When the ban on dancing is debated on Good Friday, we know it's Easter time. This year it was Juso CEO Kevin Kühnert who criticized the ban as no longer up-to-date. In an interview, he said, "Of course, I would not register for a church party, but I think those who want to go to the disco that day should be able to do that."

For this he received criticism, also from his own party. "So far, I did not know that the SPD is a fun party," said Wolfgang Thierse of the SPD, former Bundestag President and member of the Central Committee of German Catholics. It is not a new dispute, but it represents a question that has occupied the political space for years: how close should state and church be?

Germany is a secular country. "There is no state church," says Article 140 of the Basic Law. Despite the neutral state, state and church are close - they cooperate in many fields.

Many cooperation possibilities

Germany is historically a biconfessional country - since the Reformation there are Catholics and Protestants. Representatives of both orientations repeatedly came into conflict with war. Only with the Weimar constitution did Germany become a secular state - albeit not a secular one. The authors of the constitution came to a compromise: while there should be no more state churches, at the same time cooperation opportunities between the state and the churches were opened. The separation between state and church is not quite as strict.

After the end of the National Socialist dictatorship, the constitutional constitutional law of the Weimar Constitution was incorporated into the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany. The possibilities of cooperation between state and church are manifold:

  • Both major churches are public corporations. They may raise taxes from their members and collect them through the tax office;
  • in public schools religion classes of both denominations are offered;
  • The bodies of public service broadcasters also include representatives of the churches;
  • at public universities there are theological faculties that are bound by the instructions of the churches;
  • the churches take over military pastoral care in the Bundeswehr (according to the Ministry of Defense, military rabbis will soon take over the pastoral care of Jewish soldiers, military names for Muslim soldiers are also planned);
  • Christian holidays are protected by the state.

Actually, the church is omnipresent. But since the establishment of the Federal Republic, the Christian self-understanding of the country has changed. 28 percent of Germans are Catholics, 26 percent are Protestants. That's almost 45 million people. Nevertheless, the number of members is falling, in many places churches are only well attended at Christmas and Easter. (Read the SPIEGEL cover story here)

Islam and Christianity are practically not equal

Germany is an immigration country with many religions. It is estimated that nearly five million Muslims live in this country. So far, however, the Basic Law has been designed primarily for the two Christian churches. This leads to contradictions: in courts may hang crosses, but if women wear headscarves, the public service in these same courts is denied so far. Both are religious symbols - one is treated differently than the other.

Even with teachers wearing a headscarf, the debate is controversial, the countries have to different regulations. The Federal Constitutional Court ruled in 2015 that a blanket ban on headscarves and other religious expressions in public schools was incompatible with the freedom of belief of educators.

Many Muslim communities do not gain corporate status - many smaller Christian communities and Jewish communities, on the other hand.

But slowly the country is changing: In 2013, the Muslim community Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat was granted corporate status in Hesse, in North Rhine-Westphalia Islam classes have been taught at regular schools for some years, and Islamic theology is taught at several German universities.

More separation of church and state?

In view of the greater cultural and religious diversity as well as the growing number of agnostics and atheists, a greater separation of church and state is required again and again. The legal philosopher Horst Dreier has written a book about this, "State without God". In it he writes: "However much the liberal secular state with its regulations and measures sometimes deeply intervene in the lives of people, as little as he appropriates decision-making authority on the fundamental metaphysical questions about the meaning of the world and our existence in it." The state should not identify with any religion.

But not only in the schoolyard or in courtrooms church and state are often mixed. They are also financially linked, not only through the church tax. There are still so-called "state benefits". The federal states are currently paying around 500 million euros a year to the church. The state benefits go back to contracts from the 19th century. Because the church then had to cede goods to the state, the countries agreed compensation payments. Even the Weimar Republic wanted to stop these compensation payments.

Nothing has happened yet.