Winterstein, Ulrike: Vertriebener Klerus in Sachsen 1945–1955, Paderborn [u. a.] 2010

Ulrike Winterstein: Vertriebener Klerus in Sachsen 1945–1955.

How did the Catholic Church react to the influx of hundreds of thousands of expellee Catholics in the Soviet Occupied Zone? What possibilities did the Church have for integrating them in a political environment where religion was pushed to the margins?

The book undertakes to answer these questions using the case of approximately 200 priests who found a new, »unfamiliar home« (fremde Heimat) in the diocese of Meissen and in the diocesan territory Görlitz-Cottbus, the »rump« of the Archdiocese of Breslau that remained in Soviet Occupied Zone. Both church-political as well as manifold pastoral factors presented obstacles to their integration. The author shows the considerable integration difficulties the Church faced internally even as outwardly it provided a religious and cultural haven in a socialist state and social order.