Germany has a religiously diverse population, with approximately one-third Protestant and one-third Catholic. Churches dominate towns and villages across Germany and remain important community centers. While church membership remains high, observance of religious rituals and traditions has declined. Germans hold common Christian beliefs about an afterlife but also maintain older superstitions, especially concerning death, aging, work, pregnancy and childbirth.

1. man B el ie fs and
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Su perst itions

2. Religious Beliefs
Germany was the homeland of the Protestant Reformation, but, in
the politically fragmented Holy Roman Empire of the sixteenth
century, many territories remained faithful to Roman Catholicism or
reverted back to it, depending of the policy of the ruling house.
Today, 34 percent of the population belongs to the Evangelical
(Protestant) Church and a further 34 percent belongs to the
Catholic Church. Many Germans have no religious affiliation.

3. Rituals and Holy Places
From the smallest village to the largest city, the local church dominates the central area of
nearly every German settlement. German churches are often impressive architectural
structures, which bear witness to centuries of growth and renovation. In predominantly
Catholic areas, such as the Rhineland, Bavaria, and parts of Baden-Württemberg, the areas
surrounding the towns and villages are typically strewn with shrines and chapels. The
processions to these shrines, which were common until the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, have now been largely discontinued.

4. Death and Afterlife
Nearly 70 percent of Germans are members of a Christian
church, and many of these share common Christian beliefs in
himmel (heaven) and hölle (hell) as destinations of the soul
after death.. Funerary rites involve either a church service or
a civil ceremony, depending on the beliefs of the deceased
and his or her survivors.

5. Superstitions
Presented superstitions are only one of the few that
German culture has gathered throught the centuries.

6. Superstitions connected with Death and
Aging

7. 1.
If a sick man wishes to die, then one should open all the windows,
fill any object in the house which is empty and turn it over, so that
the soul is free to leave and cannot stay anywhere.

8. 2.
If a deceased man's clothes are not soon washed, he cannot rest.

9. 3.
The moment that someone dies, the crops in the storehouse should
be shoveled and the wine in the cellar shaken, otherwise the grain,
when planted, will not grow, and the wine will go sour.

10. Superstitions connected with work

11. 1.
Men should not stay in the house when women are filling
beds with feathers, otherwise the feathers will poke through
the ticking.

12. 2.
It is not good to sew or patch something while still
wearing it.

13. Superstitions connected with pregnancy and
childbirth

14. 1.
Neither fire, salt nor bread may be given away from the
house of a woman during the first six weeks following
childbirth.

15. 2.
If pregnant women go to the
place where cloth is being
bleached, they will have pale
children.

16. 3.
The first medicine which a woman receives following
childbirth should be taken from her husband's spoon; taken
thus it will be more effective.

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T h an es
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Agnieszka Bednarz (Poland)
Ewa Kijas (Poland)
Karolina Barglik (Poland)
Amanda Arvelo Bethencourt (Spain)
Yara María Zamora (Spain)
Elizabeth Santana (Spain)
Miriam (Germany)