Kulturkampf

The Kulturkampf (German pronunciation: [kʊlˈtuːɐ̯ˌkamp͡f]; lit. 'Cultural Struggle') was the seven-year political conflict (1871–1878) between the Catholic Church in Germany led by Pope Pius IX and the Kingdom of Prussia, led by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, as well as other German states. The Prussian church-and-state political conflict was about the church's direct control over both education and ecclesiastical appointments in the Prussian kingdom. Moreover, when compared to other church-and-state conflicts about political culture, the Kulturkampf of Prussia also featured anti-Polish sentiment.

In modern political usage, the German term Kulturkampf describes any conflict (political, ideological, or social) between the secular government and the religious authorities of a society. The term also describes the great and small culture wars among political factions that hold deeply opposing values and beliefs within a nation, a community, and a cultural group.

Background

Europe and the Catholic Church

The philosophic influences of the Enlightenment, scientific realism, positivism, materialism, nationalism, secularism, and liberalism impinged upon and ended the intellectual and political roles of religion and the Catholic Church, which then was the established church of Europe (excluding Scandinavia, the Russian Empire, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and crucially Prussia). By way of the legislated separation of church and state, the Age of Reason reduced society's financial debts to the Church and rendered secular the public sphere of society, and established the state's supremacy concerning the content and administration of public education for all of society. During the Age of Reason in the 17th and the 18th centuries, the European Kulturkampf principally occurred in the regional and local politics of a society, especially in cities and towns where the educated populations were politically Liberal and practised the politics of anti-clericalism and of anti-Catholicism.

The Catholic Church resisted such intellectual trends, which often were associated with attacks on the religion itself. With the growing influence of enlightenment and after having lost much of its wealth, power, and influence in the course of the secularization of the early 19th century, the Church had been in a state of decline. The papacy was at a weak point in its history, having in 1870 lost all its territories to Italy, with the pope a "prisoner in the Vatican". The Church strove to regain its influence and to hold sway in such matters as marriage, family, and education. It initiated a Catholic revival by founding associations, papers, schools, social establishments and new orders, and encouraging religious practices such as pilgrimages, mass assemblies, devotion to the Virgin Mary, or the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the veneration of relics; the pope himself became an object of devotion.

Apart from the growth in religious orders, the 19th century was a time when numerous Catholic associations and organisations were founded, especially in Germany and in France. In the United States, there was a comparable rise in fraternal organizations in the late 19th century. Catholic propaganda, including the interpretation of daily events, was promoted through local and national Catholic newspapers that were prominent in all Western European nations. In addition, organised missions and groups were dedicated to producing pious literature.

In the 19th century, the popes issued a series of encyclicals, such as Mirari vos (1832) by Pope Gregory XVI, condemning liberalism and freedom of the press. These generated controversy in some quarters. Under the leadership of Gregory's successor, Pope Pius IX, the church dogmatised Mary's Immaculate Conception in 1854. In 1864, Pius IX published the encyclical Quanta cura with its appended Syllabus Errorum ("Syllabus of Errors"), and in 1870 convened the First Vatican Council. In turn, the Council proclaimed the dogma of papal infallibility. In Syllabus Errorum, Pius IX condemned as false some 80 philosophical and political statements. It rejected outright such concepts as freedom of religion, separation of church and state, civil marriage, sovereignty of the people, liberalism and socialism, reason as the sole base of human action, and in general condemned the idea of conciliation with progress. The announcements included an index of forbidden books. The Church gradually re-organised and began to use mass media expansively to promote its messages. In addition, the popes worked to increase their control of the Church. The Church centralised some functions and streamlined its hierarchy, which prompted strong criticism by European governments. The bishops sought direction from the Holy See, and the needs and views of the international church were given priority over the local ones. Opponents of the new hierarchical church organisation pejoratively called it ultramontanism.

In view of the church's opposition to enlightenment, liberal reforms, and the revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, these dogmas angered the liberal-minded across Europe, even among some Catholics. Debates were heated. The dogmas were perceived as threatening the secularized state, as they reaffirmed that the fundamental allegiance of Catholics was not to their nation-state, but to the Gospel and the Church. The pope's teaching was promoted as absolutely authoritative and binding on all the faithful. Secular politicians wondered whether "Catholicism and allegiance to the modern liberal state were not mutually exclusive". British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone wrote in 1874 that the teaching on papal infallibility compromised the allegiance of faithful English Catholics. For European liberalism, the dogmas were perceived as a declaration of war against the modern state, science, and spiritual freedom.

The pope's handling of dissent from the dogmas, e.g. by excommunication of critics or demanding their removal from schools and universities, was considered the "epitome of papal authoritarianism". In direct response to papal announcements, Austria passed the May Laws for Cisleithania in 1868, restricting the Concordat of 1855, and then cancelled the Concordat altogether in 1870. Saxony and Bavaria withheld approval to publish the papal infallibility dogma; Hesse and Baden even denied it any legal validity. France refused to publish the doctrines altogether; Spain forbade publication of Syllabus Errorum in 1864.

Germany

Pre-1871

By the mid-19th century, liberal policies had also come to dominate Germany and the separation of church and state became a prominent issue. The Kulturkampf in Prussia is usually bracketed by the years 1871 and 1878, with the Catholic Church officially announcing its end in 1880; however, the struggle in Germany had been an ongoing matter without definite beginning and the years 1871 to 1878 only mark its culmination in Prussia. In the wake of other European countries, most German states had taken the first steps in secularisation well before unification. Predominantly Catholic Baden was at the forefront of curbing the power of the Catholic Church, as in the Baden Church Dispute (1852–1854) and the Kulturkampf Baden (1864–1876).

Other examples are Prussia (1830s, 1850, 1859, and 1969), Württemberg (1859/1862), Bavaria (Bayerischer Kulturkampf, 1867), Hesse-Nassau or Hesse-Darmstadt. In the 1837 Kölner Wirren (Cologne Confusion) of legal and policy issues regarding the children of mixed Protestant-Catholic marriages, Prussia's final settlement was considered a defeat for the state as it had given in to the demands of the Catholic Church. In 1850, Prussia again had a dispute with the church about civil marriage and primary schools and in 1852, it issued decrees against the Jesuits. As in many European countries, Jesuits were being banned or heavily restricted in many of the German states, e.g. in Saxony (1831), Baden (1960) or Württemberg (1862), and even in Catholic ones such as Bavaria (1851).

In the Vormärz period, Catholic publications usually portrayed revolutions as negative and dangerous to the existing order as well as to the interests of the Catholic Church. Most of them considered a viable Catholicism to be necessary for the very health of society and state and to be the only true and effective protection against the scourge of revolution. The unsuccessful German revolutions of 1848–1849, which the Catholic Church had opposed, produced no democratic reforms and attempts to radically disentangle state-church relationships failed. In the revolutionary parliament, many prominent representatives of political Catholicism sat on the right wing. In the years following the revolution, Catholicism became increasingly politicized due to rising liberal ideologies contrasted with the anti-modernist and anti-liberal policies of the Vatican. The Catholic dogmas and doctrines promulgated in 1854, 1864 and 1870 were perceived in Germany as direct attacks on the modern nation state.

Bismarck, the Liberals, and the Conservatives, representing orthodox Protestants, found the Centre Party's support of the pope highly provocative. Many Catholics shared these sentiments, especially against the pope's declared infallibility and the majority of Catholic German bishops deemed the definition of the dogma as "unpropitious in light of the situation in Germany". While most Catholics eventually reconciled themselves to the doctrine, some founded the small breakaway Old Catholic Church. According to the Bavarian head of government, Hohenlohe, the dogma of infallibility compromised the Catholics' loyalty to the state. He sent a circular letter to all the diplomatic representatives of the Bavarian Kingdom saying, "The only dogmatic thesis which Rome desires to have decided by the Council, and which the Jesuits in Italy and Germany are now agitating, is the question of the Infallibility of the Pope. This pretension, once become a dogma, will have a wider scope than the purely spiritual spheres, and will become evidently a political question: for it will raise the power of the Sovereign Pontiff, even in temporal matters, above all the princes and peoples of Christendom."

The liberal majorities in the Imperial Diet and the Prussian parliament, as well as liberals in general, regarded the Church as backward, a hotbed for reactionaries, enemies of progress and cast monastic life as the epitome of a backward Catholic medievalism. They were alarmed by the dramatic rise in the number of monasteries, convents and clerical religious groups in an era of widespread religious revival. The Diocese of Cologne, for example, saw a tenfold increase in monks and nuns between 1850 and 1872. Prussian authorities were particularly suspicious of the spread of monastic life among the Polish and French minorities. In turn, the Church saw the National-Liberals as its worst enemy, accusing them of spearheading the war against Christianity and the Catholic Church.

1871–1872

At unification in 1871, the new German Empire included 25.5 million Protestants (62% of the population) and 15 million Catholics (36.5% of the population). Although a minority in the empire, Catholics were the majority in the states of Bavaria and Baden as well as in the four Prussian Provinces of West Prussia, Posen, Rhineland, Westphalia and in the Prussian region of Upper Silesia, and in the territory of Alsace-Lorraine. Since the Thirty Years' War, the population was generally segregated along religious lines and rural areas or towns were overwhelmingly, if not entirely, of the same religion. Education was also separate and usually in the hands of the churches. There was little mutual tolerance, interaction or intermarriage. Protestants in general were deeply distrustful of the Catholic Church. Unification had been achieved through many obstacles with strong opponents. These were the European powers of France and Austria, both Catholic nations. For Bismarck, the empire was very fragile and its consolidation was an important issue. Biographer Otto Pflanze notes that "all of these developments, real and imagined, reinforced Bismarck's belief in the existence of a widespread Catholic conspiracy that posed a threat to both his German and European policies."

In a nation state dominated by Protestant Prussia, the Catholic Church was to lose its standing. Thus, in 1870, on the eve of unification, the Center Party was explicitly founded to defend the position of the church in the new empire. Bismarck was highly concerned that many major members and supporters of this new party were not in sympathy with the new empire: the House of Hanover, the ethnic minority of the Poles and the southern German states. In 1871, the predominantly Catholic states of Southern Germany had only reluctantly joined the empire, increasing the overall share of the Catholic population to 36.5%. Among this Catholic share was Germany's largest ethnic minority, well over 2 million Poles in the east of Prussia, who under Prussia and Germany suffered discrimination and oppression. Bismarck regarded the new Centre Party not only as an illegal mixup of politics and religion and the church's "long arm" but also as a unifying force for Catholic Germans and Poles and thus a threat to the consolidation of the empire. He feared that the Centre Party would frustrate his broader political agendas and he accused the Catholic priests of fostering Polish nationalism as had been done openly in the provinces of Posen and Upper Silesia.

The Liberals regarded the Catholic Church as a powerful force of reaction and anti-modernity, especially after the proclamation of papal infallibility in 1870 and the tightening control of the Vatican over the local bishops. The renewed vitality of Catholicism in Germany, with its mass gatherings, also attracted Protestants – even the heir to the Prussian throne, with the king's approval, attended one. Anti-liberalism, anti-clericalism and anti-Catholicism became powerful intellectual forces of the time and the antagonism between Liberals and Protestants on one side and the Catholic Church on the other was fought out through mud-slinging in the press. A wave of anti-Catholic, anticlerical and anti-monastic pamphleteering in the liberal press was answered by anti-liberal preaching and propaganda in Catholic newspapers and vice versa. For these reasons, the government sought to wean the Catholic masses away from the hierarchy and the Centre Party and the liberals' demands to curb the power of the churches meshed well with Bismarck's main political objective to crush the Centre Party. According to historian Anthony J. Steinhoff:

Bismarck's plan to disarm political Catholicism delighted liberal politicians, who provided the parliamentary backing for the crusade. Yet, the phrase the left-liberal Rudolf Virchow coined for this struggle, the Kulturkampf, suggests that the liberals wanted to do more than prevent Catholicism from becoming a political force. They wanted victory over Catholicism itself, the long-delayed conclusion of the Reformation.

