The ‘Prussian Union’ was an alliance between the Evangelical Lutheran and Evangelical Reformed Churches in Prussia, established in 1817, which continued to exist through its successor organisations until 2003/2006.

On 27 September 1817, King Frederick William III (1770–1840) called upon the Lutheran and Reformed congregations within his realm to celebrate the forthcoming 300th anniversary of the Reformation together, just as he himself would be celebrating it with Holy Communion in a united ‘Protestant-Christian congregation’ at the Court and Garrison Church in Potsdam. The call was not a decree, but an invitation to join the union ‘out of the freedom of one’s own conviction’, ‘in unity of heart, according to genuinely biblical principles’. The appeal aimed at worshipping together between Reformed and Lutheran congregations, a ‘truly religious union’ of the Protestant churches, which were now separated only ‘by external differences’ (according to the enlightened king’s misunderstanding), from which a unified administration of both was to emerge.^[1]

In fact, over the following decades, under pressure from the government, the vast majority of congregations in the Prussian provinces of the Rhineland, Westphalia, Brandenburg, the ecclesiastical province of Saxony, Pomerania, Silesia, Posen, West and East Prussia heeded the royal call; however, there was also resistance within Prussia from Lutheran quarters (the formation of church factions) and schisms from the Prussian Church (the 1830 secession of the so-called Old Lutheran Church in Silesia).

Until 1918, the King stood at the head of the Prussian Church as summus episcopus; in 1822, he imposed a standardised liturgical order upon it (which sparked considerable resistance). The internal governance of the Church was carried out synodically through General Synods or Provincial Synods in the individual provinces under a president or bishop. However, their resolutions required royal approval. In 1829, General Superintendents were appointed as the King’s spiritual representatives in a church province; they presided over the consistories that had already been established in 1815. Central administration was initially carried out by the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs; from 1850, it was handled by the newly formed Evangelical Higher Church Council, based in Berlin and headed by its president.

The recognition of the presbyterian-synodal Rhenish Church Order in 1835 gradually led to a more balanced relationship between the often-contentious coexistence of consistorial and synodal elements (1873 Parish and Synodical Order for the six eastern provinces; 1876 General Synodical Order for the eight older provinces). In addition to rent, capital investments, collections and fees for official acts, the Church was financed by a state subsidy (as a result of the secularisation of 1803) and the levying of an annually fixed church tax (Church Act of 1905).

The predominantly Lutheran territories that had been incorporated into Prussia during the German War of 1866 – the Kingdom of Hanover, the Duchy of Nassau, the Electorate of Hesse, the Free City of Frankfurt and Schleswig-Holstein—which had been incorporated into Prussia following the German War of 1866—were not incorporated into the Prussian Church, but retained their own church constitutions or were granted their own constitutions.

When King Wilhelm II (1859–1941) abdicated the throne in 1918 following the loss of the World War, Prussia’s ecclesiastical constitution also had to be reformed. On 29 September 1922, a constituent church assembly adopted the constitutional charter for the ‘Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union’ (APU), to be governed by a Church Senate and the Evangelical Higher Church Council.

The church elections of 1933, which resulted in a majority for the ‘German Christians’ church party and the appointment of a provisional church president to the Evangelical Supreme Church Council, sparked protests and led to the formation of the ‘Confessing Church’ (Barmer Synod, 1934).

With the end of the war in 1945 and Germany’s territorial losses in the East, the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union lost a third of its territorial jurisdiction. The Prussian church provinces initially organised themselves as independent regional churches; however, when the State of Prussia was abolished on 27 February 1947, the churches of the Rhineland, Westphalia, Berlin-Brandenburg, the ecclesiastical province of Saxony, (remaining)Pomerania and Silesian Upper Lusatia decided in 1952 to continue working together under the name ‘Evangelical Church of the Union’ (EKU). The ‘Council’ of the EKU, under its President, was now responsible for implementing the Synod’s resolutions and was supported in this by the Church Chancellery in Berlin. The Council saw its role as providing theological guidance to the affiliated churches, keeping alive the legacy of the 1934 Barmer Theological Declaration, cooperating with other Union churches, and establishing working groups and commissions for joint tasks.

In 2003, the EKU was incorporated into the larger “Union of Protestant Churches within the Evangelical Church in Germany” (UEK), which included other union churches (Baden, Palatinate). In 2006, the work of the Church Chancellery in Berlin came to an end.

• J. F. Gerhard Goeters, Joachim Rogge: The History of the Evangelical Church of the Union. A Handbook. Vol. 1–3. Leipzig 1992–1999.
• Iselin Gundermann, Dietrich Meyer, Hartmut Sander (eds.): The Evangelical Church of the Prussian Union 1817–2003. A volume of images and text. Berlin 2013 (Publications of the Evangelical Central Archive in Berlin 11).
• Albrecht Beutel (ed.): Protestantism in Prussia. Portraits from its History. Vol. 1–5. Frankfurt am Main 2009–2013.
• Joachim Rogge: ‘Evangelical Church of the Union’. In: Theological Real Encyclopaedia. Vol. 10 (1982), pp. 677–683.
• Joachim Rogge: The Path of a Church. The Evangelical Church of the Union between 1817 and 1995. In: Yearbook for Silesian Church History 75 (1996), pp. 227–244.
• Klaus Wappler: The Theological Significance of the Prussian Union Act of 27 September 1817. Berlin 1978 (Theological Works 35).

[1] Quoted from the reprint of the appeal in Goeters/Rogge: *Geschichte*, Vol. 1, p. 91 ff. (also in Gundermann/Meyer/Sander: *Evangelische Kirche*, p. 13 ff.).

Dietrich Meyer: Prussian Union. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2019. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32785 (accessed 3 April 2019).