Continuities and Discontinuities in the Transmission of (Non-)Religion. West and East Germany compared [Kontinuitäten und Diskontinuitäten in der Weitergabe von (Nicht-)Religion. Ein Vergleich von West- und Ostdeutschland]

Gärtner, Christel; Hennig, Linda; Müller, Olaf;

Abstract

In this chapter, we focus on the question of continuity and discontinuity in the familial transmission of religion in Germany. We examine this question from a mixed-method perspective and in a West–East comparison.1 We begin our paper with a brief overview of the development and specificity of the reli­gious landscape in Germany, which carries important implications for both data selection and data analysis. We will then describe how we proceeded in data collection and analysis according to the two different methodological paradigms we used. Third, we will outline why we theoretically use two dif­ferent concepts of generation: familial and historical generations. Then, we will highlight and discuss some results about continuity and discontinuity of transmission, both with regard to the East–West difference and with regard to methodological approaches, starting with selected quantitative findings followed by case reconstructions related to the qualitative data. At this point, it will already have become clear that the results of both methodological approaches complement and deepen each other. In the sixth section, we illustrate the advantages of the triangulation of qualitative and quantitative results once again along the issue “communication about religion.” We will conclude the chapter with some reflections regarding the mixed-methods approach and, at the same time, emphasize our most important results.