of East Germany had ended up in 1945, East Germany was overwhelmingly Protestant rather than Catholic. The imposition of church taxes in West Germany meant that the protestant churches in West Germany were, by international standards, cash rich. After 1958 roughly 40% of the income of the Protestant churches in West Germany was transferred to the Protestant churches in East Germany, and Ludwig Geißel played a role in the negotiation and administration of this little publicised initiative. Häftlingsfreikauf The Protestant Bishop of (West) Berlin, Kurt Scharf, took it upon himself to enter into discussions with the East German authorities on behalf of church workers whom the East Germans had imprisoned, but he soon became unacceptable as an interlocutor for the East Germans. He therefore appointed an assistant, a young lawyer who worked for the church called Reymar von Wedel, to undertake the task. Negotiations got under way involving von Wedel, the West German lawyer Jürgen Stange and an East Berlin lawyer Wolfgang Vogel. The discussions took place without publicity and the opening objectives of the parties are not clear, but by Christmas 1962 what had emerged was an agreement whereby twenty East German political prisoners and the same number of children were released to West Berlin in return for a delivery to East Germany of three rail wagons loaded with potash fertilisers. It is not clear whether this was a continuation of an existing covert arrangement involving the churches or the start of something new. In any event, what was new was the demand that the West German government should now be involved, and the West German Minister of Intra-German Relations, Erich Mende became officially responsible for what became in 1964, amid conditions of total secrecy, a West German government programme. By 1964 Geißel was taking on various task on behalf of the West German in facilitating and administering West German purchases of freedom for East German political prisoners identified on behalf of the West German government as being the most urgently deserving of release. Unlike others involved, following German reunification Geißel spoke little about his own involvement, details of which remain unclear, though some indications emerged over time. His negotiating partners from the East German side included the Head of the Secretariat of the Conference of Governing Bodies of the Evangelical Churches ("Geschäftsstelle der Evangelischen Kirchenleitungen"), Manfred Stolpe, who after 1989 became a leading politician in post-reunification Germany. Sources