Gross - The War Against Catholicism Liberalism and The Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany (2004)

Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany
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The War against Catholicism

Liberalism and the Anti- Catholic
Imagination in Nineteenth
Century Germany
Michael B. Gross
The University of Michigan Press
Ann Arbor
Copyright by the University of Michigan 2004

All rights reserved
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
@ Printed on acid-free paper
2007
2006
2005
2004
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise,
without the written permission of the publisher.
A CIP catalog recordfor this book is available fi'mn the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gross, Michael B . , 1961The war against Catholicism : liberalism and the anti-Catholic
imagination in nineteenth-century Germany I Michael B. Gross.
p. em. - (Social history, popular culture, and politics in
Germany)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-472-n383-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
r . Kulturkampf-Germany. 2. Anti-Catholicism-Germany-History19th century. 3. Liberalism-Germany-History-19th century.
4 Catholic Church-Germany-History-Igth century. 5 Germany
Politics and government-I 871-1888. I. Title. II. Series.
DDII 8 .G76 2004
322' . 1 '094309034-dc22
For Anne
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
IX
X111
I
Chapter 1 . Revolution, the Missionary Crusade, and

Catholic Revival
29
Chapter 2 . Protestantism, Anti-Catholicism, and the

Reconstruction of German Liberalism
74
Chapter 3 The Anti-Catholic Imagination: Visions of

the Monastery
128
Chapter 4 The Women's Question, Anti-Catholicism,

and the Kulturkampf
185
Chapter 5 Kulturkampf, Unification, and the War

against Catholicism
240
Conclusion
292
Bibliography
303
Index
347
Acknowledgments
It is a pleasure to acknowledge my gratitude to all those who over the

course of several years helped make this work possible. This book
began as a doctoral dissertation at Brown University directed by Volker
R. Berghahn. I am grateful for his encouragement, for our rich conver
sations, and for his example as a scholar and gentleman. I would like to
thank Mary Gluck for encouraging me to explore the questions of cul
tural and intellectual history that made this study possible in the first
place. I am grateful also to David Kertzer for lending his interdiscipli
nary perspective and for his careful reading of my work. At different
stages of this work I was fortunate to receive the counsel and in various
forms the criticism of David Blackbourn, Larry Eugene Jones, Jiirgen
Kocka, Jonathan Sperber, James Retallack, and Ronald J. Ross. I
would like to thank specifically Margaret Lavinia Anderson for care
fully reading a final draft of the manuscript and offering timely correc
tions and comments. I particularly thank Helmut Walser Smith for his
thoughtful critique of my work, generous advice, and continuous
encouragement at crucial stages. In addition, I would like to thank the
anonymous readers at the University of Michigan Press for their help
ful criticism of the manuscript. Many of these scholars have generously
saved me from making mistakes, some have not agreed with everything
I have said, and none bears responsibility for any faults. All have helped
make this work more than it otherwise would have been.
In addition to the archived state documents, the research material
for the subject of this book-anticlerical and anti-Catholic, liberal,
Catholic, and Protestant books, pamphlets, newspapers, j ournals, and
other documents from nineteenth-century Germany-at one time,
judging by the card catalogs and microfiche inventories, amounted to a
virtual mountain of material. In the course of the last century this
mountain was whittled down as these materials were first under the
Acknowledgments
National Socialist regime sometimes restricted or confiscated by the

Gestapo for reasons known to themselves, later stored during the Sec
ond World War in mine shafts to avoid incineration in Allied bombing
raids and then often lost, or finally in Berlin toward the very end of the
war blown apart by approaching Red Army tanks and artillery. On
many occasions my access to the material that survived was due to
patient librarians and archivists willing to bear with my requests that
they search again for materials miscataloged, misplaced, or marked
Kriegsverlust and forgotten. Without their assistance and the efforts of
others at libraries and archives in Germany this book would not have
been possible.
I would, therefore, like to thank the archivists and librarians of the
Archiv und Bibliothek des Diakonischen Werkes der EKD in Berlin,
especially Dr. Leonhard Deppe for his hospitality, which extended
beyond his responsibilities in the library; the Landesarchiv, Berlin; the
Geheimes Staatsarchiv PreuBischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin; the Lan
deshauptarchiv, Koblenz; the Hauptstaatsarchiv, Dusseldorf; the
Stadtarchiv Dusseldorf; the Hauptstaatsarchiv, Aachen, particularly
Dr. Herbert Lepper; the Staatsbibliothek PreuBischer Kulturbesitz,
Haus r, Unter den Linden, and Haus 2, Potsdamer Str., Berlin; the
Niedersachsische Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek, Gottingen; the
Universitatsbibliothek, Freie Universitat Berlin; the O ffentlichesbib
liothek, Aachen; the Universitatsbibliothek, Dusseldorf; and Landes
und Stadtbibliothek, Dusseldorf. In addition, I would like to thank
librarians at the New York Public Library, Central Research Library;
and the John D . Rockefeller, Jr. , Library, Brown University. Finally, I
would like to thank the staff of Joyner Library at East Carolina Uni
versity, particularly Patricia Guyette and Elizabeth Winstead of Inter
library Services for their efficiency and Diana Williams and Michael
Reece in the Office of Digital Projects for preparing the illustrations.
The research for this work was generously funded by several schol
arly institutions and foundations . Support early on provided by the
Volkswagen Stiftung through the German Historical Institute enabled
me to receive paleographic training at the Karl August Bibliothek,
Wolfenbuttel, and to tour archives in Germany. For grants that made
the research possible, I am grateful to the German Academic Exchange
Service (DAAD ) and to the Berlin Program for Advanced German and
European Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the Freie
Universitat Berlin. As a Fellow in the Berlin Program, I was fortunate
to be part of an intellectually inspiring, interdisciplinary cohort of
scholars. A Lawrence F. Brewster Scholarship from the Department of
Acknowledgments
xi
History, East Carolina University, freed time from teaching responsi

bilities and provided funding for travel, research, and writing. A Col
lege Research Award from East Carolina University also enabled me
to return to Germany for additional research. I would like to gratefully
acknowledge this support from East Carolina University as I encour
age the university in its responsibility to support and fund future
researchers and authors .
I thank also Geoff Eley, who as editor of the University of Michigan
Press series Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany
offered his interest, critical comments, and encouragement. I was for
tunate to have at the Press the assistance of Christopher Collins, Sarah
Mann, and the editorial staff. I should add that, unless otherwise indi
cated, all translations are my own. My colleagues in the Department of
History at East Carolina University provided a collegial home, and I
particularly thank Michael Palmer for his counsel, for ongoing encour
agement, and for arranging time free from other responsibilities for
completing the final revisions.
I give further thanks to Alexandra Staub and Demitri Bezinover for
their hospitality during a memorable summer in Berlin, and I thank
Elizabeth Bachhuber and Christoph Rihs for providing a warm refuge
in Dusseldorf during a particularly dark winter. They gave me a home
and family when I most needed them, and I continue to benefit from
their stimulating insights about Germany, past and present. For offer
ing along the way encouragement, sympathy, good humor, and other
forms of sustenance I thank Michael Bassman; Susan, Melissa, David,
and Patricia Bunnell; Eric and Janet Gross; Manik Hinchey; Birgit
Jensen; David Scialdone; and my friends at the Berlin Stammtisch. I
cherish their friendship . I would also like to thank my professional col
leagues and friends with whom I communicate via email and telephone
until we finally see each other again, usually at the annual conferences of
the German Studies Association. Their camaraderie and our discussions
together have kept me going in more ways than they might recognize.
I give special thanks to Carol Hager, who lifted me up, dusted me
off, and set me on my feet when I needed it. Kerry McNamara has been
there since the early years and was a constant friend during the
research and writing. During the final phase of revision, Thomas
Midyette, Charles Dupree, and Bets and David Crean kept pointing to
the most important things. The memories of John Gross and Bodo
Nischan lent perspective, and the impending arrival of Jessica Gross
provided the final impetus to complete the manuscript. I especially
thank my parents, Frank Robert and Jean Pichotta Gross, for their
xii
Acknowledgments
support during every stage of this book but even more for offering me
their living examples of integrity and dedication. I thank above all my
very best friend, Anne Bunnell. She patiently lived with this project
from the very beginning and during stages of writing and revision let
me get away with less of the cooking and housework. More important,
she brought to this work balance and faith and to my life innumerable
blessings . This book is for her.
Abbreviations
Bd.
Best.
Bl.
BM
HSTAD
Kr.
LR
LRA
LHAK
Nr.
OP
OPR
p
PB
PD
Pf.
pp
RA
RBA
RBD
RBT
RD
RK
RP
SBHA
Band
Bestand
Blatt or Blatter
Burgermeister
Hauptstaatsarchiv Dusseldorf
Kreis
Landrat
Landratsamt
Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz
Nummer
Oberprasident or Oberprasidium
Oberprasident or Oberprasidium der Rheinprovinz
Prasidium
Prasidial buro
Polizei Direktor
Pfarrer
Polizei Prasident or Polizeiprasidium
Regierung Aachen
Regierungsbezirk Aachen
Regierungsbezirk Dusseldorf
Regierungsbezirk Trier
Regierung Dusseldorf
Regierung Koln
Regierungsprasident or Regierungsprasidium
Stenographische Berichte iiber die Verhandlungen des
preujJischen Landtages. Haus der Abgeordneten
Introduction
For obvious and irrefutable reasons, anti-Judaism in the nineteenth

century and particularly anti-Semitism after the r 8 7os have received
considerable attention from historians of modern Germany. The long
and shameful record of anti-Judaism and the origins of modern anti
Semitism have undeniable importance for the history of Germany and
indeed of Europe. Yet the nineteenth century in Germany with its par
ticular confessional divide, modern rationalizing culture, and secular
izing social currents was arguably more a century of anti-Catholicism.
It was anti-Catholicism in Germany in the nineteenth century that cul
minated in what contemporaries called the Kulturkampf (cultural
struggle) of the r 8 7os, a campaign sponsored by liberals and prose
cuted by the state intended to break the influence of the Roman
Catholic Church and the religious, social, and political power of
Catholicism. The attack on the church included a series of principally
Prussian, discriminatory laws that made Roman Catholics feel under
standably persecuted within a predominantly Protestant nation. The
Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) , along with the Franciscan, Dominican,
and other religious orders, was expelled from the German Empire, the
consequence of two decades of anti-Jesuit and antimonastic hysteria.
The Prussian state imposed its own authority over the education and
appointment of Catholic clergy. Other state legislation authorized the
seizure of church property, the expulsion of recalcitrant priests, and
the removal of the financial support of those members of the clergy
who refused to align themselves with state policies. Roman Catholics
within Germany immediately recognized that these measures were an
attack not merely on the church but on the entire Catholic way of life.
State authorities believed they had no choice but to call upon the army
to put down spontaneous riots by Catholics rebelling all over Germany
in protest against the closing of monasteries, the imprisonment of
priests, the arrest of bishops, and the confiscation of church property

by the state. By the end of the decade over eighteen hundred Catholic
priests had either been incarcerated or exiled, and Catholic church
property worth some sixteen million marks had been taken over by the
state. 1
With the founding of the German Empire in r87I, Jews in Germany,
meanwhile, finally achieved complete emancipation. This, of course,
did not always mean that Jews were free from discrimination, but it did
mean that Jews enj oyed equal legal status in a state that protected its
citizens from arbitrary authority and guaranteed the rule of law. With
considerable success, German Jews now increasingly moved into
respectable commercial, professional, and academic positions and
established themselves in German society as attorneys, j ournalists,
physicians, and academics in numbers clearly disproportionate to the
size of the Jewish population within the empire. At the same time dur
ing the first decade of the empire, contemporary critics continuously
complained about the social, cultural, and professional underachieve
ment of the Catholic population. Catholics and the Catholic Church in
Germany now also faced a barrage of discriminatory Kulturkampf leg
islation that seemed constantly to remind them that they were not wel
come. In modern Germany, an Ausnahmegesetz (exceptional legisla
tion outside normal civil-juridical procedure) that abrogated citizen
rights and a state-sponsored domestic war were unleashed first against
Roman Catholicism.
While maj orities could be found in the Prussian parliament and in
the Reichstag to pass discriminatory legislation against Roman
Catholics, the emancipation of Germany's Jews, who constituted less
than r percent of the population and therefore were scarcely capable of
defending themselves against opposition, was not revoked. The Kul
turkampf, even when most of its legislation lapsed in the r 8 8os, left a
long legacy among German Roman Catholics, the bitter feeling that
they had been branded as pariahs and had, for the sake of survival, to
establish a separate Catholic subculture within the population. Liber
als, the purported champions of tolerance, freedom, and equal rights
before the law and as such the leadership of those who had insisted on
Jewish emancipation, were the greatest enemies of Catholicism in the
nineteenth century and the most dedicated prosecutors of the antir. David Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 178D-1918
(New York: Oxford University Press, 199fl), 262.
Introduction
Catholic attack. By the 1 8 70s liberals in Germany conceived of the

anti-Catholic campaign as nothing less than a war to save the new
empire from its most powerful enemy within its own territorial bor
ders.
This study explores why the hatred of Roman Catholicism and
Catholics was of such paramount importance to liberals, the self
avowed heirs of the Enlightenment, proponents of a modern industrial
society, and loyal defendants of the modern nation-state. It examines
more specifically the peculiarities of the liberal anti-Catholic imagina
tion and the forms of intolerance developed and practiced by liberals
against priests, monks, nuns, and the Catholic population in Germany.
The anti-Catholicism of the nineteenth century and the anti-Catholic
legislation of the 187os emerge under close examination not, as so often
understood, as contradictions of liberal principles, attempts to pre
serve the autonomy of the secular state, or campaigns to ensure the
Protestant identity of the nation. The intolerance of Catholics that cul
minated in the Kulturkampf and the attempt once and for all to break
the power of Roman Catholic faith and the influence of the Roman
Catholic Church were instead embedded in a more pervasive and com
plex array of imperatives and anxieties specific to liberal identity and
the liberal program for political citizenship, economic development,
moral order, and public and private life in modern Germany.
German Catholicism and Liberalism in
Historical Perspective
From the 1960s to the late 1980s almost an entire generation of social
historians of Germany trained their attention on the society, culture,
and politics of the working class in the nineteenth century. Toward the
end of the 19 8os, as historians began to look for new approaches to
understand modern society, attention shifted to an exploration of the
politics and social-cultural world of the German Biirgertum. Mean
while, the history of German Roman Catholics during the nineteenth
century remained for the most part unexamined or confined to
Kirchengeschichte, often narrow studies of the institution of the church
itself, despite the fact that, demographically, Catholics constituted
one-third of the social and cultural life of the empire . Though once
neglected, the broader religious, social, and political dimensions of
German Catholicism have been rediscovered. Wolfgang Schieder's
pathbreaking article on the Catholic revival in the Rhineland with the
Trier pilgrimage of 1844 and then Jonathan Sperber's equally impor

tant book on the resurgence of popular Catholicism in the Rhineland
and Westphalia in the second half of the century initiated a wave of
interest in the subject. 2 Since these works, the study of German
Catholicism in its rich social, cultural, and political aspects has become
a maj or field within the historical literature of modern Germany.
Now historians can look back with some justified satisfaction on
almost a generation of exemplary scholarship on nineteenth-century
German Catholicism: Thomas Mergel's study of Catholic middle-class
society in the Rhineland, Otto Weiss's exhaustive study of the
Redemptorists in Bavaria, Irmtraud Gotz von Olenhusen's work on
Catholic women and study of the culture of clerical ultramontanism in
Freiburg, Margaret Lavinia Anderson's works on Catholic piety and
political culture, and David Blackbourn's articles on political Catholi
cism and especially his study of Marian apparitions are only a few
notable examples.3 As the study of Catholicism in Germany has devel
oped a substantial body of literature, historians of Catholicism have
2. Wolfgang Schieder, "Kirche und Revolution: Sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte der Trierer
Wallfahrt von 1844," Archiv fiir Sozialgeschichte 14 (1974) : 419-54; and the critical response
by Rudolf Lill, "Kirche und Revolution: Zu den Anfiingen der katholischen Bewegung im
Jahrzehnt vor I848," Archiv fur Sozialgeschichte r8 (I978): 565-75; Jonathan Sperber, Popu
lar Catholicism in Nineteenth- Century Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
3 . Thomas Merge!, Zwischen Klasse und Konfession: Katholisches Biirgertum im Rhein
land, 1794-1914 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1994); Otto Weiss, Die Redemp
toristen in Bayern ( 1790-1909): Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Ultramontanismus (St.
Ottilien: Eos Verlag, 1983); Irmtraud Gotz von Olenhusen, ed., Wunderbare Erscheinungen:
Frauen und katholische Frommigkeit im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Paderborn : F. Schc)ningh,
1 995); idem, Klerus und abweichendes Verhalten: Zur Sozialgeschichte der katholischer
Priester im 19. Jahrhundert; Die Erzdiozese Freiburg (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und
Ruprecht, r994); Margaret Lavinia Anderson, Windthorst: A Political Biography (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1981); idem, Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture
in Imperial Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); David Black bourn, Class,
Religion, and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany: The Centre Party in Wiirttemberg before
1914 (New Haven: Yale University Press, r98o); idem, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin
Mary in Nineteenth- Century Germany (New York: Alfred A . Knopt: r994) .
Other maj or works representing the range of topics in the literature on Catholicism in nine
teenth-century Germany include but are not limited to Wolfgang Altgeld, Katholizismus,
Protestantismus, Judentum: Uber religiOs begriindete Gegensiitze und nationalreligiOse Ideen in
der Geschichte des deutschen Nationalismus (Mainz: Matthias Grunewald Verlag, 1992); Olaf
Blaschke and Frank-Michael Kuhlemann, eds . , Religion im Kaiserreich: Milieus-Mental
itiiten-Krisen (Giitersloh: Chr. Kaiser, 1996); Werner K. Blessing, Staat und Kirche in der
Gesellschaft: Institutionelle Autoritiit und mentaler Wandel in Bayern wiihrend des 19. Jahrhun
derts (Gc)ttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, r982); Ellen Lovell Evans, The German Cen
ter Party, 187o-1933: A Study in Political Catholicism (Carbondale : Southern Tllinois Univer-
Introduction
been able to take stock of some of their predominant conclusions in

order to direct or redirect further research, an indication of both the
vitality and significance of the field. Recently, Oded Heilbronner has
argued that historians may have brought the study of Catholicism out
of the ghetto of historiographical ostracization, but in doing so they
have ironically also confined the nineteenth-century Catholic popula
tion to a social and cultural ghetto, one that was willfully circumspect
and antimodern, at variance with the progressive, main currents of life
in Germany.4 This current historical evaluation of nineteenth-century
Catholicism is an echo of the attitudes of liberal contempories who, as
sity Press, 1981); Horst Grunder, "Nation und Katholizismus im Kaiserreich," in

Katholizismus. nationaler Gedanke und Europa seit I8oo, ed. Albrecht Langer (Paderborn :
F. Schoningh, 1985), 65-88; Rudolf Lill, "Die deutschen Katholiken und Bismarcks Reichs
grundung," in Reichsgriindung I870f7I: Tatsachen. Kontroversen, Interpretationen. ed.
Theodor Schieder and Ernst Deuerlein (Stuttgart: Seewald Verlag, 1970), 345-66; Wilfried
Loth, Katholiken im Kaiserreich: Der politische Katholizismus in der Krise des wilhelminischen
Deutschlands (Dusseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1984); Rudolf Morsey, "Die deutschen Katholiken
und der Nationalstaat zwischen Kulturkampf und Ersten Weltkrieg," Ilistorisches Jahrbuch
90 (1970) : 31-64; Anton Rauscher, ed., Katholizismus. Bildung und Wissenschaft in 19. und 20.
Jahrhundert (Paderborn: F. Schoningh, 1987); Ronald J. Ross, Beleaguered Tower: The
Dilemma of Political Catholicism in Wilhelmine Germany (Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1976); idem, The Failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf Catholicism and State
Power in Imperial Germany, 187I-I887 (Washington, D . C . : Catholic University of America
Press, 1998); Wolfgang Schieder, ed., Volksreligiositiit in der modernen Sozialgeschichte (GOt
tingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1986); and Helmut Walser Smith, German Nationalism
and Religious Conflict: Culture. Ideology, Politics, I870-I9I4 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1995) .
4. Oded Heilbronner, "From Ghetto to Ghetto: The Place of German Catholic Society in
Recent Historiography," Journal of Modern History 72 (2000) : 453-95. For an example that
emphasizes the "backward antimodernism" of the Catholic clergy, see the study by Urs
Altermatt, a historian who has considerably shaped the field of modern Catholic Germany,
"Katholizismus: Antimodernismus mit modernen Mitteln?" in Moderne als Problem des
Katholizismus, ed. Urs Altermatt et al. (Regensburg: Verlag F. Pustet, 1995), 33-50. See also
the similar perspective in Martin Baumeister, Paritiit und katholische Inferioritiit: Unter
suchungen zur Stellung des Katholizismus im deutschen Kaiserreich (Paderborn: F. Schoningh ,
1987). Karl-Egon Lonne's discussion of the ultramontane milieu mentality indicates how
prevalent this point of view has become in recent studies. Karl-Egon Lonne, " Katholizismus
F orschung," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 26 (2000) : 1 3 7-44. Other reviews of the development
of the historiography of Catholicism in modern Germany include Margaret Lavinia Ander
son, "Piety and Politics: Recent Work on German Catholicism," Journal of Modern History
63 (1991): 681-71 6; Michael Klocker, "Das katholische Milieu: Grundi.iberlegungen-in
besonderer Hinsicht auf das Deutsche Kaiserreich von 1871," Zeitschrift fiir Religions- und
Geistesgeschichte 44 (1 992) : 241-62; and Eric Yonke, "The Catholic Subculture in Modern
Germany: Recent Work in the Social History of Religion,'' Catholic Historical Review So
(1994) : 5 34-45
I shall show, continuously complained of the Catholic population's

Bildungsdefizit (educational deficit) and backwardness.
In comparison to the body of research now available on Catholi
cism, little careful and sustained research has been devoted to modern
German Protestantism and Protestant piety. David Blackbourn's com
plaint that "the subject of popular Protestantism in the nineteenth cen
tury still awaits its historian" remains for the most part unanswered. S
Yet if research o n Protestantism lags behind research o n Catholicism
and for that matter Judaism in Germany, historians have recently
begun to plow new terrain in the history of religion as they move
beyond the traditional focus on one religious denomination, whether
Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish. Though usually the religious popula
tions have been studied separately, historians are abandoning older
habits, crossing over confessional borders to examine the ways the dif
ferent religious populations in Germany cohabited and reciprocally
shaped religious, social, cultural, and nationalist attitudes and prac
tices.6
At the same time, antireligious attitudes, particularly the study of
the other side of the Catholic revival in the nineteenth century, the dra
matic and parallel resurgence of anticlericalism and anti-Catholicism,
have remained largely unexamined despite their breadth and depth and
their larger meaning for German society and culture. Those studies
that have explored anti-Catholicism in the nineteenth century have
predominantly confined themselves to the period of the Kulturkampf
itself.7 Much of this historiography has concentrated on the national
political dimensions of the church-state conflict. 8 Studies focused on
5 David Blackbourn, "Progress and Piety: Liberals. Catholics. and the State in Bis
marck's Germany," in David Blackbourn, Populists and Patricians: Essays in Modern Ger
man History (London: Allen and Unwin, r987), r43-67, quotation at r6o.
6. This is one of the virtues among others of Smith, German Nationalism. See also the col
lection of essays in Helmut Walser Smith, ed., Protestants, Catholics, and Jews in Germany,
I800-I9I4 (Oxford: Berg, 2001), particularly Helmut Walser Smith and Chris Clark, ''The
Fate of Nathan," 3-32.
7 For important exceptions, see Ross, Beleaguered Tower; and Smith, German National
ism. Margaret Lavinia Anderson examines anti-Catholic sentiments in Wilhelmine politics in
"Interdenominationalism, Clericalism, Pluralism: The Zentrumsstreit and the Dilemma of
Catholicism in Wilhelmine Germany,'' Central European History 2r (r9RR): 350--78. Konrad
Jarausch cites rising prejudice toward ultramontane Catholics among Protestant university
students in Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Rise of Academic Illiber
alism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 377-79.
8. For an exhaustive review of the older literature, see Rudolf Morsey, "Bismarck und der
Kulturkampf: Ein Forschungs- und Literaturbericht, I945-I957," Archiv fiir Kulturgeschichte
39 (1957), 232-70; and idem, "Probleme der Kulturkampf-Forschung," Historisches Jahrbuch
83 (1 964), 2 1 7-43 . See also the extensive bibliographic notes in Rudolf Lill, " Der Kul-
Introduction
Otto von Bismarck as first minister of Prussia and chancellor of the

