Religion played a key role in the Kasner family's migration from West Germany to East Germany. Merkel's paternal grandfather was originally Catholic but the entire family converted to Lutheranism during the childhood of her father, who later studied Lutheran theology in Heidelberg and Hamburg. In 1954, when Angela was just three months old, her father received a pastorate at the church in (a quarter of Perleberg in Brandenburg), which was then in East Germany.--> The family moved to Templin and Merkel grew up in the countryside north of East Berlin.