a part of a church, but the have no releationship to the church and take not part of the churchlife. Take a look in the brouchure of the EKD. It says only 3,8% of the memer attend to a church service regular. Nandus (talk) 13:19, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Sections
I think this article has too many pointless sections. A sentence should not have its own section. It looks bad. 74.46.140.30 22:53, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

i totally agree. So in action, i deleted the section about orthodox christians and moved the sentence to the end of the christianity section.

East - West difference
The great difference between East and West Germany should be stressed much more. In Eastern Germany Christianity has been expelled from people's every day life completely. In Western Germany this is not the case at all. Western Germany, especially in Catholic areas, is more religious than many other parts of Europe. I can't tell exact numbers right now, but in the former GDR there are about 25% Christians, while in the West it's something like 80%.

I can now back this up with facts. The recent Bertelsmann Poll, which is currently much talked about in Germany and should probably be mentioned in the article, has the following conspicuous results: In Western Germany 81% of the population consider themselves "religious", 19% "not religious". In Eastern Germany 39% of the population consider themselves "religious", 61% not.
 * Can you provide a link to the poll? —Angr If you've written a quality article... 20:12, 16 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, I can: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3009320,00.html

incorrect figure
Someone is rather insistent on putting the figure back that states "die bevolkerung isst uberwiegend" meaning the majority of the populations is --and then either catholic or protestant. As more than 50 % of the population in eastern germany and Hamburg is neither this figure is clearly incorrect, once again I will replace it.

Ruud64 (talk) 22:03, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The map you keep replacing doesn't show what you think it does. It only shows the proportion of Catholics to Protestants; it does not imply a percentage of the population as a whole. It does not take the irreligious, or anyone other than Catholics and Protestants, into consideration at all. In the section on Christianity, it makes sense to use a map that takes only Christians into consideration; lower down, in the Secularism section, the other map that does take the irreligious into consideration is used. +Angr 08:20, 24 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Dear user Angr,


 * Amazing reponse, I actually don't know how to respond as I have already rather clearly stated my argument which is just ignored. So let me restate again. In the picture the tekst is used "Bevölkerung Überwiegend" which translated means the majority of the total population - thus including the portion of the german population without a religion. Yet you state that the figure does not imply what is shows. (Not what I think it shows-- the two words are after all in the picture). An example the picture shows that the majority of the population in the bundesstaat Sachsen-Anhalt is a protestant one whereas more than 80 % of this bundesstaat is known to be without (an organised) religion. Futhermore, you never quote the basis of the figure and I wonder if the figure is up to date enough to account for the faster erosion of the number of protestants compared to the number of catholics. After all it used to be that the EKD was larger than the german catholic church but nowadays this is the other way around quoting figures from the two churches. So for example for the bundesstaat Nordrhein-Westfalen is the 1:1 number (still) correct or should it be a clearly in majority catholic bundesstaat. What are actually the figures by bundesstaat that you are using for catholics and protestants ?  What is the source ?
 * Untill the figure is factual correct I will remove this.


