60 FRANK BÖSCH AND JENS GIESEKE
the Kulturbund and organized in local groups, for instance, the boundar-
ies between oppositional, church-based, and state activists blurred over
time. Grey areas such as these were experimental spaces for new forms
of politics and issues that were swept into the limelight in the fall of 1989.
Rather than concerning themselves with the big ideological questions of
the day, these arenas fostered a pragmatic approach to issues that af-
fected the local village or neighborhood, or problems such as air and wa-
ter pollution. They were also forums for dialog and consensus-oriented
communication as opposed to confrontation and power struggles.
Another “traditional” major organization that became politicized and
polarized in the 1970s and 1980s was the Christian church(es). This came
as a bit of a surprise in both Germanys. Whereas congregations in the
GDR had been shrinking since the 1950s as a result of the state’s repres-
sion of the churches, more and more people began to leave the churches
in West Germany as well. The Catholic Church in particular came under
public scrutiny.^58 Simultaneously, at the end of the 1960s, smaller political
groups had already begun to attract more public attention, including the
Protestant theologian Dorothee Sölle’s “political evening prayers” and
the young Christians who protested the Katholikentag in Essen in 1968^59
This resulted in a doubled political mobilization process in the early
1970s. On the one hand, conservative groups formed in opposition to
the new left-liberal zeitgeist. The socioliberal reforms aff ecting the family
and abortion rights prompted the churches to protest the government’s
policies with millions of pamphlets, countless critical public statements,
and even protests on the streets.^60 The Catholic Church further reinforced
its contra position in a pastoral letter concerning the federal elections
in 1980 that also attacked the public debts that had been run up by the
social-liberal coalition government. On the other hand, many Christians
and some clergymen had become involved in the peace movement at the
end of the 1970s. The Catholic congresses and the Protestant Church
congresses, which were virtually insignifi cant in the 1970s because they
were so small, underwent a revival, attracting massive crowds in turn.
The Protestant Church Day in Hamburg (1981) and in Hannover (1983)
in part resembled major peace demonstrations.^61
In contrast, politicization was the last thing that the churches in the
GDR wanted in the 1970s. Rather, they sought to leave the vehement con-
frontations of the 1950s behind them, which worked to some extent. The
SED still maintained, for example, that the children of pastors should not
be able to become teachers or hold other ideologically relevant positions.
The Catholic Church reacted by focusing on its primary religious role,
but the Protestant churches adopted a “church in socialism” approach as
their modus vivendi, which corresponded to their long history as a loyal
state church since the Reformation.