empire have argued that the Kulturkampf was part of a manipulative
strategy to ally liberal members of the Prussian parliament and the
Reichstag with the state and imperial governments. By offering the
Catholics as a target for liberal hostility, the chancellor hoped to divert
attention away from the demand for constitutional-political reform.
Josef Becker's work exemplifies much of this instrumental and top
down perspective, arguing that "the chancellor imagined himself a
'political chess player, ' holding together the splintering inclinations of
the liberal parties in the empire by means of a slogan appealing to wide
circles, a sort of outcry against popery, in order to corrupt liberalism,
the strongest parliamentary force, through the Kulturkampf and to
divert it from its constitutional-political goals . " 9 Studies that, on the
other hand, stress the role of liberal politicians have also for the most
part studied the church-state conflict as an aspect of parliamentary
politics. Gustav Schmidt, for example, argues that liberal parliamen
tarians saw the Kulturkampf as an opportunity to solidify their politi
cal program, to force the chancellor to depend on liberal support, and
to break the political power of the clergy in order to ensure parliamen
tary majorities. r o
Other works even as they moved beyond parliamentary politics have
retained the traditional focus on Bismarck at the center of the church
state conflict. Heinrich Bornkamm, for example, in his account of the
ostensibly ideological origins of the conflict, concluded finally, "the
Kulturkampf, despite all associated influences, was Bismarck's perturkampf in PreuBen und im deutschen Reich (bis 1X7X)," in Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte,
ed. Herbert Jedin (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1973). 28-47. The most extensive treatment
of the Kulturkampf remains Johannes B . Kissling, Geschichte des Kulturkampfes im
deutschen Reiche, 3 vols. (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 191r-r 6).
9. Josef Becker, Liberaler Staat und Kirche in der Ara von Reichsgriindung und Kul
turkampf Geschichte und Strukturen ihres Verhliltnisses in Baden, J86o-1876 (Mainz:
Matthias Grunewald Verlag, 1973). 375-76. See also Michael Sturmer, Regierung und Reich
stag im Bismarckstaat, I87I-I88o: Ciisarismus oder Parlamentarismus (Dusseldorf: Droste
Verlag, 1974) , 87.
ro. Gustav Schmidt, "Die Nationalliberalen-eine regierungsfiihige Partei? Zur Prob
lematik der inneren Reichsgrundung, 1870-1 878." in Die deutschen Parteien vor 1918:
Parteien und Gesellschaft im konstitutionellen Regierungssystem, ed. Gerhard A. Ritter
(Cologne: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 1973), 208-23. Dieter Langewiesche's account of the
Kulturkampf also argues that the campaign was in part an attempt to bind Bismarck to the
liberals. Dieter Langewiesche, Liberalismus in Deutschland (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp
Verlag, 1988), r82. As Jonathan Sperber notes, these two explanations-one specifying the
role of the state, the other the motivation of the liberals-are not mutually exclusive . Both
could have promoted the church-state conflict in order to increase its influence over the other.
Sperber, Popular Catholicism, 208 .
sonal work." 11 Studies that opened up the deeply nationalist character

of the Kulturkampf see it as primarily an attempt by Bismarck to
"Germanize" the Catholic peripheral populations, particularly the
Polish-speaking nationalist population in the east. 12 Marjorie Lam
berti argues Bismarck conceived of school reform under the Kul
turkampf as a weapon to combat the political activity of the Catholic
clergy in the Polish-speaking areas of Posen, Upper Silesia, and West
Prussia. 13 Studies of the Catholic Church and local and regional stud
ies have more successfully moved beyond the focus on Bismarck at the
center of the Kulturkampf. Christoph Weber's wide-ranging institu
tional study of the church has taken the historiography of the Kul
turkampf into the inner politics of the church hierarchy and the Vati
can. 14 Norbert SchloBmacher's study of Dusseldorf, Karl Rohe's study
of the Ruhr area, and Ute Olliges-Wieczorek's study of Munster are
examples of works that examine the Kulturkampf at the level of local
and regional politics and political organization. rs Together they have
been able to demonstrate the distinctive politicizing effects of the Kul
turkampf on municipal affairs and the Catholic Center Party. Mean
while, in an especially rich local and regional study of Constance, Gert
Zang and others broke new ground with a structural and socioeco
nomic analysis of liberalism and the Kulturkampf in the Grand Duchy
of Baden prior to the church-state conflict in Prussia and the empire. '6
With a sustained campaign against the Catholic Church and particur r . Heinrich Bornkamm, "Die Staatsidee im Kulturkampf," Historische Zeitschrift 179
(1950) : 41-72, 273-306; the quotation is from the edition appearing as Die Staatsidee im Kul
turkampf (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. 1969). 59. See also Adolf Birke,
"'Zur Entwicklung und politischen Funktion des biirgerlichen Kulturkampfverstandnisses in
PreuBen-Deutschland," in Aus Themie und Praxis der Geschichtswissenschaft: Festschrift fur
Hans Herzfeld zurn 8o. Geburtstag, ed. Dietrich Kurze (Berlin : de Gruyter, 1972), 257-79; and
Winfried Becker, "Kulturkampf und Zentrum: Liberale Kulturkampf-Positionen und poli
tischer Katholizismus,'' in Innenpolitische Probleme des Bismarck-Retches, ed. Otto Pfianze
(Munich : R. Oldenbourg, 1983), 47-7 1 .
1 2 . Lech Trzeciakowski, The "Kulturkampf' in Prussian Poland (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1990); Richard Blanke. "The Polish Role in the Origin of the Kulturkampf
in Prussia," Canadian Slavonic Papers 25 (1983): 253-62; Zygmunt Zielinski, "Der Kul
turkampf in der Provinz Posen," Historisches Jahrbuch 101 (1981): 447-6 1 .
1 3 . Marjorie Lamberti, "State, Church, and the Politics o f School Reform during the Kul
turkampf," Central European History 19 (1986): 63-8 1 .
14. Christoph Weber, Kirchliche Politik zwischen Rom, Berlin und Trier 1876-I888: Die
Beilegung des preujJischen Kulturkarnpfes (Mainz: Matthias Grunewald Verlag, 1970) .
1 5 . N o rbert SchloBmacher, Dusseldorf im Bismarckreich: Politik und Wahlen, Parteien und
Vereine (Dusseldorf: Schwann, 1985); Karl R ohe, Vom Revier zurn Ruhrgebiet (Essen: Hob
bing, 1986); Ute Olliges- Wieczorek, Politisches Leben in Munster: Parteien und Vereine im
Kaiserreich (I87I-I9I4) (Munster: Ardey Verlag, 1995).
r6. Gert Zang, ed., Provinzialisierung einer Region: Regionale Unterentwicklung und lib
erate Politik in der Stadt und im Kreis Konstanz irn 19. Jahrhundert. Untersuchungen zur
Introduction
larly its charitable organizations, which liberals believed drained eco

nomic capital and encouraged moral dependence, Constance liberals
launched a progressive program for social improvement, commercial
development, and political autonomy. In a collection of essays impor
tant not only for the Kulturkampf but for the history of German liber
alism, the campaign against the church takes on larger cultural-politi
cal life and social and economic dimensions that are often sorely
lacking in narrow political interpretations of the church-state conflict.
Even this cursory review suggests the volume and range of work on
the Kulturkampf. But even as historians have acknowledged the
importance of this work, they have continued to regard the Kul
turkampf as an underresearched topic and enduring riddle in the his
tory of nineteenth-century Germany. The most recent account contin
ues to point out that the Kulturkampf itself "remains among the least
understood problems of modern German history. "17 Parallel to the
work on the Kulturkampf, there has been a persistent sense that many
rich and interesting questions about the conflict have not been pur
sued.' 8 The best recent work on the anti-Catholic campaign has, there
fore, opened up fresh perspectives, training attention on previously
Entstehung der biirgerlichen Gesellschaft in der Provinz (Frankfurt am Main: Syndikat, 1978).
For work on the Kulturkampf in B aden. see also Becker, Liberaler Staat und Kirche; Lothar
Gall, Der Liberalismus als regierende Partei: Das Grossherzogtum Baden zwischen Restaura
tion und Reichsgriindung (Wiesbaden : F. Steiner, 1968); idem, "Die partei- und
sozialgeschichtliche Problematik des badischen Kulturkampfes," Zeitschrift fiir die
Geschichte des Oberrheins I I 3 (1965): 151-96.
17. Ross, Failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf, 3.
r8. Examples that run parallel to the development of the historiography of nineteenth-cen
tury Germany: 'The statement . . . that the Kulturkampf for historical research remains 'the
most perplexing chapter' of Bismarckian domestic politics continues to be true. " Birke,
'"Funktion des burgerlichen Kulturkampfverstandnisses," 257. '"The central significance that
the Kulturkampf had for the full, domestic development of Germany has not been at all
understood to its full extent. " Gall, "Problematik des badischen Kulturkampfes," r s r .
"Despite a n abundance o f sources that has been available for decades, research o n the Kul
turkampf . . . to this day has not yet attained a satisfactory result. A 'definitive' general
account ['abschliessende ' Gesamtdarstellung] of this fundamental and significant political,
diplomatic, and spiritual struggle is still missing. " Morsey, "Bismarck und der Kul
turkampf," 232. "The history of the Prussian-German Kulturkampf is one of those themes
that still has not been thoroughly researched, placed in its larger historical context, and
examined for its effects on the inner disposition of German Catholics in Wilhelmine Ger
many. " Idem, "Probleme der Kulturkampf-Forschung,'' 217. More recently: The Kul
turkampf "remains remarkably under-researched. " Blackbourn, "Progress and Piety," 143.
'"The popular-cultural aspects of the Kulturkampf and the sometimes near-utopian aspira
tions invested in it by liberal activists are a neglected dimension in the literature ." Geoff Eley,
'"Notable Politics, the Crisis of German Liberalism, and the Electoral Transition of the
r 890s," in In Search of a Liberal Germany: Studies in the History of Germany Liberalism from
1789 to the Present, ed. Konrad H. Jarausch and Larry Eugene Jones (New York: Berg, 1990),
187-2 16, quotation at 194 n. 1 7 .
ro
unexamined social and cultural dimensions of anti-Catholicism and

the anti-Catholic campaign. David Blackbourn broke new ground ini
tially with an important article on the culture of anticlericalism that
pitted liberal "progress" against Catholic "backwardness," arguing
that the Kulturkampf was more than an episode in church-state rela
tions or Bismarckian political calculations. '9 He broke ground again
with his elegant exploration of the cultural meaning of apparitions of
the Virgin Mary in the town of Marpingen under the repressive legisla
tion and state coercion of the Kulturkampf.2 0 In a work that brings
theories of nationalism to the social history and politics of religious
conflict in imperial Germany, Helmut Walser Smith examines the Kul
turkampf as an attempt to impose on the German population a high
culture based on "enlightened Protestantism. " 21 By doing so, he has
developed an argument that consciously takes distance from the Kul
turkampf understood primarily as a liberal or state-sponsored attack
on the church. From a social-historical perspective, Ronald J. Ross's
study of the failure of state power to prosecute successfully the cam
paign against the church captures the popular dimensions and social
depth of a conflict that had been largely passed over as shallow or
unremarkable.22 Recently, Margaret Lavinia Anderson in her rich and
important work on the democratic franchise in imperial Germany has
stressed that the Kulturkampf cannot be understood with the politics
left out. The Kulturkampf, however much it owed to the clash between
radical anticlericalism and fervent ultramontanism, should not be sep
arated from the anxiety that accompanied the introduction of Ger
many's democratic suffrage.23 Arguing that the Kulturkampf was pre
dominantly a political not a cultural struggle, Anderson, in fact, brings
the historiographical perspectives on the Kulturkampf almost full cir
cle by reasserting the primacy of politics.
Together these recent works demonstrate that histories of modern
Germany that either dismiss the Kulturkampf as marginal or accept
the Kulturkampf narrowly as an attack directed merely against the
institution of the church, clericalism, and the Center Party and not
more broadly as a campaign against Catholicism as a way of life are
untenable. The Kulturkampf struck deep into the Catholic population,
19. Blackbourn, "Progress and Piety."
20. Blackbourn. Marpingen.
2 1 . Smith, German Nationalism.
22. Ross, Failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf
23. Anderson, Practicing Democracy. See also idem, "The Kulturkampf and the Course of
German History,'' Central European History 19 (1986): 82-I I 5 .
Introduction
II
both its piety and consciousness, so much so that Catholics in response

formed a relatively closed subculture: Catholics read their own news
papers, borrowed books from their own libraries, shopped at their own
cooperatives, joined their own associations, belonged to their own
trade unions, lived in their part of town, subscribed to their own brand
of nationalism, and clung to their own worldview. For all their consid
erable virtues, however, these works also remain bound to the tradi
tional research on anti-Catholicism inasmuch as they examine anti
Catholicism and the campaign against the Catholic Church only after
the founding of the empire. Studies focused on the period of the Kul
turkampf itself, as important as that period was, enter the history of
anti-Catholicism in the nineteenth century in medias res. While most
accounts of the Kulturkampf give the impression that the anti
Catholic campaign arose spontaneously and suddenly at the beginning
of the r87os and therefore provide little sense of the wide and deep-run
ning anti-Jesuit, antimonastic, and anti-Catholic hysteria prior to Ger
man unification, the groundwork that made the Kulturkampf possible
was, in fact, prepared over a period of decades. In contrast to previous
work, one of the aims here is to expand the chronological horizon of
the Kulturkampf.24 The anti-Jesuit paranoia, rabid antimonasticism
and anticlericalism, and fervent anti-Catholicism that explain the pas
sion of the Kulturkampf developed along with the dramatic revival of
popular Catholicism during the r8 sos and r 86os. This book argues that
grappling with the significance of the anti-Catholic campaign requires
an exploration of anti-Catholicism in Germany after the Revolution of
r 848 and, therefore, a vision trained on the period well before the
inception of Kulturkampf legislation.
Moving the exploration of anticlericalism and anti-Catholicism
back to the r 848 Revolution, r 8 sos, and r 86os opens up the opportu
nity to reevaluate the nature of German liberalism in the second half of
the nineteenth century. By focusing on the liberal obsession with anti
Catholicism particularly in the years before the unification of Ger
many and the unleashing of the Kulturkampf, this work develops new
perspectives on liberalism and liberals in Germany. Over the past three
24. Work on the period before the Kulturkampf is of limited usefulness: Adelheid Con
stabel, ed., Die Vorgeschichte des Kulturkampfes: Que/len aus dem Deutschen Zentralarchiv
(Berlin: Ri.itten und Loening, 1956), though valuable, is only a compilation of source mater
ial. Erich Schmidt, Bismarcks Kampf mit dem politischen Katholizismus: Pius IX und die Zeit
der Riistung 1848-1878 (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1942), and Erich Schmidt
Volkmar, Der Kulturkampf in Deutschland 187I-I890 (Gottingen: M usterschmidt, r962), by
the same author, were written by a member of the SS and exhibit a tendency to accept with
out critical circumspection the j udgment of Catholics as "enemies of the empire ."
12
decades, a considerable amount of work has been devoted to the study

of the nature and development of liberalism in nineteenth-century Ger
many. Conceptually much of this can be traced back to a major histori
ographical debate that opened in the mid-1970s.2s In a seminal essay,
Lothar Gall stressed the importance of the r848 Revolution in the trans
formation of liberalism as a political movement. Gall posited that prein
dustrial German liberalism as a result of the revolution underwent a
transition from a constitutional movement committed to a burgerliche
Gesellschaft or "classless society of burghers" that was dominated by a
large if internally differentiated Mittelstand (shopkeepers, artisans, and
independent farmers) to a bourgeois ideology that was devoted to eco
nomic development and free-market capitalism. As an ideology of bour
geois class interests committed to the preservation of the status quo, lib
eralism became increasingly vulnerable during the period before the
founding of the empire since it was unable to secure support from newly
emerging social forces like the labor movement in the r86os. Provoca
tively, Gall went so far as to suggest that the character of liberalism had
changed so fundamentally that it might not be possible to speak of liber
alism at all in Germany after r8so.26 On this reading, the period coincid
ing with Germany's industrialization appears as the beginning of the end
2 5 . See the excellent historiographical review in the introduction to Jan Palmowski, Urban
Liberalism in Imperial Germany: Frankfurt am Main, I866-I9I4 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999). 1-37, and specifically for the different arguments concerning the change of liber
alism, 3R-42. See also Hartwig Brandt, " Forschungsbericht: Zu einigen Liberalismusdeutun
gen der siebziger und achtziger Jahre," Geschichte und Gesellschaft I 7 (r99r) : 5r2-30; Hellmut
Seier, "Liberalismus und Burgertum in Mitteleuropa 18 5o-r 88o: Forschung und Literatur
seit 1970," in Biirgertum und biirgerlich-liberale Bewegung in Mitteleuropa seit dem I8.
Jahrhundert, ed. Lothar Gall (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1997), 132-229.
26. Lothar Gall, "Liberalismus und 'biirgerliche Gesellschaft' : Zur Charakter und
Entwicklung der liberalen Bewegung in Deutschland," Historische Zeitschrift 220 (1975):
324-56. Gall's thesis, which ran throughout his subsequent work. was an application to Ger
man liberalism in general of his groundbreaking regional study of liberalism in Baden from
r848 to r87r, a study in which he carefully described the liberal abandonment of previously
cherished ideals in the years before the founding of the empire. Idem, Der Liberalismus als
regierende Partei; idem, ''Liberalismus und Nationalstaat: Der deutsche Liberalismus und
die Reichsgriindung," in Biirgertum, liberate Bewegung und Nation: Ausgewahlte Aufsatze,
ed. Dieter Hein, Andreas Schulz, and Eckhardt Treichel (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1996),
r90-202; idem, " 'Siidenfall' des liberalen Den kens oder Krise der Biirgerlich-Liberalen Bewe
gung?" in Liberalismus und imperialistischer Staat: Der Imperialismus als Problem liberaler
Parteien in Deutschland, I890-I9I4, ed. K. Holl and G. List (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und
Ruprecht, 1975), 14R-5R . The idea of a preindustrial liberalism committed to a classless soci
ety of citizens is elaborated in the collection of articles in Wolfgang Schieder, ed., Liberalis
mus in der Gesellschaft des deutschen Vormarz (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht,
1983).
Introduction
13
of liberalism; liberalism was not, after all, the ideological path breaker
toward modern industrial society.
At the same time, in a thesis even more sharply formulated than
Gall's, Michael Gugel argued that in the middle of the century German
liberalism lost its original progressive, emancipatory character and
became an exclusive, biirgerlich class movement. Facing the social con
sequences of industrialization, namely, the rise of the working class
and the demise of the petite bourgeoisie, liberals either rejected or at
least reinterpreted their original goals in favor of a defense of their
social status. According to Gugel, the liberal political strategy during
the constitutional conflict that dominated Prussian political life from
1861 to 1866 is best understood not by the allure of Realpolitik ideology
but as a recalculation of their socioeconomic interests .27 Recent local
and regional studies of voluntary associations central to the Burger as
a social group have given further specificity and empirical ballast to
Gall's thesis. For example, Michael Wettengel's study of the Rhein
Main area argues that the experience of the 1 848 Revolution was, at
least in the Duchy of Hesse, the Duchy of Nassau, and the Free City of
Frankfurt, the decisive break point in the trajectory of liberalism.
Here, according to Wettengel, liberals faced with the failure of the rev
olution and under the pressure of the reactionary decade of the 18 sos
jettisoned the idealism of the Vormarz and became hard-nosed realists
as they constituted new and modern political parties. 28
Together Gall and Gugel unleashed a spirited debate concerning the
course and fate of liberalism in the nineteenth century. Wolfgang J.
Mommsen soon argued that both Gall and Gugel idealized the politi
cal and social program of preindustrial liberalism and, by limiting the
character of early liberalism to a "constitutional movement, " masked
or distorted liberal social and economic interests.29 Mommsen pro27. Michael Gugel, Industrieller Aufsteig und biirgerliche Herrschaft: Soziookonomische
Interessen und politische Ziele des liberalen Biirgertwns im PreujJen zur Zeit des VeFjas
sungskonflikts 1857-1867 (Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, 1975).
28. Michael Wettengel, Die Revolution von 1848/49 im Rhein-Main-Raum: Politische Ver
eine und Revolutionsalltag im Grossherzogtum Hessen, Herzogtum Nassau und in der Freien
Stadt Frankfurt (Wiesbaden: Historische Kommission fiir Nassau. 1989), 504. See also Frank
Moller, Biirgerliche Herrschaft in Augsburg 1790-J88o (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1998) by one
of Gall's students and also a study of voluntary associations, though the argument ultimately
does not fit easily into Gall's periodization.
29. Wolfgang J. Mommsen, '"Der deutsche Liberalismus zwischen 'klassenloser Biirgerge
sellschaft' und 'organisierten Kapitalismus' : Zu einigen neuern Liberalismusinterpretatio
nen," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 4 (1978): 77-90.
14
posed that the crisis that changed liberalism into a socially conserva
tive ideology came not in 1848-49 or even 1 866-67 or 1878-79 but
rather only later in the 1 8 8os with the second thrust of industrial devel
opment, protective tariff policy, and the dramatic rise of the working
class. Under the conditions of "high capitalism, " liberalism began its
demise, the liberal movement disintegrated, and the classical liberal
program lost its persuasive appeal. Meanwhile, in the first synthetic
evaluation of German liberalism since Friedrich C. Sell's comprehen
sive treatment of the theme in 1953, James J. Sheehan examined "the
relationship between liberalism and German society" throughout the
nineteenth century.3 In a study of liberal elites, changing social condi
tions, party politics, election returns, and city and regional contexts,
Sheehan explored, as he argued, "the way in which the historical situa
tion narrowed liberals' choices and often precluded alternatives that
might have enabled them to save themselves and their ideals . " 3r Shee
han described an early liberalism that was not simply dominated by the
Honoratioren (notables) of the Bildungsbiirgertum-intellectuals, civil
servants, and the economic bourgeoisie-but also included a broadly
based and socially diverse Mittelstand. Sheehan supported Gall's argu
ment to the extent that he showed that the social heterogeneity of lib
eralism in the prerevolutionary period as well as its ideals meant that it
was not a class-based movement. Sheehan, however, argued that liber
alism began its decline not with the 1 848 Revolution but with the
founding of the empire in the 1 8 70s. Although liberalism was once a
movement of political opposition, liberals now advocated Bismarck's
Kulturkampf, foreign policy, and social-economic programs; no
longer a movement of the Mittelstand, liberalism alienated Catholics,
workers, and ethnic minorities. Sheehan concluded, "By the 1 890s,
30. James J . Sheehan, German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 197R), 2. Sheehan's book was the culmination of a series of interrelated
arguments he had been developing over the previous decade: idem, "Deutscher Liberalismus
im postliberalen Zeitalter, r 890-I914,'' Geschichte und Gesellschaft 4 (1978): 29-48; idem,
"Liberalism and the City in Nineteenth Century Germany," Past and Present 5r (r97r):
u6-37; idem, "Liberalism and Society in Germany, rR15-4R ," Journal of Modern History 45
(r973) : 58 3-604; idem, "Partei, Yolk, and Staat: Some Reflections on the Relationship
between Liberal Thought and Action in Vormarz," Sozialgeschichte Heute, ed. Hans-Ulrich
Wehler (Gottingen : Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1974), 162-74; idem, "Political Leadership
in the German Reichstag, r R 71-19IR," American Historical Review 74 (r96R): 5 u-2R . Sell
described the history of German liberalism, tied as it was to the history of Germany as a
whole, as a "tragedy" that culminated in r933. an assessment that was enormously important
for subsequent studies of liberalism. Friedrich C. Sell, Die Tragodie deutschen Liberalismus
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, r953).
3r. Sheehan, German Liberalism. 3
Introduction
15
their dreams emptied by frustration, dissension, and defeat, the liberals

receded to the fringes of political life. "32
As historians continued to debate the location of the "decisive" turn
ing point in the course of German liberalism, the debate itself took a
turn with a stimulating critique by David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley of
dominant interpretations in current German historiography. They
together exposed as a myth the established notion of a Sonderweg or
unique course of German historical development and, as they did so,
pushed the watershed for German liberalism even further back in the
nineteenth century.33 The significance of the Sonderweg debate has been
well rehearsed. As is well known, historians who advocate the Sonder
weg thesis argue that an insufficient legacy of liberalism in general and
the abortive Revolution of 1848 in particular meant that Germany in the
second half of the nineteenth century failed to establish within society
the liberal and democratic foundations that developed in other Western
countries at that time. According to these historians, preindustrial elites
retained their privileged positions within a political autocracy. At the
same time, the liberal desire for political reform was silenced by the
national unification they themselves had been unable to achieve; cultur
ally and socially the bourgeoisie was feudalized and then distracted by a
"social imperialist" policy of manipulation from above.34 Blackbourn
and Eley contend that this interpretation of German deviant develop32. Ibid., 273. After his initial reply to Gall's thesis, Mommsen seemed to agree with Shee
han that the period 1870 to r 89o was decisive in the transition of liberalism: "The period
between about r870 and r 890 must be seen as the final phase in the history of bourgeois lib
eralism, at any rate at the level of the state .'' Wolfgang J. Mommsen, " Society and State in
Europe in the Age of Liberalism, 1870-1890," in Imperial Germany, I867-I9I8: Politics, Cul
ture, and Society in an Authoritarian State (London and New York: Arnold, 1995), 57-74,
quotation at 6 5 . This essay was first published as "Gesellschaft und Staat im liberalen Zeital
ter: Europa 1870-1 890," in Der autoritare Nationalstaat: Verfassung, Gesellschaft und Kultur
des deutschen Kaiserreiches (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1990), 86-ro8.
3 3 David Blackbourn and GeofT Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois
Society and Politics in Nineteenth- Century Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, r984),
published originally as David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, Mythen deutscher Geschichts
schreibung: Die gescheiterte biirgerliche Revolution von 1848 (Frankfurt am Main and Berlin :
Ullstein Materialien, 1980) .
3 4 The most prominent proponent o f the Sonderweg interpretation was Hans-Ulrich
Wehler in Das deutsche Kaiserreich, I87I-I9I8 (Gi.ittingen : Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht,
1973), appearing in English as idem, The German Empire, I87I-I9I8, trans. K. Traynor
(Leamington Spa: Berg, 1985), and idem. Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 3. Von der
"Deutschen Doppelrevolution " bis zum Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges, 1849-1914 (Munich: C.
H. Beck, r987-96) . Other influential work that developed this approach included Ralf
Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (New York: W. W. N orton, 1967); and Bar
rington Moore. The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (B oston : Beacon, 1966).
r6
ment rested on a normative, ahistorical, and misconceived comparison

