The cities of the Historic Highlights of Germany present a vivid record of how religion evolved in Germany - indeed, throughout much of Europe - during the past two millennia.

Missionaries spread Christianity
By the 6th and 7th centuries, however, much of Europe was in turmoil from invasions and war, and many scholars fled to Ireland. There, monasteries flourished as centers for spiritual life, missionary training, and scholarly activity. From these same monasteries, missionaries returned to a devastated Europe between the late 7th and 9th centuries. Working in close association with the papacy, they spread Christianity across the continent.

Würzburg's prominence was set in motion in 686 when three Irish missionaries came to the town to convert its people. After the three were murdered and later canonized as saints, the pilgrims started pouring in. In 742 AD St. Boniface founded the bishopric of Würzburg and named St. Burkard the first bishop. Today's Marienberg Fortress was built on the original stronghold.

Christianity spurs growth
In 764 in Heidelberg, Lorsch Monastery was erected. In 863, the monastery of St. Michael was founded overlooking the town on the Heiligenberg inside an ancient Celtic rampart. At the same time, the bishopric of Worms extended its influence into the valley, founding Schönau Monastery in 1142. It was from a tiny hamlet at the foot of a Worms castle that Heidelberg eventually developed. Similar scenes took places in towns and villages across the region, and today's churches and cathedrals provide stone evidence of the people's faith. Church towers stretched ever farther toward the sky in hopes to bring a closer connection to God. At the same time, bishops and other church officials took on increasingly political roles, and their palaces and castles prove the wealth that ensued.

Humanism plants seeds of Reformation
In the 14th century, the Renaissance, a humanistic movement, spread to Germany, and many came to question the absolute power of the Catholic Church. It was in 1505 that Martin Luther entered the Augustinian Monastery in Erfurt and soon took his monk's vow. While studying Theology at the University of Erfurt, he was exposed to the ideas of the Humanists.Martin Luther lived in the Augustinian Monastery as a monk from 1505 to 1511. Today, the monastery complex houses an important library with rare books and a permanent exhibition about the life of Luther.

The Reformation begins
In 1517, Luther signaled the beginning of the Reformation by posting 95 theses at Wittenberg. A few months later, Luther was received warmly at Heidelberg University, Germany's oldest institution of higher learning, where he defended the theses. Numerous churches and the Cathedral mark Augsburg as the seat of a bishopric. It was here that, in 1518, Martin Luther and Cardinal Cajetan engaged in their famous debate. It is the fertile interplay of religious and secular power that helped give Augsburg its inimitable flair.

Many cities - like Trier - rejected the Reformation
In 1697, Trier numbered fewer than 2,700 inhabitants, not including the residents of 29 monasteries. It was its function as a Catholic religious center that kept Trier going, and, by the middle of the 18th century, eminent architects and artists turned the city into a place set splendidly with baroque and rococo churches, palaces, and gardens. In some towns, the Reformation met with violent responses. In 1532, following its introduction in Münster, the Anabaptist war raged in. Three iron cages still hang from the steeple of St. Lamberti Church, where executed Anabaptists were exhibited as a warning to the populace. In 1628 the last Protestants were expelled from Münster.

Religious territorialism
In 1530, the Augsburg Confession of Lutheran faith was issued, followed in 1555 by the Peace of Augsburg. This established an arrangement of religious territorialism rather than toleration. It recognized the existence of Catholicism and Lutheranism in the German Empire and provided that citizens should adopt the religion of their respective rulers. It was in Münster and Osnabrück also that the Peace of Westphalia was negotiated and signed, in 1648, ending the Thirty Years' War. The two locations were required because Protestant and Catholic leaders refused to meet each other. Sweden had favored Osnabrück due to its Protestant background, while France chose Münster due to its Catholic background. Among its terms, the treaty gave equality to Catholics and Protestants in the 300 states of the Holy Roman Empire.

Jewish expulsion
By the end of the 15th century, tension between Jews and Christians was beginning to increase. A few weeks after the death of Emperor Maximilian I in 1519, under whose rule Jews had enjoyed protection, the town council decided to expel the Jews from Regensburg.

In Germany, Judaism has a troubled and tragic history that extends through the centuries. In most cases, all that remains to remind visitors of former synagogues are plaques, although old synagogues or Jewish cemeteries can still be seen in Erfurt and other towns. Mainz’s Jewish Cemetery contains Europe’s oldest gravestone.

In Osnabrück, the Felix Nussbaum House is named after the artist Felix Nussbaum, who was born in Osnabrück in 1904 and murdered in Auschwitz in 1944. Like no other painter, his impressive works record the stations of his life, from the "happy childhood" in a Jewish merchant family, via initial artistic success in Berlin, to the despair of a persecuted Jew living in Belgian exile. The collection includes Nussbaum's seminal work, "Self-portrait with Jewish Identity Card.” The creative tension between the museum’s architecture and painting admonishes us not to forget the fate of Europe's Jews during the Holocaust.

Museums provide insight
Several museums help visitors understand the development and history of religion in Germany. In Würzburg's Museum by the Cathedral, art with Christian themes from the 11th to the 18th centuries is exhibited facing a larger number of works from the 20th and 21st centuries. This juxtaposition is intended to illustrate graphically how the artists tried to reflect the religious deliberations and positions of their times.

Unearthing the medieval Jewish quarter
In Regensburg, between 1995 and 1998, archaeologists working at Neupfarrplatz Square unearthed the remains of cellars belonging to houses and buildings of the Jewish quarter. The most sensational find was the Gothic synagogue and the remains of the previous Romanesque synagogue. The ruins were found on top of a further layer of ruins from the Roman period. Visitors can enter the underground site and walk down in time.
The Jewish quarter comprised about 39 houses and several public buildings, such as the synagogue. The community had its own administration, seal and judge. Ironically, Neupfarrplatz Square was the site of the burning of books by the Nazis in 1933 and of meetings of a resistance group in 1942-1943 that was brutally crushed by the Nazi regime.

At about the same time that Luther was nailing his 95 theses, Jews were being expelled from cities and towns. The Jewish quarter in Regensburg is first mentioned in a document dating from ca. 1000 A.D. - the earliest mention of a Jewish settlement in Germany. For more than 500 years Jews lived here, largely free of persecution and pogroms.

In A.D. 313, Roman Emperor Constantine the Great recognized Christianity as a legal religion in the Roman Empire. The imperial city of Trier quickly became an early center for the spread of Christianity north of the Alps. Within 20 years, a Roman palace was leveled and replaced by the largest Christian church in Antiquity on the site of the present Cathedral.

Over the next two centuries, many Germanic tribes fell to the Franks, who took over politically after 485 A.D. In 496, Clovis, King of the Franks, was converted and became the defender of Christianity in the West. The Franks became a Catholic people.