Urban Space,Functional Differentiation,and Conditions of Religious Place-Making in 19th-Century German and British Cities

Abstract

The article discusses the urbanization process of the 19th century against the background of the theory of functional differentiation. It is assumed that functional differentiation is an essential prerequisite for today’s forms of urban religion. For this purpose, the urbanization process of the 19th century is understood as an arena in which major social upheavals and changes were negotiated. This also applies to the changing social status of religion. The challenges this posed for the major Christian denominations in Western Europe are described here on the basis of three fundamental problems of reference: (1) the issue of material presence in the urban space; (2) the pursuit of symbolic significance, and (3) the question of social inclusion. Using contemporary source material, the spatial and material aspects of these challenges in particular will be discussed.

Introduction

Discussions on urban religion have drawn attention to diverse forms of place-making by religious groups and to their creativity in the appropriation of urban space (Becci et al., 2013; Dodsworth & Watson, 2013; Van der Veer, 2015). The focus is primarily on contemporary phenomena and developments like transnational migration and the growth of new religious movements with its contributions to a religious revitalization of contemporary cities. Particular attention is paid to the close connection between urban religion and urban lifestyles and the associated ways of living and working (Lanz, 2014). Other research focuses more on aspects of home making (Eade, 2012) and place making (Vasquez & Knott, 2014) of religious groups in the city. Another approach emphasizes the centrality of infrastructural assemblages to the formation of urban religion (Burchardt & Höhne, 2015). Among other things, the concept of urban religion is directed against the old thesis of cities as the epitome of secularization and stresses instead the vibrant and diverse character of urban religion. The borrowings from the concept of lived religion (Hall, 1997; Orsi, 1999) are clearly recognizable. More recent criticism is directed against the concept’s focus on the present. A quick historical generalization is not possible because historically older relations of city and religion are not captured by the concept of urban religion (Rüpke, 2019). ¹

Against this background, the article focuses more precisely on the historical point in time that made today’s forms of urban religion in the metropolises possible in the first place. The focus is therefore on the urbanization processes of the 19th century. Following the early Marxist theories of space, I start from the assumption that social space is a product of societal structure. And even more: every society produces its own space (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 31). This is also true for urban space. In this respect, the urbanization process of the 19th century does not simply represent an increase in cities but must be understood as an arena in which essential social upheavals and changes are negotiated. Of particular relevance for an understanding of modernity are new kinds of functional differentiation processes, that is, the horizontal substantive differentiation between social subareas. I assume that this novel form of differentiation is an essential prerequisite for today’s forms of urban religion. The challenges involved are described here in terms of three basic problems of reference to which contemporary Christian churches have had to find an answer. At the same time, the analysis of the responses of the dominant religious communities at the time offers important clues to the challenges that urbanization processes in modernity still pose for religious communities today. Therefore, the urbanization processes of the 19th century will be analyzed below from the perspective of the sociology of social differentiation.

The sociology of space has so far paid attention primarily to processes of vertical differentiation in cities (e.g., segregation and gentrification). This has not fundamentally changed even after the critique of Marxist approaches and the cultural turn. ² In contrast, the following contribution draws attention to the fact that not only vertical but also horizontal processes of social differentiation affect urban space. These became increasingly perceptible to contemporaries in the 19th century (Stichweh, 2006). In analyzing the associated challenges and coping processes, I am particularly interested in the spatial-material aspects. I argue that spatial and architectural motifs and strategies played an important role in addressing the challenges posed by functional differentiation. To date, however, the spatial and material aspects of religious activity in growing 19th century cities have often been treated as a secondary research focus (Collins, 2006; Dodsworth & Watson, 2013; Wolffe, 2013). While the question of material culture plays an increasing role in current debates about urban religion, it has rarely been considered in the study of the activities of religious actors and institutions in the 19th century. This article provides some initial insights here.

In the following sections, we first elaborate on the theoretical framework (2) and provide some details on the research context and the data used (3). Sections 4 to 6 present key findings. The paper ends with some considerations and suggestions for further research.