with the French, English, and American experiences.
Just as important, Blackburn and Eley argue that the fixation of his
torians on the defeat of the r 848 Revolution has blinded them to the
considerable accomplishments of German liberals in the nineteenth
century. Despite the political failures of the r 848 Revolution, the com
promise of constitutional reform, and the realignment with protective
tariffs, German liberals nonetheless waged an economic, social, and
cultural "silent revolution." They achieved many of their most impor
tant objectives in the domain of civil society, particularly during the
r 8 sos and r 86os, and successfully established the "hegemony of the
bourgeoisie. " Only in the r8gos, according to Blackbourn and Eley, did
the traditional solidarities of liberal Honoratiorenpolitik (politics of
notables) finally give way to a new style of mass, nationalist politics.35
Faced with the more complex and fragmented array of political con
stituencies in the final decade of the century, the National Liberals,
unlike the Conservatives and the Catholic Center Party, failed to cre
ate popular organizations that included workers, the peasantry, and
the Mittelstand. The liberal parties ultimately proved, Blackbourn and
Eley argue, unable to keep pace with the dramatic rise in voter turnout
that favored the parties to the right.36
Historians have by now criticized the German Sonderweg from dif
ferent theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives so suc
cessfully that the interpretation no longer dominates contemporary
For one of the first essays critical of the notion of a Sonderweg, see Thomas Nipperdey,
"Wehler's 'Kaiserreich': Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung," Geschichte und Gesellschaft I
(1975): 539-60. Among the best surveys of the debate are Roger Fletcher, "Recent Develop
ments in West German Historiography: The Bielefeld School and Its Critics,'' German Stud
ies Review 7 (r984) : 45r-8o; Robert G. Moeller, "The Kaiserreich Recast? Continuity and
Change in Modern German Historiography," Journal of Social History 17 (1984): 655-83;
and James Retallack, "Social History with a Vengeance? Some Reactions to H.-U. Wehler's
'Das Deutsche Kaiserreich.' ' German Studies Review 7 (1984): 423-50.
3 5 . Blackbourn and Eley also reevaluate the Sonderweg and posit the r89os as a major
shift in political alignments in, respectively, Blackbourn, Class, Religion, and Local Politics;
Geoff Eley, Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bis
marck (New H aven : Yale University Press, 1 980); and idem, ''Notable Politics." See also the
collection of essays in Richard J. Evans, Society and Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (Lon
don: Croom Helm, 1978).
36. Jonathan Sperber's examination of elections throughout the imperial period substan
tiates Blackbourn's and Eley's identification of the 1890s as a decade of considerable move
ment between parties, marking a break from Bismarckian election patterns. At the same time
he concludes in contrast to Blackbourn and Eley that voter turnout declined during the
Reichstag elections of the 1890s. Jonathan Sperber, The Kaiser's Vo ters: Electors and Elec
tions in Imperial Germany (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. 1997).
'
Introduction
17
German historiography.37 Even so, it continues to serve as a concep

tual touchstone, often implicit, that historians use to order debate
about fundamental aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ger
man society, politics, and culture, particularly the course of liberal
ism.38 In a comprehensive examination of liberalism as ambitious as
Sheehan's, Dieter Langewiesche focuses not on a special variant of
German liberalism but on liberalism in Germany, a reorientation con
sciously recorded in the title of his book.39 In this work and in a string
of subsequent essays, Langewiesche argues that liberalism in Germany
can be understood only if every change is not equated with a deviation
from its original goals.4 He emphasizes continuities within liberalism
over the course of the century: early liberalism may have shifted from
a utopian vision of a classless society of citizens to an increasingly
bourgeois ideology at midcentury, but at the same time basic tenets,
including optimism; an orientation to the future; and a commitment to
progressive reform, most notably education, remained intact. In
Langewiesche's nuanced evaluation, liberalism was not characterized
by a simple linear demise; despite failures beyond r87r liberal ideas
continued to pervade German society and influenced the prevailing
political culture. Liberal parties helped lay the legal, social, and eco
nomic foundations of the nation-state and helped establish the infra37 Even Jilrgen Kocka and Hans-Ulrich Wehler, two principal proponents of the Son
derweg thesis. have retracted much of their original point of view. Jiirgen Kocka. ed., Biirg
ertum im 19. Jahrhundert: Deutschland im europaischen Vergleich (Munich: Deutscher
Taschenbuch Verlag, 1988), 58; idem, "Germany before Hitler: The Debate about the Ger
man Sonderweg, " Journal of Contemporary History 23 (1988) : 3-16. Hans-Ulrich Wehler,
'"Deutsches Bildungsbiirgertum in vergleichender Perspektive: Elemente eines "Sonder
wegs'?'' in Bildungsbiirgertum im 19. Jahrhundert: Politischer EinflujJ und gesellschaftliche For
mation, ed. Jilrgen Kocka (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1989), 215-3 7.
3 8 . For a general reappraisal of German liberals, see Elizabeth Fehrenbach, Veljas
sungsstaat und Nationsbildung J815-I87I (Munich: R . Oldenbourg, 1992); for liberal achieve
ments, particularly the rule of law in civil society, see Michael John, Politics and the Law in
Late Nineteenth- Century Germany: The Origins of the Civil Code (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1989); and for a regional study that challenges the traditional concept of "unpolitical''
liberals, Rudy Koshar, Social Life, Local Politics, and Nazism: Marburg, J880-I935 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986).
39 Langewiesche, Liberalismus in Deutschland.
40. These essays include Dieter Langewiesche, "Bildungsbilrgertum und Liberalism us im
19. Jahrhundert," in Bildungsbiirgertum und Liberalismus im 19. Jahrhundert. Part 4. Politi
sche EinflujJ und gesellschaftliche Formation. ed. Jiirgen Kocka (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1989),
95-121; idem, "German Liberalism in the Second Empire, 1871-1914,'' in In Search of a Lib
eral Germany: Studies in the History of German Liberalism from 1789 to the Present, ed. Kon
rad H. Jarausch and Larry Eugene Jones (New York: Berg, 1 990) . 217-35; idem. 'The N ature
of German Liberalism," in Modern Germany Reconsidered, I870-1945. ed. Gordon Martel
(London : Routledge, 1992), 96-n6.
r8
structures necessary for modern life in the cities. In fact, politically left
liberalism experienced a remarkable revival in the first years of the
twentieth century before the collapse of the empire in 1 9 1 8 . Only during
the Weimar years was liberalism discredited before, according to
Langewiesche, it was finished off by the Nazi rise to power in 1933.
Similarly, Konrad H. Jarausch and Larry Eugene Jones have also
revised the account of liberal development through the nineteenth cen
tury to the post-1945 period.41 Together they argue that the course of
liberalism is not characterized by one decisive break; rather it exhibits
an uneven pattern with "peaks of success" and "valleys of disappoint
ment and failure" that do not coincide with previous evaluations. From
the French Revolution through the Vormarz, liberal ideas, according to
Jarausch and Jones, emerged in a network of voluntary progressive
associations in German society. The Revolution of 1 848 marked not the
ultimate failure of liberalism but a temporary setback from which the
liberal movement recovered by the end of the reactionary 18 5os. The
period from the beginning of the so-called New Era in 1 8 5 8 to Bis
marck's "second founding" of the empire in 1878-79 witnessed not the
compromise of liberals with the authoritarian state but the first triumph
of liberalism during which liberals were able to launch much of the
major legislation including the Kulturkampf of the new empire.
Bismarck's break with the National Liberals at the end of the 1870s
initiated, Jarausch and Jones argue, a period of fragmentation and
decline that lasted until the 1890s . With the turn of the century came
not liberal isolation and dissolution in the face of mass, nationalist
organizations but a second wave of liberal achievements that culmi
nated in 1919 with the founding of the Weimar Republic. During this
period, the progressive parties revitalized themselves by reaching over
class and religious lines to social democratic and Catholic constituen
cies. This period of success was followed by the chaotic course of
social, political, and economic developments specific to the Weimar
period that together devastated the social basis of the German liberal
parties and finally provided the Nazi Party with its electoral triumph.
Liberalism experienced a third wave of accomplishment in the postwar
period with the establishment of liberal ideas and practices in the
41 . J arausch and Jones, " Getman Liberalism Reconsidered: Inevitable Decline, Bourgeois
Hegemony, or Partial Achievement?'' in In Search of a Liberal Germany: Studies in the His
tory of German Liberalism from 1789 to the Present, ed. Konrad H. Jarausch and Larry
Eugene Jones (New York: Berg, 1990), 1-23.
Introduction
19
social, economic, and political life of the Federal Republic of Ger

many. Ultimately, Jarausch and Jones argue that evaluating the course
of liberalism requires standards that include not just the electoral per
formance of its parties but its social and cultural dimensions as well.
The debate concerning the fate of liberalism in Germany seems to
have no immediate end in sight; recent research on liberalism at the
local level promises to ensure that the debate will only continue. For
example, in a study of Frankfurt am Main during the second empire
Jan Palmowski evaluates liberals as they actually exercised power at
the municipal level of government, the only level at which liberals
across Germany had any real political power throughout the empire .42
He identifies the late r 86os and r 8 7os as the crucial watershed that wit
nessed the fundamental politicization of urban government: during
this period, which included the founding of local liberal parties, politics
took on the characteristics that lasted in their essentials well into the
Weimar Republic. As urban liberal leaders pushed through maj or
reforms, they proved themselves politically astute, innovative, and pre
pared when necessary to compromise-behavior, Palmowski argues,
that indicates their vitality, proves their realism, and refutes the image
of German "unpolitical" notables.
In short, historians of German liberalism have argued for a funda
mental change in liberal ideology after midcentury while disagreeing as
to precisely when this transition took place. In a series of often mutu
ally contradictory accounts, they have located the "decisive" turning
point(s) and period(s) of success and failure in virtually every decade
from the Revolution of r 848 to the Weimar Republic. Most argue that
change for either better or worse was due to one or more seminal
events: the defeat of the Revolution of r 848, the years of repression in
the conservative decade of reaction, capitalist economic prosperity, the
constitutional conflict of the mid-r86os, the success of Bismarck's
"Blood and Iron, " the allure of Realpolitik, and Bismarck's break with
the National Liberals in 1 8 78-79. Clearly all of these events had a
major impact on liberals, liberal practice, and liberal theory in the sec
ond half of the nineteenth century. But we miss an important part of
the development of liberalism as a political ideology, as a social vision,
and as a self-identity as long as the issues and terms remain fixed on
middle-class prosperity with the economic boom of the r86os, the con-
42. Palmowski, Urban Liberalism.
20
stitutional battle, the success of the wars of unification, the split of the
liberals with the "second founding" of the empire, and the fate of Hon
oratiorenpolitik. As important as these factors were in themselves, lib
eralism in the second half of the century cannot be understood with
reference alone to political and economic pressures.
If so, then Dagmar Herzog's study of religious politics in prerevo
lutionary Baden, exploring liberalism from a decidedly different
angle, opens up opportunities to reevaluate liberalism in Germany.43
Rooted in feminist theory and literary criticism, Herzog focuses on
the discursive relationships that tied together and reshaped controver
sies over ecclesiastical authority, Jewish emancipation, and women's
rights. In reaction to Catholic conservatives' intransigent policy
regarding clerical celibacy and marriage between Protestants and
Catholics, many liberals embraced the cause in general of religious
dissenters and in particular the antiultramontane Deutschkatholiken
(German Catholics) . Support of the religious rights of Deutschkatho
liken and opposition to Catholic hard-line orthodoxy, not commit
ment to universal equality, compelled liberals to accept Jewish eman
cipation. However, the terms in which liberals accepted Jewish
emancipation contributed to the persistence of anti-Jewish prejudice.
The liberal paradox is likewise evident in the attitudes of
Deutschkatholiken toward women's rights. The deutsch-katholisch
attitude, like the mainstream liberal notion of gender equality, was
undermined by an insistence on gender difference that excluded
women from genuine emancipation.44 Not only salient political and
economic themes, therefore, but also private matters of intimacy such
as faith, marriage, and sex reshaped the liberal political agenda in pre
revolutionary Baden . These arguments may together amount to a
reorientation of the more traditional study of liberalism. Since they
are, however, limited to the Vormarz and to Baden, it remains to be
seen whether they apply generally to liberalism in Germany in the
nineteenth century. Indeed, since Herzog focuses on Deutschkatho
liken, a small minority among liberals in the duchy, it is not clear that
her conclusions are representative of liberalism even in Baden in the
Vormarz.45
43. Dagmar Herzog, Intimacy and Exclusion: Religious Politics in Pre-Revolutionary
Baden (Princeton: Princeton University Press, I996).
44 "Liberalism,"' Herzog concludes, "was part of the problem. " Ibid 82. See also 58.
45. Baden may also be an unlikely place for a case study of Deutschkatholiken. Most of
the early deutschkatholisch congregations were located in Saxony, and the largest congrega
tion was, in fact, located in Breslau in Prussia, where some one thousand people signed a
.
Introduction
21
The perspective according to which modern liberal ideology masks a

deep authoritarian strain that can be traced to the totalizing utopian
project of the Enlightenment bears on anti-Catholicism in the nine
teenth century and offers ways to rethink particularly the Kul
turkampf. Ultimately, most historians have tried to account for the
Kulturkampf by explaining it away: the Kulturkampf with its intoler
ance and state coercion, they argue, amounts to a mistake along the
liberal trajectory of the nineteenth century.46 They dismiss the Kul
turkampf as a betrayal of the ideal of universal rights, a moment of lib
eral absentmindedness or acquiescence to Bismarckian manipulation
during which, in either case, liberals abandoned their cherished princi
ples. Even on its own terms the explanation for the Kulturkampf as a
liberal "accident" seems unsatisfactory on three counts. First, the lib
eral hatred of Catholics that culminated in the Kulturkampf was too
deep, too intense, and too abiding to be simply a mistake. Second,
accounting for the Kulturkampf as a misguided departure from the
presumably normative course of liberalism forecloses further critical
inquiry into the origins of the Kulturkampf and the nature of liberal
ism. Finally, as recent scholarship has emphasized, presupposing a
normative course as against a deviant one for the development of Ger
man liberalism in the nineteenth century is ahistorical: liberal ideology
was what it was in any given historical period, not what it should have
been. The Kulturkampf was not due to the liberals' insufficient com
mitment to their own creed. Nor was it the case that German liberals
declaration of membership at the congregation's founding in early 1845 and over eight
thousand belonged by 1847. Herzog also gives considerable space to Louise Dittmar, her
self an exceptionally radical feminist for the time, and since she did not live in Baden and
she did not publish her works there (she merely gave several addresses at the small M onday
Club at the very end of the Vormarz in 1 8 4 7). it is unlikely that Dittmar had a major impact
on the formulation of Badenese prerevolutionary liberalism . Fundamental questions there
fore remain regarding the formation of liberal identity and ideology in nineteenth-century
Germany.
46. As examples, see Bomkamm, Die Staatsidee im Kulturkampf, 18; Gordon A. Craig,
Germany, 1866-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, r978), 77-78; Haj o Holborn, A
History of Modern Germany, I840-1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 2: 264;
Lill, "'Der Kulturkampf in Preul3en," 38; Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Ger
many (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 2 : 1 78; Schmidt, "'Die Nationalliberalen,"
214. For exceptions, see the comments in Geoff Eley, '"Bismarckian Germany," in Modern
Germany Reconsidered, I870-1945, ed. Gordon Martel (London: Routledge, 1992), 1-32;
idem, " State Formation, N ationalism, and Political Culture in Nineteenth-Century Ger
many," in Culture, Ideology, and Politics: Essays for Eric Hobsbawm, ed. Raphael Samuel
and Gareth Stedman Jones (London: Routledge. 1982), 277-301; and Smith, German Nation
alism, 37-41 .
22
were endowed with an inadequate Enlightenment legacy. On the con

trary, the German liberals who were Kulturkampfer (culture warriors)
against the Catholic Church and Catholicism were passionately dedi
cated to their ideals and incessantly referenced the Enlightenment for
inspiration and orientation. From the perspectives of cultural studies,
the issue is rather that intolerance, specifically anti-Catholic intoler
ance, was, I argue, integral to liberalism in the second half of the nine
teenth century.
Understanding why this was so requires recognizing a specific cogni
tive process of identity formation that placed anti-Catholicism at the
center of liberal ideology and practice in the second half of the century.
After the defeat of the r 848 Revolution, when liberals faced oppression
and ultimately worried about their own continued relevance in the con
servative decade of reaction, they found themselves in a crisis of pur
pose and identity that required critical reevaluation, associational
reorganization, and cultural-ideological reorientation. In the context
of the dramatic Catholic missionary campaign and the revival of pop
ular Catholicism taking place all over Germany, the liberal response
was to develop new anticlerical and anti-Catholic rhetorical metaphors
and practices that by means of differentiation and contrast proved
powerful ways to define and assert the bourgeois claim to social hege
mony. During the New Era after r 8 5 8 , the liberals' stigmatization of
Jesuits, priests, monks, and Catholics as stupid, medieval, supersti
tious, feminine, and un-German helped orient their vision of German
society toward modern rationalism, bourgeois individualism, high
industrialization, free-market capitalism, the unified nation-state, and
gender-specific public and private spheres. By examining the formation
of liberal identity and the liberal prescription for German society after
the defeat of the revolution and during the resurgence of popular
Catholicism, this book identifies the moral, social, and cultural imper
atives behind the Kulturkampf of the r 8 7os. The Kulturkampf emerges
in this light not as an exception to liberal principles but as the culmi
nation of liberal demands for a modern German political, economic,
social, and sexual order. Anti-Catholic intolerance was not derivative
but constitutive of liberalism; it was not an ancillary expression but, on
the contrary, at the core of liberalism in Germany.
Outline of the Argument
Two conceptual precepts inform the course of this work. First, liberal
ism is understood here not simply as a political movement and set of
Introduction
23
economic principles but more broadly, as Konrad Jarausch and Larry

Eugene Jones have argued, as also a body of cultural attitudes and
social practices. As culture, "liberalism existed as a powerful cluster of
related ideas and principles that helped legitimate bourgeois claims to
social and political hegemony. "47 At the center of this cluster was the
idea of the individual free from any restriction to the development of
personality. "Directed against the unholy trinity of feudalism, abso
lutism, and religious orthodoxy, this ideal posited the cultivation of
human reason and the development of the human intellect as the high
est goal of all cultural activity."48 Different aspects of German liberal
ism-a belief in a biirgerlich social order, a constitutional though not
necessarily parliamentary state, a historically grounded belief in civil
and human rights, a belief in reform within rather than emancipation
from the state, a belief in private property and rights-were all
embraced by the idea of Bildung, the cultivation of the human intellect
and spirit. For German liberals Bildung was the defining characteristic
of men as individuals and as members of civil society. As one historian
has argued, German liberals believed "only the Gebildete [cultivated
man] was competent to participate 'reasonably' in public discourse,
and only the Gebildete could become an 'autonomous personality'
the highest credo in liberal thinking. "49 Living a liberal life, however,
entailed more than simply the cultivation of intellect and indepen
dence . It was also, according to Dieter Langewiesche, a historically
specific "style of thinking" characterized by an "affinity for the new, an
orientation toward the future, a belief in progress toward more free
dom, rights, and reason. " s o If liberalism was a culture of rationalism,
individualism, independence, Bildung, and progress-the principles in
general of liberal modernity-then this study examines liberalism as a
historically specific cognitive style in nineteenth-century Germany, a
psychological and rhetorical dispo sition that was, I argue, anti
Catholic.
Second, this study accepts the assumption that words and deeds can
produce meanings and identities that transcend in often unexpected
47 Jarausch and Jones, "German Liberalism," 22.
48. Ibid.
49 Gangolf Hiibinger, Kulturprotestantisrnus und Politik: Zurn Verhiiltnis vorn Liberalis
rnus und Protestantismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland (Tiibingen : J. C. B . Mohr, r994), 8 .
See also Margret Kraul, "Bildung und Bi.irgerlichkeit," i n Biirgerturn irn 19. Jahrhundert:
Deutschland im europiiischen Verlgeich, ed. Jiirgen Kocka and Ute Frevert (Munich:
Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1988), 3 :45-73.
so. Langewiesche, "Bildungsbi.irgertum und Liberalismus," 96.
24
and unwelcome ways the intentions of their original authors and

actors . By tracing the management of images in anti-Catholic texts or
mob attacks against Jesuits and monasteries, it is possible to trace lib
erals working through who they were and what they wanted the Ger
man nation to be morally, socially, economically, and culturally. It is
also possible, however, to uncover within anti-Catholic discourse and
practice the deep level of dysphoria that characterized German liber
als' cognitive relationship to Roman Catholics. The confrontation
with the resurgence of popular Catholicism after 1 848 betrayed com
plex anxieties among liberals about their capacity to establish a unified,
rationalized, scientific, and industrial German nation. In the liberal
imagination, the Catholic revival represented a new age of mass cul
ture, political democratization, and women's emancipation, an age
seemingly hostile to independent character, Honoratiorenpolitik, and
the rational public sphere. The specific terms of anti-Catholicism as an
act of creative imagination shaped an identity that was, I argue, riddled
with insecurities about the reemerging women's movement; the rise of
socialism; the masculine public persona; and, ultimately, the viability
of liberalism itself. Liberal men made their own identity, but they did
not make it just as they pleased.
These issues and arguments are addressed in thematic chapters
organized roughly chronologically from the Catholic Church's reac
tion to the 1 848 Revolution through the dissolution (for all practical
purposes) of the liberal and state campaign against the church at the
end of the 1 8 7os. Chapter 1 examines the ultramontane Catholic
revival that was the context for unprecedented levels of liberal anti
Catholic hysteria. It traces the response of Catholic Church authori
ties to the chaos they believed had been unleashed by the liberal-spon
sored 1 848 Revolution against throne and altar, the pillars of social,
political, and religious order. In the wake of the revolution, with a
feverish crusade of missions and the development of new forms of
piety, the Catholic Church dramatically reawakened and mobilized
popular Catholicism. While I examine the role of the missions in the
Catholic resurgence throughout Germany, the concentration is pri
marily on the Rhineland, a region that due to its heavily Catholic pop
ulation has been the focus of previous research on the popular
revival.5' I revisit this region using different source material in order to
5 1 . Erwin Gatz, Rheinische Volksmission im f9. Jahrhundert: Dargestellt am Beispiel des
Erzbistums Koln (Dusseldorf: L . Schwann, 1963); Bernhard Scholten, Die Volksmission der
Introduction
25
revise previous conclusions about the conduct of the missionary cam

paign and its impact on popular Catholic culture . In contrast to
Jonathan Sperber's work on Rhineland-Westphalia, for example, I
show that as the campaign continued into the late 1 86os the number of
missions did not abate but in fact increased, that the missions were
better organized and more systematic than in the 1 8 50s. More impor
tant, the church's campaign appears not merely as a bulwark against
religious indifference and political radicalism; with their dynamic ser
mons that pounded audiences with the threat of infernal damnation,
hellfire, and brimstone, the missions were instruments of psychologi
cal and public terror, traumatizing their audiences and driving them
back into the church. By moving beyond the biased reports of clergy
men, I also show, again in contrast to Sperber, that though the mis
sions had a profound impact on religiosity, alltaglich (everyday) pat
terns of popular, rural culture remained resilient despite the church's
efforts to improve moral conductY
Chapter 2 examines the impact of the Catholic missions on Protes
tants and Protestant religious authorities, a topic that has been passed
over in the social and religious history of modern Germany. The mis
sions were remarkable "intraconfessional zones" where the different
religious populations mixed and reconfessionalized in unprecedented
ways . Contrary to the largely unquestioned assumption by historians
that the Protestant population was undergoing an unrelenting process
of secularization throughout the century (not simply in Germany but
across Europe), the evidence indicates that one of the unexpected
results of the Catholic missionary campaign was the heavy attendance
of Protestants and with it the reawakening of popular Protestant reli
giosity. At the same time, the response of the Protestant leadership to
the Catholic missions and revival was the development of militant anti
Catholicism and anti-Jesuit hysteria in particular. Within this context
the chapter explores with close readings of important liberal prescrip
tive texts how anti-Catholicism could be used to rehabilitate and reori
ent German liberalism after the shattering events of 1848 and 1 849, in
the following decade of state repression and during a new age of indus
trial development. The chapter finally examines the polarization of lib
eralism and Catholicism by the late 1 86os and argues that the Kul
turkampf was not simply the expression of traditional Protestant
Redemptoristen vor dem Kulturkampf im Raum der Niederdeutschen Ordensprovinz (Bonn :
Hofbauer-Verlag, r976); Sperber, Popular Catholicism.
sz. Ibid. , 56-63. 91-98.
26
anti-Catholicism but a more specifically liberal project for social and