At least since 1847 and in line with the Liberals, Bismarck had also been of the professed opinion, that state and church should be completely separated and "the sphere of the state had to be made secure against the incursions by the church", although his ideas were not as far-reaching as in the United States or in Great Britain. He had in mind the traditional position of the Protestant church in Prussia and provoked considerable resistance from conservative Protestants. This became clear in a heated debate with Prussian culture minister von Mühler in 1871 when Bismarck said: "Since you stopped my plans in the Protestant church, I have to go via Rome." In August 1871, at Bad Ems, Bismarck revealed his intention to fight against the Centre Party, to separate state and church, to transfer school inspection to laymen, to abolish religious instruction from schools and to transfer religious affairs to the minister of justice.

On 22 January 1872, liberal Adalbert Falk replaced conservative Heinrich von Mühler as Prussian minister for religion, education and health. In Bismarck's mind, Falk was "to re-establish the rights of the state in relation to the church". Yet, unlike Bismarck, whose main motivation for the Kulturkampf was the political power struggle with the Centre Party, Falk, a lawyer, was a strong proponent of state authority, having in mind the legal aspects of state-church relationships. Falk became the driving force behind the Kulturkampf laws. Although Bismarck publicly supported Falk, he doubted the success of his laws and was unhappy with his lack of political tact and sensitivity. The differences in their attitudes concerning the Kulturkampf eventually put the two politicians at odds with each other. With this background and the determination of church and state, the Kulturkampf in Germany acquired an additional edge as it gathered in intensity and bitterness.

Timeline, 1871–1876

From 1871 to 1876, the Prussian state parliament and the federal legislature (Reichstag), both with liberal majorities, enacted 22 laws in the context of the Kulturkampf. They were mainly directed against clerics: bishops, priests and religious orders (anti-clerical) and enforced the supremacy of the state over the church. While several laws were specific to the Catholic Church (Jesuits, congregations, etc.) the general laws affected both Catholic and Protestant churches. In an attempt to overcome increasing resistance by the Catholic Church and its defiance of the laws, new regulations increasingly went beyond state matters, referring to the purely internal affairs of the church. Even many liberals saw them as an encroachment on civil liberties, compromising their own credo.

Constitutionally, education and regulation of religious affairs were vested in the federal states and the leading actor of the Kulturkampf was Prussia, Germany's largest state; however, some of the laws were also passed by the Reichstag and applied to all of Germany. In general, the laws did not affect the press and associations, including Catholic ones.

1871

• 8 June: Fusion of Catholic and Protestant sections in the Prussian Ministry of Culture (responsible for religious matters). The Catholic section had been installed in 1840. The reason given for the merger was that "the exclusively political attitude of equal justice to all" was to be adopted and that, for that purpose, one ecclesiastical department was required. The merger was also a precondition for the School Supervision Act of the following year.

• 10 December: Passing of the Pulpit Law (Kanzelparagraph) at the initiative of Bavaria and meant to curb what was considered the misuse of religious sermons for political agitation from the pulpit. The law read: "Any cleric or other minister of religion shall be punished with imprisonment or incarceration of up to two years if he, while exercising his occupation or having his occupation exercised, makes state affairs the subject of announcements or discussion either in public before a crowd, in a church, or before any number of people in some other place designated for religious gatherings in such a way that it endangers the public peace."

1872

• 22 January: Adalbert Falk became Prussian minister for spiritual, educational and health matters.

• 11 March: Prussian School Supervision Act (Schulaufsichtsgesetz). This legislation was at the heart of the Kulturkampf, abolishing church oversight of the Prussian primary school system (Catholic and Protestant), excluding the clergy from education and eliminating its influence in curricular matters. This was a milestone for liberalism, as placing education into the hands of the government had always been at the top of its agenda. Liberals believed it would create an open-minded and neutral system of education, seen as the prerequisite for a progressive society. In the eyes of Bismarck, this law was necessary after the church supposedly put itself in opposition to the state and used the schools to incite the young against the government.

• April: The Holy See rejected Gustav Adolf, Cardinal Prince of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst as German ambassador to the Holy See. Schillingsfürst had been critical of the infallibility dogma but eventually accepted the decision of the council. Therefore, Bismarck took him for a suitable mediator. In response to the rejection, the diplomatic mission was left vacant and Prussia suspended relations with the Holy See in December 1872.

• 4 July: German Empire, Jesuit Law banning of the Jesuits who were seen as the emissaries of Rome and the spearhead of ultramontanism. By acknowledging the supremacy of Papal authority, the Jesuits were accused of contesting the secular authority. The law allowed for the dissolution of all Jesuit chapters and the expulsion of their members. The following year, the law was extended to closely related orders: the Redemptorists, Lazarists, Fathers of the Holy Ghost, and the Ladies of the Sacred Heart. Continued and increasing Church resistance and contempt of the 1871/1872 laws led to changes in the constitution and the enactment of further laws. In order to facilitate these laws, the Prussian Constitution was amended.

• 20 September: The Prussian bishops, at a conference in Fulda, protested against the regulations hostile to the church.

• 23 December: The pope, in an address to his cardinals, denounced the new laws as persecution of the church.

1873

• 17 January: The term Kulturkampf comes into use. Debating the law on education conditions for the employment of clerics, a Progressive deputy in the Prussian legislature – the distinguished medical scientist and pioneer of public health methods, Rudolf Virchow said: Ich habe die Überzeugung, es handelt sich hier um einen großen Kulturkampf ("I am of the conviction that this is about a great cultural struggle"). He repeated this term in a call for a vote by the German Progress Party on 23 March 1873. It was ironically picked up and derided in the Catholic press and enthusiastically defended in the liberal press.

• 30 January: While the laws were being debated in parliament, the Prussian bishops submitted a protest against the planned legislation and in a memorial, they announced their opposition to the new laws.

• 5 April: Prussia, Amendment of Sections 15, 16 and 18 of the Prussian Constitution:
  • In section 15, the sentence "The Protestant and the Roman Catholic Church, as well as every other religious community, regulates and administers its affairs independently" is supplemented by "but remain subject to the laws of the state and its legally regulated superintendence". It is added that the same applies to the possession or beneficial use of institutions for religion, teaching, charity, endowments and funds.
  • Section 16, regarding the unrestricted dealings of religious communities with their seniors and public announcements according to general regulations, was cancelled.
  • Section 18 cancelled the state's right to appoint, nominate, elect or confirm clerics for a post. But the amendment added that the state could regulate the minimum education required for clerical posts, the appointment and dismissal of clergymen and servicemen of religion, and define the limits of ecclesiastical disciplinary measures.

• 2 May: The bishops issued a common pastoral letter explaining to the faithful the necessity to unanimously and passively resist these laws.

• 11–14 May: Four "May Laws" were passed in 1873 and were enacted on 11–14 May that year.

• 26 May: The bishops issued another pastoral letter calling on the faithful to resist the new laws and informed the Prussian government that they would not cooperate in their execution. Parish councils declined to elect new pastors or accept parish administrators. Exiled or imprisoned bishops used underground networks. The bishops of Münster and Paderborn refused the Kulturexamen for their seminaries and appointed priests without notifying authorities. Clergy obeying the mandate of the bishops immediately became subject to the punishments prescribed by the laws. Fines were imposed in hundreds of cases and the clerics resisted paying, at which, in turn, the government resorted to force, either by confiscation or imprisonment of up to two years.

• 21 November: In his encyclical Etsi multa on the persecution of the Church in Italy, Germany, and Switzerland, the pope wrote of Germany "No wonder, then, that the former religious tranquility has been gravely disturbed in that Empire by this kind of law and other plans and actions of the Prussian government most hostile to the Church. But who would wish to falsely cast the blame of this disturbance on the Catholics of the German Empire!" He claimed that Freemasonry was the motivating force behind the Kulturkampf.

May Laws

The Falk Laws, also called May Laws (Maigesetze), were a set of laws passed by the Prussian parliament in the years 1873, 1874, and 1875. Four laws passed in 1873 were enacted on 11–14 May that year:

1. Law on religious disaffiliation allowing a person to sever his connection with the church by simple declaration before a secular judge. This declaration freed him from all civil effects of belonging to a church, especially ecclesiastical dues.

2. Law on ecclesiastical disciplinary measures restricting the exercise of ecclesiastical punishments and means of discipline directed against the life, property, freedom or honour of citizens. This included the infliction of the great excommunication if proclaimed with the name of the guilty, because of possible disturbances of civil and social intercourse. Thus, disciplinary measures were almost totally restricted to the spiritual realm (see state Monopoly on violence).

3. Ecclesiastical disciplinary law concerning ecclesiastical power of discipline and the establishment of The Royal Court of Justice for Ecclesiastical Affairs. This subordinated the Catholic Church to state jurisdiction not only in external but also in internal matters. The law regulated the exercise of disciplinary power by church authorities against their officers for special violation of their duties. Members of the court had to be Germans residing in Germany. Bodily chastisement by the Church was entirely forbidden, fines were limited to maximum amounts, restrictions of freedom could only consist in banishment to a church institution within Germany no longer than 3 months and not against the will of the person concerned. On the other hand, the new court was also given jurisdiction over ecclesiastical officers in violation of state laws.

With this law, the German clergy was to be exempt from any juridical body outside of the nation. Hence, judgments of the Holy See or the Roman Rota would not be binding upon them. The highest court was made up of Prussian ecclesiastics, all appointed with the permission of Prussian civil authorities. The Church's juridical and punitive powers were restricted by allowing clerics, e.g. those punished by the Church for not resisting the Kulturkampf laws, to appeal to the Royal Court of Justice for Ecclesiastical Affairs. Bishops in defiance of this law could be deposed.

4. Education standards and civic registry law concerning the education and appointment of priests. Regarding the Protestant Church, these regulations had already been in force for a long time. All men intended for the priesthood needed a graduate degree (Abitur) from a German gymnasium and to study 3 years of theology at a German university.

All appointments of clerics had to be approved by the state. Herewith, training and appointment of the clergy came under state supervision. The traditional regimen of clerical study was to be replaced by a modern education in a liberal German institution, thus ensuring that candidates to the priesthood were imbued with the spirit of secularism. Furthermore, ecclesiastical offices could only be filled with the permission of the highest civil authority in each province, essentially reviving the ancient practice of lay investiture.

1874

• 9 March: Prussian Civil Registry Law (birth, marriage, death). The same law was passed for the whole empire on 6 February 1875.

• 4 May: Imperial Expatriation Law was meant to curb the exercise of church duties by clerics without the required consent of authorities. The law stipulated that in such cases, after a final conviction, a cleric would be banned from his parish or sent to another place within the empire and, in case of reoccurrence, that the cleric would be expatriated and expelled.

• 20 May: Prussian Law on the administration of vacant bishoprics. According to the law of 11 May 1873, administrators were to be elected for vacant bishoprics, authorizing laymen to assume administrative responsibilities at the parish level. This additional law stipulated that should an administrator not be elected according to the law, the property would be managed by a state superintendent.

• 13 July: In the town of Bad Kissingen, Eduard Kullmann attempted to assassinate Bismarck with a pistol, but only hit his hand. Kullmann cited church laws as the reason for his attempt; he was sentenced to 14 years of Zuchthaus (correctional facilities with harsh forced labour). The assassination attempt led to an intensification of the Kulturkampf measures.

