Wille, Jan H.: Das Reichskonkordat. Ein Staatskirchenvertrag zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie 1933–1957, Paderborn 2024
The book examines the transformation of Catholicism in the Federal Republic of Germany and considers the effects of this transformation on an emerging post-modern society: What comes after the milieu? How are the changes configured politically and how do people live through and experience these? Which semantic displacements, specific modes of action, and emotional experiences are significant in this context?
The focus is on the purportedly ›backward‹ Rhineland-Palatinate region and the incremental abolition of state-funded parochial schools that occurred there during the ›long 1960s.‹ In impressive fashion, the author shows that established notions such as the ›pull of secularization‹ or the ›church in the headwinds‹ quickly prove to be hollow. Many farewells were proclaimed, far fewer actually took place. One group longed for change, another bitterly opposed change, a third was indifferent. Not a few were unable to recognize any change, while others attempted to use change in order to lend old traditions new splendor.
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