 * You have removed part of a sentence with the words "Despite significant losses in the number of adherents during the last two decades," and then this sentence continued with "christinianity is still by far the largest religion ". Why ? Do you have other data ? Either on recent loss of adherents or on christianity not being the largest religion by far?
 * Where you the same user that changed the picture that I inserted a few weeks ago such that the cut-off point for non religious changed to 70 % and hence Hamburg could be shown as a protestant rather than bundesstaat with a majority non religious folks, is so why ?
 * Ruud64 (talk) 12:32, 25 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Once again you made changes without a discussion. I am not interested in an edit war. Could you respond on this edit page ?
 * Ruud64 (talk) 13:07, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * With reference to your last change - which I undid - : What are your arguments for a pointless and misleading map? Thank you for avoiding an edit war and settling with arguments. Ruud64 (talk) 13:09, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) I'm sorry if you feel I've been ignoring your argument. In fact, I merely feel that your argument is missing the point; after all, this article is Religion in Germany, not Irreligion in Germany. You're right that File:Konfessionen in Deutschland.gif has provided no source for its information, so I concede it should probably be removed. On the other hand, File:Konfessionen-in-Deutschland.svg has provided no source for its information either, so it also needs to be removed. Both the maps suffer from the error of treating each Bundesland monolithically, so that important distinctions are lost (e.g. the predominance of Catholicism in southwestern Lower Saxony and northern Thuringia, the predominance of Protestantism in Upper and Middle Franconia. What the article really needs is a modern update of File:Verbreitung der Konfessionen im deutschen Reich.jpg with information attributable to a reliable source. As for the clause "Despite significant losses in the number of adherents during the last two decades", you didn't add a source for it, while "Christianity is still by far the largest religion" is sourced. (And if you're not interested in an edit war, why do you keep edit warring?) +Angr 13:15, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * You are not replying on the remark that you are showing non religious bundeslaender as protestant neither to my other remarks. Instead of removing the picture that I added, why did you not use either this dicssion page or the possibility. Looking back at the history of the religion in germany page, it is rather obvious that you have been trolling my additions several times - and at no time you actually have been using this discussion page. rather you started an edit war. Ruud64 (talk) 13:25, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I have seen that you have now started to added questions around source data, no issue for me here. Rather easy to give - but these are in German - and refer to discussion above on "Bevölkerung Überwiegend" I don't know if this is an issue for you. Example http://www.ekd.de/download/broschuere_2009_internet.pdf.. for the EKD figuresRuud64 (talk) 13:31, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Ruud64 (talk) 13:31, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * You're the one who keeps adding unsourced claims, and used to keep removing the map with edit summaries showing that you misunderstand it. The fact that it's unsourced is a good reason to remove the map; the fact that it shows something different from what you think it does is a bad reason to remove it. And again, the non-religious population has no relevance in an article on religion in Germany; the neue Bundesländer and Hamburg are predominantly Protestant among the religious population, which is the topic of the article. (And please stop using commas as decimal points when you write in English.) +Angr 13:37, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Dear user Angr, Once again look at the figure, this shows the words Bevölkerung Überwiegend so of the total population and not among the religious population as you claim it is showing so that makes my point. On your unsourced claims comment, interesting while I back up my contributions with proper references you delete your figure because it is unsourced. One of the drawbacks of wikipedia is running into folks that just don´t want to admit making a mistake whereas actually wikipedia is supposed to be about working together. As you will notice, I did change the comma´s into decimal points so thanks for pointing that out. Ruud64 (talk) 14:36, 12 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Angr,


 * the German WP article clearly states the data source for the map; I've added that information to the image information on Commons.


 * Of course it would be much better to have a map based on Landkreise, but this seems not to be available right now.


 * Also, I think it's highly relevant to the discussion of religion in Germany that the East is predominantly not Christian anymore (due to the past suppression of Christianity by the German Democratic Republic), thus a map should reflect that fact.


 * Therefore, I'm putting this map back in, as there are two WP editors who would like to see it included, vs one who doesn't. I hope this resolves the conflict.


 * Thanks!
 * Morn (talk) 11:09, 25 February 2010 (UTC)


 * The map of course doesn't show that the East is predominantly not Christian; it only shows that most people in the East are not registered in either the EKD or the Catholic Church. If the East were predominantly SELK or Old Catholic or Baptist or Methodist or Anglican, the map would look the same. Nor does it show that the East is predominantly nonreligious: the map would also look the same if the East were predominantly Muslim or Jewish. I really don't see that the map shows much useful information at all. +Angr 11:28, 25 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Angr, that's really splitting hairs. Of course the map could mean that the Eastern states are mostly Mormon, Buddhist, etc., but the text (and tabular data) gives the appropriate context. It's only natural that maps are limited in the number of factions they can show, this is no different for the maps of religion in the US article (which are also only presented at the state level by the way).


 * If you can find a finer-grained map (e.g. by the German census), that would be ideal, but right now this map is the best one we have, therefore it should be incorporated into the article.


 * As far as not having a Christian denomination is concerned, I think this needs to be included because e.g. atheism is also a religion ("God does not exist" being a religious statement) and AFAIK enjoys the same protections as any other religion. Maybe agnosticism could be considered being irreligious, but I don't think there's any data on whether the majority population in the East calls itself atheist or agnostic.


 * But the relevance of the map for the article is (a) the North-South split between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, and (b) that the East, which used to be predominantly Protestant (and therefore Christian) is now atheist/agnostic/etc.---in other words no longer Christian---due to its political history. That's an important point to make.