1875

• 5 February: The encyclical Quod Nunquam (That Never) declared that the May Laws were invalid, "insofar as they totally oppose the divine order of the Church." The Catholic newspaper Westfälischer Merkur was the first to publish the whole text on the 18th of the same month in Germany. All the following papers publishing the encyclical were confiscated.

• 22 April: The Prussian Payment Law (Breadbasket Law) stopped government subsidies and payments for the Catholic bishoprics and clerics unless they signed a declaration of adherence to all laws.

• 31 May: Prussian Congregations Law dissolving all orders within 6 months except those involved in care for the infirm. For teaching orders, the time could be extended.

• 20 June: Prussian Church Finances Administration Law providing for a representation and a council elected by the parish for the administration of property.

• 4 July: Prussian Old-Catholic Church Entitlement Law giving Old-Catholic communities of a certain size the right to use Catholic churches and cemeteries.

1876

The last two laws passed in 1876 were of no practical importance:

• 26 February: The possible punishment for violation of the pulpit law was extended to publications.

• 7 June: The State Supervision Act provided for government supervision of all church assets in the Catholic dioceses in Prussia.

Mitigation and Peace Laws, 1878–1887

Austria accepted German unification under Prussian leadership and formed the Dual Alliance with Germany in 1879. The possibility of a war with France or Russia also became more remote. Therefore, Bismarck's attention gradually turned to the threatening popularity of the socialists and to questions of import duties. In these matters, he could either not rely on the support of the liberals to pursue his goals or they were not sufficient to form a majority. Bismarck had not been comfortable with the increasing ferocity of the Kulturkampf. Concerning the rise of the Centre Party, the laws had proven to be greatly ineffective and even counterproductive. He soon realized that they were of no help battling the Centre Party and as far as the separation of state and church was concerned, he had achieved more than he wanted.

In order to garner support for his Anti-Socialist Laws and protective trade tariffs, Bismarck turned his back on the liberals in search of new alliances. The death of Pius IX on 7 February 1878 opened the door for a settlement with the Catholic Church. The new pope Leo XIII was pragmatic and conciliatory. He expressed his wish for peace in a letter to the German emperor on the very day of his election, followed by a second letter in a similar vein that same year. Bismarck and the Pope entered into direct negotiations without the participation of the Church or the Reichstag, yet initially without much success. It came to pass that Falk, vehemently resented by Catholics, resigned on 14 July 1879, which could be read as a peace offering to the Vatican. A decisive boost only came in February 1880, when the Vatican unexpectedly agreed to the civic registry of clerics. As the Kulturkampf slowly wound down, the talks led to a number of mitigation and peace laws which were passed until 1887.

• July 1880: The First Mitigation Law reallowed government payments to Prussian dioceses and freed the bishops from swearing allegiance to the Prussian laws. Hereupon, four new bishops were installed where sees had been left vacant after the death of the incumbents. Catholic associations involved in the care of the infirm were readmitted.

• 1882: Resumption of diplomatic relations between Prussia (not Germany) and the Vatican, which had been cut in 1872.

• 31 May 1882: The Second Mitigation Law allowed the waiver of government exams for clerics.

• July 1883: The Third Mitigation Law legalized all religious actions of bishops and in certain cases, the king could pardon deposed bishops. 280 expelled clerics were pardoned.

On 29 September 1885, as another sign of peace, Bismarck proposed the Pope as arbiter in a dispute with Spain about the Caroline Islands and accepted his verdict in favour of Spain. In gratitude but to the great horror of Catholics, the Pope awarded Bismarck the Supreme Order of Christ, the highest order of chivalry to be granted by the Holy See. Bismarck was the only Protestant ever to receive this award. After further negotiations between Prussia and the Vatican, the Prussian parliament passed 2 additional laws amending some of the Kulturkampf laws.

• 21 May 1886: The First Peace Law amended some of the regulations in the education standards and civic registry law of 11 May 1873; state exams for clerics (waiver in Second Mitigation Law of 31 May 1882) were totally abolished. Episcopal-theological academies and seminaries, as well as theological studies at these institutions, were readmitted. Students were allowed to be quartered in Catholic boarding houses (Konvikte). The state acknowledged papal disciplinary powers and abolished the Royal Court of Justice for Ecclesiastical Affairs.

• 26 April 1887: The Second Peace Law readmitted all orders except the Jesuits to Prussia.

On 23 May 1887, the Pope declared, "The struggle which damaged the church and was of no good to the state is now over". The Mitigation and Peace Laws restored the inner autonomy of the Catholic church while leaving key regulations and the laws concerning separation of church and state in place (civic marriage, civic registry, religious disaffiliation, government school supervision, civic registry of clerics, ban of Jesuits, pulpit law, state supervision of church assets, constitutional amendments and the Catholic section in the Ministry of Culture was not reintroduced). The respective opposing parties in the Reichstag harshly criticized the concessions made by the Vatican and the Prussian government. Windthorst and the Centre Party were dismayed at being sidelined and not being consulted about the concessions the pope made, e.g. about the ban on Jesuits or the civil registry of clerics. None of the party's major demands were met. Instead, the pope even sided with Bismarck on non-religious issues and pressured the Centre Party to support Bismarck or at least abstain, e.g. in the matter of the hotly debated Septennat 1887 (7-year military budget). Many Liberals, especially Falk, objected to the concessions Bismarck made to the Church. The growth of the Centre Party has been considered a major setback for Bismarck, although never publicly conceded. In spite of strong Catholic representation in the Reichstag, the political power and influence of the Church in the public sphere and its political power was greatly reduced. Although Germany and the Vatican were officially at peace after 1878, religious conflicts and tensions continued. At the turn of the century, Pope Pius X announced the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis, mounting new attacks on historical criticism of biblical texts and any accommodation of Catholicism to modern philosophy, sociology or literature. As of 1910, clerics had to take an oath against all forms of modernism, a requirement later extended to teachers of the Catholic religion at schools and professors of Catholic theology, resulting in intense political and public debates and new conflicts with the state.

Effects and impact

The abolition of the Catholic section of the Prussian Ministry of Ecclesiastical and Educational Affairs deprived Catholics of their voice at the highest level. The system of strict government supervision of schools was applied only in Catholic areas; the Protestant schools were left alone. The school politics also alienated Protestant conservatives and churchmen. The British ambassador Odo Russell reported to London in October 1872 how Bismarck's plans were backfiring by strengthening the ultramontane (pro-papal) position inside German Catholicism: "The German Bishops who were politically powerless in Germany and theologically in opposition to the Pope in Rome – have now become powerful political leaders in Germany and enthusiastic defenders of the now infallible Faith of Rome, united, disciplined, and thirsting for martyrdom, thanks to Bismarck's uncalled for antiliberal declaration of War on the freedom they had hitherto peacefully enjoyed."

Nearly all German bishops, clergy and laymen rejected the legality of the new laws and were defiantly facing the increasingly heavy penalties, trials and imprisonments. As of 1878, only three of eight Prussian dioceses still had bishops, some 1,125 of 4,600 parishes were vacant, and nearly 1,800 priests ended up in jail or in exile, nearly half the monks and nuns had left Prussia and a third of the monasteries and convents were closed. Between 1872 and 1878, numerous Catholic newspapers were confiscated, Catholic associations and assemblies were dissolved, and Catholic civil servants were dismissed merely on the pretence of having Ultramontane sympathies. Thousands of laypeople were imprisoned for assisting priests in evading the punitive new laws.

The general ideological enthusiasm for the Kulturkampf, particularly among liberals, was in contrast to Bismarck's pragmatic attitude towards the measures, as well as the growing disquiet from the Conservatives. Apart from the outspoken criticism of the Kulturkampf Laws by the Catholic Church and the Centre Party, there were also a number of Liberals and Protestants who voiced concern at least at the Kampfgesetze (battle laws). "Unease concerning the effects of his programme continued to spread among all but the most bigoted priest-haters and the most doctrinaire liberals". Such noted critics outside the Catholic camp were Friedrich Heinrich Geffcken, Emil Albert Friedberg or Julius von Kirchmann. Although they were proponents of state superiority, they regarded some of the laws as either ineffective or as interference in internal church affairs and not consistent with liberal values. Geffcken wrote that "with the intention to emancipate the laity from the hierarchy, the main body of the Catholics was brought in phalanx into the hands of leaders from which it was to be wrested. But the state cannot fight at length against a third of the population; it has no means to break such a passive resistance supported and organized by religious fanaticism. If a statesman desists from the correctness of a measure, it only matters that he has the power to enforce it." Even Bismarck – who initially saw a variety of tactical political advantages in these measures, e.g. for his suppressive policies against the Polish population – took pains to distance himself from the rigours of their enforcement."

The Kulturkampf law was considered the harshest and, with no equivalent in Europe, was the Expatriation Law. Passed by a liberal majority in parliament, it stipulated banishment as a punishment that all civilized peoples considered the harshest, beyond the death penalty. As to the Centre Party, these measures did not have the effect that Bismarck had in mind. In the state elections of November 1873, it grew from 50 to 90 seats and in the Reichstag elections from 63 to 91. The number of Catholic periodicals also increased; in 1873 there were about 120. The Kulturkampf gave secularists and socialists an opportunity to attack all religions, an outcome that distressed the Protestant leaders and especially Bismarck himself, who was a devout pietistic Protestant.

In the face of systematic defiance, the Bismarck government increased the penalties and its attacks, and was challenged in 1875 when a papal encyclical declared that the entire ecclesiastical legislation of Prussia was invalid, and threatened to excommunicate any Catholic who obeyed. There was no violence, but the Catholics mobilized their support, set up numerous civic organizations, raised money to pay fines and rallied behind their church and the Center Party. To Bismarck's surprise, the Conservative Party — especially the Junkers from his own landowning class in East Prussia — sided with the Catholics. They were Protestants and did not like the Pope, but they had much in common with the Center Party. The Conservatives controlled their local schools and did not want bureaucrats from Berlin to take them over. They were hostile to the liberals, being fearful of free trade that would put them in competition with the United States and other grain exporters, and disliking their secular views. In the Prussian legislature, they sided with the Center Party on the school issue. Bismarck was livid, and he resigned the premiership of Prussia (while remaining Chancellor of the German Empire), telling an ally, "In domestic affairs, I have lost the ground that is for me acceptable through the unpatriotic treason of the Conservative Party in the Catholic question." Indeed, many of Bismarck's conservative friends were in opposition. So too was Kaiser William I, who was King of Prussia; he was strongly opposed to the civil marriage component of the Kulturkampf.

The Kulturkampf made Catholics more resolute; they responded not with violence but with votes, and as the newly formed Center Party became a major force in the Imperial Parliament, it gained support from non-Catholic minorities who felt threatened by Bismarck's centralization of power. In the long run, the most significant result was the mobilization of the Catholic voters through the Center Party, and their insistence on protecting their church. According to Margaret Anderson, "The effort was perceived, and not only by its opponents, as aiming at nothing less than the forcible assimilation of the Catholic Church and its adherents to the values and norms of the empire's Protestant majority [...] [it led] Catholics – young and old, male and female, cleric and lay, big men and small – to cleave to their priests and defy the legislation." After the Center party had doubled its popular vote in the elections of 1874, it became the second largest party in the national parliament, and remained a powerful force for the next 60 years. It became difficult for Bismarck to form a government without their support. From the decades-long experience in battling against the Kulturkampf, the Catholics of Germany learned democracy, according to Margaret Anderson. She states that the clergy "[a]cquired a pragmatic, but real, commitment to democratic elections, parliamentary procedures, and party politics – commitments in which they schooled their flock, by their practice as much as by their preaching."

