Freethought

Freethinkers is a term for people who stand for an independent and self-reliant way of life in the spirit of the Enlightenment and reject any religious faith, belief in God and religious dogmas, or, more generally, be understood as atheists, agnostics, skeptics and secular humanists.

In a narrower sense means " free thinkers " People who engage in free-thinkers movement, for example, as a member of the Freethinkers Association.

• 2.1 Associations, splitting and merging
• 2.2 oppression and resistance between 1933 and 1945
• 2.3 A new beginning in Germany after 1945

Term

England and France

The term free-thinker has its origins in the English and French Enlightenment. The word goes back to a letter of the English philosopher and scientist William Molyneux of 6 April 1697 the founder of the English Enlightenment John Locke. In it he refers to this as candid freethinker. John Tolland took in his writings this term first for themselves and their friends the Deists, temporarily edited (1711 ) the weekly The Free - Thinker and worked out the difference between religion and superstition. Locke's pupil, Anthony Collins, first introduced in 1713 by its anonymous publication Discourse of Free- Thinking, the term in circulation. Free thinking proved his evidence in the case and not by an authority. The discussion eternal being or god called first in the upper middle classes and the aristocracy of England, after the translation then even more so in France a strong indignation, but did not yet reach the people.

Germany

The transfer of German Freethinker to freethinkers, which took place in 1715 by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, joined in the course of the 18th century with the already familiar term free spirit. However, the terminology has remained relatively diffuse. In the Johann Anton Trinius 1759 edited Frey Thinker Lexicon free spirit stands for " atheists, naturalists, deists, coarse indifferentists, Sceptiker and like people." Subheading also Gottfried Lessing Epharaim fragments dispute with Hermann Samuel Reimarus.

Only in the second half of the 19th century took place under the influence of the scientific world view, the criticism of religion and of dialectical materialism a significant shift in emphasis from the religious philosophy of religion political freethinker movement. The dispute between the free-thinkers with the Church was concerned in the individual questions the radical demand the separation of church and state. Including in connection with the demand of the cremation controversy immortality of the soul, or resurrection of the body.

Historical Development

Associations, splitting and merging

By the middle of the 19th century, there were in Germany freethinking movements such as the Friends of Light, which was founded as an association of Protestant friends on June 29, 1841 to the Los -von- Rom movement of the German Catholics of 1844, at the first June 1859 merged in Gotha to collar free of religious communities. They took the free self-determination in all religious matters.

On 29./31. August 1880 was constituted on the initiative of Belgian and French freethinkers first the freethinking philosophy of nature in the middle International freethinkers covenant ( IFB) in Brussels. Under Louis Büchner, a brother of the writer Georg Büchner, the German Freethinkers covenant ( DFB) was founded on April 10, 1881 in Frankfurt am Main.

The German Monist League, which was founded in 1906 under the chairmanship of Ernst Haeckel and Wilhelm Ostwald and intellectuals gathered for a scientific world-view, 1930 reached more than 10,000 members. 1905 formed the Marxist freethinking in the Association for cremation. From the free-thinkers Federation developed a particular workgroup 1908 Central Association of Proletarian Freethinkers Germany with the magazine The Atheist, 1927 unnamed become the Association for freethinking and cremation. A successful post-1918 church propaganda outlet leads in 1930 to split the Communist members of the Association of Proletarian Freethinkers and German Freethinkers Association. There was also the covenant Socialist free thinker with 20,000 members. In 1925 formed the International Proletarian Freethinkers in Vienna a merger of the Marxist associations. From it was 1931, the socialist minority out that joined forces with the bourgeois International Freethinkers Association and brought it to 660,000 members in 1933.

Oppression and resistance between 1933 and 1945

Already on 28 March 1931, the " Decree of the Reich President for the control of political riots " the potential capacities of the Communist freethinking in Germany curtailed sharply. Another decree of May 3, 1932 banned the Communist organizations with the accusation of " godless propaganda "; she was concerned about 150.000 members. In the era of National Socialism, the German bourgeois freethinkers associations that approximately 540,000 members listed in 1932, was dissolved by violent SA- actions, transferred the assets of the fire funeral funds in the New German burial fund; Furthermore, the German Freethinkers Association ( DFV) was declared a treasonable organization and banned in March 1936 by the People's Court. The Chairman Max Sievers was executed on 17 January 1944 at the Brandenburg prison.

A new beginning in Germany after 1945

On March 21, 1951, the German Freethinkers Association ( DFV) was established in Germany in Braunschweig. He scored 1955 in its five regional associations 5,500 members and is since then the magazine Der freethinkers out.

In the GDR, freethinker associations were forbidden until 1989, since the SED has even taken over the function of the former proletarian free thought and had sufficient atheist organizations. On 7 June 1989 of 400 delegates (mostly university teachers) in East Berlin founded " Association of Free Thinker" at the headquarters of the Academy of Arts.

According REMID the DFV had in 2010 still about 3,000 members.

Part of the short-lived organized in communications and Freethinkers Association of the GDR members joined after 1990 the Humanist Association of Germany ( HVD ). In Berlin, the HVD National Association emerged from the local Freethinkers Association and has since become the country's largest carriers of cultural, educational and social offerings on the basis of a humanistic worldview.

Practice

The freethinkers created similar as the free religious movement in their festive life forms not entirely new, but alternatives. Analogous to the ecclesiastical rituals and ceremonies created the freethinker associations non- religious forms of design that took place the so- called free speaker. This created instead of a quasi- religious ritual baptism to the birth, such as the names consecration, the socialist naming; instead of Confirmation and Communion quasireligöses a ritual to adolescence, for example, the youth consecration; rather than the church ceremony a quasi religious ritual for marriage, for example, the life covenant ceremony, the socialist marriage; instead of ecclesiastical burial, a quasi- religious ritual for death cremation, for example, the funeral or the funeral socialist. Today orator stands with his eulogy in this tradition the funeral oration of the free speaker.