Abstract

As the birthplace of the Reformation, Germany has been the site of some of the most significant moments in the history of European Christianity. Today, however, its religious landscape is one that would scarcely be recognizable to earlier generations. This groundbreaking survey of German postwar religious life depicts a profoundly changed society: congregations shrink, private piety is on the wane, and public life has almost entirely shed its Christian character, yet there remains a booming market for syncretistic and individualistic forms of “popular religion.” Losing Heaven insightfully recounts these dramatic shifts and explains their consequences for German religious communities and the polity as a whole.

Thomas Großbölting is a Professor of History at the University of Münster. His scholarship focuses on social, industrial, and religious history, as reflected in his doctoral thesis on the East German middle class and subsequent work on industrial exhibitions and trade fairs. He is currently researching religious change in postwar Germany and remembrance of the GDR after German unification.

“The first comprehensive history of religion in Germany after 1945.” · Süddeutsche Zeitung

“Thomas Großbölting’s differentiated, tightly argued, and wide-ranging study succeeds in its task to write the first history of religion in Germany and to meet the challenge of integrating very different and more narrowly focused research. It sets the standard for every other work in this field.” · RPI