Anti-Polish aspect of Kulturkampf

Studies that analyze the nationalist aspect of Kulturkampf point out its anti-Polish character and Bismarck's attempt to Germanise Polish provinces in the German Empire. The Poles had already suffered from discrimination and numerous oppressive measures in Germany long before unification. These measures were intensified after the German Empire was formed, and Bismarck was known to be particularly hostile towards the Poles. Christopher Clark argues that Prussian policy changed radically in the 1870s in the face of highly visible Polish support for France in the Franco-Prussian war. Polish demonstrations made clear the Polish nationalist feeling, and calls were also made for Polish recruits to desert from the Prussian Army – though these went unheeded. Bismarck was outraged, telling the Prussian cabinet in 1871: "From the Russian border to the Adriatic Sea we are confronted with the combined propaganda of Slavs, ultramontanes, and reactionaries, and it is necessary openly to defend our national interests and our language against such hostile actions." Therefore, in the Province of Posen the Kulturkampf took on a much more nationalistic character than in other parts of Germany.

Not an adamant supporter of the Liberals' general Kulturkampf goals, Bismarck did recognize the potential in some of them for subduing Polish national aspirations and readily made use of it. While the Liberals' main objective was the separation of state and church as essential for a democratic and liberal society, Bismarck saw its use in separating the Polish population from the only supporter and guardian of its national identity. Prussian authorities imprisoned 185 priests and forced hundreds of others into exile. Among the imprisoned was the Primate of Poland Archbishop Mieczysław Ledóchowski. A large part of the remaining Catholic priests had to continue their service in hiding from the authorities. Although most of the 185 imprisoned were finally set free by the end of the decade, those who were released emigrated. The anti-Polish aspects of the Kulturkampf remained in place in Polish provinces of the German Empire until the First World War.

In other countries

Austria

The Kulturkampf in Austria has roots dating back to the 18th century. Emperor Joseph II launched a religious policy (later called "Josephinism") that advocated the supremacy of the state in religious matters. This resulted in far-reaching state control over the Catholic Church, including the reorganization of dioceses, the regulation of the number of masses, the transfer of many schools into government hands, state-controlled seminaries, and the limitation of the number of clerics and the dissolution of numerous monasteries. Protests of Pope Pius VI, and even his visit to Vienna in 1782, were to no avail. In the Concordat of 1855, which was the culmination of Catholic influence in Austria, many of the Catholic Church's previous rights that had been taken away under Joseph II were restored (marriage, partial control of censorship, elementary and secondary education, full control of the clergy and religious funds). In 1868 and 1869, after sanctioning from the December constitution, Emperor Francis Joseph's newly appointed cabinet undid parts of the Concordat by way of several liberal reforms. These reforms are referred to as the May Laws. Against strong protests from the Catholic Church, the laws of 25 May 1868 and 14 May 1869 restored civil marriage, passed primary and secondary education into government hands, installed interconfessional schools, and regulated interconfessional relations (for example, mixed marriages and children's rights to choose their faith).

In a secret consistory, Pope Pius IX condemned the constitution of 1867 and the May Laws as leges abominabiles. In a pastoral letter dated 7 September 1868, bishop Franz-Josef Rudigier called for resistance to these May Laws; however, the letter was confiscated, and Rudigier had to appear before the court on 5 June 1869. This event led to the first-ever public demonstrations by the Catholic population. On 12 July 1869, the bishop was sentenced to a jail term of two weeks, but he was later pardoned by the emperor. The May Laws provoked a serious conflict between state and church. After the promulgation of papal infallibility in 1870, Austria abrogated the Concordat of 1855 and abolished it entirely in 1874. In May 1874, the Religious Act was officially recognised.

Switzerland

In Switzerland, the Kulturkampf (represented as the "Investiture Controversy of the 19th century" by historian Peter Stadler) was a period of intense religious and political confrontation. It was a struggle between political liberalism and anticlerical radicalism on one side, and the Catholic Church and political Catholicism on the other. The conflict was part of a broader European process of secularisation and modernisation, as the new nation-state sought to emancipate itself from centuries-old ties between the Church and political power.

Origins and the "Pre-Kulturkampf" (1830–1864)

The roots of the Swiss conflict extend back to the Enlightenment and the Helvetic Republic, but a distinct polarization began in the 1830s during the Regeneration. This period saw the rise of liberal philosophy, which was condemned by the 1832 encyclical Mirari vos. This tension inspired the Articles of Baden in 1834. Throughout the 1840s, the antagonism intensified with the affair of the Argovian convents, the recall of the Jesuits to Lucerne in 1844, the volunteer corps expeditions, and the Sonderbund War. The subsequent foundation of the federal state in 1848 resulted in a Catholic community divided between a marginalized conservative majority and a few radicals in leadership positions. This climate favoured the rapid progression of ultramontanism, which prioritized the authority of the Pope.

Between 1848 and 1860, several cantonal conflicts prefigured the national crisis. In Fribourg, Bishop Etienne Marilley defended Church privileges against the radical government; his refusal to unconditionally swear to the 1848 Constitution led to his incarceration and exile in France until 1856. In St. Gallen, the radical government suppressed denominational secondary schools in 1855 and founded a mixed cantonal school in 1856 to limit Church influence. In Ticino, the "Civil Ecclesiastical Law" of 1855 subjected clergy activities to state control, while in Bern, measures were taken to remove Catholic sisters from schools in the Bernese Jura. In 1862, Zurich suppressed the Rheinau Abbey. The publication of the encyclical Quanta cura and the Syllabus of Errors in 1864, which rejected reconciliation with "progress, liberalism, and modern civilisation," turned these localised tensions into an open ideological war.

Peak of the conflict (1871–1874)

The true Kulturkampf erupted following the First Vatican Council, which defined Papal infallibility. Although Bishop Carl Johann Greith of St. Gallen attempted to interpret the dogma restrictively to de-escalate tensions, but a group of liberal-aligned Catholics broke away to form the Christian Catholic Church of Switzerland. This schism provided political radicals with the opportunity to escalate the conflict during the revision of the Swiss Federal Constitution. Two major events served as catalysts: in 1872, Bishop Eugène Lachat of Basel excommunicated the priest Paulin Gschwind for refusing the new dogma, and in 1873, the Pope appointed Gaspard Mermillod as Vicar Apostolic of Geneva without government notification.

The radical governments of the cantons belonging to the Diocese of Basel (excluding Zug and Lucerne) responded by destituting Bishop Eugène Lachat in 1873. Simultaneously, the Federal Council expelled Mermillod from Switzerland. The Bernese government revoked the mandates of priests in the Jura who supported Lachat and eventually expelled them from the canton in January 1874, implementing a law that required the democratic election of parish priests. Following Pope Pius IX's condemnation of these acts in the 1873 encyclical Etsi multa, the Federal Council severed diplomatic relations with the Holy See and expelled the Apostolic Nuncio from his residence in Lucerne. The Federal Constitution of 1874 was subsequently accepted with Special Provisions directed specifically against the Catholic Church.

The intensity varied by region. In the Bernese Jura, the Catholic population engaged in passive resistance despite the presence of federal troops. In Bern, the Church of Saints-Pierre-et-Paul was granted to the Christian Catholics. In Geneva, the state expelled teaching orders and took control of ecclesiastical affairs. In Zurich, Roman Catholics were forced to cede the Augustine Church to the Christian Catholics. In St. Gallen and Solothurn, the conflict highlighted internal Catholic splits; liberal Catholics like Matthias Hungerbühler remained within the Roman Church but opposed the creation of the Christian Catholic Church, differing from figures like Augustin Keller who supported the schism.

Resolution and impact

The conflict began to ebb after 1874 once the radicals' primary demands — the creation of the civil state registry, the provision for secular funerals, and the secularisation of public education — were satisfied. The Christian Catholic Church failed to gain mass appeal despite support from the governments of Bern, Aargau, and Solothurn. Within the Catholic camp, conciliatory leaders like Philipp Anton von Segesser gained prominence. The 1873 economic crisis and the rise of the social question also diverted political energy away from religious disputes.

The election of Pope Leo XIII in 1878 marked a turning point. Under his papacy, negotiations with federal councillors Emil Welti and Louis Ruchonnet led to normalisation. In 1878, the exiled Jura priests were allowed to return to their parishes after the Church accepted the democratic election of curates. In Geneva, the situation was resolved when Mermillod was named Bishop of Lausanne and Geneva with a seat in Fribourg. Bishop Lachat was appointed as the Apostolic Administrator for Ticino in 1884, allowing the conciliatory Friedrich Fiala to take over the Diocese of Basel in 1885.

By 1885, the Kulturkampf had largely ended, though a final skirmish occurred in 1882 over a proposed federal school secretary (derisively called the "school bailiff" or Schulvogt), which was rejected by voters. The 1891 election of Josef Zemp to the Federal Council signalled the integration of Catholics into the federal state; however, the cultural and denominational divisions persisted for decades, resurfacing during the Jura question and in the late-20th century votes to repeal the Jesuit ban (1973) and the cited article on dioceses (2001).

Kulturkampf in contemporary usage

United States

In the late 19th century, cultural wars arose over issues of prohibition and education in the United States. The Bennett Law was a highly controversial state law passed in Wisconsin in 1889 that required the use of English to teach major subjects in all public and private elementary and high schools. Because Wisconsin German Catholics and Lutherans each operated large numbers of parochial schools where German was used in the classroom, it was bitterly resented by German-American and some Norwegian communities. Although the law was ultimately repealed, there were significant political repercussions, with the Republicans losing the governorship and the legislature, and the election of Democrats to the Senate and House of Representatives.

In the United States, the term "culture war" has been used to refer to conflict in the late 20th and early 21st centuries between religious social conservatives and secular social liberals. This theme of "culture war" was the basis of Patrick Buchanan's keynote speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention. It has also been used to refer to neoconservative reaction to the New Left, and the ideological battles playing out in the country's public schools.

Throughout the 1980s, there were battles in Congress and the media regarding federal support for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities that amounted to a war over high culture between neoconservatives and paleoconservatives. Justice Antonin Scalia referenced the term in the Supreme Court case Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), saying "the Court has mistaken a Kulturkampf for a fit of spite". The case concerned an amendment to the Colorado state constitution that prohibited any subdepartment from acting to protect individuals on the basis of sexual orientation. Scalia believed that the amendment was a valid move on the part of citizens who sought "recourse to a more general and hence more difficult level of political decision making than others". The majority disagreed, holding that the amendment violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Israel

The term, translated to Hebrew as Milhemet Tarbut (מלחמת תרבות) is also frequently used, with similar connotations, in the political debates of Israel—having been introduced by Jews who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

See also

• Away from Rome!
• Culture war
• Expulsion of congregations (1880)
• Expulsion of congregations (1902–1903)
• Febronianism
• Freedom of religion
• Gallicanism
• Germany–Holy See relations
• Investiture Controversy
• Josephinism
• Kirchenkampf
• First School War in Belgium (1879–1884)
• Jules Ferry laws in France
• Pope Pius IX and Germany

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Kulturkampf — The name given to the political struggle for the rights and self-government of the Catholic Church, carried out chiefly in Prussia and afterwards in Baden, Hesse, and Bavaria. The contest was waged with great vigour from 1871 to 1877; from 1878 to 1891 it gradually calmed down. On one side stood the government, the Liberals, and the majority of the Conservatives; on the other, the bishops, the priests, and the bulk of the Catholic people. Prussia was the chief centre of the conflict. The Prussian government and Prince Bismarck were the leaders in this memorable struggle.

I. Causes of the Kulturkampf

They are to be sought: (1) in the political party-life of Germany; (2) in the trend of ideas among the German people towards the middle of the nineteenth century; (3) in the general European policy of Bismarck after 1870.

