Abstract:

Each country in Europe has created their own concepts and institutions in the field of freedom of religion and conscience. These concepts and institutions varied according to the historical experiences of each state that were extracted from the political conflicts between the church and the state. In Germany, after the Thirty Years’ War, the Treaty of Westphalia was signed. The treaty ended the sectarian wars and recognized the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches as equals. The freedom of religion and conscience in Germany was also discussed during the writing of the 1919 Weimar Constitution. Based on the painful experiences it has gained in the past, Germany has created a unique model in the field of freedom of religion and conscience. In this model the regulations in the field of collective freedom of religion are established by the contracts between state-run bodies of the Federation, the federal states and the church (the religious groups). In this way, the role of the state and the church is determined with respect to freedom of religion and conscience in Germany. In other words, the religious area in the public sphere was regulated together by the state and the religious groups.

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