cultural reform.S3
Chapter 3 is a more focused examination of the culture of anticleri
calism and anti-Catholicism, concentrating on the relationship
between the meaning of antimonasticism and anticonvent hysteria and
the liberal reconstruction of self and nation. Liberals like state author
ities looked with alarm yet fascination on the dramatic increase in the
number of male and female religious orders during the postrevolution
ary period. As purported relics from the feudal period in an age that,
liberals believed, was supposed to be modern, progressive, and sci
entific, monasteries and monks across the German landscape served in
the imagination as historical artifacts that could orient the middle class
culturally in the direction of industrialization, capitalism, productive
labor, and nation building. I also look for the production of identity
and meaning in the proliferation in widely read liberal journals and
newspapers of lurid stories about sexual atrocities in convents. These
stories on the one hand serviced bourgeois demands for morbid and
prurient entertainment. On the other hand, and more important, fan
tasies about sexual intrigue in convents and nuns secretly hidden away
to rot in dungeons ultimately reveal the complex anxieties that haunted
liberals in an age of militant ultramontanism and the authoritarian
state. At the end of the r86os, an attack against a Dominican residence
in an industrial suburb of Berlin, a series of antimonastic rallies, and
antimonastic petitions delivered to the Prussian parliament expressed
by means of contrast liberal expectations for the modern nation-state.
The more closely we examine the German liberal relationship to
monasteries and more broadly clerics and Catholicism in the nine
teenth century, the more we recognize that anti-Catholicism was a rich
and elaborate ritual of identity.
Chapter 4 examines the links between anti-Catholicism, prescrip
tions for public conduct and private domesticity, misogyny, and the
Kulturkampf in liberal discourse. For liberal men, the reemergence of
the women's movement in the mid- r86os, what contemporaries called
the Frauenfrage or "women's question," and the demand by women
for access to the public were inextricably linked to mass Catholic resur
gence. In public Catholics seemed to undermine the principle of sepa
rate spheres reserved, according to liberal social and sexual ideology,
for feminine domesticity and public masculinity. In this light, the
attack on Catholicism emerges as an attempt during a period of dra-
5 3 . This contrasts with Smith, German Nationalism. 1 7-49.
Introduction
27
matic change to maintain the social and political status quo between
men and women. Helmut Smith reminds readers in his study of nation
alism and religious conflict that the Kulturkampf is perhaps best
understood as a kaleidoscope changing shape with each shift of per
spective. 54 If Smith viewed the Kulturkampf as an episode in the
process of German nation building, I turn the lens a notch farther and
see a war incited by the women's question, the question concerning the
role of women in society and their access to public life, education, pro
fessional opportunities, and ultimately politics. Exploring the Kul
turkampf as a Geschlechterkampf, a contest between men and women,
for access to the public sphere allows for a dramatically different eval
uation of the origins and meaning of liberal anti-Catholicism, one that
moves beyond studies that have argued that the church-state conflict
was at bottom a clash between the "modern" outlook of liberal nation
alists and "backward" Catholics, an attempt to preserve the autonomy
of the state, or a campaign to stem the tide of political Catholicism,
though, to be sure, the Kulturkampf was in some measure all of these
as well.
The final chapter examines two seminal debates during the Kul
turkampf, one concerning the ideological background that defined the
legal relationship between church and state and the second concerning
the enactment of anti-Jesuit legislation meant to break finally the
Catholic missionary campaign that had continued unabated since
1 848. As leading liberal legal scholars engaged the Kirchenfrage, the
question concerning relations between the church and the state, they
established the theoretical principles that abrogated the authority of
the Catholic Church in Prussia guaranteed in the constitution of 1 8 50.
They went so far as to argue that the imperatives of freedom and
progress ultimately justified, if deemed necessary in the campaign
against the political power of Catholicism, amending the constitution
in order to rescind the citizen rights of the Catholic population. In the
debate concerning the Jesuit law, the exceptional legislation closing the
Society of Jesus and suspending the residence rights of German citi
zens, progressive and national liberals argued that they were pursuing
a campaign based on their historical responsibility in the name of free
dom, modern culture, and the preservation of the modern state. In
their prosecution of Kulturkampf legislation, liberals imagined that
civilization itself weighed in the balance and that duty, therefore,
demanded of them no less than a war against the Catholic Church.
Ultimately this book argues that the Kulturkampf, the culmination of
54. Ibid. , 1 9-20. A kaleidoscope as a metaphor for the Kulturkampf is original to Pfianze,
Bismarck and the Development of Germany, 2 : r 7 9 .
28
over twenty years of fervent liberal anti-Catholicism, should be under

stood not simply as an attack on the Catholic Church as most scholar
ship has argued but, rather, as a more complex (and, therefore,
arguably more interesting) attempt during a period of dramatic pres
sures for change to preserve an entire moral, political, social, and sex
ual order. Anti-Catholicism, far from the marginal status to which it is
usually consigned, emerges as a central theme in nineteenth-century
German politics, society, and culture.
An identity that could manifest such religious disdain, social arro
gance, and masculine bravado does not perhaps lend itself well to dis
interested analysis. I have tried, nonetheless, to balance this work with
an appreciation for the historical specificity of time and place. The
period in Germany that this work examines was marked by political
revolution, by profound social trauma, by blood shed in warfare for
national unification in the form of the empire. This was an age of great
surges forward in industry and the economy; the time of the break
through of the Industrial Revolution and free-market capitalism; and,
despite setbacks and crises, a period of accelerated growth and boom
ing prosperity. It might seem a paradox, but it was, I shall argue, surely
no mere coincidence that during this period Catholicism and liberalism
were the movements with the greatest vitality and momentum. Despite
their incompatibility, the age belonged as much to the one as to the
other. Anti-Catholic progressives like Rudolf Virchow and Hermann
Schulze-Delitzsch and national liberals like Rudolf von Gneist and
Heinrich von Sybel exhibited an irony consonant with their age.
Though rabidly intolerant, they were not without redeeming virtues.
They were principled, public men who believed in science, progress, and
freedom; in the value of the individual and the rule of law; in service to
humanity as well as the nation. They were idealists who shouldered
together the burdens of remaking a world but shared no less the opti
mistic conviction despite personal sacrifice that it was worth doing and
that it could be done for the better. They were, in short, visionaries of a
modern age shaped by humanism and the Enlightenment, an age that
could only be by definition, they believed, beyond and without Catholi
cism.55 They had apparently very little if any sense that their idealism
was their limitation, that they were paradoxically as much bound to as
repulsed by Catholicism. This is ultimately, therefore, a study of the
problem of anti-Catholicism as a prescription for modernity.
5 5 For an eloquent statement concerning the current inclination to chastise German lib
erals and to sentimentalize the Catholic victims of the Kulturkampf, see Blackbourn,
Marpingen, xxxiv .
CHAPTER
Revolution, the Missionary Crusade,

and Catholic Revival
In 1 848 the European world of the nineteenth century shuddered again.

Liberal revolutions, the hallmarks of a modern age of change, erupting
in France and the Austrian Empire and in the German and Italian
states, rocked the traditional pillars of church and state in Restoration
Europe. ' Liberal nationalists and radical democrats, shouting in
assemblies, armed on the barricades, and fighting in the streets,
demanded a new kind of citizenship with a voice in government, the
establishment of constitutions, and the curtailment of monarchical
power. In the German states at the height of the revolution, the liberal
and democratic representatives of the demand for change met at the
National Assembly convened in the Free City of Frankfurt. In the
heady and hopeful months of spring and summer, they planned the
political reform and national unification of Germany. In the fall, howr. For accounts of the revolutions in Europe in 1 R4R see Priscilla Robertson, Revolutions of
1848: A Social History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952); Jonathan Sperber, The
European Revolutions, I848-I85I (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1994); and Peter
N. Stearns, 1848: The Revolutionary Tide in Europe (New York: W. W. N orton, r974) . For
the revolution in Germany see Theodore S. Hamerow, Restoration, Revolution, Reaction:
Economics and Politics in Germany, I8I5-I87I (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1958);
Carola Lipp and Wolfgang Kaschuba, 1848-Provinz und Revolution: Kultureller Wandel und
soziale Bewegung im Konigreich Wiir ttemberg (Tubingen: Tubinger Vereinigung fiir Volks
kunde, r979); Thomas Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, I8oo-I866, trans.
Daniel Nolan (Princeton : Princeton University Press, r996), 562-63; P. H. Noyes, Organiza
tion and Revolution: Working- Class Associations in the German Revolution of 1848-1849
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966); Jonathan Sperber, Rhineland Radicals: The
Democratic Movemen t and the Revolution of 848-1849 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1991); Veit Valentin, Geschichte der deutschen Revolution 1848-!849 (Cologne: Kiepen
heuer und Witsch, 1 970) ; Gi.inter Wollstein, Deutsche Geschichte 1848/49: Gescheiterte Revo
lution in Mitteleuropa (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1986).
29
30
ever, their work was interrupted when angry crowds stormed the
assembly in an effort to oust conservatives and radicalize the revolu
tion. When Prussian troops intervened to restore order, radical demo
crats threw up barricades throughout the city. Fighting again raged in
the streets until the radicals were subdued with artillery barrages and
infantry assaults. The violence left some eighty radicals and two con
servative members of the National Assembly dead. The street battles
and bloodshed in Frankfurt were only part of the wave of democratic
demonstrations and radical movements breaking out all across western
Germany. In Dusseldorf and Cologne, the largest cities in the
Rhineland province of Prussia, red republicans influenced by the revo
lutionary theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels unleashed anar
chy and murder. A short-lived insurrection then erupted to the south in
the Grand Duchy of Baden.2 These were the indications that the revo
lution, even according to its liberal and democratic fathers, had taken
the turn toward lawless terror.
Meanwhile, not much farther up the River Main from the National
Assembly in Frankfurt, in the city of Wiirzburg, a wholly different
kind of meeting was taking place in the Kingdom of Bavaria. Here the
bishops and archbishops of the dioceses of the Roman Catholic
Church convened to assess the tumultuous events erupting across Ger
many. Together they planned a counterrevolution. The Catholic bish
ops believed that the revolutions were not merely the result of political
movements and social unrest. The revolutions were both cause and
effect, they reasoned, of a failure of religion and morality that threat
ened the church as much as monarchical authority. Ecclesiastical
authorities believed that religious and moral erosion were a predictable
part of the wear and tear of the everyday business and concerns of life.
According to Cardinal von Geissel of Cologne, the trend toward secu
larization and amorality lay "in the weakness of human nature . " "Over
the course of time, customs, even if holy and honorable," he explained,
"lose the impression with which they were born. The strength of reli
gion and the necessity to live by it have not diminished. But the spirit
and heart, overcome by worldly sins, have become worn out and cold.
The Christian life has become tepid and deadened. " 3
2 . Sperber, European Revolutions, 212-1 5 .
3 Cardinal von Geissel, Hirtenschreiben, Erlassen beim Beginn der Fastenzeit, Ki.1ln, 25
Jan. r853, in Aktenstiicke zur Geschichte der Jesuiten-Missionen in Deutschland, I848-I872,
ed. Bernhard Duhr (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herdersche Verlagshandlung, 1903), 188 (here
after cited as Aktenstiicke) . This is a rich , indispensable, and neglected collection of church
documents, clerical letters, missionary reports, Catholic and Protestant eyewitness accounts,
Revolution, the Missionary Crusade, and Catholic Revival
31
Church bishops believed, however, that the roots of the crisis ran far
deeper, The people had been "blinded" and "bewildered, " "bewitched"
and "bedazzled" by modern and fashionable philosophies: material
ism, rationalism, liberalism, and democracy, all propagated, church
leaders claimed, by an endless number of anti-Christian and antisocial
newspapers.4 Expressing the anxieties of church leaders, Bishop Niko
laus von Weis of Speyer argued to the king of Bavaria that philosoph
ical poisons had brought the country to the edge of ruin: "The belief in
a personal God, creator and keeper of all things, has been frequently
and systematically undermined and destroyed by a false-philosophy
[ Trugphilosophie] . . . . Christianity has been attacked at its deepest
foundations and has lost its influence on many souls . . . . With the
weakening or destruction of faith in divinely revealed Christianity, the
authority of the church and no less the secular authority have also been
undermined. Both support themselves on the authority and order of
God . " S Against the storm of "evil powers" and "the spirit of darkness"
that "daily deliver a terrible waste," Bishop Weiss argued that a mighty
dam had to be erected. Otherwise there would be an "unspeakable con
fusion and a terrible ruination of civil society itself. "6 In a second let
ter, the bishop argued that the depravity of the Zeitgeist could be
judged by the fact that it was "a mark of enlightenment to eschew reli
gion, to embrace unholy indifference, to deny God and the immortal
ity of the soul as absolute in the life hereafter, and to limit the entire
destiny of man to the pursuit of pleasures on earth."7 These were senti
ments indicative of the culture of crisis that permeated the entire
liberal and conservative newspaper articles, and government and miscellaneous documents
concerning the Jesuit missionary campaign. Also valuable though much less extensive for the
Franciscan missions are the documents collected in Autbert Groeteken, ed., Die Volksmissio
nen der norddeutschen Franziskaner vor dem Kulturkampf (1848-!872) (Munster: Alphonsus
Buchhandlung, 1909) (hereafter cited as Volksmissionen der norddeutschen Franziskaner) . A
compilation of Protestant declarations attacking the missions and Catholic popular petitions in
defense of the Jesuits can be found in Christoph Moufang, ed., Aktenstiicke betreffend die
Jesuiten in Deutschland (Mainz: Franz Kirchheim, r872). For the perspective of a Jesuit active
in the missionary campaign see the biography by Johannes Mundweiler, P. Georg von Wald
burg-Ziel: Ein Volksmissioniir des f9. Jahrhunderts (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herdersche Ver
lagshandlung, rgo6), which includes extensive excerpts from Waldburg-Ziel's diary.
4 See, for example, Bischof Nikolaus von Weis an den Konig Max von Bayern, 24 July
1 8 5 1 , Aktenstiicke. 72-79; Rundschreiben des Bischofs Johann Georg von Munster an die
Geistlichkeit tiber die Missionsvereine, 31 Dec. 1 852, Aktenstiicke, 181; Bischof Nikolaus von
Weis an den Konig Max von Bayern, 3 March 1865, Aktenstiicke, 337.
5 Bischof Nikolaus von Weis an den Konig Max von Bayern, Speyer, 24 July r 8 5 r , Akten
stiicke, 72.
6. Ibid.
7 Bischof Nikolaus von Weis an den K(1nig von Bayern, 3 March r865, Aktenstiicke. 337
32
Catholic Church in Germany after the revolution. In r8so a low-level

parish priest in Bonn, a stronghold of liberalism, reported to his
bishop, "a significant part of the population has unfortunately . . . not
been spared by the spirit of the age, which characterizes itself as the
enemy of religion, truth, and morals. " 8 Less the consequence of daily
life, it was the philosophical poisons of the age, parish clergy believed,
that were throwing the German population into ruin.
Whatever the ultimate cause of the revolution, the bishops who
assembled at Wiirzburg in the fall of r 848 agreed that the church could
not stand idly to the side and watch Germany slide into chaos. They
therefore committed the church to an extraordinary campaign of "mis
sions for the people" ( Volksmissionen) to restore faith, obedience, and
order among Catholics throughout Germany. The missionary cam
paign unleashed by the bishops and undertaken by the principal reli
gious orders in Germany was systematic and dramatic, extending
across the German states and continuing for over two decades. With
hellfire and brimstone sermons that promised damnation for the unre
pentant and salvation for the obedient, they attracted unprecedented
crowds; inculcated a new commitment to church and faith; and rallied
the Catholic population in an anti-Enlightenment campaign against
materialism, liberalism, and rationalism. However, the Catholic
revival that followed in the path of the missionaries was neither
smooth nor uniform everywhere . The missionaries not only faced
adversaries among state officials, Protestant Church leaders, and lib
eral and democratic opponents . Just as important, they often encoun
tered pockets of resistance within the Catholic laity and sometimes
within the church leadership itself, among the older parish clergy who
resented the heavy-handed intrusion of the missionaries. At the same
time, the life-style and habits of leisure of the Catholic rural peasantry
proved to be remarkably resilient when challenged by the missionaries'
attempts to inculcate new sobriety and moral reform. The pace of
Catholic repietization also varied by region and in rural and urban
areas . It was nonetheless clear to everyone, Roman Catholic and non
Catholic alike, those who greeted the Catholic revival as salvation and
those who feared it would ruin Germany, that by the end of the r86os
the church and Catholicism had been reborn as a popular and power
ful religious movement with a faithful laity and a new militancy.
8. Pf. von B onn an den Erzbischof Johannes von Geissel, 28 Aug. 1 8 50, Aktenstucke, 34
33
The Missionary Crusade
After the German bishops of the Catholic Church met in Wurzburg,

they quickly prepared their parish clergy for the new missionary cru
sade to restore Catholicism. In a pastoral letter in early r 8 so, for exam
ple, the bishop of Munster instructed the priests in his diocese,
"Among the means approved and recommended by the church to
awaken the spirit of penance, to root out corruption, and to stimulate
fervor, there is no better, none so reliable based on the recommenda
tion of the church and the experience of the centuries, as the holding of
so-called missions for the people . . . . There has never been a time more
than our own when such extraordinary means have been necessary, a
time of religious indifference and immorality in which more than ever
before divine and human laws are being trampled under foot. "9 Later
in a letter to the king of Prussia justifying the need for the missions, the
clergy of the Diocese of Munster cataloged a depressing array of sins
they believed characterized the spirit of the age: "Indifference, deprav
ity, an undermined sense of right, irresolute faith, indecision, treason
and fraud, insolence, a spineless anything-goes, and an almost thor
ough self-interest and selfishness in religious and political matters is the
signature of our time which we clergy encounter among the masses. " 10
With the banning of the Jesuit order by papal decree in 1773 the pop
ular missions had disappeared in central Europe. When the order was
revived in 1814 with the defeat of Napoleon and the restoration of the
monarchical regimes of Europe, state authorities within the German
Confederation looked upon the Jesuits with deep suspicion, and the
Prussian government did not allow the order within state territorial
borders. In Westphalia secular clergy (i.e., clergy living and ministering
to the laity "in the world") themselves attempted to revive the missions
shortly before the outbreak of revolution. If Roman Catholic authori
ties were initially equivocal toward or even condemned the revolution,
the church nonetheless quickly emerged as one of its principal
beneficiaries. The "decree constitution" imposed by the reactionary
Brandenburg ministry in the fall of 1 848 and then the Prussian consti9 Rundschreiben des Bischots Johann Georg (Muller) von Munster an samtliche Herren
Pf. des Bistums Munster, 4 Feb . r 8 so. Aktenstiicke, 8. See also Karin Jaeger, "Die Revolution
von r!l4/l und die Stellung des Katholizismus zur Problem der Revolution," in Kirche zwis
chen Krieg und Friede: Studien zur Geschichte der deutschen Protestantisrnus. ed. Wolfgang
Huber and Johannes Schwerdtfeber (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1976), 243-91.
ro. Immediatvorstellung der zehn Landkapital des Dioezese Munster an den Konig von
PreuBen fiir die Jesuiten, Munster, r6 Oct. r!\52, Aktenstiicke. r67.
34
tution of r 8 so not only granted the church's freedom and indepen

dence . They also established a parliament within which Catholic mate
rial, political, and spiritual interests could be articulated and defended
at the national level. Perhaps even more important for the long-term
development of political Catholicism was the push the revolution gave
to Catholic associational life and the Catholic press. The Piusverein,
founded in Mainz in March r 848, was followed by numerous sister
associations in almost every part of Germany; older Catholic organi
zations like the Bruderschaften and Schiitzvereine were revitalized,
and Germany's Catholic bishops set up the National German Bishops'
Conference to pursue political and ecclesiastical issues. The Rheinische
Volkshalle (replaced by the Deutsche Volkshalle) and the Deutsche
Volksblatt were published in Cologne and Wiirttemberg respectively,
and in Mainz the Mainzer Journal soon established itself as the most
important Catholic periodical. The revolution provided, therefore,
opportunities to mobilize, consolidate, and coordinate Catholic opin
ion in ways hitherto unavailable or unimaginable. ' '
At the same time, additional concordats and conventions between
the church and states throughout Germany brought to an end state
interference in the ecclesiastical affairs of the Vormarz. In particular,
the new political order and church-state agreements guaranteed to the
church the right of religious orders to settle freely on German territory
and to hold their missions. Now sanctioned by the state, members of
the Society of Jesus gathered in Cologne in July r 849. In response to
the Wiirzburg conference they agreed to take up the call of the German
bishops and organized an extensive missionary campaign. Jesuits
already in the German states were quickly j oined by additional mem
bers of their order from the United States, Australia, England, France,
and Belgium. Other religious orders, including the Redemptorists and
Franciscans and to a lesser extent the Capuchins and Lazarists, j oined
the crusade and organized their own popular missions. 12 In general,
r r . Simon Hyde, "Roman Catholicism and the Prussian State in the Early r8 sos, Central
European History 24 (1991): 95-121.
1 2 . Accounts of the Jesuit order and its missionary activities include the work by the Jesuit
Bartholomew J. Murphy, Die Wiederaujbau der Gesellschaft Jesu im Deutschland im 19.
Jahrhundert: Jesuiten in Deutschland, 1849-1872 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1985).
Enno Kopperschmidt, Jesuiten Arbeiten: Zur Geschichte des Jesuitenordens in Deutschland
von 1866 bis 1872 (Munich: Ludendorff, 1940) is a biased account published by the ultrana
tionalist Lundendorff publishing house during the Nazi period. The accounts of the Redemp
torist missions by the Redemptorist Bernhard Scholten, Volksmission der Redemptoristen;
and idem, Die Volksmission der Niederdeutschen Redemptoristen und Oblaten wiihrend des
Kaiserreichs ( I873-1918) (Bonn: Hofbauer-Verlag, 1978) are narrow, institutional accounts.
For a more interesting study of the Redemptorist popular missions in Bavaria see the the"
35
after the revolution and into the early years of the reactionary r 8 sos,
the state greeted the church as a partner against revolutionary agita
tion, and it granted the church the autonomy it needed to pursue this
task. 13
Starting in 1 849 teams of missionaries swept across Germany visiting
thousands of villages and towns and major cities from Trier in the
Rhineland to Danzig on the Baltic Sea during all seasons of the year.
The missions continued uninterrupted for a twenty-three-year period
ending in 1872 with the closing of the Jesuits and other religious orders
during the Kulturkampf. The role of the missionaries in changing the
face of Roman Catholicism in Germany and establishing new patterns
of piety-as well as the fervor with which they undertook their cru
sade-can hardly be overestimated. r 4 However, the missions held by
the Catholic religious orders across Germany not only revived and
reshaped popular German Catholicism. Aside from the brute force of
the state, they were also the most important element in the process of
counterrevolutionary rollback during the decade of reaction. They ini
tiated a counterrevolutionary, antiliberal, anti-Enlightenment mass
religious and cultural movement that served not only the interests of
the church but also those of the monarchical state in the conservative
decade of reaction. 15
During the period between the revolution and the founding of the
German Empire, the intensity of the missionary crusade as a whole did
not slacken. The missions were, in fact, more numerous as well as betmatically broader, richly detailed, and more critical work by Otto Weiss, Die Redemptoris
ten in Bayern. For the missions, see 977-rOr7. See also the work by P. Klemens Jockwig,
"Die Volksmission der Redemptoristen in Bayern von r848 bis r 8 7 3 : Dargestellt am Erzbis
tum Miinchen und Freising und an den Bistiimern Passau und Regensburg; Ein Beitrag zur
Pastoralgeschichte des 19 Jahrhunderts,'' in Beitrage zur Geschichte des Bistums Regens
burg, ed. Georg Schwaiger and Josef Staber (Regensburg: Verlag des Vereins fUr Regens
burger Bistumsgeschichte, 1967), 41-407. The single source concerning the activities of the
Lazarists is Leonhard Dautzenberg, Geschichte der Kongregationen der Mission in der
deutschen Provinz (Graz, I 9 I I ) . For the popular missions in the Rhineland see Gatz,
Rheinische Volksmission.
1 3 . For an account of the cooperation and tensions between the Catholic Church and the
Prussian state in the Rhineland, see Weber, Kirchliche Politik. For an account of church-state
cooperation but at the same time the missions as an instrument of counterrevolution at vari
ance with the counterrevolutionary agitation of the state, see Sperber, Popular Catholicism,
99-I I4. See also idem, "Competing Counterrevolutions: Prussian State and Catholic Church
in Westphalia during the r 85os,'' Central European History 1 9 (r986) : 45-62.
14. For the revival of popular Catholicism in Germany after 1 8 5 0 see Sperber, Popular
Catholicism. For the popular missions see 56-63. For recent debates on the periodization and
interpretation of the Catholic revival in Germany see Anderson, "Piety and Politics."
15. Sperber, "Competing Counterrevolutions." But for a rebuttal see Hyde, "Roman
Catholicism and the Prussian State . "
36
ter organized and attended, in the late r 86os than they were during the
postrevolution period of reaction. 16 The figures indicate levels of Jesuit,
Franciscan, and Redemptorist missionary activity between 1 848 and
1 872 when the missions were finally brought to a halt by Kulturkampf
legislation. Figure r gives the number of Jesuit missions held through
out the German states. Figure 2 indicates the number of Franciscan
missions in the Prussian dioceses of Breslau, Cologne, Munster, and
Osnabruck as well as missions held in the Austrian dioceses of Konigs
gratz and Olmutz. Between 1 849 and 1872 the Franciscans held an
additional 20 missions in Paderborn and 30 missions in both Trier and
Luttich dioceses. Figure 3 indicates the number of Redemptorist mis
sions in the Dioceses of Cologne, Limburg, Munster, Paderborn, and
Trier. Between 1 8 50 and 18 72, the Redemptorists also held 15 missions
in the Diocese of Osnabruck, and in addition between 1 848 and 1 8 72
they held approximately 700 missions in Bavaria. Figure 4 totals Jesuit,
Franciscan, and Redemptorist missionary activity between 1 849 and
1 872. The Lazarists held an average of 8 to ro missions each year dur
ing this period. I 7 Meanwhile, the Capuchins added at least 152 missions
from 1 8 5 3 to 1 872.18 Based on these statistics and excluding hundreds of
shorter follow-up missions (Missionserneuerungen), the total number
of missions by Catholic religious orders held throughout Germany
between 1 848 and 1 8 72 was at the very least about 4,000.
The missions concentrated on dense Catholic areas. They were also
thorough. Within twenty years, for example, every parish in the dioce
ses of the Rhineland and Westphalia received at least 1 mission, and
many received several. Together the Jesuits, Franciscans, and
Redemptorists held a mission in almost every one of the 360 parishes in
the Diocese of Munster. In the Diocese of Regensburg in Bavaria 88
missions were held from r 8 so to 1 8 57, and 67 missions were held from
r 86o to r867. So frequent were the missions in that diocese that the
bishop had to assure state authorities there that the frequency of mis
sions was not having a significantly detrimental impact on the region's
agricultural productivity. 19
r 6 . This is in contrast to Sperber's assessment of the missionary activity in the Rhineland.
Sperber, Popular Catholicism, 57
17. Scholten, Volksmission der Redemptoristen, 108.
r 8 . Ibid ., II2.
1 9 . Bischof von Senestrey an den Staatsminister von Gresser, 28 Sept. 1 867, Aktenstiicke,
361-62. An average of II missions were held in the Diocese of Regensburg from 1 8 50 to 1 8 5 7
( r 6 missions i n 1 8 5 3 . 1 9 i n 1854, r 8 i n r855. and r s in 1 8 56), and an average of 8 or 9 missions
per year were held from r86o to r867.
37
90
80 ---,I------ it------
70
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1849 1 850 1851 1 852 1853 1854 1855 1 856 1 857 1858 1859 1 860 1861 1 862 1 863 1 864 1865 1866 1 867 1 868 1 869 1 870 187 1 1 872
;::
.:::
i:
Fig. I. Jesuit missionary activity, 1849-72, dioceses of the German states. (Data
from Scholten, Die Volksmission der Redemptoristen, 103 n. 9.)
The missionaries concentrated their efforts on the towns and villages

of the countryside where in r8 so two-thirds of the population still lived.
The Jesuits, however, also brought the Catholic revival to large, secu
larizing cities, including those with slim Catholic minorities like Ham
burg, Bremen, and even Berlin. Missionaries usually worked in groups
of three, but they might include as many as eight. The missions typi
cally lasted for two weeks. Not only missionaries but also the Catholic
laity were on the move all over Germany. From the surrounding areas
and from neighboring towns and villages hundreds or thousands of
Catholics led in processions by their parish priests journeyed to the
mission sites.2 0 Towns bulged to four or five times their normal popu
lation. Visitors from outside the community found accommodations in
lodges, stayed overnight in the churches, or slept in the churchyards. In
r 8 s r , when the Jesuit mission came to the small town of Gabsheim near
Mainz, three thousand Catholic pilgrims descended on a population of
20. See Pf. Huschenbett an Bischof Konrad Martin, 20 Jan. 1 8 59. Aktenstucke. 276; Pf.
Kliitsch an Bischof Wilhelm (Arnoldi) von Trier iiber die vom I 7 Februar bis 2 Marz abge
haltene Mission, 3 March r 8 s6, ibid . , 248 .
38
100 r .
90 +-----
80 +-----70 +-----
60 +-------
50 +-----
40 +---.---
30 +------4!!1---.---
20 +---I--+ t--il
----==---il
!l-i Il-=---1 1---]----i ii- h!H!Il-lilJ------j
F ''
10
.
+----...
. . .. . .
.
IT!l 1850
1849
1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872
HiiJ-tiJ-------
---+H!r
i i- ii i i- !1
-htl---fdKif--H4---Ild----j
1 !1 1 !1
Fig. 2. Franciscan missionary activity, 1849-72, Dioceses of Breslau, Cologne,