(1) Moritz von Blankenburg was the leader of the Prussian Conservatives. From the first he declared himself openly and clearly in Parliament for an anti-Roman policy. The Conservatives represented the orthodox Protestants of Prussia, themselves threatened by the Liberal movement at that time opposed to all positive Christianity. Nevertheless the attitude of Blankenburg was no personal caprice. The Conservatives yet held in principle to the Protestant character of the State of Prussia as formerly constituted (i.e., up to the German Revolution of 1848). After the Constitution of 1848, it is true, this exclusively Protestant character of the State was no longer recognized by law. But the Conservatives jealously saw to it that as a matter of fact no change took place in Prussia. It could not be pleasing to them that the Catholics of the Rhineland and Westphalia should gradually rise to power through the new parliamentary institutions. When the German Empire was formed in 1870, and South Germany, in great majority Catholic, was thereby joined with Prussia, they conceived the gravest fears for the supremacy of Protestantism in Prussia.

However, the real instigators of the onslaught on German Catholicism were the German Liberals. Their attitude is thus explained: previous to 1860 the Liberal party had long been composed almost entirely of men belonging to narrow professional circles-professors, lawyers, etc., also prominent business men. They united in opposition to political absolutism, and were eager for a larger constitutional life in Germany. But they had also an intellectual bond. Whether as anti-clerical disciples of French Deism or Austrian Josephinism, or as enthusiastic admirers of German poetry and philosophy (and therefore advocates of an undogmatic and unecclesiastical Christianity), they were all inimically disposed towards the Catholic Church and all positive belief. With the help of legislation and state schools they hoped to secure for "free and indepedent science" (die freie Wissenschaft) an absolute control over the intellectual life of the whole German nation. Indeed, the original pioneers of the Liberal party were as unanimous in their philosophical views of the world and life as they were in their views of the State. In the beginning, therefore, they were inclined in their public utterances to promote equally both policies. Until 1860, however, they considered themselves too weak to undertake vigorous action in behalf of their Kultur aims, i.e., their intellectual and political ideals as described above. Isolated failures of an earlier date (the Kölner-Wirren, or ecclesiastico-political troubles of 1837, and the Deutsch-katholischen movement of Ronge in Baden, 1844-46) still served as warnings. In both cases vast masses of the people had been deeply troubled. Even the middle-class citizens, usually rather indifferent in matters of faith, were not yet ready to participate in religious conflicts of this nature. Their chief aims at that time were politico-economical; a little later, after 1850, the passion of national unity stirred deeply the entire Bürgerthum of Germany. But when the Liberal influence increased after 1860 in the Prussian Parliament (Landtag) and in the various German states, the party leaders began to change their tactics. The Grand Duke of Baden confided to them the organization of the Ministerium, i.e., the civil administration of the State. Forthwith the Archbishop of Freiburg and the clergy of Baden were subjected to the strictest civil supervision. The Church was deprived of all free control of its property and revenues, with which, till then, the Government had not interfered. All ecclesiastical influence was expelled from the schools, and an effort made to introduce the spirit of "free science" even into the education of the clergy. In the summer of 1860 Bavaria offered the Liberals a pretext for the introduction of their Kultur programme. Of course, in so Catholic a people and state, no permanent results were attainable apart from a thorough transformation of popular life and thought. This was to be done by means of new educational laws and by the so-called Bavarian "social legislation". The latter, in particular, was meant to clear the way for a complete renovation of the economic and social conditions of the Bavarian people. For the present, however, only preliminary steps were taken. Education was naturally the foremost question. Meantime the parliamentary supremacy of the Prussian Liberals, so recently and laboriously acquired and so essential for their success, was seriously challenged. In Otto von Bismarck, since the end of 1862 chief of the Prussian Ministry, they found a superior opponent. This led (1866-67) to the formation of a Prussian National Liberal Party committed to a reconciliation of the hitherto dominant Liberals with the now all-powerful minister. In this way it was hoped to secure again for the party its waning influence in Prussia. In public opinion the Liberals had been for three decades the chief representatives of the idea of national unity under Prussian leadership. Bismarck had now realized that ideal, and in this fact was found the common ground between the National Liberals and the new master of German politics. Bismarck then abandoned his anti-Liberal attitude and for the most part of the next decade received the parliamentary support of the Liberals; towards the year 1870 the more important offices, both Prussian and German, were held by the Liberals. Soon the party began, in Prussia, as previously in Bavaria, to attack the Catholic ecclesiastical influence in the schools; politico-economical and social questions were also brought to the front apropos of the new and systematic legislation proposed. The National Liberals at this time reached the acme of popularity, owing to the universal enthusiasm over the defeat of France, also through the general satisfaction with the economic legislation of the party that left free scope to the growth of material interests.

(2) The Kultur policy which the Liberal party then sought to impose on the newly-established empire and on its chief constituent states need not have produced the intense excitement that followed. It would have been possible, through the public press and assemblies, to keep up in the Parliament an appearance of peaceful legislative work and to influence in a moderate way the public opinion of the nation, somewhat, if we may so put it, as is now done in France. Instead of this, legislative action degenerated into a savage party stuggle that aroused in the public mind all manner of violent emotions. The Liberal efforts to influence public opinion became so many fanatical assaults on the hereditary devotion to their Church of the orthodox Catholic masses. It is to be noted, however, that for this violence of temper there were certain reasons.

The great events of the years 1866-1871 had agitated deeply the now united German nation. It was not unnatural, therefore, that its people should consider all political problems in the light of their extremest consequences, from the view-point of principles, and of the great ideas that were then appealing to the popular masses. In the average German mind at this period two great thoughts were dominant-the new-born German nationality and a new philosophy of man and life. Most German Catholics were very apprehensive for the future welfare of their religion in the ancient fatherland; as a matter of fact it was Protestant Prussia, the birthplace of Kant and the source of Hegelianism, that had accomplished the unity of Germany. Most Liberals, on the other hand, while they rejoiced over the settlement of the "German question" by Prussia, continued to hold the national unity as incomplete so long as the Germans were divided in religion and in the aforesaid fundamental philosophic views. They maintained that a permanent political unity of Germany depended absolutely on unity of religion, language, and education. On this ground they proclaimed the Catholic minority a foreign element in the new empire; it must be either assimilated or exterminated. The deep-rooted religious differences of Germany, thus brought again to the front in connection with the nation's future, were freshly aroused, though such new occasion was scarcely necessary. Even while the Liberals yet hesitated to evoke them, they had, of themselves as it were, and by their own nature, taken on a new life.

As early as 1848, an important "Catholic Movement" sprang up in Germany. During the eighteenth century the German Catholics had been quite outman uvered by the Protestants, and in the early decades of the nineteenth century found themselves politically powerless. Economically they had fallen into the background, nor could they exercise socially an equal influence. In general education they were also backward, in comparison with their rivals. Their Catholic consciousness was therefore much weakened; no longer proud of their religion, they ceased to profess it openly and freely. But about the middle of the nineteenth century a change came over the Catholics of Germany, and they awoke to a fresh sense of the power and beauty of their religion. Simultaneously Catholic life took on a new development throughout the entire West, especially during the pontificate of Pius IX. This pope had a wonderful influence over the Catholic masses, whom he filled with a remarkable confidence and zeal, especially as to their public life. In the Syllabus of 1867 he condemned with great earnestness that Liberalism which was then everywhere proclaimed as the heir expectant of Catholicism. Thereupon, he convened an cumenical council, the first in 300 years. At this turning-point the German Catholics, so long eliminated from the political, economic and educational life of their nation, rallied to the defence of their faith against Liberalism. Under papal leadership they devoted themselves to the defence of Christian teaching and life, violently attacked by a multitude of infidel writers, and undertook to withstand the combined hosts of Protestantism and Liberalism. The Liberals, on the other hand, resented bitterly both Syllabus and Papal Infallibility; in some places (Mannheim, Berlin) Catholics suffered from the violence of mobs. At the very time when the dogma of Papal Infallibility was being proclaimed, Germany was winning her great victories over France; to the Liberals (some of whom were thus minded in the Prussian war of 1866 against Austria) it seemed as if the time had come for the final conflict between the empire and papacy, the last decisive battle of the Reformation against enslavement of religious thought and subjection to ecclesiastical authority. Gradually and almost unconsciously, under the influence of the aforesaid political and ecclesiastical events, a situation that in the Liberal mind originally contemplated only a more or less comprehensive legislation, both as to the schools and the relations of Church and State, developed into one of the most passionate conflicts of principles ever fought out within the limits of a great nationality. This was the state of affairs when, in the fall of 1870, the Prussian Catholics, not satisfied with their widespread system of popular associations, (Vereinswesen) undertook the creation of a new political party, the Centre (Zentrum); on the other hand, in the Reichstag elections of the Spring of 1871 the Liberals overthrew the Conservatives and took up the reins of power. In April, 1871, the mutterings of the tempest were already heard in the opening debates of the Reichstag, especially in the debate on the Address to the Throne, when the Liberals insisted very pointedly on a flat and final rejection of any proposition looking towards the restoration of the Temporal Power, characterizing any such steps as an interference with the domestic affairs of a foreign people. As yet, however, no one had the courage to let loose the turbulent passions that filled men's breasts, nor as late as the end of 1871 (Memoirs of Prince Hohenlohe) were the Liberal leaders ready to open the campaign. The Centre remained on the defensive, occupied chiefly in outlining its parliamentary status. At this juncture Bismarck appeared on the scene.

(3) He was then under strong nervous tension, owing to the extraordinary exertions and emotions of the "high stakes" policy of his previous eight years. He was dominated by the fear that new and more exhaustive wars would soon be necessary in order to defend the unity of Germany then barely won. In this temper he was deeply concerned lest within the empire itself the foreign enemy should find aid and succour from particularist or anti-Prussian elements, whose importance he easily over-estimated. At this stage of his diplomacy he was bent on preventing the recurrence of any situation similar to that of 1863-66, when he found himself helpless in the presence of a powerful parliamentary opposition. He was at all times naturally inclined to resent as unnecessary, and therefore unjustifiable, any kind of parliamentary opposition. Quite indifferent to theories of home government and the division of political authority within the State, he was equally eager for a solid centralization and thorough reinforcement of all national resources, in view always of the foreign enemy. In this spirit he had once fought the Liberals, and compelled his former opponents to become the ardent supporters of his foreign policy. Now, on his return from France, he found before him a party, on the one hand more powerful in a parliamentary sense than the Liberal opposition of the sixties, while on the other it seemed to him gravely perilous in case of a foreign war. He was suspicious of one deputy, Ludwig Windthorst, in whom he at once recognized the real leader of the Centre.

While Bismarck was fully aware of the high abilities of Windthorst, he knew also that he was a former subject of the House of Hanover and was still in close touch with that dynasty, that he had never approved the exclusion of Austria from the German unity as accomplished by Bismarck, and that he vigorously disapproved the excessive favour shown by Bismarck to the Liberals, both in Prussian and in imperial affairs. He had already suffered a notable defeat at Windthorst's hands in the Tariff Parliament of 1868, on which occasion Bismarck tried in vain to obtain from the assembly anything more than the politico-economical services for which it had been called (i.e. he failed then to secure the peaceful union of the South German States with the North German Confederation). Windthorst at that time had no strong parliamentary following, yet his political strategy had proved successful. But now a strong party was at his back, and, as its acknowledged leader, he lost no occasion to increase its influence. On the one hand he appealed to certain Conservatives, superior to Protestant prejudices, and unalterably opposed to the National Liberals as enemies of Christianity and the traditional German views of the State; on the other he was always ready to combine with those Liberals who had not gone over unconditionally to Bismarck. This welcoming of recalcitrant Liberals was always Bismarck's chief cause of complaint. He had also persuaded himself from the beginning that the Centre entertained foreign relations inimical to the new German Empire. After the Franco-Prussian War the chancellor seems to have feared a conflict with Russia as champion of the new Panslavism. He had in large measure the habitual distrust of Prussia for its Polish subjects, and was persuaded that in case of war they would be on the side of Panslavism-that, whether in war or diplomacy, they would always prove a thorn in the side of Germany. He had watched them closely for several years and noted with deep suspicion the alliance of their deputies with the German Catholics. He laid great stress on this fact; as is well known, the Polish question is one of those which cause most uneasiness to Prussian statesmen. It offended him, moreover, that Catholic members of the Centre frequented the Radziwill salons in Berlin, and were thereby willing to appear friendly to Polish demands and aspirations.

