The online version of the German newspaper Die Zeit has published an article, entitled 'Kirchenland in Bürgerhand' (Churchland in townspeople's hands) on how in the French Rhineland between 1789 and 1815, with the confiscation of church lands and the subsequent sale to townspeople, the economic foundations for the new Germany were laid. For the article (in German), http://www.zeit.de/2001/07/Hochschule/200107_a-luneville.html