Differentiation Theory, Religion, and Urban Space

Theories of functional differentiation assume that in modernity processes of horizontal differentiation have become increasingly relevant (Schimank, 2021). Western societies are pictured as the emergence of several subsystems or -fields, resp., such as politics, economy, science, art, or education. This was accompanied by a shift to other forms of inclusion. In European pre-modernity, social actors were included in society primarily through their membership in a social class, and this inclusion usually encompassed their whole person. In modernity, they are now included primarily through the audience roles they (can) assume in the respective social sub-fields (Stichweh, 1988). This role-based inclusion is always only partial and specific, but manifold. It is thus an essential element of modern experience of individuality, insofar as the individual is constituted as the intersection of such a multiplicity of affiliations (Simmel, 1908/1992, pp. 456–511). This had far-reaching effects on religion and secularization theory has addressed this at length (Bruce, 2002; Taylor, 2007). The claim to supreme relevance previously formulated by religious institutions such as the Christian churches became increasingly difficult to assert. Instead, social subdivisions such as art, science, and economy became increasingly autonomous. They established their particular logics and, in the process, set themselves apart from religious interpretations and influences. Religion is thus thrown back on itself and now restructured itself as one social subfield among others (Luhmann, 1977). The inclusion of believers in the religious field, in turn, increasingly became a voluntary matter, that is, an individual decision.

According to Lefebvre and others, cities affected by rapid urbanization processes played an important role in these developments. If every society produces its typical (urban) space, then the horizontally differentiating society also shapes (urban) space in a specific way. Shifts and changes in the guiding principles of differentiation should therefore become visible and perceptible to people especially here. One can assume that the decreasing role of religion and church was therefore also noticeable early on, especially in the big cities, and was reflected in contemporary discourses.

The following reconstruction primarily considers the spatial and material dimensions of these developments. In the theories of functional differentiation, spatial and material aspects play only a marginal role. Important theories of functional differentiation like Niklas Luhmann’s System Theory (Luhmann, 1995) are explicitly written against spatially related concepts like territories and nation states. This has not fundamentally changed even after the spatial turn (see Schroer, 2006). Conversely, however, this also applies to urban and spatial sociology. Particularly in the context of urban sociology, the latter has so far focused on the processes of vertical differentiation (Löw, 2021). There has been little investigation of the relationship between space, architecture, and functional differentiation.

The article contributes to filling this research gap. It draws attention to the fact that horizontal differentiation also manifests itself spatially and materially. The increasing relevance of horizontal differentiation has certainly become visible and tangible in the form of spatial syntheses (e.g., government quarters, museum quarters, and sports fields) and related architectural forms and building types (e.g., parliaments and museums, etc.). Individualization as a consequence of the new mode of inclusion also became perceptible first and primarily in urban centers (cf. on this already Simmel, 1976). As forms, places, neighborhoods, or squares can make important contributions to the construction and stabilization of social structures because they enable the formation of expectations and practices. Socially established and collectively shared syntheses of space indicate the presence of politics, art, religion, and so on. The location of buildings in the urban space (center–periphery), as well as the proportions of architecture, also give clues to their social relevance. Architecture itself also takes on communicative functions. ³ Religious place-making in urban space therefore is by no means a marginal question. The ongoing and controversial debates of the 19th century about church building, especially in the big cities, should therefore also be understood as a search for appropriate forms of spatial and architectural institutionalization of religion under the conditions of a horizontally differentiating society.

Analysis of contemporary source material shows that the discussions revolved around three basic problems of reference. The issues in question encompass criticism of contemporary urbanization but also normative ideas about what would constitute the successful institutionalization of religion in the city under the modern conditions of functional differentiation. The three major reference problems are (1) the issue of material presence in the urban space; (2) the pursuit of symbolic significance, and (3) the question of social inclusion.

Research Context

The following is a detailed reconstruction of the spatial and architectural considerations and activities as undertaken by religious actors such as pastors, members of faith-based associations, and their donors and administrators. It considers how these actors anticipated new conditions of church and religion in the modern era through the lenses of the growing cities, and the responses and solutions they considered appropriate. As will be shown, spatial and architectural considerations and initiatives played a constitutive role. The article primarily examines documents and public statements by initiatives and faith-based associations like Christian art associations or church building associations. These associations were interested in church building and in questions of religious art and artifacts. Their members regularly intervened in the discussion about new building projects with ideas and conceptions about the role and significance of religion in modernity. With their activities, they vividly illustrate the social problems that contemporaries perceived, but at the same time also their expectations of the effectiveness of architecture and spatial planning.

The aim of the following sections is to explore the three problems of reference mentioned above by examining records from local church congregations in London, Berlin, and Leipzig; religious associations such as the English Incorporated Church Building Society (ICBS) and the Cambridge Camden Society (CCS); and several German Christian art associations from Saxony and Prussia. ⁴ This selection of material has pragmatic but also systematic reasons. Initial ideas and insights came from a former research project on Protestant and Catholic art associations and church building associations in the German Empire. The influence these associations had on contemporary church building in the second half of the 19th century was examined (Karstein, 2019). Due to the accessibility of the sources, the research focus was on the Protestant regions of Saxony and Prussia with Leipzig and Berlin as important metropolises. In the further research process, it became apparent that the German associations were oriented toward English models and forerunners like ICBS and CCS which were very active in London as by far the largest European metropolis in the 19th century. One advantage of this restriction to a few of the large established Christian religious communities is that initially they in particular were affected by the loss of significance brought about by functional differentiation. Moreover, there was a striking similarity in how the English and German churches perceived the problem regarding their spatial and material presence in urban centers. It is further more interesting to note that both in Germany and in England associations were founded that were committed to the construction of new churches. As the logic of the Grounded Theory Methodology (Corbin & Strauss, 1990) also suggests, the initial investigations that now follow can be used as a starting point for later comparative investigations that look for contrasts and differences in various ways. In the final summary, some initial thoughts on possible comparison options will be discussed.

Material Presence in the Urban Space

The first reference problem concerns the difficulties of mainline churches in maintaining a material presence in growing cities. Rapid urbanization first occurred in the 19th century, particularly in Great Britain where the proportion of people living in cities doubled between 1800 and 1850. By the end of the 19th century, the majority of the British population lived in cities (McLeod, 1997, p. 75). London had grown four-fold and had a population of 4 million by around 1900. Urbanization was also evident in continental Europe. Cities like Berlin, Leipzig, and Düsseldorf grew by more than 300% between 1875 and 1910.

When it came to the religious capture of the population, the main focus in both England and Germany was the reorganization of the urban parish. Existing municipalities often had to be reduced or divided to regain manageable parish sizes. New parishes were also established in new districts. With an “expectation that the parishes also constitute representative communities for all social strata,” all those involved showed an “interest in the standardization of the parochial structure and adequate pastoral care” (Herden, 1996, p. 28). This also raised the question of a corresponding church building infrastructure. For religiously engaged contemporaries, there was no doubt that these church buildings were necessary, but there were differences with regard to where responsibility laid. In 19th-century England, the state was neither directly nor indirectly responsible for the reorganization of the parishes and the building of new churches. With the exception of occasional parliamentary grants, this was largely left to the churches and religious communities themselves.

The Anglican Church, as a people’s church, did not consider itself to be in a position to meet this challenge with its human, financial, and structural resources and therefore relied on private initiatives and the willingness of the wealthy to donate early on (Flew, 2016, p. 2). The most important associations that emerged as a result include the ICBS, founded in 1818, and the London Diocesan Church Building Society (LDCBS), which has been active since 1854, mainly in London. When new districts were created, the initiatives secured plots of land as church sites early on, and actively appealed for donations from landowners. ⁵ All of these attempts to control and support church attendance were eclipsed by the rapid expansion of the city in the second half of the 19th century. During big urban growth spurts, there was an evident discrepancy between the desired manageable parish sizes and actual development. High population growth and fluctuation as well as increasing denominational and religious diversity ensured that the previous identity between church and civil community broke apart. The previous form of parochial affiliation was also questioned (Nelson & Gorski, 2014), as was the congruence of interests between civil and religious communities.

In Prussia, the state or the respective royal family generally took responsibility for church buildings until the middle of the 19th century. Following the example of the English church-building programs, conservative circles in Berlin also tried to divide existing parishes or create new ones, and the Prussian king offered himself to numerous new congregations as the patron of the church. He also funded a large part of the construction work (Herden, 1996). Here too, however, actors could not keep pace with population growth. In Berlin, for example, the St. Jacobi congregation grew from 26,000 to 45,000 members between 1860 and 1862 (Herden, 1996, p. 32). In view of these circumstances, the identity between the civil community and the religious parish also fell apart.

