BERLINERS HAVE voted against offering religious education in state schools as an alternative to an existing mandatory course in ethics.
After weeks of heated debate, 51 per cent of voters rejected the “Pro-Reli” initiative backed by conservatives and church leaders. The number of Yes votes also fell short of the 25 per cent quorum.
The result made clear once more how, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German capital remains a hugely divided city.
While nearly all former East Berlin neighbourhoods voted against the Pro-Reli campaign, a nod to their recent socialist history, wealthier neighbourhoods there were strongly in favour. Some 40 per cent of Berliners express religious beliefs.
“The eastern neighbourhoods are more relaxed, poorer, opener and even anti-bourgeois,” said sociologist Hartmut Häussermann on German radio. “They aren’t regular church-goers even if they send their children to a religious-run kindergarten.”
The Pro-Reli initiative mounted a huge poster campaign and counted chancellor Angela Merkel and Germany’s Christian and Jewish leaders as supporters.
“I think the discussion we sparked was still valuable,” said Pro-Reli campaigner leader Christoph Lehmann. “In a city people call the atheist capital of Europe, we had a controversial and fruitful discussion about religion.”
The initiative would have allowed students attend religious education as an alternative to an ethics course introduced in 2006 after a German-Turkish youth killed his sister in a so-called “honour killing”.
Berlin’s city-state government backed the ethics course as an important integration tool in a city where 43 per cent of youths under 18 have a migration background.
Under the existing rules, students can still choose to study religion as an optional extra class.
