the Kaliningrad Oblast most property of the Ecclesiastical Province of East Prussia had been taken by the state and is serving profane purposes these days. Fled and expelled parishioners from the old-Prussian eastern ecclesiastical provinces as well as fled and expelled Protestants from Czechoslovakian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Polish, or Romanian church bodies – altogether amounting to maybe 10 millions, who happened to strand in one of the remaining ecclesiastical provinces were to be integrated. The church founded a relief endowment (), helping the destitute people. The six surviving ecclesiastical provinces transformed into the following independent church bodies, to wit the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg, the Pomeranian Evangelical Church, the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, the Evangelical Church of the Ecclesiastical Province of Saxony, the Evangelical Church of Silesia, and the Evangelical Church of Westphalia. The Rhenish and the Westphalian synods constituted in November 1948 for the first time as state synods () of the respective, now independent church bodies. In 1947 at a meeting of delegates of the six surviving ecclesiastical provinces they confirmed the status quo, with the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union having transformed into a league of independent church bodies. In July 1948 the provisional executive of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union had to convene separately in East and West, because the Soviets blocked the interzone traffic after the introduction of the Deutsche Mark in the Bizone and the French zone of occupation. The schism was not yet fully overcome, since only the most radical German Christians had been removed or resigned from their positions. Many neutrals, forming the majority of clergy and parishioners, and many proponents of the quite doubtable compromising policy in the times of the struggle of the churches assumed positions. It was Dibelius' policy to gain the mainstream of the parishioners. Thus the strict opposition of the Dahlemites and Barmensians continued to maintain their conventions in the old-Prussian brethren councils. On 14 January 1949 representatives of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union decided to reconcile the groups and founded a committee to develop a new church constitution. On 15 August 1949 the Evangelical Supreme Church Council, presided by Dibelius, issued the proposal of the committee for a new constitution, which would bring together the Westphalians striving for the complete unwinding of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union, the Dahlemites and Barmensians as well as the Dibelians. The bulk of