Munster, Osnabriick, Konigsgratz, and Olmutz. (Data from Groeteken, Die
Volksmissionen der norddeutschen Franziskaner, II0-33.)
six hundred. "All the houses and huts were filled with lodgers,"
reported one Catholic newspaper. 21
Church authorities did not impose the popular missions on an
unwilling population. During the V ormarz many German lay
Catholics had crossed from Baden into Alsace and from the western
Rhineland into Belgium to participate in the missions held near the
borders. Many Catholics were eager now for the missions to be held on
German territory. When Franz Joseph BuB, professor of theology at
Freiburg University and representative to the National Assembly,
finally abandoned the revolution and returned to Baden in the late
summer of r8 so, hundreds of Catholic men asked him to add his voice
to the call for missions to restore faith and morality among the peo
ple.22 Wherever a mission was held, it was an enormously popular, all2 r . Katholische Sonntagsblatt, r6 Feb. r 8 s r , Aktenstiicke, 44.
22. Franz Joseph BuG, Die Volksmissionen: Ein Bediirfnis unserer Zeit (Schaffhausen:
Hurter, r8so), r s z .
39
9o r-----
8o r------+ ------
7o r---r---.---; ------
6o r-------nr-tkt-it------
5o r-------o4n--- nr--n r-tia-+n----
40 +-------,.,--l )j f- - iii- ])I---I iii-+U- -IEIHIII--IIii---IEl--fiijl--
30 r------t 'r;'mr-rmt--Jur;Dc- - ni- ii
..
20 +---i----t if- Jii---I---J :I--f iif- di--I TI-I:II---I Jif- - iii - ii

10
''
+-rrn ---,l !,.-l 1---1!!! !!!1 - !!!1 ---fHI-fdl---l!!ih- !!

f-
ii f-
;;
- iii- @
!!!
]i
!
iir- ii
iff- ii
!if- ii
!! !!
1 849 1 850 1 851 1 852 1 853 1 854 1 855 1 856 1 857 1 858 1 859 1 860 1 861 1 862 1 863 1 864 1 865 1 866 1 867 1 868 1 869 1 870 1 871 1 872
Fig. 3 Redemptorist missionary activity, 1849-72, Dioceses of Cologne, Lim

burg, Miinster, Paderborn, and Trier. (Data from Scholten, Die Volksmission der
Redemptoristen, 151.)
consuming event. Work in the fields was suspended, and housework

stopped. Factories, businesses, shops, theaters, and schools shut
down.23 Both Catholic and Protestant factory owners shortened or
canceled the workday, ordered their workers to go to the missions, and
compensated them with full wages.24 When the Redemptorist mission
came to the industrial town of Bottrop near Bochum in r868, mine and
23. Mission Pf. Nieters an den Bischof Paulus Melchers von Osnabruck, Emden, s April
r864, Aktenstiicke, 3r8; Pf. Koester an das Bischof!. General Vikarat M ilnster, Olde, 20 Feb .
r 8 so, Aktenstiicke, w; Die Missionen im Munsterlande, Oldenburg, w Nov. r8so, Akten
stiicke, 9s; Scholten, Volksmission der Redernptoristen, 143, I S S
24. Stadtdechant Dilschneider an Kardinal Johannes von Geissel, Aachen, 20 May r X s r ,
Aktenstiicke, 6 4 ; Dekan Rietz a n das Generalvikariat Kulm, Muhlbanz, 21 July r8s9, Akten
stiicke, 280.
40
225
200 +-----
------
1 7 5 +------=;--
-------
1 50 +---1
!11- -II
1 2 5 +--------mn---------------------,;,---------f!j}---"""
-utr-------1
;;
1 00
75
50
25
+---i-+ iir- ii!t-ld!---..---i
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I-- -FiH!UI--H+- -1111'n;n;H!-+H----i i ii- iii -
t---i-I i!l-- iih- - i!i-!iiHHf--t!tf----1 1---Ht!----u!H!!tl----n!l----1 1-- -EH- - -lt!Hi!i- !ii+----IItH !iif- iii I--
- II!- Uimm:n-+nt----1
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-ll-- I!IHIIII--
1---t-l +--ltiHUtl---n-l +----i f---liHI--liil--I!Ii- iii- -
+---i-l tHi'.l.i.l i. - . - lwwnl--+nr---l.!,i: ...

I . . . . .
. .
i'\;
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- !ir- w
Ei
!li-- I!!HI!II--
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- ! 1 - - 1 ---- lj!HI! I I---
. . .: I Il 1 1
:
1 849 1 850 1 8 5 1 1 852 1 853 1 854 1 855 1 856 1 857 1 858 1 859 1 860 1 86 1 1 862 1 863 1 864 1 865 1 866 1 867 1 868 1 869 1 870 1 87 1 1 872
Fig. 4 Jesuit, Franciscan, and Redemptorist missionary activity, 1849---7 2. (Data

from Groeteken, Die Volksmissionen der norddeutschen Franziskaner, 110---3 3; and
Scholten, Die Volksmission der Redemptoristen, 103 n. 9, us.)
factory managers were delighted. 25 In an industrial age requiring new

forms of discipline, employers recognized the value of sermons that
extolled the virtues of authority and obedience. On the other hand, if
the Protestant factory owners in Aachen in Westphalia refused to sus
pend or to shorten the workday when the mission arrived, Catholic
workers literally took matters into their own hands. They simply reset
the work clocks so that there would be sufficient time for them to
attend the sermons. 26
The missionaries were part of a well-organized, systematic effort
2 5 . Scholten. Volksmission der Redemptoristen, 129.
26. Ibid . , 140.
41
involving cooperation at all levels of the church hierarchy. Bishops

plotted the movement of the missions throughout their dioceses, and
parish priests prepared their congregations weeks in advance. Local
carpenters built extra confessionals. Churches were emptied of their
pews to allow for the maximum amount of room. Still, people stood
"from the entrance to the steps of the altar, man to man, and head to
head. "27 People flooded the churches at four or five in the morning and
remained until far into the night. Thousands more often stood outside
in the churchyard, straining to hear the sermons and to find a way to
enter. When the mission came to Cologne in r8 so, as many as sixteen
thousand people filled the cathedraP8 Where the churches were not
large enough, sermons and masses were held outside in the churchyard,
at the marketplace, or in the town square. Men and women from all
social classes participated: according to the Catholic j ournal Sian in
1 8 5 3 , "City as well as country people took the greatest interest. Men
and women from all social strata, military and civil officials, university
professors, especially the aristocracy eagerly attended. "29 The police
commissioner at Koblenz confirmed in his report to the district gover
nor that people "from all classes of the Catholic population" were
attending the missions .3
The Promise of Hell
The missionaries held mass, heard confessions, and performed exor

cisms at an intense pace for two weeks, but the sermons were the most
important instrument of the missionaries in their crusade to restore
Catholic faith. The sermons, held three times a day at dawn, in the
afternoon, and in the evening, lasted two hours each.3' The secular
priest Joseph Hillebrand, the indefatigable director of missions in the
Diocese of Paderborn, has left a rich collection of mission sermonsY
They indicate that the missionaries concentrated on the major aspects
of church doctrine: the origins of man, the sacraments, the Ten Com
mandments, sin and repentance, the judgment after death, the threat of
27. Pf. Koop an Bischof Konrad Martin, Arnsberg, 9 Dec. 1858, Aktenstiicke, 273.
28. Murphy. Der Wiederaujbau der Gesellschaft Jesu. 93
29. Bericht der Zeitschrift Sian. Nr. 25, 27 Feb. 1853, Aktenstiicke. 197.
30. LHAK, Best. 403, OP der Rheinprovinz, Nr. 75TT, "Die Jesuiten, r 8 5 5-r 865," PD
Junker to RP, Koblenz, 28 Feb . r 8 s6, Bl. 99-106.
31. H STAD. RD, PB. Nr. 1252. "'Katholische Orden und Missionen: Betr. vor allem
Niederlassungen und Missionsveranstaltungen des Jesuitenordens," Bd. 1 , 1852-87, BM to
LRA, Huls, I 7 Jan. r872, Bl. 1 5 .
3 2 . Joseph Hillebrand, Missionsvortriige, 2 vols. (Paderborn: F . Schoningh, 1870) .
42
damnation, the need for confession, the incarnation of Christ, and the
incontestable authority of the church. At the same time, the sermons
introduced powerful new forms of popular veneration including the
crucifix and the Virgin Mother of Christ (whose Immaculate Concep
tion became dogma in r8 54) . The objective of the missionaries also
included the reform of popular culture. They ranted against alcohol
consumption and tavern life, dancing, playing cards, gambling, read
ing novels, foul language, and sexual license.33 The sermons struck at
radical political movements that threatened traditional authority and
order. The uprisings of r 848 and r 849 were singled out and denounced
as sins, the consequence of depravity and religious indifference. Ratio
nalism, materialism, the Enlightenment, democracy, and socialism
were attacked as the work of Satan. All of this was music in the ears of
state authorities in the years of conservative reaction. Following the
mission in Dusseldorf in r 8 s r , the police commissioner had the Jesuits'
sermons printed and circulated in order to restore order in a city that
had once been a center of democratic radicalism during r 848 and
! 849 .34
It was, however, the sermons delivered on the themes of sin, hell, and
repentance that had the most impact on listeners. According to a Burg
ermeister (mayor or principal magistrate) in the Ruhr region of West
phalia, Jesuits delivered some sermons that "appealed to understand
ing and sound reason and took great pains to avoid exciting the
mind."35 Rural parish priests, with their closer ties to peasant sensibil
ity, however, encouraged the missionaries to give "not especially
learned, scientific, but on the contrary more powerful, forceful ser
mons emphasizing sin and repentance. " 36 Missionaries therefore
adopted a theatrical style that looked like a tantrum. They screamed,
pounded the pulpit, stomped their feet, jumped up and down, and
thrashed about. According to one disturbed witness, "The preacher
3 3 . For a list of forty-two sermons delivered at a mission at Danzig see Uber die von Mis
sions-Priestern aus dem Orden der Gesellschaft Jesu in Danzig gehaltenen Missionen (Pader
born: F. Schoningh, r 852), 7-rz. See also the list in K. A. Leibbrand, Die Missionen der
Jesuiten und Redemptoristen in Deutschland und die evangelische Wahrheit und Kirche
(Stuttgart: E. Schweizerbart'sche Verlagshandlung, r85r), 30-34.
34. Sperber, Popular Catholicism, 6o.
35 HSTAD, RBD, P, Nr. r252, " Katholische Orden und Missionen: Betr. vor allem
Niederlassungen und Missionsveranstaltungen des Jesuitenordens,'' Bd. 1, 18 52-8 7; BM,
Huls, to LA, Kempen, I 7 Jan. I872, 8 1 . rs; BM Schwartz, Brugger, to LRA, Kempen, I9
March r857, Bl. ro.
36. Pf. Cruse an Bischof Konrad Martin, 24 April 1868, Aktenstucke, 377.
43
breaks the staff of God's wrath over everyone . He shouts with his
hands balled into fists. He violently swings his body, working on one
side of the pulpit then the other. He thumps his feet, smacks his hands
together, stretches his arms high over his head then out over the
rails . "37 The missionaries terrorized their audiences with furious and
graphic depictions of infernal horror and the promise of eternal
damnation for unrepentant sinners. Here is a typical example of the
way the missionaries repeatedly beat the image of hell into the heads of
their listeners.
Hell is a gruesome dungeon in which sinners languish for all eter
nity. Hell is the state of excommunication, where horror and mis
ery reign. Hell is the place where fire and brimstone burn forever.
Hell is the place of constant despair and everlasting damnation.
Hell is the place of wailing and darkness, the shadow of death and
chaos, confusion and terror.38
The number of sermons on hell in Hillebrand's collection attests to the
power the missionaries believed the threat of damnation had over their
audiences. The grim and exhausting catalog of titles includes "The
Judgment of Damnation," "There Is a Hell," "What Does It Mean to
Be Damned?" "Hell," "The Sinner in Hell and the Sinner on Earth, "
"The Sorrow of the Damned, " "The Fear of Hell," "The Eternal
Fires," "The Rich Man in Hell, " "The Gradations of Punishment in
Hell," "Eternal Punishment in Hell, " "The Danger of Going to Hell, "
"The Fruits of Considering Hell," and "The Belief in Hell and the
Behavior of Christians. " Other sermons devoted to the themes of sin,
death, and final judgment also emphasized the promise of damnation
for unrepentant sinners and drew pictures of infernal horror. Fire and
brimstone were, in fact, invoked so often in the sermons that the mis
sionaries found themselves dubbed "the hell-preachers. " As one dis
gusted critic complained, "What do the Jesuits preach?-Hell and
damnation and damnation and hel1! "39 Among the Catholic laity in the
Diocese of Paderborn, Hillebrand himself became popularly known as
Hollebrand (Hellfire) .
Those who denied the existence of hell did so, according to the mis
sionaries, for various reasons : because they were "materialists, athe37. Die Jesuitenansiedlung in Westfalen und das Westfiilische Junkerthum. Beitriige zur
Geschichte der Volksverdummerung in Preuj]en (Bremen: A. D. Giesler. r8 so), q.
3 8 . Hillebrand, "Was ist ein Verdammter," Vortriige 2:267.
39 Jesuitenansiedlung in Westfalen, 14
44
ists, or wrongdoers and usurers, or whores and adulterous, or com

pletely hardened sinners. "4 And those who sought solace in the
belief that the fires of hell were a mere metaphor without real conse
quence were, the missionaries warned, deluded. The missionaries told
their listeners that the five corporeal senses like the human soul were
eternal and that hell was a real, physical, endless furnace ruled by
Satan and stoked by his angels, a woeful abode, and the just end for
anyone who transgressed God's laws on earth: "Everything endures
pain in the flames: the evil tongue , the lusting eyes, the imprudent ear,
the unchaste body, the impure heart. All suffer. The entire body is
gripped and consumed with fire . " 4r With all their senses listeners were
told to imagine themselves already in hell: to see the flames and suf
fering souls; smell the smoke, sulfur, and burning flesh; taste their
own tears and feel the worm of conscience slithering through their
bodies; hear the frightful shrieks and blasphemies of the damned.
"Endless burning in the fire pits, hearing without end the howls and
shrieks of the damned, eternally suffering the scorn of the all-power
ful and just God. That is the horrible, hopeless condition . . . . For
ever! Eternity without end! "42 At the hell sermons it was, therefore,
not simply the promise of horror itself that was powerful but the way
the torture could be internalized. Hell was not where one looked
upon the fate of others. In the Catholic imagination it was a place
prepared and waiting for oneself, in a lake of fire, flesh crackling,
charred black, melting but not dying.
The pressure broke down men and women. They panicked, panted,
wailed, and raised their arms above their heads, dropped to their
knees, and "wept like children. "43 But there was nowhere to go. The
missionaries admonished "sinners! " to "leave the path of ruin! " and
confront the choice "repent or hell! "44 The hellfire sermons reflected
the moral dimensions of Catholic eschatology practiced for centuries,
40. Hillebrand, "Es gibt eine Holle," Missionsvortriige, 2:256.
41 . Idem, "Was ist ein Verdammter," Missionsvortriige, 2:272.
42. Quoted in Scholten, Volksmission der Redemptoristen, 172 n . 34
43. Allgemeine Zeitung, Nr. 3 1 6, 1852, Aktenstiicke, 174; Bericht eines Augenzeugen, Miin
nerstadt, 29 Feb . r 8 52, Aktenstiicke, rr4; Volksrnissionen der norddeutschen Franziskaner, r r .
44 Hillebrand, "Die Furcht vor der Holle und die Bewahrung vor der Holle,'' Mis
sionsvortriige, 2:2!\X. For a study of the centrality of the threat of damnation in hell in
Catholic life and moral behavior see Andreas Heller, '"Du kommst in die Holle . . . '
Katholizismus als Weltanschauung in lebensgeschichtlichen Aufzeichnungen," in Religion
und Alltag: Interdiszipliniire Beitriige zu einer Sozialgeschichte des Katholizismus in lebens
gechichtlichen Aufzeichnungen, ed. Andreas Heller and Therese Weber. (Vienna: Bohlau Ver
lag, 1990). 28-s s .
45
and the link of sin to suffering was an ancient, fundamental aspect of

Christian sensibility. Especially in rural towns and villages, the melo
drama of the sermons was, however, no less a psychological shock, an
explosion of the quiet and boring routines of peasant Alltag. The emo
tional susceptibility of the participants to the sermons was due in part
to their physical exhaustion and mental fatigue . For many parishioners
the pace of the missions was frantic. At large missions in cities, crowds
hurried back and forth between churches to hear one sermon after
another and hardly stopped to rest or eat.45 Men and women went for
days without hot food, eating instead what they could, when they
could. Peasants at the Jesuit mission in Reissing in the Diocese of
Regensburg in r8s6 went day after day without sleep. As the local
priest reported to his bishop, "The parishioners were on their feet day
and night. A large part of the night had to be used in order to be able
to devote oneself on the one hand to the agricultural work and on the
other hand to the mission. "46 Those who fainted due to stress and
hunger and sleep deprivation under the bombardment of the sermons
or collapsed for lack of oxygen were dragged to the first-aid stations
located at the church portals.
Prepared by three days of sermons on the themes of sin, judgment
upon death, punishment in hell, purgatory, and the need for repen
tance and confession, men and women gathered before dawn in front
of the church doors eager to repent their sins .47 When the Jesuit mis
sion came to Aachen people stood in a rainstorm through the night.
They continued to wait as long as twelve to fifteen hours in seemingly
endless lines for their turn in the confessional. Teams of as many as
thirty to forty priests gathered from the neighboring parishes and
demanded complete and detailed "life confessions" of every penitent,
each of which lasted about twenty minutes. 48 So desperate were they
not to miss their turn in the confessionals at the Aachen mission, fac
tory workers and peasants broke into a bloody brawl.49 The Jesuits'
chief instrument was the sermon, but the Redemptorists concentrated
45 Bericht der Zeitschrift Sian, Nr. 25, 27 Feb. 1853. Aktenstiicke, 197-98.
46. Pf. Obelt an Bischof von Valentin von Regensburg. Reissing, 30 June 1856, Akten
stucke, 256.
47 See the order of sermons recorded with brief summaries in Uber die von Missions
Priestern aus dem Orden der Gesellschaft Jesu in Danzig gehaltenen Missionen, 7-12 .
48. See Pf. Koop an Bischof Konrad Martin. Arnsberg, 9 Dec. 1858. Aktenstucke, 273; Pf.
Zehrt an Bischof Konrad Martin, Heiligenstadt, rs May r859, Aktenstucke, 277; Pf. Cruse an
Bischof Konrad Martin, Buderich, 24 April r868, Aktenstucke, 377. To ensure anonymity
and encourage repentance, local priests did not hear confession during the missions.
49. Mundweiler, Waldburg-Zeil, 84.
46
their efforts on confession. One of them found it difficult to find the

words to describe the scene before him when the confessionals were
finally opened during the mission in the Diocese of Limburg.s o Men
and women burst into tears if they missed the chance to confess their
sins and returned to the lines the next day. After exiting the confes
sional, the particularly exuberant went back to the end of the line to
confess all over again. The emotional purgation of confession and the
relief, if not euphoria, of forgiveness and redemption were intense per
sonal and collective religious experiences not readily imaginable today.
Clearly the missionaries' objective was an emotional, not intellectual,
response to the sermons . Not simply the number of people but the vol
ume of weeping and shrieking at the missions was, therefore, the mea
sure of their successY The missionary and parish reports repetitiously
emphasize, even celebrate, the amount of "wailing and sobbing, "
"mourning and weeping, " and "tears of remorse and love" in order to
prove to ecclesiastical superiors the success of the missions.
The mission culminated on the final day in a large festive procession
and the planting of a large permanent cross in the town square or in
front of the church. At the mission in Mergentheim in the Diocese of
Rothenburg, over thirty thousand attended. The scene was repeated at
Meudt in the Diocese of LimburgY Crowds threw blossoms in the
path of the missionaries on the way to the local railway station. Amid
cheering crowds they boarded the train and moved on to repeat their
work at the next mission site. The missionaries paid for the relentless
tempo of the missions-the strain of constant travel, preaching, offer
ing mass, hearing confessions for hours on end, performing exorcisms,
and organizing sodalities-with their health. Many lost their voices,
collapsed, and broke into fever.53 Hillebrand's own record offers at
least one indication of the strenuous pace of the missionary work.
From 1846 to 1 8 5 6 he held 1 5 5 missions (excluding shorter follow-up
missions) in Paderborn, a large diocese that stretched in western Prus
sia from Westphalia through Hanover to Holstein and the North Sea.
so. Scholten, Volksmission der Redemptoristen, 214.
51. Trevor Johnson, "Blood, Tears, and Xavier-Water: Jesuit Missionaries and Popular
Religion in the Eighteenth-Century Upper Palatinste," in Popular Religion in Germany and
Central Europe, I40D-I8oo, ed. Bob Scribner and Trevor Johnson (New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1 996), 183-202. esp . 195; William Christian. "Provoked Religious Weeping in Early
Modern Spain," in Religious Organizations and Religious Experience, ed. John Davis (Lon
don: Academic Press, 1982), 97-II4.
52. Mission, Mergentheim, 22 Mai bis 5 Juni 1 8 5 3 , Aktenstiicke, 207; Scholten, Volksmis
sionen der Redemptoristen, 124.
53 Bericht des Schwiibisch Merkur, I I June rl\57. Aktenstiicke, 262.
47
According to one calculation, he delivered 3,852 sermons, heard

194,634 "life confessions," recruited 109,656 people in alcohol absti
nence sodalities, and enrolled 26,679 young women in religious associ
ations, though such statistics may invite some incredulity.54 In any
case, Hillebrand utterly exhausted himself, so much so that it came as
a surprise to no one when in r863 at the age of fifty he finally collapsed
and was unable to recover and continue his work. Another missionary
nearly died from overexertion, and bishops worried that the mission
aries had so physically and emotionally spent themselves that they
would never fully recuperate.55
Protestant leaders and social activists like Heinrich Johann Wich
ern, working in the inner mission movement among the working class
in large cities like Berlin and Hamburg, were aghast by what they
believed was a campaign of calculated coercion . One indignant Protes
tant pastor claimed that Protestant clergy would never manipulate
their congregations with the brute force of tenor and the threat of pun
ishment in hell. The Catholic missionaries, however, "conjure up
images of hell with great diligence and energy, and they routinely do it
in the evening hours when the heart is especially susceptible. The
speakers really know how to paint a picture for the people, that much
one must grant them. Hellfire runs through their sermons like a bloody
thread. " He likened the Catholic missionaries roaming across Ger
many to the Methodist preachers and their "practice of shock and
fear" (Erschiitterungs- und Angstpraxis) taking place at revivalist meet
ings at the same time in the United States. 56 A democratic critic argued
it was even worse: not only did the Jesuits stupefy and coerce the peo
ple, they wrecked their physical health too . Almost two-thirds of the
inhabitants of Munster, he explained, were bedridden following the
mission held there in 1 8 50. In their weakened condition, crammed
together head to head in the dank, overcrowded cathedral, they had
contracted the "Jesuit disease," a severe strain of influenza that cou
pled missions with pathology. He believed the founding of a perma
nent Jesuit residence near Munster meant no relief was in sight. Ulti
mately, he likened the "Jesuit disease" to a new strain of cholera that
54 Aktenstiicke, xii-xiii n. r .
5 5 For examples, see Bericht der Zeitschrift Sian, Nr. 25, 2 7 Feb. r 85 3, Aktenstiicke, 198;
Der Provinzial P. Behrens S.J. [Society of Jesus] an den Bischof!. Missionar Hillebrand in
Paderborn, Munster, 29 Sept. 1856, Aktenstucke, 259; Pf. Zehrt an Bischof Konrad Martin,
r 5 May 18 59, Aktenstiicke, 277; Pf. Herrmann an den Bischof von Ermland, Gr. -Ki.111en, 14
July 1863. Aktenstiicke, 3 1 3 .
56 . Leibbrand, Missionen der Jesuiten und Redemptoristen, 30-31 , 4 3
48
"now threatens to become endemic like the Asiatic cholera in

