CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Kimmey III, Roy Albert |
|---|---|
| Title | Protestantism and Protest: The Lutheran and Reformed Churches in Rural East Germany |
| Summary | Current research on the Protestant Church in East Germany can be divided largely between two dominant narratives: 1.) the Church, as both an institution and through the work of individual pastors, provided opportunities to organize opposition to the state and in this way, fostered a nascent public sphere and civil society; or 2.) the hierarchy of the Church was infiltrated top-down by the Stasi, rendering it little more than an institution of state control in an atomized society. Underlying both narratives is an understanding of the Church – and GDR society on the whole – where all actions vis-à-vis the state can be categorized as either opposition or collaboration.< br> By accessing a theoretical framework articulated in two recent social histories – one on the GDR Protestant Church and another on everyday life in the Soviet Union – my thesis seeks to problematize this simplistic and reductionist binary. In doing so, I argue that opposition and collaboration existed as poles on a spectrum of behavior, within which most Church members operated (although examples of both extremes exist). As my approach seeks to bring a new perspective to a now two decade-old debate, I have found it most useful to look past Church activities and organizations in urban areas; nearly all previous scholarly work examines the Protestant churches in East Berlin, Leipzig, Halle, and Erfurt, and places particular emphasis upon the concluding years of the 1980s. This research, by contrast, analyzes the Protestant Church in rural parishes, with the aim of finding how the Church addressed the unique needs of an agricultural population. |
| Supervisor | Riedl, Matthias |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/kimmey_roy.pdf |
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