The Austrian Lutheran Church (also: A.C. = Augsburg Confession) immediately arises from the Reformation of the 16th century: very soon after Martin Luther and others had published Protestant ideas in sermons, theses, devotional books, and papers, these ideas also came to the regions of present-day Austria. At the end of the 16th century, two-thirds of the Austrian population were Protestant. As soon as January 12th, 1522, Paul Sperratus preached Protestant principles in Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral. As of the start of the 17th century, Protestant religious life was illegal. The flourishing Protestant Church was destroyed almost completely through persecution and expulsion.

Deed of Tolerance and “Tolerance Parishes”

After roughly 150 years of “secret Protestantism”, the first parishes were formed in 1781 due to the Deed of Tolerance by Emperor Joseph II. The Deed of Tolerance is felt as a “liberation document”: very quickly Protestant parishes and schools arise – these so-called “tolerance parishes” still exist today, like Rutzenmoos in Upper Austria for instance. A chapel (“house of prayer”) was allowed to be built in places, where 100 Protestant families lived. However, the building was not permitted to be identifiable as a church from the outside and to have direct access from the street. Pastors and teachers were allowed to be appointed. For the individual Protestant it was important, that it was possible for him/her to become a master craftsman, to gain civil rights, and to go to university.

Between 70,000 and 80,000 people reported in the area of present-day Austria due to the Deed of Tolerance and confessed to be Protestant. The former “secret Protestants” became the base of the new Evangelical Church of Austria. Emperor Franz Joseph I granted the Austrians full equal rights with the Deed of Protestants in 1861. However, the Evangelical Church of Austria was still subjected to supervision by the State. This first changes through the Law for Protestants in 1961.

Increase in the 19th and 20th Century

Over the course of the 19th century the Evangelical Church gains an influx through merchants, businessmen, scientists, and artists particularly from Germany. About a quarter of today’s parishes arose through transfers within the scope of the “Free from Rome”-movement at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century.

In Burgenland, the percentage of the Protestant population is larger than in any other federal state, which is due to the fact, that it first emanated from the German-speaking outskirts of Western Hungary in 1921.
The catholic-fascisticly oriented corporate state in Austria (1934-1938) drove Socialists and Social Democrats above all as “political Protestants” into the Protestant churches. The last big influx was generated by refugees and displaced persons, who stayed in Austria after 1945. The present-day fundament of the churches - based on the canon law of the established church – is the “Law for Protestants of 1961”, in which the Evangelical Church was put on a par with the Roman-Catholic Church.