 * As yours is the minority opinion, please leave the article in a state where the map is included. If you fail to see why "I really don't see that the map shows much useful information at all." is not a valid reason for removing content from WP, then I'll have to take this through the WP arbitration process. Morn (talk) 12:10, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to edit-war over this useless map, but I do consider your statement "right now this map is the best one we have, therefore it should be incorporated into the article" to be a non sequitur. If the best map we have is worse than having no map at all, it should not be incorporated into the article. You say the map is relevant because it illustrates the north-south split between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, but in fact it merely greatly oversimplifies it. To look at this map you'd never guess that there were towns as far north as Cloppenburg that are majority Catholic or towns as far south as Memmingen that are majority Protestant. And again, the map does not show that the east is now atheist/agnostic, because the map makes no distinction between atheists, Muslims, and Free Church members, but groups them all together as "neither EKD nor Catholic". So the map doesn't succeed in doing either of things you say make it relevant to the article. +Angr 13:11, 25 February 2010 (UTC)


 * All those points you make can easily be included in the article text (insofar as that is not already the case); the map can't do everything, nor does it have to. And as I said, it is known from the text and table that the East is not Muslim, Free Church, etc., so there is no reason why a reader would assume the latter. Images and maps on WP always need to be seen in the context of the article, because no diagram can ever provide a complete picture, but a simplification. Morn (talk) 14:14, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Images are supposed to complement the text, to illustrate things in a way that can't be done by text alone to increase readers' understanding of the topic. This image doesn't show anything that can't be stated in text and actually decreases readers' understanding of the topic. +Angr 15:00, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

My take on images, specifically the ones in the opening paragraph, is that they should provide a visual overview of the topic, in this case that would be:


 * What are the main religions in Germany? (answer: Protestant and Roman Catholic)
 * How is religious belief distributed geographically? (North vs South, East vs West asymmetries)

Since you have made an image of the Red states and blue states, I thought you would understand: In that article, there are two maps by state at the top of the page which give the reader a quick first impression (blue states near water, red states more in the interior), but then later in the article this first impression is corrected somewhat---in the "purple states" section, which is a more detailed picture but also a little confusing because in the high-res view all states look more or less the same, making it difficult to see clear differences:



Same principle here---provide a quick overview, both textual and visual, then launch into details later in the article.

Also, some people find it easier to learn from text, others visually. Seeing that you are fluent in so many languages, I assume that your view it skewed by personal experience. Just because you prefer assimilating information from text to a map does not mean that this is true generally...

Perhaps the biggest problem I see with the map (well, not so much the map but its underlying data) is that it doesn't tell you much about e.g. church attendance. That the majority of people are baptized in the West doesn't mean anything if they never attend church, never read the Bible, etc. Everyone else in my family is baptized either P. or R.C., but they never read the Bible (I'm not sure they even have one); I'm not baptized, yet I do. So in reality Christianity in the West has probably been destroyed as effectively as in the East, with church attendance coming mainly from older people, therefore the further declines even after the fall of the GDR. The question is whether people answer truthfully in these surveys (what they really believe) or just reiterate what it says on their ID cards about their religious affiliation.

I'd say what the article and the map need is a more in-depth discussion of what exactly people believe in, or do not believe in, in the East, preferably some kind of scientific study. Perhaps that topic is already covered in another WP article somewhere, but simply calling it secularism isn't much of a description IMHO.

Aber insgesamt ist eine (stark vereinfachte) Karte trotzdem eine gute Idee hier! Nicht alles aus der deutschen Wikipedia ist automatisch Schrott. ;-) Morn (talk) 15:54, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The difference between this case and that of the red states and blue states is that state-level politics in the U.S. is actually meaningful, since the presidential candidates get all the electors from each state in which they win a plurality of votes. Bundesland-level religious affiliation in Germany, however, is not meaningful at all. As to who gets counted, I am quite certain the numbers reflect neither baptism nor church attendance but rather who's officially registered as a Catholic or a Protestant for purposes of Kirchensteuer. There are of course plenty of baptized people who have ausgetreten from their church. As for German Wikipedia, my main beef with it is the fact that most articles there are either totally unsourced or woefully undersourced, and the people there get all huffy when you point this out to them. But the map, at least, is no longer unsourced. +Angr 20:53, 25 February 2010 (UTC)