Europe. " 57 Protestants and liberals also complained that the missions
contributed to mental illness, induced "religious insanity," or caused
psychological malaise that might lead finally to suicide. 58 They repeat
edly charged the Jesuits with preying on those of frail constitution, on
the mentally and physically "weaker sex, " and on the peasantry. Dur
ing what one historian has called "the cholera years, " with the emer
gence of a new medical science including hygienic rationalization and
psychological asylums, the Jesuit problem was best grasped as a patho
logical problem, a viral infection or mental illness attacking the psy
chological, physical, and social health of the nation.59 Given the
lessons wrought from the ravages of typhoid and cholera, the epidemi
ological analogy also proffered a solution: quarantine or extirpation.
Catholic Church authorities, meanwhile, countered that the reports in
liberal newspapers of hysteria and psychological distress induced by
the sermons were merely attempts to discredit the missionary cam
paign . But it is telling that the Jesuits themselves began to open their
missions with the warning that anyone prone to anxiety or depression
should avoid their sermons. 60
Intrachurch Conflicts
Hundreds of reports and letters written by parish priests to ecclesiasti

cal authorities effusively sing the praises of the missionaries and their
work. They no doubt pleased the bishops who had summoned the mis
sionary campaign and looked with satisfaction on its success. Bound
by duty and faith to preserve at least the appearance of unanimity,
local clergy rarely alluded in their reports to any tensions that might
have been engendered by the visits of the missionaries to their parishes.
State reports on the missions, however, offer another perspective.
57. Jesuitenansiedlung in Westfalen. r9-20 .
5 8 . D r . Hubert Joseph Reinkens verteidigt die Jesuitenmission in Schlesien, Breslau, 22
July rS52, Aktenstiicke. q6; Pf. Weckesser an das bischofi. Ordinariat zu Speyer, Maikam
mer. 29 July 1 8 52. Aktenstiicke. 1 52. Also Bericht des katholischen Pfarramts Thennenbronn
an das Dekanat Triberg zu Dauchingen, Thennenbronn, 9 Dec. rS62, Aktenstiicke. 304.
59 See also the discussion in Blackbourn, Marpingen, 258. For a social and cultural analy
sis of the cholera epidemics see Richard J. Evans, Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in
the Cholera Years, I8JO-I9IO (New York: Penguin Books, 1987).
6o. See Mission Bericht des katholischen Pfarramt. Thennenbronn, 9 Dec. r862, Akten
stiicke. 304. For the context of gender and "religious madness" see Ann Goldberg, Sex, Reli
gion, and the Making of Modern Madness: The Eberbach Asylum and German Society.
I8I5-1849 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1 999) .
49
However many local priests valued the restoration of piety among their
parishioners, state accounts suggest that parish clergy resented being
upstaged in their own congregations by the ascetic, zealous, and heavy
handed missionaries. A report of the district governor in Aachen to the
Rhenish provincial governor in Koblenz in 1859 records the animosity
and insecurity suppressed beneath the surface.
Off the record, the secular clergy bitterly complain about the way
the missions devalue the priest. The missionaries are usually sent
to the parish with foreign encouragement, if not without the con
sent of the parish priest. The parish priest believes he is overshad
owed by the sermons and lectures of the missionaries and by their
austere appearance. He thinks he is far more undervalued than he
deserves. It hurts him even more to be displaced in the confes
sional and in the confidence of his parishioners . . . . The priest
endures it and remains silent, and he cannot do otherwise. But, if
he were allowed to speak, he would come forward against the ten
dency encouraged and cultivated by the diocesan authorities, with
the help of the monastic clergy, to reintroduce asceticism and for
malism in church life. 61
The Landrat at Malmedy near Cologne recognized that "the local
clergy is in general no friend of the Jesuits and dislikes their visits" and
reported that the parish priests were offended by the Jesuits' "far
reaching ambitions that disrupt their comfortable, quiet lives. "62 Bish
ops could empathize with the parish clergy. They too were not always
happy with the attention and authority the missionaries now com
manded within the church and in the life of the church. To the surprise
and no doubt ironic delight of the anticlerical critics of the missions,
the Redemptorists like the Jesuits and other missionaries threatened to
undermine not secular state but episcopal authority. 63
Ultimately, ecclesiastical authorities, however, worried that secular
clergy had become too settled in their routines and immersed in the
day-to-day realities of pastoral care in the world. The bishops doubted
their routines of pastoral practice were equal to the challenge of reli6 1 . LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 7511, RP. Aachen, to OP Pommer-Esche, Koblenz, 13 Sept.
r859, Bl. 367-7762. HSTAD, RA, PB, Nr. 1239, "Missionaren, Jesuiten, Lazaristen: Ordenstatigkeit der
selben in Kirche und Schule, 1835-1916,'' LA to RP Kiihlwetter, Aachen, 13 Aug. 1859, Bl.
I 56.
63. Anderson, "Piety and Politics," 700; Weiss, Redemptoristen in Bayern, 787-82r .
so
gious revival. They suspected that given the events of 1 848-49 local
clergy had after all failed at some fundamental level to control their
congregations and uphold religious and secular authority. The mis
sionary campaign was meant, therefore, not just to repietize the laity
but to rehabilitate the religious commitment and institutional disci
pline of the parish clergy. As the bishop at Speyer argued, "the secular
clergy from time to time need religious renewal not less but even more
than the people so that they do not become secularized by their con
stant contact with the world. " In contrast, the regular clergy (i.e.,
clergy who swore vows to live according to monastic regulations) had
the complete confidence of the church leadership . "They are especially
prepared and ready for [the missionary campaign] . They are devoted
by an uninterrupted inner spiritual life to attend to sin-worn souls and
to renew the spirit of penance and piety with their teachings and
lives. "64 The social status of the Jesuits and monastic clergy relative to
the clergy "in the world" contributed to the resentment felt by the
parish clergy and their sense of insecurity. Parish priests seldom had an
advanced education and were often themselves sons of peasants. The
Jesuits by contrast were the elite in the church and German Catholic
society. They were well-educated, well-traveled, exercised considerable
ecclesiastical influence, and often came from prominent or aristocratic
families. In an age when patterns of deference to Honoratioren were
still intact, the Jesuits appeared in humble rural communities as more
impressive and venerable representatives of Catholic religious and
social power. It irked local priests, who after all had for years, some for
a lifetime, dedicated themselves to their congregations, to find their
own spiritual advice, penance, and absolutions overruled by outsiders
and superiors within the church.65
The tension between secular parish clergy and the missionaries was a
reflection of deeper conflicts within the church over shifts in authority
and the nature of the Catholic revival. At the same time that the mis
sions were sweeping through the German states, there was also dra
matic growth in the number of new monastic orders and religious con
gregations in Germany. Secular parish clergy recognized that the
64. Bischof Nikolaus von Weis an den Konig von Bayern, 3 March r 865, Aktenstiicke, 337.
6 5 . For the development of the ultramontane clergy and frictions with older clergy see also
Gotz von Olenhusen, Klerus und abweichendes Verhalten; idem, "Klerus und Ultramontanis
m us in der Erzdii.)zese Freiburg: Entbiirgerlichung und Klerikalisierung des Katholizismus
nach der Revolution von 1848/49," in Religion und Gesellschaft im f9. Jahrhundert, ed. Wolf
gang Schieder (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. I993). II3-43; idem, "Die Ultramontanisierung des
Klerus: Das Beispiel der Erzdii.)zese Freiburg, " in Deutscher Katholizismus im Umbruch zur
Moderne, ed. Wilfried Loth (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, I99I), 46-75 .
51
missionary crusade and the Catholic revival brought an increase in the

stature and influence of monastic clergy and a movement toward the
centralization of authority within the church. The missionaries and the
regular orders to which they belonged enthusiastically embraced ultra
montanism, an unwavering dedication to the absolute and incon
testable authority of the pope in Rome. With their new radical ultra
montanism, the Franciscans, Redemptorists, Dominicans, and Jesuits,
their detractors sarcastically claimed, wanted to be more Catholic than
the pope himself. Ultramontanism continued to gain ground in the
church throughout the r 8 sos and r 86os and finally culminated in the
promulgation of the dogma of papal infallibility at the Vatican Coun
cil in r 8 7o. But to the traditional local clergy, and many episcopal
authorities too, the new culture of ultramontanism often seemed coer
cive and repressive. Only grudgingly did they yield to the new ultra
montanism and the increasing prominence of the regular clergy within
the church, a fact not missed by Prussian state authorities . In r858, as
the report to the provincial governor of the Rhineland explained, "The
parish clergy is still warding off, as much as possible, a larger increase
of the monastic clergy. But it is not possible to judge how long this will
be possible. "66 Parish priests who had joined the clergy during the Vor
marz and were accustomed to the more subdued sermon styles and pat
terns of worship of that period were often out of step with the more
flamboyant Catholicism that emphasized sensational preaching, fire
and brimstone, and Marian devotion. 67
At least as serious as the social gap and the issue of ecclesiastical
authority was the tension between older, secular clergy and younger,
regular clergy. The generational contest between parish and regular
clergy, a competition for authority that the monastic orders were win
ning, was obvious even to the Landrat at Aachen: "The local, older
clergy, " he reported to the district governor, "are not especially fond of
the monastic clergy. The latter seems to attract the younger clergy. It
has to be expected that, if the younger clergy climb to the top of the
parishes, the missions and with them the activities of the monastic
clergy will increase. "68 The district governor reported to his superior,
"The younger clergy, already educated in [asceticism and formalism] ,
will not tolerate any resistance. "69 A conflict between mere youth and
66. LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 75II, RP, Aachen, to OP Pommer-Esche, Koblenz, 13 Sept.
r859, Bl. 367-77. See also PD Junker, Koblenz, to RP, Koblenz, 28 Feb . r856, Bl. 99-ro6.
67. Sperber, Popular Catholicism, 58.
68. HSTAD. RA, P, Nr. 1239. LA to RP, Aachen, 21 Aug. r859, Bl. r6o.
69. LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 75n, RP, Aachen, to OP Pommer-Esche, Koblenz, I3 Sept.
r859, Bl. 367-77. See also PD Junker, Koblenz, to RP, Koblenz, 28 Feb . r856, Bl. 99-ro6.
52
age within the church was, however, hardly the issue. At bottom was
again a conflict between two different paths of devotion and service
and experience within the church, between secular priests in and of the
world, tied to life and relationships in their parishes on the one hand
and monks detached from the world, fiercely loyal to their respective
orders, and utterly devoted to the pope on the other hand. Finally, to
this picture of conflict between traditional local clergy and the younger
evangelical missionaries must be added the tension between the reli
gious orders themselves. Redemptorists in Bavaria apparently both
feared and despised the Jesuits .7 Clergy in closed, monastic orders like
the Redemptorists and presumably the Dominicans and Franciscans
too, with their reputation for extreme asceticism, exaltation of blind
obedience, and mortification of the flesh, were at loggerheads with the
Jesuits, who were much more comfortable, even enj oyed, being in the
world.
Hostilities between missionaries of different orders did not necessar
ily translate into practical problems. At the level of organization and
logistics, the religious orders could simply avoid one another as they
went about their work. This was hardly an option, of course, for secu
lar clergy, who by necessity and duty were bound to cooperate with the
missionaries. Yet the parish clergy embraced the missionaries. The
slights they endured and the resentments they harbored for the mis
sionaries all paled next to their common high purpose. Secular clergy
recognized immediately that the missions were the only apparent
answer to many of the problems of pastoral care they had been
encountering in the Vormarz, and they, therefore, eagerly accepted
their role in the missionary crusade. They gave advance notice from
their pulpits and heightened the anticipation of their congregations for
the forthcoming mission. They cleared arrangements with civil
officials, and they managed the beautification of the church, the clear
ing of pews, the building of additional confessionals, and the reception
of the missionaries. Priests led their congregations from outlying
parishes into the towns that had been selected as mission centers, lis
tened for hours on end to confessions, and facilitated affairs during the
course of the mission. The Jesuits themselves recognized that their
efforts would have been fruitless without the dedication of the secular
priests. 7' Missionary reports to bishops often singled out individual
parish priests for comment and praise.
70. Anderson, "Piety and Politics," 698; Weiss, Redemptoristen in Bayern. 813-14.
7 1 . Sperber, Popular Catholicism, 97.
53
Meanwhile, the other authority in the community, the Biirgermeis

ter, felt little reason to resent the missionaries. He was, in fact, often an
enthusiastic advocate of the missions. Whether Catholic or Protestant,
he welcomed the opportunity to bolster civic order and authority with
sermons extolling the virtues of obedience, duty, reconciliation, and
peace. The Biirgermeister of Milbringen, for example, personally wel
comed the Jesuits when they arrived at his town in r867. He made an
appointment to discuss with the missionaries the "reigning, principal
evils" of his town and was then well pleased to hear them singled out
and castigated in the sermons. 72 Civil magistrates were delighted to see
their communities socially rehabilitated by the missions. During the
missions long and bitter feuds were resolved between neighbors, and
family quarrels were laid aside . As late as 1871 on the eve of the Kul
turkampf, the Biirgermeister of Croev in the Diocese of Trier argued to
the Landrat in Wittlich that the missions were "good and useful,
indeed, even necessary. "73
The Impact of the Missions
Parish reports and diocesan accounts unanimously proclaimed the cru

sade to revive Catholicism in Germany a triumphant success. With the
arrival of the missions, according to reports from the parish priests at
Warburg to their bishop of Paderborn in 1 8 5 1 , the church had entered
nothing less than "a new epoch."74 The parish priest at Niederembt in
his report to the archbishop at Cologne in 1 8 5 8 proclaimed "a new life
for the church. "75 While some local clergy reported initial resistance
among some parishioners, the priest at Neunburg vorm Wald in the
Diocese of Regensburg reported to his bishop that the Jesuits had ulti
mately conquered all opposition. By r86g they could, he believed, pro
claim in the immortal words of Julius Caesar announcing his victory at
Zela, "Veni. Vidi. Vici."76 According to the priest at Cochem in the
Diocese of Trier, after the mission in r 864 only ten of the five hundred
parishioners who had stopped attending mass refused to return to the
72. LHAK, Best. 442, Nr. 3963, "Wirken und Verhalten der katholischen Missionen und
Jesuiten, r 8 s 9-1900," BM, Milbringen, to LRA, Merig, 7 April r867.
n LHAK, Best. 442, RBT, Nr. 3963, B M to LRA, Wittlich, 3 Oct. r87r, Bl. 447
74. Die Pf. Willmes und Pees an den Bischof Drepper von Paderborn. Warburg, 27 Dec.
r852, Aktenstiicke, r8o.
75 Pf. an das Erzbischofl. Generalvikariat, Ki.1ln, 8 Nov. r 8 5 8 , Aktenstiicke. 272.
76. Pf. Fell an den Bischof Ignatius vom Regensburg, Neunburg vorm Wald, July? r869,
Aktenstiicke. 396.
54
fold. 77 Men and women who had not confessed or taken the Eucharist
for fifteen or twenty years received the sacraments in the confessional
and at the altar. "The indifference that ran like a thread through the
so-called educated strata and also infected the working class many
times, " according to the priest at Worbis in the Diocese of Paderborn
in 1859, was transformed into religious conviction.78 In the small town
of Jiicken in the Diocese of Cologne, young people of the upper class,
"who had become indifferent and morally depraved as a result of read
ing and traveling, " now recanted their ridicule of religion and declared
their loyalty to the church.79 "Where the spirit of the time had poi
soned everything and had threatened to destroy the last roots of Chris
tianity, " the bishop of Eichstatt j oyfully declared in 1 8 5 3 , "a fear of
God and Christian propriety blossomed again" ; those "bedazzled by
the arrogance of a false Enlightenment were awakened again to belief
in God by the power of the divine word . " 80 According to the report of
a parish priest to his superior in Regensburg, even a year after the mis
sionaries had come to Offenstetten in the Diocese of Regensburg in
1 867, his congregation was still attending mass on Sunday with more
intense and heartfelt attention. 81 According to the report of a proud
priest about the mission at Gmiind in 18 50, a sermon on the existence
and eternity of hell "destroyed with a few blows the web of the modern
Enlightenment and skepticism. " 82 Such triumphalist and celebratory
reports by Catholic Church leaders about the missionary campaign
could be cited and quoted by the hundreds.
The objective of the missions, however, was not only to indoctrinate
religiosity but also to improve individual and social morality. The mis
sionaries believed that the one was necessarily bound to the other. Ser
mons on the doctrines of sin and repentance, therefore, hammered
away at alcohol consumption and sexual license and exhorted listeners
to resolve family feuds, to mend broken friendships, to return stolen
property, and to live righteous lives. The missionaries who preached
that hell was a real place, not a metaphor, wanted not only to exert
control over the laity but to save others from infernal damnation and
77. Dechant Schnorfeil an das Generalvikariat in Trier, Cochem, 1R April 11.\64, Aktenstiicke. 3I9.
71.\. Pf. Huschenbett an Bischof Konrad Martin, Worbis, 20 Jan. r l.\ 59. Aktenstiicke. 276.
79. Pf. Dahler an den Erzbischof Paulus von Koln, Jiicken, 21 Jan. r868, Aktenstiicke, 373.
Ro. Fasten-Hirtenbrief des Bischof's Georg (v. O tt!) von EichsUitt, Eichstatt, 23 Jan. rR53,
Aktenstiicke, 186.
81. Pf. Rosmann an den Bischof von Regensburg, Offenstetten, 8 Nov. 1867. Aktenstiicke,
363.
R2. Quoted in Leibbrand, Die Missionen der Jesuiten und Redemptoristen, 30-31 .
55
in the process to transform themselves and society for the better in this
life. In reply to hostile liberal and progressive critics and the concern of
secular authorities that the missions drained away otherwise produc
tive social and economic resources, the bishop of Regensburg argued
to the Bavarian state minister in 1867 that the missions, on the con
trary, positively served the interests of society. He explained that the
sermons emphasizing moral character, modesty, and self-discipline
rescued households from bankruptcy and bolstered the economy:
"Luxury, excess, and waste are the principal problems leading to the
financial ruin of families, and lying and fraud undermine social trust,
the foundation of credit. But the missions have swept away these vices
wherever they have free access. The uprooting of these vices and the
planting of their opposite virtues have dried up the sources that have
led to the sad demise of so many of our farmers today." 83 The missions
not only saved souls, church leaders argued, they also encouraged
sound fiscal management and rehabilitated the moral and social foun
dations of the capital credit and investment necessary for economic
expansion and the recovery of agricultural production.
The missions also set up religious sodalities with the dual aim of sus
taining the religious revival and socially rehabilitating the community.
The new sodalities established after 1 8 50 represented a revolution in
the associational life of German Catholics. 84 Catholic communities set
up elaborate networks of association along gender, class, and genera
tional lines. In Aachen, for example, seven different devotional confra
ternities were founded for men, j ourneymen artisans, students, youth
from the "educated classes, " young female servants, factory workers,
and working women. 85 Members of these new religious associations
took oaths to God to morally improve their individual lives. Those
who joined the sodalities and religious brotherhoods vowed to stop
drinking. Members of the new Catholic youth groups promised to
avoid unsupervised contact with persons of the opposite sex. Young
men and women swore to enter into relationships only with the
f\ 3 . Bischof v. Senetrey an den Staatsminister v. GreBer. Regensburg, 2f\ Sept. 1f\67, Akten
stiicke, 362.
f\4. Sperber, Popular Catholicism, 73-9f\; idem, 'The Transformation of Catholic Associ
ations in the N orthern Rhineland and Westphalia, 1 830-1870," Journal of Social History 1 5
(r98r): 253-63; Oded Heilbronner, "In Search o f the (Rural) Catholic Bourgeoisie: The Bi.irg
ertum of South Germany," Central European History 29 (1996) : 191-93 . See also the articles
in Otto Dahn, ed., Vereinswesen und biirgerliche Gesellschaft in Deutschland (Munich : R. Old
en bourg, r984).
85. LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 75u, RP to OP Pommer-Esche, Koblenz, 21 Feb . r86o; RP to
OP, Koblenz, 9 Sept. 1857, Aachen, 81. 9 1 .
56
expressed intent of marriage and with the approval of their parents . 86

Men and women dedicated themselves to more austere, morally sober
lives. They agreed to eschew public entertainment and did so appar
ently with conviction. Following the mission at Munster, the theater
halls stood practically empty; only those not from the city attended. 87
The parish priest at Darfeld took pleasure in reporting to his bishop at
Munster in r 8 s r that during the year following the mission the moral
behavior of the community had significantly improved. There was no
longer any boozing and nightly romping. Girls were even wearing their
hats more modestly, without bands and flowers. 88 Parish reports con
cerning the religious and moral impact of the missions paint a picture
of unqualified success and an impressive example of the religious and
social control exercised by the church.
The reports of parish secular clergy, eager as they were for the
revival both to succeed and to meet the expectations of their authori
ties regarding the religious and moral rehabilitation of their congrega
tions, are themselves, however, not disinterested information. 89 Assess
ing the impact of the missions on popular behavior requires, therefore,
at least some qualification of the triumphalist appraisals of the mis
sionary and parish reports. First of all, the missions were not every
where equally well received. In the village of Offt, for example, hard on
the French border in the Rhineland, the congregation broke into a riot
of protest when the parish priest announced that the Redemptorist
missionaries were coming.9 When in r 86r the missionaries came to
Niederau, a small town near Aachen, while the factory workers
attended the sermons, the peasants refused to show up. They did not
care at all about moral or religious improvement.91 Especially in the
cities, not all Catholics greeted the Jesuits with open arms. Missions
86. Dechant Handly an den Bischoflichen Kommissar Nolte in Heiligenstadt, Neustadt,
14 May 1 8 so. Aktenstiicke, 25; Pf. Spithover an Bischof Johann Georg von Munster uber die
Mission, r8 July r 8 so, Aktenstiicke, 32; Pf. Feuslageden Bischof von Munster iiber den Segen
der im Marz r8so gehaltenen Volksmission, Darfeld, r6 April r 8 s r , Aktenstiicke, 62; Koln
ische Zeitung, Nr. 274, rs Nov. r 8 s r .
87. Jesuitenansiedlung in Westfalen, r 8-r 9 .
8 8 . Pf. Fenslage a n den Bischof v o n Munster uber den Segen der i m Marz r 8 s o gehaltenen
Mission, Darfeld, r6 April r 8 s r , Aktenstiicke, 63.
89. For all its virtues, Sperber's study of the missions and the Catholic revival in the
Rhineland and Westphalia accepts too uncritically church reports and sources regarding the
impact of the missions on the moral behavior of Catholics. Sperber, Popular Catholicism,
chap. 2.
90. Scholten, Volksmission der Redemptoristen, II9 n . 48.
9 1 . Sperber, Popular Catholicism, 62, and for other examples of popular opposition to the
missions, 62-63.
57
held in urban areas drew massive audiences, but in relative terms they,
in fact, were less successful than those held in small towns and villages
in rural areas. At the height of the missionary campaign in r868, the
mission in Aachen pulled an impressive throng of 2o,ooo, yet the total
Catholic population was 73,000. When the mission came to Cologne in
the same year, 30,000 of a population of IOo,ooo attendedY On the
other hand, by nineteenth-century standards crowds of 2o,ooo and
30,000 were spectacular sights and were proof of the new mass power
of Catholicism. Even so, the Rheinisches Kirchenblatt noted that in
Cologne the "affluent part" of the population stayed away from the
mission or came only to see enough to be able to participate in a con
versation about it.93 The relatively lower attendance among the total
Catholic urban populations was an indication of the secularization
under way in cities. In the small towns and peasant villages of the rural
areas, where clerical monitoring of individuals within the community
was possible and personalized patterns of authority and deference were
more entrenched, almost everyone attended the missions.
In addition, educated, secularizing, middle-class Catholics were
more inclined to resent the missionaries' antiliberal, antirational, anti
materialist message that struck at the heart of their social-cultural
identity as members of the Biirgertum. Middle-class Catholics may
have appreciated the Jesuits' campaign for social order and moral
sobriety among the lower classes, but they also distrusted their heavy
handed manner and were embarrassed by the unseemly spectacle of
men and women at the sermons moaning, swooning, and sobbing.
Throughout the period of the missionary campaign Catholic liberals
found themselves increasingly torn between their membership in the
middle class on the one hand and loyalty to the Catholic Church on the
other.94 They were wary of an ultramontane Catholicism that they
often regarded as the imposition of a foreign and centralizing author
ity and that seemed especially strong among "ignorant" peasants and
privileged aristocrats. The prominent role of the Jesuits in the Catholic
revival placed a further strain on their relationship with the church. In
r 8 5 8 , to cite one example, Cologne's liberal-Catholic patrician Eber
hard von Groote railed against the Jesuit "parasites in the ecclesiastical
92. Scholten, Volksmission der Redemptoristen, 24r .

