The Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Mecklenburg in the 20th century dictatorships (until 1961)

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Veronika Albrecht-Birkner
• Subject Area: Protestant Theology ; Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 455730097

Over the last decade, both the ecclesiastical and the general history have stressed the importance of long-term contextualized perspectives on the 20th century. Consequently, the history of Protestantism in GDR needs to be implemented in the general history of German Protestantism. The German regional churches have been amongst very few organisational bodies, which continued to exist throughout the 20th century. In all political changes from dictatorial to democratic times until the German reunification they have played a very influential part in both ecclesiastical and general history. Therefore, this research project works on the key assumption that additionally to a biographic approach, an institutional approach looking at the regional churches is meaningful and leads to fundamentally new insight into a long-term perspective on ecclesiastical history. Against this background, this research project aims at a monographic description of the history of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg between 1933 and 1961, incorporating an overview over the decade from 1921 (constitutional founding) until 1933 (beginning of the NS-time). Although August 1961 (building of the Berlin Wall) foremost marks a political caesura, it also had a dramatic impact on the Lutheran church of Mecklenburg. The following time from 1961 onwards is part of a follow-up project to close the gap until 1990.Methodically, this project combines both a synchronic and a diachronic approach. A sectorial approach is necessary as well as the inclusion of historical continuities and contradictory narratives which existed during the time. The project aims at sharpening the view on the protestant church in Germany during the 20th century and applying criteria to describe its development.Substantially, this research project does not only refer to an institutional history but also intends a reconstruction of the various dynamics amongst theological, culture- and piety-historical as well as societal and political factors in their influence on various levels of church organisation. These various determining aspects are also being looked at in their chronological and diachronic long-term dynamics. The project is founded on the assumption that certain historical long-term developments, that have their origin in dictatorial times, have never been described and are therefore not consciously recognized as historical heritage. Many of those have an important impact until present times. The corpus of the project includes besides printed primary sources to a high degree unpublished sources of varied origin. Combining a macroscopic access to the topic with a meso- as well as a micro perspective, this project allows for focussing on key topics within a long-term research setting.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants