The Uckermark, that is Schwedt - the industrial center with all the problems, people could get or cause. This is Prenzlau in the center, this is Templin, investing in tourism for a long time already, this is an area with many lakes, huge fields and lots of woods, small tiny villages, mostly being centered by an ancient church, in what shape now whatsoever.

As all German areas the Uckermark used to be catholic before the time of Reformation. The change to protestant took part without any outer pressure, the priests just converted one by one. The French Revolution had some impact, too. The horses of French soldiers where hidden in some of the churches. The Uckermark doesn't know any kind of slavery as other parts of Germany used to have. (In Europa slavery didn't mean having black people working for you, but mainly these "slaves" were poor farmers who couldn't pay the rent nad lost there personal freedom).

The church buildings usually date in the 13th century. They werde constructed mainly by rocks and are easy to keep up. Usually the village churches are sited inside the graveyard, which showed up as a real blessing through communist times, there was no way to missuse the buildings. Nowadays this fact is reducing the use of these churches.

Mainly the people call themselves protestant, some catholic, or atheistic. You'll find independend churches mainly in Prenzlau, also other groups like Mormons and sects. The catholic people mostly have their roots in Polish origin or had to leave their homes in the more eastern German countries as the Russian troups proceeded westward in 1944/45.

The structures of the protestant church are reduced as there is no money to finance. It's still existing at many places, butmore and morethe already small groups stop to exist, because there is nobody to care about, the few volunteer church workers are not capable to get all the work done. Services are cut away and people have to drive miles to here the word of God.

But there is another fact. The rural structure, the mentality of the population doesn't open up to the modern ways of founding churches. The positive in all this is surely that sects have almost no chance to get along. People just don't respond. The best chances are still to use the structes of the remnant of the former big protestant church. The pastors still have a good reputation, which is probably a result of the former political pressure wherein the church functioned somehow as a little island of freedom in the communist system. Often people trust the pastor more than they will ever admit, typical for North German population.