Church music in Germany

Church musician ("Kirchenmusiker") is a music profession in Germany.
At present there are about 3,600 main job and 25,000 second job church musicians in the Protestant and Catholic Church in Germany.
There are four different degrees of examination: A, B, C and D. A and B requires a study at a music college or a university (Master of Arts, Bachelor of Arts) . Church musicians with C and D are trained mostly by main job church musicians. The study of A takes about 12 semester and B 8 semester.
Subjects of education are organ, improvising, piano, singing, conducting, ear training, composition, score reading and figured bass, liturgics, hymnology, music history, organology.