2024-07-24 11:50:24
Every year in Germany, more than half a billion euros goes to the two major Christian churches. The basis for this payment has been gone for more than 100 years. It’s absurd.
You have to let that sink in: The reason for this happened over 220 years ago. The task of repealing the regulation has been enshrined in two German constitutions for more than 100 years. And yet the German state continues to transfer around 600 million euros to the two major churches in Germany every year. A historical absurdity that should indeed be ended as soon as possible. Read more about it here.
In a secular country like Germany, this good half a billion is paid out year after year as compensation because church buildings were expropriated in 1803. Both Article 140 of the Basic Law and the Weimar Constitution of 1919 (the Basic Law refers directly to the relevant articles) state the aim of putting an end to this. But the whole thing goes on and on and on.
Sometimes a silly season is good for something, when politicians from the traffic light government, specifically the Greens and FDP, question this church privilege and call for it to be abolished, in other words to fulfill the constitutional mandate. For 100 years, the Catholic and Protestant churches in this country have continued to receive considerable amounts of money on a shaky legal basis.
This really should finally come to an end. Even the legal compensation over the first 100 years can be called into question when one considers how the churches wrested their money and wealth from the simple farmers and by what means. This is precisely why Martin Luther successfully instigated a church revolution more than 500 years ago.
The fact that the German state makes its tax office structure available to the churches to collect membership fees is questionable enough. The fact that it also receives additional income that has had no basis for a century is absurd.
The only bitter aftertaste of the initiative is that it was born out of sheer necessity. This budget that the traffic light coalition has drawn up for 2025 is creaky at the front and rotten at the back. And this is no less true for the state budgets from which the church collection comes.
Of course, half a billion is tempting. But it has always been the case that politicians are only able to take far-reaching steps in extreme emergencies. That is why it can be tolerated as a deduction in the B grade.