These principles being admitted, there still remained the difficult problem of the relations of State and Church. The following solution was adopted: There is neither complete separation nor any close union of the Churches and the State. The Churches are emancipated from the State, but they enjoy certain privileges. _The Churches are free._ “There is no State Church.” The union that formerly existed between the Church and the State, in Prussia, for example, and in the majority of the German States between them and the evangelical church, has disappeared, and the principle according to which religious affairs depend upon the state is abolished. This freedom of the Churches is manifested first, in that the creation of religious denominations and sects is free, and that the assembly of religious denominations in associations within the Reich is subject to no limitation whatever. It is also revealed in the complete independence of the Churches in regard to the State. Each religious denomination administers and conducts its affairs freely, provided that it observes the laws that apply to all. It conducts its work without the co-operation of the State or of the municipality. The new system realizes thus the emancipation of ecclesiastical administration from secular control. The State may neither decree regulations affecting faith, nor appoint any one to ecclesiastical service nor demand that its assent be required to the nominations made by ecclesiastical authority. However, the Constitution does not push the principle of the separation of Church and State to such a point as to allow religious denominations no more than the merely private rights accorded by law to natural persons. Recognizing the social force and the importance in public life exercised by the Churches, the Constitution accords them _privileges similar to those given to public corporations_. Religious denominations existing in Germany at the time of the adoption of the Constitution remain recognized as public corporate bodies. As for other similar organizations, the same rights are accorded them on the motion of the state government if, by their constitution and the sufficient number of their adherents, they offer guarantees of permanence. While recognizing that in theory the smaller religious groups, chapels, and sects may be invested with rights similar to those of the principal churches, the object of the above limitation is to prevent ephemeral organizations from acquiring the standing of public corporate bodies.