It might come down to the question that was asked, if you ask people if they are Christian they might say yes but if you ask them if they are a member of a Christian church they might say no.

I think that step one should be comparing the data for Dresden with the data of other ex-GDR cities, to find out if Dresden is representative (and then the comparation with the USSR relevant) or an outlier (and then you should look at the differences with other German cities).

Help me to understand this as history? It is a question about the current day.

@MarkC.Wallace The historic part is how exactly did it happen that an originally Christian city became de-facto atheist or agnostic. Being part of the Eastern bloc doesn't tell the full story because another country (Poland) is 87 % Catholic.

@SJuan76 See update 1. There are several cities in Eastern Germany with similar percentages of religious vs. non-religious people.

@FranzDrollig: 44 years of "socialism".

@MartinSchröder The real quesiton is: Why did religion recover in several other formerly socialist countries (Russia, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine), but not in the Eastern Germany?

@MartinSchröder Could you elaborate (e. g. in an answer) why exactly Catholicism survived socialism better than Protestantism?

What's the percentage in France? England? Italy? Austria? Other German states? Also re "What events led to this?", history is not just a bunch of events one after the other. There are rough trends that slowly occur. Most numbers show that as a nation becomes more prosperous, the less religious it is.

Wait... the 30 years war and particular battles in it directly caused this or that town to be protestant or Catholic. So sometimes events directly cause a choice of religion.

@FranzDrollig, thanks for the accepted answer, but it is customary to wait a few days to see if there is a better one. This site has a global audience, spanning all time zones.

Please, don't commit the old mistake of mixing religion with political affiliation. There are hundreds of millions in these parts alone who are atheists not because they have anything to do with socialist goverments of past decades but because they find it most obvious not to believe in myths of supernatural creatures. There is no particular reason why religion should "recover", actually, it's losing ground all over Europe.

And if you compare to other countries, never forget the German church tax. A rather strong incentive for anybody without religious affiliation to officially declare this to the state while in other countries they might simply not bother at all and, consequently, won't show up that easily in statistics.

@FranzDrollig Each individual living in Dresden has many personal reasons to believe or not believe in God. I don't think you can drive conclusions just from statistics alone, especially since answers given to a poll might be an oversimplification on actual people's beliefs. It sounds like you asked the wrong question to me. If you asked something like "why did christianity decline in GDR but not in Poland during the communist era" would be more interesting in my opinion.

@FranzDrollig actually Russia is Orthodox, not Catholic. But surely, the Protestant vs Catholic/Orthodox might be a serious factor.

Smart people do not pay 10% church taxes.

@Gábor : the statistics seem to contradict your opinion. There is a strong connection between religion, political affiliation and the history of a region, otherwise there woudln't be so great differences between countries/cities/regions. And you comment about "myths of supernatural creatures" seems to indicate a lack of understanding why many people choose to stay (or to become) Christians. Many do it out of cultural reasons, and many do believe generally in a higher power without taking stories about giants and angels in the Bible literally.

@vsz: I never meant giants and angels and similar actors. Religion, by its very definition, posits the belief in supernatural forces (if you merely object the word "creatures", feel free the interpret my previous remark with "forces", it would've been a better word to start with, yes).

You are also not taking into the account the economical part: less economically developed societies are more religious.

@rus9384 Apart from Berlin and Saxony (which are middle ranked) all former DDR Bundesländer are actually low ranked in the GDP index of Germany. Your argument would indicate that North-Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg should be the least religious but they're definitely not. Bavaria is actually the most conservative and religious part of Germany being mostly cathoic (Whatever the official numbers, I grew up there and I have yet to find a more religious part in Germany).

@OttoAbnormalverbraucher I think rus9384 was referring to the relatively high religiosity in Russia or Poland (both countries most likely have lower GDPs per capita than East Germany).

@FranzDrollig The argument is still invalid. The United States are much more religious than any former eastern block country.