93. Ibid . , 242 .
94. Merge!, Zwischen Klasse und Konfession. See also idem, " Ultramontanism, Liberalism,
Moderation: Political Mentalities and Political Behavior of the German Catholic B iirgertum,
I l\4fl-I9I4," Central European History 29 (1996): 1 51-74
58
hierarchy. "95 By the Kulturkampf of the 1870s liberal Catholics-like

secular and Protestant liberals-had become fervently anti-Jesuit. In
1 872 all the liberal Catholics in the National Liberal Party and the Lib
erale Reichspartei in the Reichstag threw their votes behind the anti
Jesuit legislation that brought a halt to the missionary campaign. It
was, in fact, Eduard Windthorst, an Old Catholic progressive from
Berlin and nephew of the Catholic Center Party leader, Ludwig
Windthorst, who led the attack against the Jesuits in the Reichstag.96
Even Ludwig Windthorst had never made a secret of his personal dis
taste for the Jesuits, though he believed the anti-Jesuit law was an
abuse of state power and an intolerable attack on the autonomy of the
Catholic Church.97
Meanwhile, missions encountered organized opposition from secu
lar liberals, democrats, and socialists . In Dusseldorf radicals bitterly
contested the missions. Radicals blanketed the city walls with posters
decrying the missions, harassed the missionaries with letters, and held
demonstrations during the sermons.9 8 Democrats set up placards that
read: "Citizens ! ! As you know, the Jesuits are preaching here . Go and
hear them. Then you can convince yourselves how these wretched
swindlers are using the pure democratic teachings of Jesus to stultify
the people and to win them for the monarchy by the grace of God. "99
Liberal newspapers repeatedly argued that the missions spread nothing
but stupidity, superstition, and dogma. In return the Catholic Church
and Catholic press accused liberals and democrats of hypocrisy. In
1850 the Catholic Sonntagsblatt in Munster attacked those liberal and
democratic newspapers that, while proclaiming freedom and claiming
to represent "the rights of the people," spread lies about the missions.
The paper implored all those who had seen the missions in Munster to
judge for themselves whether they had really harmed the interests of
the people; undermined freedom; or endangered the welfare of the
individual, the family, and society.1 00
Especially in the first years of the missionary campaign, the elite,
intellectually sophisticated Jesuits also seriously miscalculated their
95 Merge!, Zwischen Klasse und Konfession, 399
96. Michael B . Gross. "Kulturkampf and Unification: German Liberalism and the War
against the Jesuits," Central European History 30 (1997): 545-66, esp . 550-5 1 .
9 7 Anderson, Windthorst, 1 2 8 , r66.
98. Burger von Dusseldorf (934 Unterschriften) an den Provinzial der deutschen Orden
sprovinz, Dusseldorf, 30 July 1 8 5 1 . Aktenstiicke. 79-80.
99 Sperber. Popular Catholicism, 62.
roo. Bericht eines Augenzeugen, Sonn tagsblatt, I7 March r 8 5o, Aktenstiicke, r4.
59
audience. Their sermons on matters of doctrine and dogma often flew

hopelessly over the heads of their listeners from humble, rural commu
nities. The Catholic Schwabische Chronik, for example, estimated that
in 1850 hardly a tenth of the audience at the Jesuit mission in Con
stance right on the Swiss border understood one particular sermon.
The preacher naively assumed that his listeners were "familiar with the
learned tools of the trade and philosophical-technical terms which he
pulled out of his sleeve sentence after sentence. " The paper complained
that prodigious scholarly training was required "to follow the compi
lation of his thoughts, the swift and precise development of his philo
sophical argument, the chain of extensive conclusions, and the series of
logical proofs until they finally became cogent and effective. " 10 ' This
particular Jesuit, a professor of dogmatic theology at the University of
Louvain in Belgium, was more suited for the university lecture hall.
When he delivered his sermons again to an educated audience in the
university city of Bonn, the audience reportedly listened with appreci
ation. ' 0 2 If the highly intellectual content of the sermon was difficult
enough for common folk to follow, the problem of understanding the
preacher, himself originally Swiss but now from the Walloon, Fran
cophone region of Belgium, was merely compounded by the fact that
those who came from the adjacent territories to attend the mission at
Constance spoke schwabisch, low Alemannic, or high Alemannic
dialects. This is the kind of problem the missionaries repeatedly faced.
In different regions and in the countryside where highly idiomatic
dialects were spoken in peasant communities, sermons delivered by
Jesuit elites in High German on the intricate nuances of theology,
dogma, and doctrine were often simply too difficult to understand.
That French or Polish not German was the native language of many of
the Jesuits only further detracted from the comprehensibility of the ser
mons. The language and intellectual gaps between the Jesuits and the
Catholic popular and peasant population were, therefore, additional
factors that limited the capacity of the missionaries to dictate from
above the reform of religious and popular culture.
Finally, the campaign to reform the social and moral conduct of
Catholics was limited by indigenous and resilient features of popular
culture. To take one illuminating example, the missionaries and mission
sodalities endlessly attacked dancing, the form of popular entertainment
in the nineteenth century. Church authorities were obsessed with the
ror. Schwabische Chronik, Nr. 220, I3 Sept. r R so, Aktenstiicke, 33-34.
102. Murphy, Wiederaujbau der Gesellschaft Jesu, 108.
6o
problem of dancing because they believed it was the occasio proxima for
more serious sin. Their suspicions were not without justification. By the
nineteenth century, premodern, highly ritualized, communal dancing
among the rural peasantry had given way to couples dancing together of
their own choosing. Dance movements were also less stylized, freer,
more spontaneous and sensual, often lewd. Sex was a prevalent topic of
conversation at village dances, and scabrous, sexual themes often pro
vided the lyrics for folk songs. Dancing, therefore, was part and parcel
of the culture of sexual permissiveness in rustic working-class life: it pro
vided the medium for romantic (or not-so-romantic) courtship and
facilitated sexual liaisons. No wonder almost all parish priests in
Bavaria believed the Freiniichte, the nights on which dances were held,
were the occasion for sex and followed by rising illegitimacy rates. 103
To the Bavarian cleric, recreational dancing, implicated as it was in
the sexual life of his village, was an intractable precisely because danc
ing was also embedded in popular religious life. Dancing was woven
into the communal celebrations of the annual liturgical cycle . The tra
ditional dance of the Minneburg took place on the first Sunday of
May, and the "bonfire dance" on the Feast of St. John. In rural com
munities, spinners celebrated the Feast of St. Agatha with food and
dancing. Every occupational group and guild had a patron saint and a
day set aside for his or her celebration with dancing. The occasion for
dancing was also provided by the sacramental rites of passage at bap
tism, confirmation, marriage, and death. In r852 the careful calculation
of the chancery at Munich determined that marriages, Kirchenweihen
(church festivals), guild patron-saint festivals, and holy feast days pro
vided the occasion for holding most of the 4, 842 dances in the Diocese
of Munich in one year alone. That impressive number did not even
include those dances held in the cities of Munich and Landshut! 104
Dancing in rustic and village culture was, despite the protests of the
church, not sacrilegious conduct in popular culture but, to the con
trary, an ongoing ritual that linked, celebrated, and facilitated at once
both sexual and religious life.
If, however, the proud priest of Darfeld is to be believed, the mis
sionaries' attack on dancing was a sweeping success: the town had
abruptly stopped dancing, and even a year after the mission people no
longer danced even at the height of Carnival. The population, he
103. J. Michael Phayer, Sexual Liberation and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Europe
(London: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977), 82-93.
ro4. Ibid ., X9.
6r
claimed, simply no longer felt the least desire to dance . 10 5 Even if this
was the case, his parish was the exception, certainly not the rule. Danc
ing remained inextricably laced into the fabric of the sexual and reli
gious life of rural communities throughout central Europe, and
attempts to reform such basic components of popular culture were lim
ited at best. The report of the parish priest of Rees in the Diocese of
Munster reflected more accurately the norm: those in his parish who
j oined the new devotional confraternities merely promised to abstain
from dancing. "To really prohibit dancing, " he candidly acknowl
edged, "doesn't lie within our power . " 106
If the missions and new sodalities could not stop dancing, there is
also reason to doubt that the missions were able to reduce substantially
the amount of cavorting at the tavern, gambling, drunkenness, foul
language, and extramarital sexual activity. While research is not con
clusive, illegitimacy rates throughout Germany probably did not
decline during the r 8 sos and r86os in the wake of the missions; even
where and when the rates appear to decline it would be difficult to
attribute that decline with any assurance to changes in moral conduct
rather than to social, economic, and demographic factors. Jonathan
Sperber argues that the illegitimacy rates in selected areas of
Rhineland-Westphalia dropped with the religious revival, but, even as
he indicates, the records of vital statistics are sparse. Most of the sta
tistics for the period of the r84os and r 8 sos are missing in his tabula
tion, yet they are necessary in order to gauge with confidence any
decline during the period of missionary activity. 107 Alcoholism also
remained an intractable problem throughout the century. The Jesuits,
always more at home in the cities than the countryside, in particular
recognized that they could not simply dictate but often had to accom
modate certain features of rural popular culture. Parish priests cited
the persistence of drunkenness and alcoholism as one reason the mis
sions were necessary in the first place, and the Redemptorists and
Hillebrand tirelessly campaigned against alcohol abuse. The Jesuits,
however, seldom preached against drinking, directing their audiences'
attention instead to what they considered the more important issues,
namely, religious indoctrination and catechism. 108 Research on the
ros. Pf. Feuslage an den Bischof von Munster uber den Segen der im Marz r8so gehaltenen Volksmission, Darfeld, r6 April r8sr, Aktenstiicke, 62.
106. Pf. Hartmann an den Bischof von Munster, Rees, 6 Feb . 1851, Aktenstiicke, so.
107. Sperber, Popular Catholicism, 93.
ro8. Scholten, Volksmission der Redemptoristen, xxii.
62
peasantry in Bavaria and on the lack of impact of the Redemptorist

missionary campaign on peasant moral behavior and the illegitimacy
rate in Bavaria has also suggested that peasant culture and value sys
tems remained remarkably detached from those prescribed to them by
church authorities. r o 9
In the wake of the missions both rising church attendance and persis
tent or rising illegitimacy rates or for that matter dancing, drinking,
fistfighting, gambling, cursing, swearing, and foul language in Catholic
rural communities would, therefore, not be a contradiction. The most
stalwart peasant may have been reduced to tears at the hellfire sermons,
confessed his sins, accepted the Eucharist, and even joined a confrater
nity, but one cannot deduce from this his subsequent moral conduct. He
himself recognized that his behavior and "religiosity" or "irreligiosity"
were not the same thing. He might drink, utter obscenities, dance, and
enjoy the pleasures of the Freinacht and on Sunday morning still take his
seat in church with the rest of his community. The rural peasant found
that he could join religious faith to his or her life without fundamentally
changing it in other respects, and this, indeed, was one of the reasons for
the phenomenal success of the Catholic revival.
The Response of the State
Prussian state authorities may have been unsettled by the overt power
of the missions, the Catholic popular revival, and specifically the mass
appeal of the Jesuits, but they also welcomed the missionaries' demand
for social discipline, call for obedience to the monarchy, and attack on
moral laxity. n o Given its dense Catholic population and its radical
legacy from 1848, the Rhineland was designated by episcopal authori
ties for intense missionary activity. Over a twenty-year period the mis
sionaries repeatedly crisscrossed the province. By the time of German
unification every parish in the dioceses of the Rhineland received at
least one mission, and many received several. I I I The Rhineland pro
vides, therefore, an instructive case with which to register and evaluate
the reaction of Prussian state administrators and authorities to the mis
sions. Here the missions from the moment of their inception were
intensely scrutinized by state officials. Rhenish government inforrog. W. Robert Lee. Population Growth. Economic Development. and Social Change in
Bavaria, 1750-1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, I 977), 384; Weiss, Redemptoristen
in Bayern. ro2r-23; and the critical comments by Anderson, "Piety and Politics," 700.
rro. LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 75rr, RP, Aachen, to OPR, Pommer-Esche, Koblenz, 13 Sept.
1859, Bl. 367-77I I 1 . Sperber, Popular Catholicism, 57.
63
mants, Biirgermeister, Landdite, and police commissioners routinely

submitted detailed reports about the missionary activity to district
governors throughout the decade of reaction. District governors
reported to the provincial governor, who in turn both channeled infor
mation to and received instructions from the reactionary ministry in
Berlin. In these reports government officials closely monitored and
evaluated the missions, teachings, and pastoral activities as well as the
movements of the individual missionaries, particularly the Jesuits.
Their reports record the Janus-faced attitude of authorities toward the
missionary work in Prussia. On the one hand, municipal officials and
district and provincial governors-especially in the years immediately
following the revolutions of 1 848 and 1849 but also throughout the
1 8 5os-welcomed the reinforcement the missionaries gave to state and
municipal authority. For the most part reports from local-level admin
istrators and authorities repeatedly stated that the sermons of the
Jesuits and other missionaries did not attack Protestantism and bol
stered state authority. On the other hand, many state authorities at the
same time insisted that the missionaries threatened confessional peace
and undermined the ultimate authority of the state.
In Berlin, Minister of Interior Ferdinand von Westphalen, Minister
of Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs Karl Otto von Raumer, and
the other Protestant ministers of the reactionary period responded to
the Jesuit missions with hostility. In the postrevolutionary period, con
servative authorities understandably looked askance on popular gath
erings. They not only believed that the missions were trying to convert
Protestants to Catholicism just as they had done during the Counter
Reformation of the sixteenth century. They, no doubt, also feared pub
lic assemblies that looked with their unbridled passions suspiciously
like the unruly mobs of the 1 848 Revolution. Already in early 1 8 5 1 ,
therefore, Berlin took action against the missionary campaign. I n Feb
ruary the minister of the interior and the minister of education and
ecclesiastical affairs issued a directive stating that punitive action
against foreign missionaries should be taken if they committed a
"criminal offense" or incited "politically dangerous or other excesses"
that could lead to the disruption of public peace. ' ' 2 I n the decrees o f 22
May 1852 (the "Raumer decrees") the ministers banned the holding of
missions in Catholic parishes in predominantly Protestant provinces
"since there is the suspicion that other goals are being pursued here
u2. Die Minister v. Raumer und
1 8 5 1 , Aktenstiicke, 52.
v.
Westphalen an die Oberprasidenten, Berlin, 25 Feb .
64
than an influence on the Catholic parishes."Tl3 One week later Berlin

prepared to go a step further in the predominantly Catholic Rhineland.
Hans von Kleist-Retzow, the Rhenish provincial governor, was
informed in Koblenz that in the Rhineland missionary proselytizing
might constitute such a threat to religious and civil peace as to warrant
prohibition of the missions altogether. " 4 Local and regional officials,
however, balked. The Landrat of district Aachen warned his superiors
that banning the missions in the province would only provoke a
Catholic backlash against the government.ns Despite his hatred for the
Jesuits and their missions, the district governor at Aachen, Friedrich
Kiihlwetter, could only concur. In his report to Provincial Governor
Kleist-Retzow he advised against banning the missions, and authori
ties in Berlin backed down from the plan to prohibit the missions in the
Rhineland. Meanwhile, in response to the decree of May r852, sixty
two deputies in the lower house of the Prussian parliament formed the
"Catholic Fraktion, " the first political stirrings of the Catholic Center
Party that was to emerge with the founding of the German Empire.
The Catholic deputies demanded that the government respect the
church's right to the religious freedoms guaranteed by the constitution
of r 8 so: the right to independent administration of church affairs free
from government interference and the right of religious orders to settle
in Prussia. The Catholic Fraktion stood firm, and the Prussian govern
ment backed down from enforcing the decree. n6
To be sure, the missionaries did sometimes incite interconfessional
hostility as they tried to instruct their audience on matters of Catholic
doctrine. During the spring of r 8 s6, the Biirgermeister of Duisberg
submitted a detailed report to the Landrat about the sermons given in
his town. One Jesuit, he reported, spoke about the necessity of the
Roman Catholic priesthood for the administering of the sacraments.
The missionary had not directly referred to Protestantism, but the
implication was clear enough. Anyone, he said, could simply give a
piece of bread to someone else and say "do this in memory of me . "
"But this, " the Jesuit argued, "is not a sacrament. The sacrament
requires a properly ordained priest . " At the end of the mission the wellI I 3 . ErlaB der preuB. Minister v. Raumer und v . Westphalen uber die Missionen, Berlin,
22 May r852, Aktenstiicke, 128.
114. HSTAD, RA, P, Nr. 1239, letter to OP Kleist-Retzow, Koblenz, Berlin, 29 May 1852,
Bl. 26.
I I 5 . HSTAD. RA, P, Nr. I239, LA, Kr. Aachen, to RP. RBA, Kr. Aachen, II June I 852.
n6. Sperber, Popular Catholicism, 61.
65
known Jesuit missionary Peter Roh delivered a sermon on the hierar

chy of the Catholic Church. Catholics, he argued, were like members
of an army with officers and generals. By contrast, Protestants, he
argued, had no such hierarchy and were, therefore, no better than
"free-schoolers . " Father Roh then attacked the Lutheran Bible, claim
ing that Luther had deliberately falsified many sections in his transla
tion in order to undermine the Catholic Church and promote the inter
ests of his own church. The Jesuit spiced his attack with sarcasm,
mocking the name "Dr. Martin Luther" by pronouncing it slowly and
laboriously. Now the Protestant Church refused, he argued, to correct
Luther's mistakes. The Biirgermeister reported that Roh told his audi
ence that the Protestant Church believed its followers had become so
accustomed to the errors that "it is better to leave them in their errors
(I was told, he said 'in their idiocy') than to correct the mistakes. " II 7
The incident, however, contrasts sharply with Father Roh's reputa
tion. Previously he had been known not only for his oratorical skill but
also for his tact and restraint. He was the one often entrusted with mis
sions held in towns with heavily Protestant populations such as Hei
delberg and Breslau. " 8 According to the conservative Neue Preu}Jische
Zeitung, for example, the Protestants attending the sermons at Breslau
in r 8 52 were moved only by the eloquence of the Jesuits' sermons
including one by Peter Roh. His sermons attacked the current "philo
sophical-religious" errors and moral depravities of the current age.
They made no attack on Protestantism, and there was, according to the
paper, no irritation noticeable among the attending public. II 9
During r 8 5 5 and r 8 s 6 the Jesuits had turned toward a more polemi
cal and incendiary style, and, to be sure, this conjured up images of
Counter-Reformation bombast and zealotry. However, it was more
often the case, according to the reports from administrators and
authorities at different levels-Biirgermeister, Landra.te, police com
missioners, district governors-as well as articles from both liberal and
conservative newspapers, that the Jesuit missionaries continued to
avoid any polemic against or even reference to Protestantism. The lib
eral Vossische Zeitung, certainly no friend of the Jesuits, was impressed
that the sermons from the pulpit in Flotenstein in the Diocese of Kulm
r r 7 . HSTAD, RD, P, Nr. r252, BM, Duisburg, to LA Keshler, Duisberg, r June r856, Bl.
72-74
r r 8 . Gesuch des Erzpriesters Theil im Namen der Archpresbyteriatsgeistlichen der Stadt
Breslau urn eine Volksmission, Breslau, 23 Oct. r852, Aktenstiicke, r6g.
ug. Urteil der Neuen PreujJ. (Kreuz-) Zeitung, Nr. 263, 12 N ov . 1852, Aktenstiicke, 171-72 .
66
in 1 8 5 8 were free of dogmatic statements and confessional provoca

tions. The Jesuits' restrained style, according to the paper, was espe
cially appreciated by the non-Catholics in attendance. These sermons
were, in fact, so spiritless and unoriginal that it seemed even to the Vos
sische Zeitung a relief when another Jesuit delivered a subsequent ser
mon with more passion. '20 In August 1 8 59 the Landrat at Duren in his
report concerning the Jesuit mission to District Governor Friedrich
Kuhlwetter in Aachen had to admit that the sermons "were concerned
only with the foundation of Catholic dogma, with the urgency of the
commandments of the church and morality, somehow without show
ing any animosity toward non-Catholics. " 121 Two weeks later the dis
trict governor reported to Provincial Governor Kleist-Retzow in
Koblenz that all the reports he had received from Burgermeister, Lan
drate, and the police commissioner had stated that all the sermons had
avoided confessional polemics.122 Such assurances, however, did little
to assuage the Rhenish provincial governor. An intransigent East
Elbian and Pietist personally weary of all popular festivities of any
kind, Provincial Governor Kleist-Retzow remained opposed through
out the reactionary period to the missions. Even as late as January
1 872, however, when the Jesuit missions had become a matter of hys
terical debate throughout the empire and only months before the Jesuit
order was banned, the Burgermeister of Huls in the Dusseldorf district
reported to the district Landrat at Kempen that at the mission held in
his town not one word in the sermons could have been taken as an
affront to non-Catholics. 123
Government reports throughout the period of reaction also stated
repeatedly that the sermons steered clear of political polemics. To the
extent the sermons did have a political content, according to officials,
they bolstered the authority of the state. In the postrevolutionary
period, state authorities could not have been more pleased by a coun
terrevolutionary sermon in 1 8 5 2 that preached that "state relations are
divine decrees, obedience to authority a service to God, sacrifice for the
fatherland a divinely inspired sacrifice, that authority is a sublime
height established by God, in which subjects are deeply invested in
r2o. Bericht der Vossische Zeitung, Nr. qr, r858, Aktenstiicke, 270.
1 2 1 . HSTAD, RA, PB, N r . 1 2 3 9 , Bericht, Di.iren, to R P Ki.ihlwetter, Aachen, 31 Aug. 1 8 5 9 ,
Bl. 164.
122. LHAK, Best. 403. Nr. 75II, RP. Aachen. to OP, Koblenz. 13 Sept. 1859. Bl. 367-77;
see also RP, Aachen, to OP Kleist-Retzow, Koblenz, 26 July 1856, Bl. 1 5 7-59.
I23. HSTAD, RD, P, Nr. I252, BM, Hiils, to LA, Kempen, I7 Jan . I872, Bl. r s .
67
accordance with the will of God . " 124 In r 8 5 3 the Landrat at

Geilenkirchen reported to District Governor Kiihlwetter in Aachen,
"In political respects [the Jesuits] have exercised no influence except to
admonish the people to obey the king and the authorities. " 125 In the
same year even the governor of the district of Minden, otherwise no
friend of Catholicism, admitted,
Up until now nothing of a politically damaging nature has been
observed about the Jesuits. On the contrary, it appears their ser
mons have had a laudable effect. They have brought forth an
energetic expression of loyal behavior from the inhabitants of
Paderborn in recent times. It appears believable, as people main
tain, that the Jesuits' lectures frequently discuss the obedience due
the laws and the authority of the state especially when one consid
ers that the democratic party, which has entirely different goals in
mind, has never found any encouragement from the Jesuits.126
In r 8 56, despite the common allegation that the Jesuits were spreading
anti-Prussian propaganda, the police commissioner at Trier reported
that the Jesuits had, in fact, exerted no "anti-Prussian influence" on the
population. 1 27 Again in r8 57 the Burgermeister of Brugger reported to
the Landrat of district Kempen that at the missions held in his town
"not a single word was expressed against the state or against other con
fessions. " 128 Later in r 866, according to the report of the Landrat at
Wittlich to the district governor in Trier, the sermons held at the mis
sion in Monzel had "absolutely no political color and contained even
less of an attack on the state government. "129
Despite the benefits that such sermons gave to the authority of the
state, and contrary to government reports concerning the confession
ally and politically unpolemical character of the Jesuit sermons, gov124. Bericht des Erzbisch()fl. Ordinariats vom 1 1 Nov. r852 an den K(1nig von B ayern,
Aktenstiicke, 174.
125. HSTAD, RA, PB, Nr. 1239, LA, Geilenkirchen, to RP Kohlwetter, Bezirk Aachen. 15
July 1853, Bl. 63.
126. Quoted in Sperber, Popular Catholicism, 6 1 .
1 2 7 . LHAK, Best. 403, OPR, Nr. 7 5 1 1 , report o f P D Tillgen, Trier, 2 4 June r856, Bl.
147-48.
128. HSTAD, RD, P, Nr. 1252, BM Schwartz, Brugger, to LA, Kempen, 19 March 1857,
Bl. 104.
129. LHAK, Best. 442, RBT, Nr. 3963, LA, Wittlich, to RP Gartner, Trier, 20 Nov. 1866,
BL 385-86.
68
ernment authorities insisted that the Jesuits threatened the state and reli
gious peace. In Aachen, for example, where the Jesuits were especially
active, the district authorities alarmingly reported in r856 that the Jesuits
were winning "more and more influence. Their sermons are the best
attended of the entire city. "'3 Here the congregation was purportedly
making large financial contributions to help with the building of a per
manent Jesuit settlement. Police Commissioner Hirsch in Aachen
informed District Governor Kiihlwetter that the Jesuits were "sparing no
means to achieve their goals. " In congregational assemblies in the parish
churches, the police commissioner reported, the Jesuits were "applying all
their oratorical skill to win over the members for themselves. " '3'
Well into the r 86os, government officials maintained their belief in
the Jesuit threat by insisting on its insidious character. In r865 Police
Commissioner Hirsch expressed a central theme in the anti-Jesuitism of
government authorities when he explained to his superior that the
means by which the Jesuits exerted and spread their control in political
affairs was indirect and covert: "Even if it is undoubtable, that the order
in public affairs (e.g., in the elections for Biirgermeister and municipal
commissioners) exercises at least indirectly its influence through the all
powerful clerical party here, there is nevertheless no positive proof for
it. " 132 It followed that allegations concerning the Jesuit danger could
not be subject to evidence and verification with surveillance reports. By
arguing that although the Jesuits' attempts to gain control over the
Catholic population for both religious and political ends were unde
tectable or unprovable, they were no less real, state officials were free to
develop an array of Jesuit threats.
On one level, the anti-Jesuitism of Prussian state authorities during the
period of reaction represented anxieties about un-German or anti-Prus
sian "ultramontanism" and the reassertion of Austrian influence in cen
tral Europe. Reports from the provincial governor of the Rhineland only
fueled these fears. According to Police Commissioner Junker in Koblenz
in his report to the district governor in r856, for example, the Jesuits rep
resented a foreign and Austrian presence that compromised Prussian
state security. Junker offered his superiors a reading list about the mis
sions in case the state wanted to pursue the assumption "that the Jesuit
order has a more ultramontane than German and more Austrian than
130. LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 75II, Aachen, 1 5 May 1 8 56, Bl. 1 3 1 ; HSTAD, RD, P, Nr. 1252,
Bl. 66.
1 3 1 . LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 7 5 1 1 , P P Hirsch, Aachen, to RP Ki.ihlwetter. Aachen. 10 Oct.
1865; HSTAD, RA, P, Nr. 1239, PP, Aachen, to RP Ki.ihlwetter, Aachen, ro Oct. r865, Bl.
195-9 L
1 3 2 . HSTAD, R A , P , N r . 1239, PP, Aachen, t o R P Ki.ihlwetter, Aachen, ro Oct. 1 8 6 5 , Bl.
195-98 .
69
Prussian character. " According to the police commissioner, the Jesuits

