Young People on Their Way to Atheism in the German Democratic Republic

The importance of the teenage years in shaping a person’s worldview can be considered a well-established fact. This was also true in political regimes that tried to enforce atheism on their population. In East Germany, surveys among the 14–25-year-olds by the Central Institute for Studies on the Youth observed a decline in atheism between the 1960s and 1990 among young people, both at the population level and in individual trajectories. The ideological imperative to foster atheisation, which did not progress autonomously, made the search for causal factors all the more urgent. By examining the influence of parents and young people’s social environment, researchers drew a complex picture of the possible links between political opinions and worldview and of different types of atheists. These insights were intended to inform ‘communist education’ across a wide range of actors.