Thus the church body renamed into Protestant State Church in the Kingdom of Bavaria right of the Rhine (German: Protestantische Landeskirche im Königreiche Bayern rechts des Rheins). In 1918, the Calvinist congregations seceded and formed their own church, the Evangelical Reformed Church in Bavaria (which merged with the Evangelical Reformed Church in Northwest Germany in 1989 to form the
Evangelical Reformed Church – Synod of Reformed Churches in Bavaria and Northwestern Germany
).
In 1921, the Protestant state church renamed into Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria right of the Rhine when the new church constitution accounted for the Kingdom having become a republic and the Reformed congregations having formed their separate church body. On 1 April 1921 the Evangelical Lutheran State Church of Saxe-Coburg merged in the Bavarian church body. The number of parishioners amounted to 1,575,000 in 1925.[5]
During the struggle of the churches under the Nazi dictatorship the Bavarian Lutheran church body remained an intact church (German: intakte Kirche), since the Nazi-submissive German Christians fraction remained a minority in the synod after the unconstitutional election imposed by Hitler on 23 July 1933. Nazi opponents, forming the Confessing Church, could act within the official bodies of the church. The prior name extension right of the Rhine was removed in 1948, after Bavaria left of the Rhine, i.e. the Palatinate, had been separated from Bavaria by the Allies in 1945.
