Arbeiten zur Kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte. Reihe B: Darstellungen – serie

The acceptance of refugees has repeatedly been the subject of controversial social debates in the Federal Republic. Protestantism was deeply involved in these debates. Jonathan Spanos examines the controversy surrounding the acceptance and recognition of political refugees as a crucial line of conflict for the negotiation of the relationship between politics and religion in the Federal Republic and as a history of the transformation of Protestant Christianity. Spanos analyzes the attitude of Protestantism to the asylum policy of the Federal Republic and its influence on the debates about the granting of asylum from a cultural and political historical perspective. Particular attention is paid to the concept of refugee, the construction of refugee stereotypes and forms of argumentation. Based on the controversy surrounding the immigration of SBZ/GDR refugees in the early Federal Republic, Spanos describes and analyzes the development of Protestant contributions to the debate. The focus of the study is on the 1970s and 1980s. The work concludes with an outlook on the position on the amendment to the Basic Law in 1993, which was accompanied by massive inner-Protestant conflicts.

With the Protestant prison pastoral care in the SBZ and the early GDR, the present study opens up a hitherto unexplored field at the intersection of church and general history. It provides new insights into both the state-church relationship and the development of the relationship between the EKD and the East German state churches. Through the reconstruction of prison pastoral care since 1945, the work also sheds light on the church policy of the Soviet occupying powers in the SBZ, which has so far been little researched. It is proven that the practice of prison pastoral care established under the Soviets formed the basis for its handling in the GDR. The investigation clarifies the state's dilemma: How was the unpopular service of the Protestant church in prison brought to a standstill without the fundamental and human right of religious freedom propagated to the outside world, an indispensable cornerstone of the democratic state - because this is how one saw oneself - , to damage?