Following the second constitution of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), enacted on 9 April 1968 and accounting for its de facto transformation into a communist dictatorship, the church bodies were deprived their status as statutory bodies () and the church tax, automatically collecting parishioners' contributions as a surcharge on the income tax, was abolished. Now parishioners had to fix the level of their contributions and to transfer them again and again on their own. This together with ongoing discrimination of church members, which let many secede from the church, effectively eroded the adherence of parishioners and the financial situation of the Evangelical Church.