Losing Heaven

Thomas Grossboelting is a Professor of History at the University of Munster. 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.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Losing HeavenPART I: A CHRISTIAN GERMANY? RELIGIOUS SELF-POSITIONING AND ILLUSIONS AFTER 1945Chapter 1. Faith in People's Lives - Lives Lived in Faith? The Religious Field between Re-Christianization and ErosionChapter 2. Organize, Standardize, Romanticize. The Churches in Politics and SocietyChapter 3. Proclamation of Faith and Pastoral Work from 1945 to the Early 1960sPART II: THE NEW DAWN AND THE PLUNGE INTO POSTMODERNITY. THE RELIGIOUS FIELD IN THE 1960S AND 1970SChapter 4. The Christian Religious Communities in the 1960s and 1970sChapter 5. Politicization and Pluralization. Religion, Politics and Society in the 1960s and 1970sChapter 6. From 'Hellfire' to 'All-Embracing Love'. Transformation in the Social Forms of Religion and in the Meaning of TranscendencePART III: CHURCH BECOMES RELIGION. RUPTURES AND CHANGES IN THE RELIGIOUS SPHERE TO THE PRESENT DAYChapter 7. Faith within Life. The Diffusion and Differentiation of the Religious FieldChapter 8. On the Way to a Multireligious Society? Pluralism as ChallengeChapter 9. Towards a De-Christianized Society?Conclusion: God in Germany - Looking Back and Looking ForwardBibliographyIndex

"The first comprehensive history of religion in Germany after 1945." Suddeutsche Zeitung"Thomas Grossboelting'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