His suspicions were still further aroused by the undeniably lively zeal which the Catholic clergy at large exhibited for the growth of the Centre, while, under Windthorst's direction, the party was standing out not only for the rights of the Catholic Church, but also for a definite political programme. This zeal of the German clergy was at this juncture especially odious to Bismarck; despite his clear-headed political realism, his imagination was deeply affected by the idea that Protestant Prussia had restored to Germany its former imperial grandeur precisely when Papal Infallibility was being proclaimed at Rome. In his eyes the empire once more stood over against the papacy; only there was now added another antithesis, that of Protestant individual freedom against submission to ecclesiastical authority. He persuaded himself that Rome was less friendly to the new empire than any other European power, and that it meant to unite against the new Protestant Empire all the Catholic nations of Europe and its own priesthood everywhere. To obtain definite information as to the relations of Rome and the Centre he demanded, in the spring of 1871, through the Bavarian ambassador at the Vatican, that Rome should censure the Centre party for its antagonistic attitude in the Parliament. A friendly answer was made by the Holy See, but on the representation of prominent members of the Centre, notably of Bishop Ketteler, Rome refused to further influence the Catholic party, whereat the indignation of the chancellor was boundless. In the meantime the South German Liberals, foremost among them Prince Hohenlohe, stirred up unceasingly his original mistrust of the Centre, the Catholic clergy, and Rome.

Though for a while slow to act, he became daily more convinced that a grave peril for the empire existed in the activity of a powerful parliamentary party of German Catholics under the leadership of a man like Windthorst, to which must be added the influence of the Vatican over this party. In his eyes the Centre was an outcome of the German Catholic Movement (die katholische Bewegung); deprived of the support of the latter, it would collapse. Now the Catholic Movement, as he knew it since 1850, was for Bismarck something entirely hostile; it had been friendly to Austria, and its adherents were numerous in Southern Germany and Westphalia. Moreover, its enthusiasm for Rome and for the independence of the Catholic Church was odious to him. As a Prussian official he believed in a State Church; the Church should not only be under the supervision of the State, but should positively serve the purposes of the State. It seemed, therefore, that the psychological moment had come for the arrest of this Catholic Movement. All Germany was enthusiastic over the new-born imperial unity. To judge by various occurrences within the ranks of German Catholicism, it seemed as if Rome had gone too far in its claims on the obedience of German Catholics in matters of faith. The Old-Catholic organization then taking shape seemed a likely nucleus for a German National Church, a State Church for Catholics; it would welcome all seceders from Rome and guarantee them a new ecclesiastical life. Old-Catholicism, he argued, must be supported; the Roman Catholic clergy forced to submit; the masses behind the Catholic Movement must be intimidated, the immediate pressure of Roman authority removed from them, and the Centre stigmatized before its constituents as an enemy of the German Empire.

II. Course of the Conflict

It may be divided roughly into three periods: 1871-72; 1872-78; 1878-91.

A. 1871-72

The afore-mentioned views of Bismarck concerning the Centre and the Catholic Movement were by no means so clearly worked out in the summer of 1871 that he was then ready to begin a systematic onslaught on German Catholicism. For a year and a half his policy was manifested only in individual cases, though in all such cases a unity of attitude was clearly exhibited. As early as 8 July, 1871, he abolished the Catholic Section of the Prussian Ministry of Worship and gave over henceforth to officials in great majority Protestant the conduct of all government matters pertaining to Catholic churches and schools. His excuse was that the members of the aforesaid Catholic Section of the Department of Worship were guilty of too close relations with the Poles. Towards the end of 1871 he proceeded, on similar grounds, against the Catholic clergy of the eastern provinces of Prussia; he introduced at that time in the Reichstag a law concerning the supervision of instruction and education. This act contemplated the extension of the civil school-supervision to religious instruction and simultaneously the abolition of all ecclesiastical supervision of the entire primary-school system hitherto exercised conjointly with the civil authorities. Henceforth, whenever the schools of a district were entrusted to ecclesiastical superintendents, their authority was to be derived solely from the State; in large measure, moreover, the Catholic clergy were excluded from any supervision of the schools. During the discussion of this School Supervision Law, Bismarck made an extremely violent attack (2 Feb., 1872) on Windthorst's leadership of the Centre, held out to the latter the olive branch of peace on condition of abandoning Windthorst, but threatened, in case of refusal, to pillory the party before all Germany as an enemy of the Empire. Shortly afterwards he caused the house of a Polish canon in Posen to be searched by the police, in the hope of finding there correspondence that would enable him to convict Windthorst of an alliance with the Poles. In this he was unsuccessful. On 4 July, 1872, the Reichstag passed the law against the Jesuits (Jesuitengesetz), on the plea that they were the emissaries of Rome in Germany (pretending at the same time to free the bishops from the Jesuit yoke); moreover, in defiance of all legality (both from a Conservative and a Liberal standpoint) the Jesuits were handed over to the arbitrary supervision of the police authorities and could at any moment be expelled from the Empire. In addition, the Bundesrath (Imperial Supreme Council) interpreted the law to mean complete exclusion from all ministry either in church or school. Thereupon the Jesuits left Germany. The next year the law was extended to the Redemptorists, Lazarists, Fathers of the Holy Ghost, and the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, as being closely related to the Jesuits, whereupon these orders also left Germany. In the same month the Government again manifested its ecclesiastico-political views by the measures which it sanctioned against the Prussian bishops, in the interest of the Old Catholics. Still earlier (1 Dec., 1871) the so-called Kanzelparagraf, or pulpit-law, was, for a similar purpose, incorporated in the Criminal Code. The Bishop of Ermland had forbidden the Old Catholic teacher of religion (Religionslehrer) in Braunsburg Gymnasium any longer to exercise his office. The Government then interfered and compelled the parents to send their children to the lessons of this instructor. Later, after a unanimous protest from the bishops of Prussia, the Government abandoned its position in this case, but demanded from the Bishop of Ermlund a declaration to the effect that "in the future he would obey in their entirety the laws of the State." He refused to make the declaration, whereupon his salary was withheld. A similar treatment befell the Catholic Head Chaplain (Feldpropst) of the Prussian Army, to whom pertained the administration of public worship for the Catholic soldiers. At Cologne the church of the Catholic military chaplain had been turned over by the Government to the Old Catholics, whereupon the Head-Chaplain of the troops forbade his subordinate to hold there the usual Catholic services. The Cologne chaplain was then brought before the Minister of War and suspended as guilty of "resisting the administrative ordinances of his superiors."

The close relation of Bismarck's anti-Catholic attitude in Germany with his foreign policy was soon shown in his famous papal election dispatch (14 May, 1872), in which he invited the European governments to agree on the conditions under which they would recognize the next papal election. The dispatch was ineffective, equally so Bismarck's attempt to compel the pope to accept, as the German Empire's first ambassador to the Vatican, Cardinal Hohenlohe, brother of the above-mentioned Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe whose close relations to both National Liberals and Old Catholics were well-known. On this occastion Bismarck uttered the celebrated words: "Nach Canossa gehen wir nicht" (We shall not go to Canossa), i.e., he foretold the real issue of the conflict before it had yet fairly begun. Nevertheless he was now fully determined to carry it on to the end. He found a ready instrument in the person of Herr Falk, appointed Minister of Worship in January, 1872, a clever and personally well-meaning man, but a jurist of a very formalist type and an extreme partisan. The chancellor had already, 7 Feb., 1872, urged the Minister of the Interior to undertake the solution of the Polish question "on a basis of principle, actively, and aggressively"; he now engaged Falk to walk in the same course. He was "to make known with all due clearness and in every sense the relations of the State to the various religious societies". On the side of the Church her defenders began now to seek the open. The Prussian hierarchy, assembled at Fulda for its annual meeting, issued (20 Sept., 1872) a memorial to all the German States in which the recent anti-ecclesiastical measures were treated in their entirety, exhibited for the judgment of public opinion, and proof supplied that rights of the Church hitherto acknowledged both by international and national law had been seriously violated. Pius IX, moreover, lifted his voice twice in protest. On the first occasion (24 June, 1872) he said to the German Catholics in Rome that Bismarck had placed himself at the head of the persecutors of the Church. "Who knows, however, but that soon the little stone will fall from the mountain and strike the feet of the colossus and shatter it?" Another time (Christmas Consistory, 1872) he spoke reprovingly of "men who not only do not belong to our holy religion, but do not even know it, yet arrogate to themselves authority to decide concerning the doctrines and the rights of the Catholic Church." The popular agitation grew from day to day. The Association of German Catholics (Mainzer Verein), founded under the presidency of Baron Felix von Loe, soon counted 200,000 members, and took a much bolder attitude than the Centre, whose leader, Windthorst, observed at all times much moderation.

In the meantime Falk aimed to make the Catholic bishops independent of Rome, the clergy independent of the bishops, and both dependent on the State. The following means were in his mind destined to accomplish these aims. The education of the clergy was to depend entirely, or nearly so, on the State, and to be carried out in the spirit of the average German Liberalistic education. Next, all ecclesiastical offices were to be filled only after approval by the highest civil authority in each province. In the future all ecclesiastical courts outside Germany should no longer exercise any disciplinary power over the Prussian clergy. From all German ecclesiastical courts there was to lie, in the future, an appeal not only on the part of the accused, but also of the Chief President (on grounds of public interest), to a court composed of civil officials and to be known as the "Royal Court of Justice for Ecclesiastical Affairs". Falk sought also to restrict considerably the exercise of the Church's punitive and disciplinary authority, in other words to facilitate apostasy so that priests and laymen who chose to side with State might suffer no inconvenience. It was evident from these measures that Falk had no idea of the close and indivisible solidarity of German Catholicism whereby bishop and clergy on one side, and the bishop and Rome on the other, were intimately bound to one another. He erred most grievously, however, when he made it a criminal offence for any priest to exercise his ministry without due authorization from the civil power, and "silenced" every bishop who refused to comply with the new legislation. In case the German clergy remained loyal to the Church these measures meant the withdrawal of the sacraments from the Catholic people, i.e., the most grievous spiritual suffering. The plans of Falk were formulated in four bills. The first was laid before the Landtag in November, 1872, the other three in January, 1873, though the royal consent was obtained with difficulty and only after insistence on the severity of the aforesaid papal allocution at Christmas of 1872. It was during the discussion of these Falk Bills that the word Kulturkampf was first used. The Landtag (Prussian Assembly) Commission to which the Falk Bills were referred expressed grave doubts as to their constitutionality, seeing that the Prussian Constitution guaranteed to the Catholic Church an independent administration of its own affairs. The Commission did not, therefore, advise the rejection of the Falk Bills, but rather proposed an amendment to the Constitution to the effect that in all her administration the Church was subject to the laws of the State and the juridically authorized supervision of the same.