In Berlin, this can be seen in the ongoing dispute between the Protestant liberal city council and the Lutheran conservative state consistory regarding financial responsibility for ecclesiastical building projects, which delayed the emergence of new churches for years (see Duntze, 1991, p. 181). After the introduction of parish and synodal regulations in the 1860s and 1870s, responsibility for the expansion of church infrastructure in Prussia and Saxony rested exclusively with the respective regional churches and parishes. Against this background, it became increasingly less self-evident in the course of the 19th century that religious actors and their interests and needs would be taken into consideration in urban development. As a consequence, numerous private initiatives were founded in Berlin, Leipzig, and other cities to support congregations with building projects. One of the largest and best-known associations was the Evangelischer Kirchenbauverein in Berlin, which was supported by the Empress Auguste Viktoria and which from 1883 onwards realized a large number of church building projects or supported parishes’ existing plans. It was successful, but also controversial, because it enabled the construction of new churches to bypass city bodies and lengthy approval procedures.

In Leipzig, efforts to build churches were made by a church association founded in 1883. Following the English model, the association appealed primarily to the wealthier classes of the metropolis and their willingness to donate funds to finance additional new churches or chapels. If one looks at the number of newly built churches and the financial means used for them, there can be no doubt that church buildings were of fundamental importance for many religious contemporaries as material symbols of presence in urban space. Even their mere existence in the sea of houses was considered to be “a tremendous sermon; its tower is a finger pointing upwards” said the founder of the Leipzig church building association Oskar Pank (1883, p. 268).

In the discussion about the future presence of religion and church in the cities of the modern era, not only did the search for suitable locations and sources of funding play a role but also the question of what the new churches should look like. These questions are dealt with in the context of the next reference problem, which will now be presented in more detail.

Symbolic Significance Through Monumentality and Style

In addition to being a period of functional differentiation, the 19th century was also a bourgeois century. The new significance of the bourgeoisie was not only expressed in a lifestyle that had an exemplary and decisive effect on wide social strata; it could also be seen in architecture. New architectural creations, such as arcades and department stores, grand hotels and coffee houses, museums and train stations, constituted concerted efforts by the bourgeoisie to make their mark and were correspondingly complex in design (Curtis, 1982; Hein & Schulz, 1996).

All these construction projects had two consequences: first, cities grew higher. The new buildings—city halls, factories, apartment buildings, train stations, universities, museums, etc.—were, without exception, taller than the medieval buildings; second, their specific architectural design often made them seem monument-like, sometimes even sacral. Many of them became new landmarks in urban areas.

In this context, clergymen and other individuals aimed to regain superiority in the changing city skyline, voting not only for new but potent and awe-inspiring church buildings. One good example is the Tabor Church in Leipzig. The old medieval church in this parish was much too small for the growing district around it and the parish started a building project for a new church in 1899. The church council stated that other new churches within the city of Leipzig were not visible on the city’s skyline, did not look majestic but petite, and could not compete with the smoke pipes of the factories. The council argued that what was needed was a huge building pointing to the sky and emphasized that the new church construction should be a monument, in addition to being functional. ⁶ Another typical example is the Heiland Church in Berlin. The surrounding district of Moabit underwent rapid growth in the 19th century, with the population increasing 10-fold in a very short period. Most of the new inhabitants were a mix of blue-collar workers and low-paid white-collar workers; tenement houses and factories dominated the landscape. Within this setting, the Heiland Church was established in 1892 with a steeple that was the third highest in Berlin at the time. The church was explicitly primarily a landmark for the district. This desire for a significant religious symbol that claimed unmistakable dominance over the surrounding tenements and factory chimneys was entirely in line with the policy pursued by the Evangelischer Kirchenbauverein. This quest for urban dominance is interesting because it both shows and attempts to conceal the consequences of functional differentiation. The height of the newly built churches continued to assert maximum relevance over other functional buildings, thus perpetuating a constellation that had long since lost its realism. At the same time, churches as religious presence symbols should remind the members of society again that they are not only political citizens, consumers, art lovers etc., but that they also need religion. The architecture and spatial conditions of the churches were thus the main criteria to which a lack of piety in the congregations was causally linked. This is exemplarily reflected in the sermon for the consecration of new St. Peter’s Church in Leipzig in 1886.

If before in our parish many things were not as they should be, if, let me speak frankly, St. Peter’s parish had gathered less than other parishes of our city around its church, then one used to excuse this with the inconspicuous church, which was not even located within the parish. Now this excuse is no longer valid (Hartung, 1886, p. 4).

