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Abstract

The Weimar Constitution guaranteed the freedom of religion (Art. 137, primarily, as well as Art. 124), which enabled numerous smaller religious communities and spiritual movements, many of which had begun to establish themselves in the second half of the nineteenth century, to grow in the 1920s. Both homegrown prophets and missionaries from abroad, particularly the United States, contributed to a proliferation of religious and spiritual movements and practices, from Christian Scientists to Jehovah’s Witnesses to the LDS Church (Mormons).

This article, which appeared in a Stuttgart regional newspaper, lists just some of the various religious communities that existed in this area alone. It concluded with a call to Christian unity in the face of growing atheism, referring ominously to the decline in religious affiliation in Germany since the nineteenth century, which deeply concerned both the Catholic and Protestant Churches alike.

Newspaper Report on the Multitude of Religious Communities in Stuttgart (June 5, 1930)

Source

According to a survey by the Stuttgart City Mission, it counted no fewer than 25 Christian and non-Christian religious communities in addition to the regional Church and the Free Churches in Stuttgart. In addition to the well-known sects of the Adventists, Old and New Apostolic, Serious Bible Students, Darbists and Christian Science, there are others whose names are still unknown. There are the “Angels of Jehovah” or the “New Earth” or the “Little Flock”, which are a variety of the Serious Bible Students. There is the “Gemeinde der Urchristenheit” (Church of the Original Christianity), which joins Serdiell’s “Urchristen” [Original Christians] and “Radical Protestants,” still well-known from his winter lectures. There is an apparently Mormon “House of David” and the “Mormons, Latter Day Saints.” There is also the “New Spirit Community,” which tends to gather its followers in the Gustav Siegle House. Finally, there are also individual “evangelists,” “missionaries,” etc. who gather their own circles of believers around them. In a time of general atheistic attack, unity of the Christian community is needed more than ever.

Source of original German text: Süddeutsche Zeitung für deutsche Politik und Volkswirtschaft, Stuttgart, June 5, 1930. Available online at: https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/newspaper/item/C3WRT2SQCFXCNMNMHPUSGRQJT6V3FL6R?issuepage=13

Translation: GHI staff