Pomeranian Evangelical Church
At the time of the Reformation Pomerania within the Holy Roman Empire (Duchy of Pomerania) consisted of three separate states, the two branch duchies of Pomerania-Stettin (capital: Stettin, renamed as Szczecin as of 1945) and Pomerania-Wolgast (capital: Wolgast) as well as of the secular principality (capital: Kolberg, renamed as Kołobrzeg as of 1945) ruled by the Prince-Bishops of Cammin, who – in Roman Catholic respect – presided over the exempt Roman Catholic Cammin diocese (seat: Cammin, renamed as Kamień Pomorski as of 1945) comprising all the prince-episcopal state, Pomerania-Stettin, parts of eastern Mecklenburg, the New March and much of Pomerania-Wolgast.
Only in Cammin's prince-episcopal state Bishop Erasmus von Manteuffel-Arnhausen [de] could defend the Catholic faith.
In 1815 Swedish Pomerania became a pawn in the hands of the powerful, Sweden ceded it to Denmark which passed it on to Prussia in exchange for Saxe-Lauenburg.
Reformed congregations were usually found in cities or newly established or resettled villages in formerly Brandenburgian Pomerania, where Calvinist immigrants ensconced after 1685.
The reform laws strengthened the parishioners' participation through elected presbyteries and provincial synods in matters of the Ecclesiastical Province of Pomerania.
In 1892 the Consistory of Pomerania Province moved into its new building on Elisabethstraße (today's ulica Kaszubska in Szczecin).
In June 1933 the Nazi government of Prussia, ignoring religious autonomy, furloughed the then incumbent general superintendent Walter Kähler [de] (western district, seated in Greifswald), whereas his colleague Paul Kalmus [de] (eastern district, seated in Stettin) retired in October the same year.
Especially among the many Pomeranian rural Pietists the opposition, forming the Confessing Church movement, found considerable support.
Due to the Nazi regime's interference causing the violation and de facto abolition of the church order, new bodies emerged such as the provincial bishop (as of 1933) and the provincial ecclesiastical committee (Provinzialkirchenausschuss) since 1935 (dissolved in 1937, presided over by Karl von Scheven [de], a member of the Emergency Covenant of Pastors of the Confessing Church), depriving the extremist Thom of his power again in 1936.
The provincial ecclesiastical committee provided for the ignoration of Thom, so that the constitutional two general superintendencies could be restaffed.
[6] By the East Pomeranian Offensive, February–April 1945, the Red Army advanced so speedily, that there was hardly a chance to rescue refugees, let alone archives of congregations in Farther Pomerania, as was recorded in a report about the situation in the ecclesiastical provinces (10 March 1945).
The Ecclesiastical Province of Pomerania tried to relocate its Stettin-based institutions, the consistory, general superintendency, and pertaining offices, to Greifswald.
Between April and July 1945 the Soviets handed over all of Pomerania on both banks along the Oder and east thereof to Poland.
With the simultaneous atrocities against and expulsion of the remaining Pomeranians and the systematic suppression of any kind of their organisations and associations the church life in Polish-annexed Pomerania came to an end.
Chattel, such as archives and files of the ecclesiastical province and the congregations, could only be partially rescued to places in the west ambit.
In August 1945 the three Allies of Potsdam approved these facts and agreed to house and feed the destitute Pomeranians expelled to their zones of occupation.
They decided to assume the independent existence of each ecclesiastical province as Landeskirche (Protestant regional church body) and to reform the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union into a mere umbrella organisation ("Neuordnung der Evangelischen Kirche der altpreußischen Union").
Most of the parishioners remaining in Polish-annexed Pomerania Province were expelled by Poland in the post-war period of expulsion of Germans between 1945 and 1948.
The provincial church institutions were built up anew in Greifswald, while the Soviets handed over Stettin, the former seat, to Poland in July 1945.
In October 1946 the 20th Pomeranian provincial synod elected Scheven general superintendent, and allowed him to adopt the new title of bishop.
Following the second constitution of the GDR, enacted on April 9, 1968, and accounting for its de facto transformation into a communist dictatorship, the Council of Ministers of the GDR demoted all church bodies from statutory "Public-law Corporations" (German: Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts) to mere "Civil Associations".
Since 1532 the ducal House of Griffins was divided into two lines, ruling in partitioned parts of the duchy (Pomerania-Stettin 1532–1637; Pomerania-Wolgast 1532–1620).
Two dependent branch duchies, Pomerania-Barth (1569–1605) and Pomerania-Rügenwalde (1569–1620) were without share in the government, thus also without competence as to the Lutheran state churches.
After the extinction of the Griffins in 1637 Pomerania was divided into a Swedish and a Brandenburgian part, where the monarchs of Sweden and the Berlin-based Hohenzollern rulers, respectively, then wielded the summepiscopacy.
