semi-officially, the second office of importance in the church, after the patriarch. In this capacity, he was also an administrator (acting bishop) of Budimlja and Polimlje and Raška and Prizren eparchies. Patriarch Appointment controversy When Patriarch Vikentije II suddenly died on July 5, 1958, internal strife struck the church leadership and no agreement could be reached on who would succeed him. German was not even appointed as the guardian of the throne (acting patriarch), instead the bishop of Braničevo, Hrizostom Vojinović was appointed to vacate the post. It is believed that German's election was a compromise, but the still popular story is that Aleksandar Ranković, the top Serbian Communist official at that time, and later Josip Broz Tito's deputy, entered the Holy Synod's session, bringing German inside, and saying: "This is your new patriarch!" German was elected the 43rd Patriarch of Peć on September 14, 1958. However, some sources claim a much higher number, as a result of over a dozen of people who occupied the throne, but were not officially ordained or recognized as such (such as several rebel-patriarchs in the 16th century during the Ottoman occupation) or the Patriarchs of Karlovci in Austria-Hungary which are not counted in the list of official patriarchs (especially not as patriarchs of Peć, instead calling themselves patriarchs of the Serbs). Schisms Like most Orthodox churches in the Eastern Bloc, the Serbian Orthodox Church under German was forced to strike a modus vivendi with the ruling League of Communists in order to procure the space it needed to operate. The diaspora priests, led by the vocally anti-communist Bishop Dionisije, claimed that the Belgrade "red priests" had acquiesced too early. After the Holy Synod started a trial against Dionisije for allegations about his personal life, he went into schism with the church in November 1963. Starting in 1977, the group assumed the name "Free Serbian Orthodox Church". It was reconciled with the SOC in 1992, under German's successor Pavle. The schism of the Macedonian Orthodox Church is a much deeper and complicated issue. It began in 1958, the very year of German's election, with an allegedly willing acceptance of the autonomy of Ohrid Archbishopric proclaimed by the archbishop Dositej. This was a great blow to German's religious authority as it was a forced acceptance, pushed by the Communist Party. In the next 9 years, the patriarch and archbishop held several joint liturgies, even with