B. 1872-78

This amendment and the four bills were adopted in May, 1873, hence the term May Laws (Maigesetze). To hasten their execution the Prussian Ministry at once enabled the Old Catholics to establish themselves as a Church, and contributed large sums for that purpose. It also encouraged the public adhesion of so-called State Catholics, i.e., Roman Catholics who protested formally their willingness to obey the new laws. Nevertheless, both Old Catholics and State Catholics remained few in number. On the other hand the unexpected happened in the shape of a remarkable development of ecclesiastical loyalty on the part of the Catholics. The bishops of Prussia had protested beforehand (30 January, 1873) against the forthcoming legislation. On 2 May they issued a common pastoral letter in which they made known to the faithful the reasons why all must offer to these laws a passive but unanimous resistance. On 26 May they declared to the Prussian Ministry that they would not co-operate for the execution of the Falk Laws. Almost without exception the clergy obeyed the mandate of the bishops. Thereupon the punishments prescribed by the laws for their violation were at once applicable; in hundreds of cases fines were soon imposed on the clergy for the execution of their ecclesiastical ministry. As none of the condemned ecclesiastics would voluntarily pay the imposed fines, these were forcibly collected, to the great irritation and embitterment of the Catholic parishioners. Soon the prisons began to open, and Falk declared (24 Oct., 1873) that still greater severity would be used. The Minister of War declared Catholic theological students subject to military service; the Marian congregations were forbidden to exist; the Catholic popular associations and the political activity of the Centre (public meetings, Catholic press) was subjected to close and inimical supervision, in every way hindered, and the Catholic population persecuted for their fidelity to the party. In December, 1873, changes were made in the oath of loyalty taken by the bishops to the king, every reference to their oath to the pope was stricken out, and an unconditional observance of the laws of the State prescribed. These measures, however, did not produce the desired results. In the November elections (1873) the Centre returned to the Landtag 90 members instead of its former 50, and to the Reichstag 91 instead of its former 63. The number of its votes was doubled, and reached about 1,500,000. The number of Catholic papers increased in 1873 to about 120.

Falk sought to overcome all this Catholic opposition by fresh ravages on the pastoral ministry. New laws of the Landtag (May, 1874) supplemented his authority and put at his disposal new means of compulsion. It was provided that when a bishop was deposed a representative agreeable to the Government should be appointed; if none such were to be had, appointments to vacant parishes should lie in the hands of the "patrons" in each parish, or should take place by free election of the parishioners. The Reichstag aided by passing a Priests-Expulsion Law (Priester-ausweisungsgesetz) by which all priests deprived of their offices for violation of the May Laws were turned over to the discretion of the police authorities. During the debates on this law the Archbishops of Posen and Cologne and the Bishop of Trier were condemned to imprisonment; later, the Archbishop of Posen (Count Ledochowski) was deposed. Shortly after the promulation of the new May Laws the Ministry saw to it that all the Prussian sees were vacated. A very great number of parishes were also deprived of their pastors. The ecclesiastical educational institutions were closed. These renewed efforts were no more successful than the former measures. No cathedral chapter chose an administrator, and no parish elected a parish priest. The exiled bishops governed their sees from abroad through secretly delegated priests. The faithful everywhere made it possible to hold Divine Service. The pope declared, 5 Feb., 1875, the May Laws invalid (irritas). On all sides exasperation was well-nigh boundless.

Under these circumstances Bismarck himself took charge of the situation. His main hope still lay in proving that the Centre party was the ememy of the empire, and this stigma he endeavoured by all possible means to fasten upon it; could he do so, the party would be isolated in the Reichstag, and soon helpless. At Kissingen, 13 July, 1874, the Catholic cooper's apprentice, Kullmann, attempted to assassinate him. Though the chancellor had no evidence to justify his assertion, he declared in a public session of the Reichstag that the murderer "held to the coat-tails of the Centre", and refused to consider any denial of the charge by that party. Bismarck now called to his aid two allies which in the past he had always found serviceable in face of great popular opposition, i.e. hunger and penury. The methods of Bismarck differed considerably from those of Falk. The latter saw in the religious life of the Catholic people their chief fortress, and so attacked it with all earnestness, hoping to meet with victory in the tumultuary reaction likely to follow any interference with the spiritual needs of an entire people. In this there was for Bismarck too much idealism; he chose rather to appeal to the material needs of his opponents. On 22 April, 1875, he obtained from the Landtag the so-called Sperrgesetz, by which all state payments to the Catholic bishops were withheld until they or their representatives complied with the new laws. Another law of the Landtag (31 May, 1875) closed all monasteries in Prussia, and expelled from Prussian territory all members of religious orders, with the exception of those who cared for the sick-and they were variously restricted. Finally (20 June, 1875), he dealt the Catholic Church what seemed to him a crushing blow; on that date was passed in the Landtag a law which confiscated all the property of the Church, and turned over to its administration to lay trustees to be elected by the members of each parish. To accomplish this he had previously to commit another act of supreme violence, i.e. the abolition of those paragraphs of the Prussian Constitution which concerned the Church. The aforesaid Kanzelparagraf, or "pulpit-law", was now amended by the Reichstag (26 Feb., 1876) so as to enable the Government to prosecute before the criminal courts any priest who should criticise in the pulpit the laws or the administration of the Prussian State. In the following years sixteen million marks ($3, 250,000) were withheld by the Government from the Church, by virtue of the Sperrgesetz; two hundred and ninety-six monastic institutions were closed. By the end of 1880, 1125 parish priests and 645 assistants had fallen victims to the new laws (out of 4627 and 3812, respectively). Within the circle of their operation 646,000 souls were entirely deprived of spiritual assistance. We must add to this the Falk Ordinance of 18 Feb., 1876, issued with Bismarck's consent, by which in the future religious instruction in the primary schools was to be given only by teachers appointed or accepted by the State, i.e., all Catholic ecclesiastical control was suppressed.

The debates on all these measures were the most violent ever heard in the German Parliament; it was apparent that on both sides the leadership would soon fall to the extremists. On the Catholic side, therefore, evidences of moderation were soon forthcoming, and tended to prevent further extreme measures on the part of the Government. The bishops felt that the gravest perils had been successfully met and averted. The earliest relief was the result of legislation originally intended to do great damage to the Catholic cause. The Prussian Civil Marriage Law of March, 1874 (extended to the German Empire, 6 Feb., 1875), withdrew from the clergy their former right of keeping the civil registers, and made civil marriage obligatory. It was hoped that in this way the laity at least would be freed from ecclesiastical control, since neither bishops nor clergy were willing to separate from Rome. Under the circumstances, however, the law turned to the advantage of the sorely persecuted Church. Had marriages remained possible only in the presence of civilly recognized priests, the Catholic population, in the end, given the absolute necessity of marriages, would have had to accept one of two issues: either they would tolerate the state clergy, or they would bring pressure to bear on the Catholic clergy in the sense of obedience to the new laws. On the other hand the bishops met successfully Bismarck's secularization of the Church property. They declared that in this respect it was material interests which were chiefly at stake, and in such cases the Church was always inclined to the most conciliatory measures; confiding, therefore, in the ecclesiastical loyalty of the faithful they directed them to obey thse laws. In the mean-time by the laws of 7 June, 1876, and 13 Feb., 1878, Bismarck undertook to sequestrate all Church property; he had already failed, however, in his original purpose. Windthorst, on the other hand, strove earnestly to check all extremist tendencies among the Catholics and to incline them to peace with the Government as soon as the ecclesiastical situation would permit. In this temper a reconciliation was evidently no longer remote, much less impossible. It was now clear to Bismarck that the popular agitation had reached a height that no material force could overcome, and that the civil authority itself was endangered. The chief motive that had originally led him to enter on this grave conflict with German Catholicism had long since disappeared; since 1875 he no longer feared an anti-German coalition of Catholic powers or a war with Russia. In the meantime those closer relations with Austria had begun which in 1879 terminated in the actual Triple Alliance. His new foreign policy brought with it a frequent rapprochement with the Catholics. In the German Paliament he could no longer act quite independently of them, and this was another factor in the future reconciliation. The National Liberals in the Reichstag had ceased to be his unconditional supporters in the grave questions of internal reform (politico-economical, social, and financial) that now claimed all his attention. The continued opposition of so large a party as the Centre was henceforth an element of grave danger for all his plans. Conservative Protestants, meanwhile, rebelled against the Liberalism of Falk, which under the circumstances was far more offensive to them than to Catholics. Moreover, Emperor Wilhelm inclined daily more in their direction. Indeed, the position of Falk had become practically untenable.

C. 1878-91

The death of Pius IX and the election of Leo XIII (Feb., 1878) made possible the restoration of peace in the much troubled Fatherland. At once, and again during that year, Leo XIII wrote in a conciliating way to Kaiser Wilhelm urging the abolition of the May Laws. His request was refused; at the same time Berlin expressed a desire for reconciliation. In July, 1878, Bismarck had a personal interview with the papal nuncio, Masella, at Kissingen (in Bavaria). However, a full decade was to intervene before the May Laws quite disappeared. The proposed basis of negotiations was not calculated at this juncture to bring about the much desired peace. Bismarck insisted that the May Laws should not be abolished by any formal act; he was willing, however, to modify their application, obtain gradually from the Landtag temporary discretionary authority in regard to the laws, remove certain odious points, etc., all this on condition of a yielding attitude on the side of the Catholics. The latter, indeed, were in this respect praise-worthy. Bismarck further desired that in all measures of relief the Government should appear to take the initiative-of course after proper diplomatic negotiations with Rome. In return he demanded from the Curia an assurance that the Centre party would support the policies of the Government; otherwise the latter could have no interest in a reconciliation.

As a proof of goodwill he dismissed Herr Falk in 1879 and replaced the author of the odious May Laws by Herr Puttkamer, whose ecclesiastico-political attitude was more conciliatory than that of his predecessor. Under him the Church began to regain its former influence over the schools. He obtained from the Landtag on three occasions (1880-83) discretionary authority to modify the May Laws; thereby he provided for a restoration of orderly diocesan administration, and the filling of the vacant sees. The vacant parishes, it is true, remained yet without pastors; it was allowed, however, to administer them from neighbouring parishes. After 1883 the Sperrgesetz, or suspension of ecclesiastical salaries, was not enforced. In 1882 Prussia established an embassy at the Vatican. Bismarck in the meantime held firmly to one point: the obligation of the bishop to make known to the Government all ecclesiastical appointments, and the Government's right to veto. This much Rome was not disinclined to allow, but demanded a previous formal abolition of at least certain portions of the May Laws. Leo XIII was very anxious to re-establish peace and harmony with Germany, and for that reason chose for his secretary of state, in 1881, Lodovico Jacobini, who had been nuncio at Vienna since 1879, and had conducted the preliminary negotiations. During the negotiations that followed, the principal defect of the papal diplomacy consisted in the excessive stress it laid on the purely politico-ecclesiastical elements of the problem (those which affected the general European situation of the Church), not sufficiently taking into account the fundamental source of the conflict, i.e., the violation of the constitutional law of Prussia. From this point of view it did not seek to co-operate with the tactics of the Centre in that party's dealings with Bismarck; it rather complied in several ways with the wishes of the latter, and sought to influence the Centre (in substantially political matters) in favour of the Government. On the other hand, while Windthorst did not perhaps give quite sufficient consideration to the general European situation, he was all the more earnest in his resolution to give permanency to the exertions of his party, to again anchor the rights of the Church in the Prussian Constitution, and to make the latter document guarantee once again the independence of the Church. During these years of more or less fruitful negotiations between Rome and Berlin, the political power of the Centre in the Reichstag grew notably; the Government was no longer able to count on a majority against it. By this time the Conservatives had again obtained the upper hand in the Landtag, and soon made evident their intention to abolish completely the Falk system of interference with the disciplinary and pastoral life of the Catholic Church (Conservative Resolution, 25 April, 1882). When Bismarck saw that it was impossible to make the Centre a Government party (spring of 1884), the negotiations on his side were temporarily dropped. To the Conservatives, now urgent, he replied that he was ready to proceed to a revision of the May Laws as soon as he knew that Rome would accept the Anzeigepflicht, or obligation of making known to the Government all ecclesiastical appointments, with the corresponding civil right of veto. He believed, apparently, that the Kulturkampf agitation would gradually die out, and the Catholic people grow weary of their struggle for "a constitutional and legal independence of the Church", now that the most burdensome of the May Laws had been withdrawn and a somewhat orderly ecclesiastical life was again possible.