But efforts to achieve visibility and significance were not just about striving for monumentality. In densely built urban areas, they were also about explicitly identifying the monumental building as a religious building. This topic became a major issue in the 19th century. For the Anglican Church, a solution seems to have been a return to the church’s historical (Catholic) roots, though not to Roman Catholicism as such. This primarily entailed a return to traditional early English Gothic architecture. The CCS was influential in realizing this vision. Founded in 1839, the society primarily sought to influence relevant actors in English church building to establish a certain style. ⁷

The CCS not only established a series of rules and prohibitions but also clearly opposed previously popular architectural styles such as the classicist Georgian church style. They also influenced the ICBS which, from 1842 onwards, primarily recommended constructions in the Old English Gothic style. German churches also considered the Gothic style to be a genuine “church style” (Rottmeier, 1859, p. 70). In the eyes of contemporaries, Gothic art represented true piety and churchliness and was also considered to be artistically complete. The German Christian art associations, which emerged from the 1850s, followed the English models and strongly recommended the Gothic style in their respective dioceses and regional churches, as well as to specialized architects (Karstein, 2019). This can also be read as a response to the differentiating society in which religion wanted to remain not only visible but recognizable with its distinction between a sacred and profane sphere (Fischer, 2017, p. 65).

Social Inclusion

The third reference problem relates primarily to the issue of social inclusion. As mentioned earlier, the nature of social inclusion changed fundamentally when functional differentiation became dominant. Individuals are now included primarily through their respective roles in the social fields—and no longer through their belonging to a social status. Ideally, inclusion means that every member of society, regardless of his or her origin, has access to the social spheres and their services (e.g., political participation, medical care, and opportunities for consumption) (Luhmann, 1989, pp. 149–258). Religious inclusion also becomes a question of individual preferences. Social origin, on the contrary, is losing importance. However, as a look back into the 19th century shows, it is not disappearing as a factor. In the contemporary discussion, these aspects were often linked. The decline in participation in religious life was attributed to social conditions, especially in large cities. There was strong empirical evidence for such a connection. The demand for religious salvation fell dramatically, especially in the newly emerging working-class neighborhoods of the industrial centers (Hölscher, 2001; McLeod, 1997). It is therefore not surprising that pastors viewed such communities as “mission areas” (Häusler, 1931).

Against this background, there were high hopes for the construction of new churches. They were supposed to put a stop to “moral savagery” (Pank, 1883, p. 268) and “bring the alienated masses back to Christianity and the church” (Kronprinz Wilhelm II, 1887, p. 10). Similar hopes can be found in documents of the English ICBS:

If we reflect upon the profligacy and the insubordination; the public calamity, and the individual misery, which necessarily and inevitably flow from a want of religious knowledge: If we consider also, that the parochial ministrations of the Established Church, are the most ready and effectual means of elevating and establishing the moral character of the People, by communicating the instructions, the consolidations, and the animating hopes of our Holy Religion; which advantages cannot possibly be enjoyed without an adequate supply of Church room. ⁸

In view of the missing integration of the working-class there were different ideas about what these churches should look like. This debate can be reconstructed particularly well for Germany. While actors such as the Berlin Evangelischer Kirchenbauverein stuck to the concept of monumental, representative churches, others preferred smaller churches that would have the character of multifunctional community centers. In Germany, the most well-known religious critic of monumental church buildings was Emil Sulze, a pastor in Saxony, whose parish in the industrial town of Chemnitz consisted of 47,000 parishioners. He favored the construction of numerous small churches instead of only a few majestic ones. He believed that small, lively communities would result in higher commitment among the lay people. Sulze and his followers favored community centers, where many other social services such as poor-relief and kindergarten but also nursing and medical services, libraries, schools etc. could be included in addition to a place of worship (Sulze, 1881).