 * The English-language WP has in recent years been plagued with editors who mainly plaster the "citation needed" template behind every sentence or even remove entire paragraphs, not because they are factually wrong, but because they don't have citations yet. It would be more constructive if those kinds of editors set out to find citations rather than deleting material or bickering endlessly, just as you might have very easily discovered yourself that the data source for the map was right there in the German article. Morn (talk) 11:50, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Which would only have solved one of the image's many problems. Why go to the trouble of finding the source information of the image when the image is useless even with source info? And while finding sources is better than deleting info, deleting info is better than having whole articles - even featured articles - that are so lacking in sources the reader has no way of knowing whether any of it is true. +Angr 13:06, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Once again a message for user Angr,

Once again, please use this page if you are not in agreement with contributions of others. Also back up with facts (maybe adding a reference to your claims?) your persisting changes that Eastern Germany is in majority protestant or deleting text based on facts stating that the majority of Eastern Germans is not religious. You also deleted references that the population in Eastern Germany is in majority not religious. If you actually have sources claiming otherwise, please be so good to add these on this page and let's have a discussion before you delete text (properly referenced of others) again. Ruud64 (talk) 11:32, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I am not claiming that eastern Germany is majority Protestant. All I'm saying is that your sources never say it's majority nonreligious. The sources you give do not distinguish between nonreligious people and non-Christian people. You are violating WP:No original research by claiming your sources say something they don't. Bringing in separate sources to show additionally that Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, etc., make up only a small proportion of the eastern German population, and using that to deduce that eastern Germany must be majority nonreligious would be a violation of WP:SYNTH, so don't bother. Also, it makes no sense to cram all of this information into footnotes of the caption of an image that doesn't actually show anything useful anyway. It would make more sense to discuss the statistics you cite in the main body of the text, without misrepresenting what they actually say. +Angr 12:21, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Dear User Angr,


 * Rather than bringing up a violation of WP:No original research, you could actually have checked the sources. Please do so. These clearly state that eastern germany is in majority non religious. No original research needed, maybe your german is not up to spec., so let me help you. A sentence like In Sachsen-Anhalt sind etwa 80 Prozent der Bürger konfessionslos  means that 4 out of 5 are actually without religion. I have added another source now from FOWID that graphically (hopefully this will help you) shows that konfessionlose i.e.non religious as % by Eastern Bundesstaat. This varies but is minimally 65%. To paraphrase your words, please stop misrepresenting what my references are actually saying. Another word of advice: the high proportion on non religious people in eastern germany has puzzled the academic world, there is plenty of research done and the reasons for this. There is absolutely no need for original research for something so thoroughly studied and documented as the religious sitution in eastern germany. I can send you more references like books you can order, if you want to have a read yourself. The information on the internet is not as good as what actually has been published.
 * Ruud64 (talk) 20:01, 13 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Second response and a plea, could you rephrain from deleting contibutions from other users until after a discussion, that is after all the point of having a discussion page.
 * Ruud64 (talk) 20:04, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
 * See my response below. The sources do not say anything of the sort. You might want to read them yourself and see what they actually say, as opposed to what you imagine they say. Konfessionslos does not necessarily mean nonreligious. +Angr 20:23, 13 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I have seen your latest edit (too bad again without a prior discussion). I checked the meaning once again of the word konfessionslos and found the following Mit Konfessionslosigkeit bezeichnet man die Nichtzugehörigkeit zu einer Glaubensgemeinschaft. Heute wird der Begriff teilweise auch mit „Religionslosigkeit“ gleichgesetzt, wenn der Betreffende weder einer Konfession noch einer organisierten Religionsgemeinschaft angehört. I need to check this further, so your comment that "Konfessionslos" isn't the same thing as nonreligious could have merit depending on how the authors of the cited references have actually meant the use of the word konfessionslose. I want to check this further, but you definitely have a point worthwhile checking, so thanks for that but again a plea to use the  discussion page.