In the meantime the Centre party and its press kept alive a strong Catholic feeling. On the other hand, the foreign situation soon brought up the question of the final abolition of the May Laws. Bismarck was again anxious in regard to Russia, and this time feared an alliance of that nation with France; the recent awakening of Panslavism added to his solicitude on this point. He was concerned lest the Vatican should favour the Franco-Russian alliance. On the other hand he now sought to rally all forces at the disposal of the Government for the suppression of the Polish movement that had by this time taken on large proportions; owing to his Kulturkampf policy, all classes of the Polish people had been deeply stirred during the previous decade, and their attitude now caused the chancellor great anxiety. He hoped, also, that a decisive ending of the ecclesiastical conflict would seriously affect the hitherto intact solidarity of the Centre and weaken notably the popular attachment to the party, whereby its influence, even yet the source of his gravest political difficulties, would finally diminish. Leo XIII saw clearly that Bismarck was now earnestly desirous of peace; Rome, therefore, it seemed, need no longer be over-timid in the matter of concessions based on suitable guarantees. The pope also hoped that Bismarck would in turn be helpful to him in respect of the German imperial policy towards Italy. It was of considerable importance that at this juncture the most statesmanlike member of the Prussian hierarchy, Bishop Kopp of Hildesheim (now Cardinal, and Prince-Bishop of Breslau), was made a member of the Prussian House of Lords (Herrenhaus). Bismarck still held with tenacity to the former government claims. In the matter of the Anzeigepflicht, the nominations of parish priests at least should not take place without the Government's approval. Nor would he listen to the restoration of the former recognition of the Church by the Prussian Constitution. Finally, he held in its entirety to the state control of the schools. In reality he was able to maintain these three points; on the other hand he yielded to the Church, practically, the control of ecclesiastical education, permitted the re-assertion of the papal disciplinary authority over the clergy, allowed the restoration of public worship and the administration of the sacraments, the application of ecclesiastical disciplinary measures (censures, etc.), and held out to the religious orders the hope of returning. This is substantially the content of the two comprehensive laws (21 May, 1886, and 29 April, 1887), that modified the May Laws in an acceptable way and thereby ended formally the long conflict since known as the Kulturkampf. During the negotiations for the first law the pope had allowed the bishops (25 April, 1886) to lay before the Government for approval the appointments of parish priests. While the second law was under discussion the pope declared that it showed the way to peace, while Bismarck termed it the restoration of a modus vivendi between State and Church. The Centre was deeply suspicious of both laws because the pope did not insist on constitutional guarantees. In the interval between these laws, and in view of them, the chancellor made a last attempt to obtain through Rome the support of the Centre for his military policy and the foreign aims it implied. He wished the Centre to vote in the Reichstag for the so-called Septennate. A correspondence ensued between Cardinal Jacobini and the President of the Centre Party; Windthorst was not to be moved from his position. It may be said that the hopes of Leo XIII in Bismarck's help respecting Italy were deceived. In the following years the last remnants of the May Laws disappeared. The law prescribing the expulsion of all priests (Priesterausweisungsgesetz) was withdrawn in 1890, and in 1891 the Sperrgelder (i.e. the ecclesiastical salaries, etc., withheld since April, 1875) were distributed to the various German dioceses. For a while it seemed as if another grave conflict would follow, this time apropos of the schools. However, since the early nineties there has prevailed the present quiescent attitude in all matters ecclesiastical and educational. It may be added that the anti-Jesuit legislation was so modified in 1905 as to offer no longer its former exceptional character; the Redemptorists had been previously allowed to return. One important consequence of the Kulturkampf was the earnest endeavour of the Catholics to obtain a greater influence in national and municipal affairs; how weak they formerly were in both respects was clear to them only after the great conflict had begun.

These efforts took the name of the Paritätsbewegung, i.e., a struggle for equality of civil recognition. In turn the discussions awakened and fed by this movement soon led to a vigorous self-questioning among the Catholic masses as to the fact of, and the reasons for, their backwardness in academic, literary, and artistic life, also in the large field of economic activities (industry, commerce, etc.). On the other hand, the reconciliation between Church and State made it possible for the Catholics of Germany to participate more earnestly than hitherto in the public life of the Fatherland, in illustration of which we may point to the notable contributions of the Centre Party (1896-1904) to the solution of the great imperial problems of that period. At present (1908) a reaction seems imminent. In closing it may be said that the Kulturkampf rightly appears as only the first phase of the vast movement of antagonism in which Catholicism stands over against Protestantism and Liberalism, on the broad field of Prussia, henceforth one of the great powers of Europe, and within the German nation now coalescent in the political unit of the Empire.

BACHEM, Kulturkampf und Maigesetzgebung in Staatslexikon G rresgesellschaft, 2d ed. (Freiburg, 1902), III; SIEGFRIED, Aktenst cke betreffend des preussischen Culturkampf (1882); F.X. SCHULTE, Geschichte des Kulturkampfs in Preussen (1882), and Geschichte der ersten sieben Jahre des preussischen Kulturkampfs, I: Der Schulkampf, 2d. ed. (1879); MAJUNKE, Geschichte des Kulturkampfs in Preussen-Deutschland (1886); BRÜCK, Geschichte der katholischen Kirche in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert, IV, ed. KISSLING (1907); HAHN, Geschichte des Kulturkampfs in Preussen (1881); VON GERLACH, Aufzeichnungen aus seinem Leben und Wirken, II (1903); HUESGEN, Ludwig Windthorst (1907); SPAHN, Ernest Lieber (1906), and Das deutsche Zentrum (1907); HEUSER, Bismarck's Conflict with the Catholic Church, in Am. Cath. Quart. Review (1884), 322 sqq.; O'SHEA, Bismarck's Decline and Fall, ibid. (1898), 836 sqq.; SCHRÖDER, The Impregnable Fortress; Prince Bismarck and the Centre, ibid. (1890), 390 sqq.; IDEM, Windthorst, ibid. (1891), 515 sqq.

Bibliography

• Anderson, Margaret Lavinia (2000). Practicing democracy: Elections and political culture in Imperial Germany. Princeton University Press.
• Atkin, Nicholas; Tallett, Frank (2003). Priests, Prelates and People: A History of European Catholicism since 1750. Oxford University Press.
• Clark, Christopher (2007). Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947. Penguin Books. ISBN 9780141904023.
• Clark, Christopher (2006). Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674023857.
• Gross, Michael B. (2005). The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany. University of Michigan Press. doi:10.3998/mpub.17623. ISBN 978-0472031306.
• Gross, Michael B. (2004). The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-11383-6.
• Helmstadter, Richard, ed. (1997). Freedom and Religion in the 19th Century. Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804730877.
• Lamberti, Marjorie (2001). "Religious conflicts and German national identity in Prussia, 1866–1914". In Dwyer, Philip G. (ed.). Modern Prussian History: 1830–1947. pp. 169–187.
• Pflanze, Otto (1990). Bismarck and the Development of Germany, Volume II: The Period of Consolidation, 1871–1880. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781400861088.
• Pflanze, Otto (1971). Bismarck and the Development of Germany, Volume II: The Period of Consolidation, 1871–1880. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-05587-4.
• Rabkin, Jeremy (Fall 1996). "A Supreme Court in the culture wars". The Public Interest (125). Archived from the original on 11 March 2007 – via Thomson-Gale.
• Robbins, Keith, ed. (2011). The Dynamics of Political Reform in Northern Europe 1780–1920: Political and Legal Perspectives. Leuven University Press. ISBN 9789058678256.
• Healy, Róisín (2003). The Jesuit Specter in Imperial Germany. Boston: Brill Publishers. ISBN 978-0391041943.
• Ruppert, Stefan (2002). Kirchenkampf und Kulturkampf: Historische Legitimation, politische Mitwirkung und wissenschaftliche Begleitung durch die Schule Emil Ludwig Richter. Tübingen: JCB Mohr Siebeck. ISBN 978-3-16-147868-0.
• Winkler, Heinrich August (2002). Der lange Weg nach Westen: Deutsche Geschichte vom Ende des Alten Reiches bis zum Untergang der Weimarer Republik (in German). Vol. 1. Munich: C. H. Beck. ISBN 3406460011.
• Winkler, Heinrich August (2000). Der lange Weg nach Westen: Deutsche Geschichte 1806–1933 (in German).

Further reading

• Anderson, Margaret Lavinia. Windthorst: A Political Biography (1981), the leader of the Catholic Center Party
• Bennette, Rebecca Ayako. Fighting for the Soul of Germany: The Catholic Struggle for Inclusion After Unification (Harvard University Press; 2012), 368 pages, examines Catholics' promotion of an alternative national identity after 1871.
• Blackbourn, David. Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford, 1993)
• Clark, Christopher and Wolfram Kaiser, eds. Culture Wars: Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth Century Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2003); Covers 10 countries; online review
• Hollyday, FBM (1970), Bismarck, Great Lives Observed, Prentice Hall
• Hope, Nicholas, "Prussian Protestantism," in Philip G. Dwyer, ed. Modern Prussian History: 1830–1947 (2001) pp. 188–208
• Ross, Ronald J. The failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf: Catholicism and state power in imperial Germany, 1871–1887, (Washington, D.C., 1998)
• Ross, Ronald J. "Enforcing the Kulturkampf in the Bismarckian state and the limits of coercion in imperial Germany." Journal of Modern History (1984): 456-482. in JSTOR
• Ross, Ronald J. "The Kulturkampf: Restrictions and Controls on the Practice of Religion in Bismarck's Germany". In Helmstadter (1997), pp. 172–195.
• Trzeciakowski, Lech. The Kulturkampf in Prussian Poland (East European Monographs, 1990), 223 pp.
• Weir, Todd. Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Rise of the Fourth Confession, Cambridge University Press, 2014, ISBN 1139867903, 9781139867900
• Zeender, John. "Ludwig Windthorst, 1812-1891" History (1992) 77#250, pp. 237–254, the leader of the Catholic Center Party

Historiography

• Anderson, Margaret Lavinia. "Confessions of a Fellow Traveller," Catholic Historical Review (2013) 99#4, pp. 623–648.
• Heilbronner, Oded. "From Ghetto to Ghetto: The Place of German Catholic Society in Recent Historiography" Journal of Modern History (2000) 72#2, pp. 453–495. in JSTOR

External links

• "Kulturkampf". Catholic Encyclopedia. 1913., detailed article by Martin Spahn, written in 1910.
• "Kulturkampf". New International Encyclopedia. 1905.
• "Bismarck's Failure: the Kulturkampf" Long description
• Founding Manifesto of the Protestant League (1887); Statistics on Membership (1887–1913) (English translation) A German anti-Catholic propaganda organisation that became active after the Kulturkampf
• Bismarck's Domestic Policies 1871–1890 Kulturkampf in the context of Bismarck's entire domestic policies, by a head of history at Catholic University School in Dublin
• Kulturkampf Now and Then 13-paged essay in pdf by a Professor of the United States Air Force Academy
• Ludwig Windthorst Speaks in the Prussian Parliament (1873) Speech of Ludwig Windthorst following its analysis
• Bismarck on the purpose of the Kulturkampf Speech in the Prussian House of Lords, 10 March 1873
• Kulturkampf: Bibliography by LitDok East-Central Europe Herder-Institut (Marburg)