The model of the community center shows not only the response of committed Protestants to the so-called social question (poverty) but also specific reactions to functional differentiation. Libraries and schools are a typical example because here offerings from another area of society are placed under religious dominance. In the literature on the history and sociology of religion, this process has been called milieu formation. In older research on milieus, socio-moral milieus were interpreted primarily in terms of worldviews as the everyday-worldly basis of certain political parties (Lepsius, 1973). In contrast, more recent research has emphasized that the milieus were primarily a reaction to the impositions of functional differentiation (Breuer, 2012). They enabled individuals to form communities along criteria such as age, gender, and social status, thus also enabling the temporary maintenance of traditional identity constructions. Such milieus promoted social exclusiveness and in-group mentality. This was a relief from the new role-based inclusion mechanisms brought about by functional differentiation (Breuer, 2012, p. 123). Of particular interest here is the fact that milieus have also developed a number of equivalents for offers of functional subsystems in their internal sphere. There were scientific organizations, art associations, mass media, banks, and more. In the 19th century, sub-societies formed in this way, which looked like a “replica” of the functionally differentiated society but under religious dominance (Breuer, 2012, p. 135).

What has been largely ignored so far, however, is the fact that these replicas of functional differentiation within denominational milieus often also received their spatial-architectural manifestation. This can be exemplified by the offerings of community centers quoted above. But there are corresponding examples outside of community centers as well. Christian art museums, colleges, academies, and hospitals, among others, should be mentioned here. This can be interpreted as a strategy of coupling, in which religion enters into a connection with other logics to be present in the corresponding social subareas and thus to provide individuals with possibilities for religious communication—without, however, still having the guarantee that these offers will actually be accepted.

Conclusion

The essay discussed urbanization processes against the background of the sociology of social differentiation. In this way, the article aims to contribute to a further historicization of the concept of urban religion (see already Rüpke, 2019) and to its foundation in a broader theory of modern society. It is assumed that in these urbanization processes of the 19th century not only vertical but also horizontal differentiation were renegotiated. Of particular interest were the horizontal processes of differentiation that led to the formation of various subsystems. This entailed a loss of significance for religion in particular, which was felt especially keenly by contemporaries in urban centers (Stichweh, 2006). Complementing sociology of space as well as sociology of social differentiation research foci, the paper argues that horizontal differentiation also manifests itself spatially and materially. This means that the changed social position of religion and church also has spatial and material effects. Even more, it can be assumed that these changes are not only spatially and materially reflected, but that space and architecture are media in which these changes are constituted and negotiated. In this context, three basic problems of reference were presented that can be found in contemporary discussions of religiously engaged actors: material presence in urban space, symbolic meaning through monumentality and style, and social inclusion.

In the following, a brief outlook will clarify the extent to which the challenges for religious actors that emerged in the 19th century are still relevant today. This also highlights possible approaches for further comparative research. On the issue of material presence, initial attempts to respond to city growth demonstrate that city space and religious space were at first considered to be congruent or homologous. This was due not least to the continuation of the parochial principle, which, however, was gradually abandoned in light of the dynamic development within cities. It is evident that already Christian churches in the 19th century experienced the necessity of place-seeking and place-making—phenomena which are often identified in urban religious studies linked to 20th-century migration (Becci et al., 2017). Further research on the history of religion would benefit at this point from recent debates understanding urban religion primarily as a problem of urban infrastructure (Burchardt & Höhne, 2015).

The two other problem areas also show that these phenomena, which are primarily discussed regarding recent religious developments, are older. The second reference problem, symbolic significance, highlights the fact that religious actors were not just concerned with remaining present in the urban space, but also with church buildings being recognizable and dominant compared to other building types. In the 19th century, religious communities were already making a visible effort to establish the iconicity of religious buildings in urban space. The church tower in particular often symbolized the claim to the ultimate relevance of religion in an increasingly complex society. A comparison with current church building projects (Knott et al., 2016) in the context of today’s ethnically and religiously divers cities is still largely lacking.

As the third reference problem, social inclusion, shows, belief in the revitalizing effect of such iconic church buildings was increasingly questioned in view of the growing religious indifference of underprivileged classes at the end of the 19th century. In this regard, structural concepts that attempt to incorporate social offers of functional differentiated subsystems into religious community centers as well as the founding of faith based functional equivalents like art museums, colleges, hospitals and so on, are of particular interest. Here, too, it could be productive to compare the recent debates on migrant community centers (Munsch, 2019) with historical predecessors. Another question is how the boundaries between religion and other logics are negotiated within denominational hospitals, schools, museums, and so on, what architectural solutions result, and how this has changed over time.

But the comparative view can of course also be turned around. Religious diversity, for example, is a core element in discussions about contemporary urban religion. Here, one could ask whether religious pluralization also played a role in the 19th century and to what extent it was also negotiated in terms of urban planning and architecture.