Ruud64 (talk) 20:27, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Please add mk wiki
Please add an interwiki link for the Macedonian version. Thank you.--Тиверополник (talk) 23:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ NW ( Talk ) 02:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It was only semiprotected, Tiveropolnik, you should have been able to edit it yourself. What happened? +Angr 07:11, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Konfessionslos vs. nonreligious
Ruud64, you are continuing to confuse being konfessionslos with being nonreligious. They are not the same thing. Table 1.3 of this source, which is what the map is based on, divides people into EKD members, RCC members, and Everyone Else ("übrige Bevölkerung"). You cannot assume that Everyone Else is 100% nonreligious, because the source never says that. In Bundesländer like McPomm and Thuringia where there are very few foreigners, it's probably true that virtually all the "übrige Bevölkerung" is nonreligious, but in Berlin and Hamburg, it's not clear at all. How many Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Iranians, and Bosnians live in Berlin and Hamburg, and how many of them identify as Muslim? I could easily believe that Berlin is 10% Muslim, and if Hamburg is too, that's already enough to bring the number of nonreligious "übrige Bevölkerung" down under 50%. How many Greeks, Ukrainians, and Russians live in Berlin and Hamburg and identify as Eastern Orthodox? How many Jews live in Berlin and Hamburg? I think Berlin now has one of the highest Jewish populations in Europe. And finally, how many people don't belong to any religious organization but are still religious in their personal beliefs? Not one of the sources you've provided says anything about nonreligious people; they only give statistics about church membership vs. übrige Bevölkerung or konfessionslos. But equating übrige Bevölkerung and konfessionslos with being nonreligious is original research and prohibited here. You have to report what your sources actually say; you can't interpret into them what you want them to say. +Angr 20:20, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Angr,
 * Our responses crossed each other, so let me now repsond first by saying thanks for using this page. Besides the EKIR document, you should also consider the FOWID source that I added, this one is making a distinction between konfessionslos, and muslims/ other religious groups so that should address bringing the comment "übrige Bevölkerung" to down under 50%. The konfessionslose are actually over 50% in the eastern german states.
 * Your other point not to equate konfessionslose with non religious is something that I at the moment have no answer on, I need to explore the meaning of the word konfessionslose as it has been meant by the authors of the quoted references. If incorrect, I do have to and will apologize for my mistake.

Ruud64 (talk) 20:38, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The map and its coloration are based only on the statistics at Table 1.3 of the EKIR document, which doesn't even use the word "konfessionslos", much less "nicht religiös". For purposes of captioning the map and explaining the colors, we can't go beyond what that one source says: how many EKD members, how many Roman Catholics, and how many Others. If you want to bring in additional sources like FOWID and the source about Sachsen-Anhalt, or sources defining "konfessionslos", put them into the body of the text, not the caption of a map that isn't based on them. +Angr 20:41, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Angr,
 * The map you are referring to was to be more precise made by user Bowzer, and is based on a table on the German wikipage Religionen in Deutschland which I personally updated a few weeks ago using the statistics of the EKIR Table 1.3 document. However the map was not originally based on that document, colors are still allright though. And yes EKIR does not have the split, but I could of course update the source table of the map and refine with FOWID as FOWID does split the übrige Bevölkerung into konfessionslos / muslims etc. so that would take care of that. I also found that a majority of the population in eastern germany is actually not religious - actually more than 2-3 thirds are either agnost / atheist with atheist more than 50%, but you already know that as you wrote that yourself in one of your previous comments to user Morn on this discussion page.
 * Now to get this discussion into a more productive mode, I propose to use the EKIR table for now (which by the way is a preliminary one-- I plan to refer to the definitive table with definitive data once the EKD ever puts it on their website - - and no I don't expect big changes - actually I don't expect any) and the FOWID data to clarify that in the eastern states and Hamburg the majority is non-denominational. I could either update the table on the German wikipage - the original source after all) and text on this german page or have it with two references on the map on the english page which I would prefer. In the body of the text then add the sources that a majority of the population is eastern germany is either atheist or agnost.
 * Finally I need to apologize as it it has every appearance that I should not have translated the german word konfessionslos into non-religious -allthough often konfessionslos is used as non-religious - I can't find that this latter was the meaning that FOWID actually meant it in their document as there is no further explanation of the word in the used FOWID or EKIR tables so hereby my apologies.
 * Ruud64 (talk) 22:20, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Untitled
The Article says: As a result of re-unification (of East and West Germany), the number of Germans without a religion has grown, especially owing to the addition of the eastern states with their large non-religious majority. - But the East Germans were Germans also before... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.100.72.244 (talk) 08:45, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Map source
Does someone have a source for the 1890 map? There's another from the 1600s that shows the Protestant region in two group colors in the north.[1][2][3][4] And this map from the Thirty Years War page. The map needs to reflect the data showing pre ww2 statistics of two-thirds Protestant in the north. Just appears to be mislabeled.174.125.77.235 (talk) 15:26, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Resolved. Source was enclosed in map properties174.125.77.235 (talk) 01:56, 15 April 2011 (UTC)