were inculcating pro-Austrian grossdeutsch sentiments among the popu
lation. "That the Austrian state principle," he argued, "has been pre
dominant in the order for centmies and that this does not agree with the
Prussian [principle], is hardly disputable." I 33 Similarly, the Landrat at
Malmedy, district Aachen, reported in 1859, "Jesuit ultramontanism is
represented here in abundance and is throwing itself on Austria. "134
On another level, the Jesuit order represented, according to Prussian
authorities, a rogue "state within the state," a hostile camp inside the
nation or parasite in the body of Prussia. Authorities believed that the
Jesuit order preyed upon religiously devout, wealthy widows, secretly
soliciting large donations and amassing large sums of cash in order to
establish permanent residence in the Rhineland. In 18 57, District Gov
ernor Eduard von Moller in Cologne alarmingly reported directly to
Minister of the Interior Ferdinand von Westphalen in Berlin that the
Jesuits were purchasing property in his district. 135 In 1 8 5 8 both Moller
and District Governor Kiihlwetter in Aachen reported to provincial
governor of the Rhineland Kleist-Retzow that Jesuits had acquired
property and were building a monastery and a church in Bonn and a
residence in Aachen, the latter with funds donated by private per
sons. 136 Subsequently, however, the Landrat in district Erkelenz
reported to District Governor Kiihlwetter that there was no increase in
bequests to the so-called dead hand-religious orders, monasteries,
churches, hospitals, and orphanages administered by religious
orders-sinkholes for otherwise productive capital. 137 The Landrat of
district Duren also reported that bequests to the "dead hand" had been
insubstantial during the last decade and had not significantly increased
in the past few years. 138 Nevertheless, Kuhlwetter's report two weeks
I 3 3 LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 75II, PD Junker, Koblenz, to RP, Koblenz, 28 Feb . r8s6. Bl.
99-T06.
134. HSTAD, RA, P, Nr. 1239, LA to RP Kiihlwetter, Aachen, 13 Aug. 18 59, Bl. 156. Of
course, pro-Austrian comments such as those expressed by Father Hillebrand, not a Jesuit
but the indefatigable director of the missions in the Diocese ofPaderborn, did nothing to alle
viate the concerns of state officials. In a sermon after the Corpus Christi celebration in Licht
enau in 1 8 54, he asked his audience to pray, "May the Lord God uphold the House of Aus
tria, bulwark and protector of the Catholic Church for many years. " Quotation from
Sperber, Popular Catholicism, 104.
135. LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 75rr, RP Moeller, Ki.11n, to Koniglichen Staats-Minister und
Minister des lnnern Westphalen, Berlin, 13 June 1 8 5 7 .
r36. LHAK, Best. 403, N r . 7 5 r r , R P , Koln, to OP Kleist-Retzow, Koblenz, 7 May r 8 5 8 ,
B l . 267-69; RP, Aachen, to OP Kleist-Retzow, Koblenz, 5 Aug. 1 8 5 8 , 81. 301-6.
I37 HSTAD, RA, P, Nr. 1239. LA, Erkelenz, to RP, Aachen, 21 Aug. r859, Bl. r6o.
r38. HSTAD, RA, P, Nr. 1239, LA, Duren, to RP Kiihlwetter, Aachen, 31 Aug. r859, Bl.
r64. See also LHAK, Best. 442, RBT, Nr. 3963, BM to LA, Milbringen, 7 April r867.
70
later to the new Rhenish provincial governor, Pommer-Esche, dis

missed these reports and doggedly argued that this was only as it
appeared on the surface . "Evidently, the donations are of a form that
elude monitoring; false names are used, donations are made from hand
to hand, and collections are made without attracting attention . " Was it
not a "public secret, " he asked, that the Jesuits already owned consid
erable property and that the persons in whose name the property was
purchased were only being used as front men?139 Though such allega
tions could not be substantiated, the conviction that the Catholic
Church was draining productive capital in an age devoted to industrial
expansion was shared by many Prussian civil servants . In r865 Police
Commissioner Hirsch in Aachen argued, "Only rarely does news about
the donations and bequests flowing to the Jesuits come to public atten
tion since the order has purposely avoided acquiring property through
the arrangement of testaments . " Instead straw men were set up secretly
to funnel money to the Jesuits .14 Such reports preserved the notion of
capital squandered on the Jesuits and other religious orders, promot
ing their interests at the expense of productive economic development
and capitalist expansion.
While the reactionary ministry in Berlin had backed down, retract
ing the antimissionary decree of r 8 52, many authorities in the
Rhineland especially after r 8 5 5 continued to push for suppression of
the Jesuits and the missions. They were frustrated throughout the lat
ter half of the r8 sos by Berlin's apparent unwillingness or legal inca
pacity to act decisively in the face of the Jesuit menace. The efforts of
District Governor Moller in Cologne illustrate both the obstinacy and
exasperation of Rhineland authorities. In December r 8 5 8 he warned
Provincial Governor Pommer-Esche about the Jesuit settlements in
Bonn and Aachen. Here, he argued, the Jesuits were "digging them
selves in more and more firmly; they have begun to accumulate a con
siderable means at their disposal . " The district governor could only
once again unequivocally state "that the Jesuit settlements are not to
be tolerated. " In the hopeless bureaucratese typical of a Prussian civil
servant he argued, "It is desirable to be rid of them. We can raise from
the side of the state government no doubts; just as little does it need to
139. LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 7 5 1 1 , RP, Aachen, to OP Pommer-Esche, Koblenz, 13 Sept.
rR59, Bl. 367-77140. LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 7511, PP Hirsch, Aachen, to RP Kiihlwetter, Aachen, ro Oct.
1865; HSTAD, RA, P, Nr. 1239, PP to RP Kiihlwetter, Aachen, 10 Oct. 1865, Bl. 1 9 5-98 .
71
be doubted that their removal is gladly seen as altogether necessary by

all sensible patriots" (emphasis in original) . 141
District Governor Moller believed the various constitutional rights
and legal obstacles preventing state action against the Jesuits should be
either circumvented or abrogated, and he searched tirelessly for ways
to do so. As early as August r 8 5 3 he had argued to the provincial gov
ernor that the Jesuit settlements were not protected by the Law of
Association and Assembly of rr March r 8 5o, guaranteeing the right of
association and freedom from state interference. In October r 8 5 3 he
argued again that the Jesuit institutions were not legally sanctioned by
the state. He took up the cause again in August r857, arguing that the
Jesuit order lay outside the legal organization of the Catholic Church
and therefore was not protected by the right of association of religious
corporations. Finally in his report of December r 8 5 8 he carefully
spelled out an interpretation of the pertinent articles of the constitution
of the Prussian state that stipulated that the Catholic Church was free
to administer its own affairs only so long as the state specifically
affirmed those associational laws that allowed it to do so . '42 Frustrated
yet tireless, Moller continued to demand in subsequent reports to the
Rhenish provincial governor in Koblenz that the state eliminate the
Jesuit menace. Even many good priests, he argued, "passionately com
plain about the weakness of the government, " which permitted "the
unlawful efforts of a party antagonistic to the Prussian state within the
Catholic Church. " 1 43 Although in r 8 5 2 District Governor Kiihlwetter
in Aachen had advised Berlin not to ban the missions in the Rhineland,
by r 8 59 he had joined Moller's efforts to put pressure on superiors in
the governmental hierarchy. He believed it was now necessary to
resolve any ambiguity on the part of the state regarding the Jesuit ques
tion: "It seems high time," he argued, "for the state government to
decide whether the Jesuit order should be tolerated or not . "144 In a sub
sequent report in r 86o, he argued that legislation existed that prohib
ited Jesuits and other monastic clergy in Prussia that did not belong to
specific dioceses. 145
According to Prussian government officials, the Jesuits and other
orders leading the missions practiced monasticism, a form of associaI4L
T42.
143.
144.
145.
HSTAD, Best. 403. Nr. 75II, RP Moller, Koln, to OP. Koblenz, 14 Dec. 1 8 5 8 .
Ibid.
LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 75II, RP Moller, Koln, to OP, 27 Sept. 1 8 59, Bl. 385-87.
LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 75II, RP, Aachen, to OP. Koblenz, 13 Sept. 1859, Bl. 367-77.
LHAK. Best. 403, Nr. 751 r, RP to OP, Aachen. 2r Feb . r86o, 81. 395-403.
72
tion so peculiar that it could not be protected by laws that guaranteed

freedom of public association. According to a report from the Depart
ment of the Interior in the district of Aachen to Provincial Governor
Pommer-Esche in r 8 59, monasteries represented a grotesque aberra
tion of human life, entailing a suppression of the individual and a vio
lent contortion of personality: "The vows of poverty, chastity, and
unqualified obedience established under the abdication of all personal
freedom and independence, impossible in a mere association, can only
be realized in the polarized expression of the person. " The report
argued that, because religious orders had an effect on public affairs
"like schools, churches, missions, welfare for the poor and sick, and
burial, " they should be considered political associations and were
bound, therefore, by the more stringent laws regulating such associa
tions. 146 By r 86o, according to reports of the Department of the Inte
rior in the district of Aachen, the maj ority of state authorities believed
that the Jesuit and monastic orders were not legally protected associa
tions. One report argued that since religious orders were hardly associ
ations in any normal sense, they could not find refuge in the Law of
Association and Assembly. As evidence it offered the depressing exam
ple of life in a Trappist monastery: the Trappists' "primary activity
consists of communal prayer in choir and silent contemplation; apart
from that they regularly spend many hours of the day in physical work,
namely, in agriculture. Characteristically the order is under the
absolute rule of the most stringent silence which may only be inter
rupted with the greeting memento mori. " 147
Throughout the r 8 sos, during the period of reaction, despite most
reports that the Jesuit sermons were not offensive to Protestants and
that they always upheld Prussian (not to mention Protestant) state
authority, government officials and authorities argued that the Jesuits
threatened confessional peace and state authority.148 By insisting that
there was far more to the Jesuits' activities and influence than met the
eye, they developed notions of a Jesuit conspiracy: Jesuits exercising
political power through the clerical parties, Jesuits as agents of anti
Prussian and pro-Austrian intrigue, Jesuits quietly assembling large
146. LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 7532, "Die Auseinandersetzung des Staates mit der Kirche,
r X 5 5-rX6g," Abteilung des Innern, Aachen, to OP, Koblenz, 24 Nov. r X 59, Bl. n 3-22 .
147. LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 7532, Abteilung des Innern, Aachen, to OP, Koblenz, 8 Nov.
r86o, Bl. 1 71-75
148. In the provincial and district archive files on the Jesuits and religious orders, the mis
sionary campaigns, and the Catholic Church, regular government reports on the missions in
the Rhineland either stopped or more likely no longer exist after the end of the 1 8 50s.
73
sums of cash and property to augment their own power within the
state. Authorities feared that the Jesuits were generating a religiously
fervent and organized Catholic public with serious political implica
tions. Such beliefs were expressed in the authorities' arguments that the
Jesuit order and other religious orders were political associations that
covertly and indirectly had an influence on political elections and pub
lic affairs. Local and district authorities in the Rhineland, where the
impact of the missionary crusade and the Catholic revival was espe
cially dramatic, repeatedly demanded that the state take action against
the Jesuits and their missions. They were already doing so some twenty
years before the founding of the empire, the initiation of the Kul
turkampf, and the implementation of the law of r872 that banned the
Jesuits and monastic orders from German territory.
CHAPTER
Protestantism, Anti-Catholicism,
and the Reconstruction of
German Liberalism
Within the Catholic population, the missionaries and particularly the

Jesuits were revered for having such a large role in the restoration of
religious faith and for delivering to Catholicism in Germany a new
lease on life. Catholics, however, were not the only ones drawn to the
missions, and the missions had a religious significance beyond their
impact on Catholics and Catholicism in the German states. Even
though the missions did not intend to attract and convert non
Catholics, they nonetheless drew huge numbers of Protestants from all
over Germany. In towns like Unterkochen bei Ellwangen in the Dio
cese of Rothenburg in r 8 54, a quarter of the participants at the mission
were Protestant. 1 In r86o in Liidenscheidt in the Diocese of Paderborn,
half of those attending the Franciscan sermons were Protestants. The
parish priest thought that "their attitude showed that they were deeply
moved."2 At the evening sermons of the mission in Emden in the Dio
cese of Osnabriick in r 862, "the educated part of the Protestants,
namely the civil officials, were always represented in large numbers. " 3
All this belongs to a remarkable story passed over by historians accus
tomed to assuming that if not the Catholic than at least the Protestant
population of Germany was headed down the secular road of the nine
teenth century. For example, one important historian of Catholicism
r. Bericht des P. v. Zeil in seinem Tagebuch, r-r2 Oct. r X 54, Aktenstiicke, 232.
2. Pf. Baumhoer an Bischof Conrad Martin, Liidenscheid, 26 April r86o. Volksrnissionen
der norddeutschen Franziskaner, 62.
3 Pf. Nieters, Emden, an den Bischof Paulus Melchers von Osnabriick, Emden, 5 April
r X64, Aktenstiicke, 3 1 X .
74
The Reconstruction of German Liberalism
75
in Germany concluded that after r 8so although Catholicism was an

expanding milieu, the Protestant milieu was in retreat.4
Yet the church's missionary crusade had an impact on Protes
tantism, however much unintended, no less important than its impact
on Catholicism. Without recognizing the revival of Protestantism, we
cannot fully appreciate in general the social and cultural history of
Germany and in particular the rise of confessional conflict between the
1 848 Revolution and unification. It was the Protestant revival
unleashed by the missions and in response to the missions and the
revival of the Protestant animus for Catholicism that provided the reli
gious context for the attack on Catholicism in the 187os. Not only in
towns and villages but also in predominantly Protestant, secularizing
cities the number of Protestant participants at the missions was also
high. Despite the vitriolic barrage of articles against the missions and
the Jesuits in the local newspapers, when the missionaries came to Bre
men in 1863 the Protestant churches stood empty while their congrega
tions attended their sermons.S Protestants from all social walks of life
were attracted to the missions, and Protestant interest in the missions
even reached up to the highest levels of the monarchy. Among the
attentive participants at the mission in Bonn in 1 8 5 1 was no less than
Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, student at the university and heir to the
Prussian throne. He was especially taken by the power and the elo
quence of the Jesuit sermons. To the embarrassment and frustration of
state authorities and the Protestant church leadership critical of the
missions, Friedrich Wilhelm's attendance was publicly approved by his
father, Prince Wilhelm, future king of Prussia and as such supreme
bishop of the Protestant Church and later emperor of Germany. 6 The
missions were, therefore, remarkably mixed and emotionally charged
events, not only religiously but socially, and as such they quickly
became a threat to Prussian conservatives and state authorities intent
now on a decade of reaction, order, and control after the convulsions
of the revolution.
Protestant pastors and church leaders responded to the Catholic
revival and, more important, to the competition posed by the attrac
tiveness of the missions for their own congregations, with a flood of
anti-Catholic, anticlerical, and anti-Jesuit sermons and pamphlets. The
4 Sperber, Popular Catholicism, 294.
5 Bremer Biirge1jreund. 28 May 1863, Aktenstiicke. 306.
6. Aktenstiicke, 57 n. 1; Gatz, Rheinische Volksmission, 97; Murphy, Der Wiederaujbau der
Gesellschaft Jesu, 108-9.
76
anti-Catholic vitriol of the Protestant leadership served to preserve and

demarcate Protestant identity as it exacerbated tensions between
Protestants and Catholics. At the same time, in general the Catholic
missionaries on confessional matters exercised polemical restraint,
proving themselves consistently tolerant of Protestants and Protes
tantism. Indeed, part of the appeal of the missionary sermons was pre
cisely their general Christian inclusiveness and applicability.
Just as important, the missions and the religious revival, both
Catholic and Protestant, provided the context for the rehabilitation of
liberalism in Germany after the defeat of 1848 and during the new age
of industrialization. During the decade of reaction and into what con
temporaries called the New Era of the 186os, liberals developed new
anti-Catholic and anticlerical representations and images. Often
couched within a broad discourse of cultural Protestantism, anti
Catholicism became a powerful way to reorient liberalism toward
postrevolutionary, middle-class priorities, including constitutional
reform, educational progress, free-market economics, and industrial
development. The Roman Catholic Church leadership responded to
liberal anti-Catholicism and anticlericalism with the attempt to drive
liberal ideology from its ranks, intolerance that made it increasingly
difficult for middle-class Catholics to be at once faithful to their church
and to liberalism. Attention to the cultural and economic agenda of
anti-Catholicism and identifying the social dimensions of the Kul
turkampf are important because they reveal that the antichurch cam
paign of the 187os was neither simply nor primarily Protestant but
more specifically a middle-class, liberal movement for modernity and
hegemony in Germany.
The Protestant Revival
Scores of parish reports, Catholic newspapers, and state surveillance

reports indicate that not just Protestants but also Jews were drawn to
the missions. A few examples make the case: in 1 8 5 3 at the mission in
Dortmund, a local priest reported to his bishop that "Protestants of all
classes are appearing in large numbers and repeatedly; Jews are also
coming. " ? At the evening sermons of the mission at Oberwesel in the
Diocese of Trier in 1 8 5 6 not only "many Protestants from the vicinity
7 Pf. Wiemann an Bischof Drepper von Paderborn, Dortmund, 20 March r 8 5 3 , Akten
stiicke, 203.
77
but even their pastors and even Jews" attended.8 A report to the bishop
of Paderborn in 1 8 5 8 concerning the mission in Arnsberg stated that "a
great number of the local Protestants and even the Jews attended the
sermons almost without interruption . " 9 The parish priest at Neheim in
the Diocese of Paderborn reported that all the Protestants and all the
Jews in the town attended the sermons given by the Franciscan mission
there in 1868. 10 The parish priest at the mission at Allenstein in 1 8 5 7
reported to his bishop that Jews knelt down together with Catholics
and Protestants and wept during the sermons. rr These were scenes,
according to clerical reports, repeated all over the German states. 12 The
reports are corroborated by newspaper accounts and government sur
veillance reports that also record the attendance of Protestants and
Jews at the missions. According to the Catholic journal Sian, Jewish
families attended the sermon given for children at the mission in
Wiirzburg in 1 8 5 3 . A Jewish father told his son, "You hear what the
Lord says. Follow." 13 In 1856 at the mission in Trier, the police comR. Pf. Kli.itsch an Bischof Wilhelm (Arnoldi) von Trier i.iber die vom 17 Feb. bis 2 Marz
abgehaltene Mission, Oberwesel, 3 March rR56, Aktenstiicke, 248.
9. Pf. Koop an Bischof Konrad Martin, Arnsberg, 9 Dec. r858, Aktenstiicke, 273.
10. Pf. Mi.instermann an Bischof Conrad Martin, Neheim. 20 March rR6R. Valksmissian
der narddeutschen Franziskaner, 94
r r . Erzpriester Pruss an den Bischof Josef Ambrosius von Ermland, Allenstein , 29 Sept.
rR57, Aktenstiicke, 264.
12. Other clerical sources recording the attendance of not only Protestants but also Jews at
the sermons include Pf. Baur an den Bischof von Munster. Cleve. 10 March 1 8 5 1 , Akten
stiicke, 56; Stadtdechant Dilschneider an Kardinal Johannes v. Geissel, Aachen. 20 May r 8 5 r ,
Aktenstiicke, 6 4 ; Bericht des Pf. Neumann an den Kardinal v. Diepenbrock, Wi.irzburg, 28
Feb. to 7 March r852, Aktenstiicke, rzr; Bericht des Pf. Walther, WeiBenburg (StraSburg). 14
June 1 8 52, Aktenstiicke, 1 36; Bericht des Erzbischofl. Ordinariats vom 11 Nov. 1852 an den
Konig von Bayern, Aktenstiicke, q6; Erzpriester PruB an den Bischof Joseph Ambrosius von
Ermland, Allenstein, 29 Sept. r857, Aktenstiicke, 265; Pf. Endepols an das Erzbischofl. Gen
eralvikariat Koln, Heins berg, 5 Aug . 1859, Aktenstiicke, 2Ro; Die Pf. Pees und Gerken an den
Bischof Konrad Martin. Warburg, 17 Dec. 1 8 59, Aktenstiicke, 282; Dekan Kammer (?) an
den Bischof von der Marwitz in Pelpin. Damsdorf, 26 Aug. r86r, Aktenstiicke, 298; Pf. Stein
an P. ZurstraBen, Montabaur, 20 Jan. r865, Aktenstiicke, 34r; Pf. Antoni an das Gener
alvikariat in Paderborn, Hultrop, 24 Sept. r868. Aktenstiicke, 38r; Pf. Kleine an das Gener
alvikariat in Paderborn, Lippspringe. 13 Feb . r 8 7 r , Aktenstiicke, 405 .
1 3 . Sian, Nr. 25, 27 Feb . 1 8 5 3 , Aktenstiicke, 1 9 7 . Other j ournal or newspaper reports
recording the attendance of Jews at the sermons include Schwiibische Chranik des Sclnviib.
Merkur, Nr. 98, 24 April r R 5o, Aktenstiicke, 23; Augsburger Abendzeitung, 1 Aug. 1853; Sian,
Nr. r6 [Beilage]. 7 Aug. r853, Aktenstiicke, 213-1 5; Schlesische Zeitung, Nr. 596, r 8 5 5 . Akten
stiicke, 245-46; "Westf. Kirchenblatt fi.ir Katholiken,'' 31 May r8sr. Valksmission der nard
deutschen Franziskaner, 35; and " Kathol. Missionsblatt," 4 July r R s R . Volksmissian der nard
deutschen Franziskaner, 49
78
missioner recorded that "a very large number of every confession"

attended the sermons.14 Meanwhile, the police commissioner at
Koblenz reported that a Jesuit sermon was heavily attended by
Catholics of all classes and by those of the "Protestant confession and
the Jewish religion. "15
If there ever was a time when the different religious populations of
Germany crossed over the confessional divide, what the historian Eti
enne Fran<;ois has called the "invisible boundary," this was it. 16 Espe
cially in light of Gangolf Hiibinger's conclusion that the boundaries
between the confessions remained all but closed, the missions, as inter
confessional "contact zones," offer an important opportunity to move
from the traditional study of confessional monocultures to the ways
religious populations interacted and mutually shaped interconfes
sional attitudes. 17 In religiously mixed communities, Jews in villages
and rural areas whether they lived as merchants, rabbis, teachers, tai
lors, or homemakers learned a great deal about the beliefs and prac
tices of Christianity at the missions. '8 Protestants learned firsthand,
often against their long-held prejudiced stereotypes, and for them
selves, not with the tainted sentiments of their own religious leaders,
about the Jesuits, the missionary campaign, and Catholicism.
But the missions with their excitement and their religious fervor not
only cut across confessional lines; they generated a remarkable and
unprecedented class, gender, and generationally mixed public as well.
Here was a spectacular sight. Nowhere else and at no earlier time dur
ing the course of the nineteenth century did so many different kinds of
people-Catholics, Protestants, and Jews; aristocrats, bourgeois, work
ers, and peasants; men and women; adults and children-peacefully
interact as they did at the missions. This was what so concerned state
authorities in the sensitive postrevolutionary years: mixed and excited
crowds of hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands that represented
a new and potentially even more powerful kind of public agitation.
14. LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 75IL PD, Trier, 24 June 156, Bl. 147-4.
rs. LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 75rr. PD Junker, Koblenz, to the RP, Koblenz, 28 Feb . r856, Bl.
99-I06.
r6. Etienne Fran<;ois, Die unsichtbare Grenze: Protestanten und Katholiken in Augsburg,
1648-I8o6, trans. Angelika Steiner-Wendt (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, r99r) .
1 7 . Gangolf Hubinger, ''Confessionalism," in Imperial Germany: A Historiographical
Companion, ed. Roger Chickering (Westport, Conn . : Greenwood, 1996), 1 5 6-4.
r 8 . See also the comments in Smith and Clark, "The Fate of Nathan," 12; and Steven M .
Lowenstein, "Judisches religiose Leben i n deutschen Dorfen: Regionale Unterschiede i m 1 9 .
und fri.ihen 20. Jahrhundert," in Jiidisches Leben auf dem Lande, ed. Monika Richarz and
Reinhard Ri.irup (Ti.ibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 219-30.
79
Non-Catholics who attended the missions were not interested in

leaving their faith. No records in the sources found for this study indi
cate that Jews converted to Catholicism at the missions. Among
Protestants there were instances of conversion to Catholicism or atten
dance at the confessional following the sermons, but these cases were
rare. The intermingling of confessional populations did not lead to
significant conversions or the dissolution of confessional conscious
ness . On the contrary, the consciousness of the other made possible at
the missions contributed to the heightened confessional self-conscious
ness that marked the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Protes
tants and Jews were attracted to the missions because they wanted to
participate in the experience of religious revival. Protestants were, in
fact, eager for a revival and j oined the Catholic missions only because
they had none of their own to attend. In r 864 one parish priest reported
with a measure of self-satisfaction that Protestants in Hiipstedt in the
Diocese of Paderborn confessed, "If only we were so lucky. If only we
could have such a mission! " 19
Even in a Protestant, secularizing city like Hamburg the Catholic
missions had an impact. Protestants were so deeply impressed by the
mission in r 862 that they occupied every seat in the Roman Catholic
church and, in effect, displaced the Catholic parishioners. According
to one Protestant observer they believed that the sermons were an espe
cially influential instrument in the Catholic Church that the Evangeli
cal Church should not simply look upon with scorn and envy. Ham
burg Protestants, he believed, attended the mission in order to learn
from the Catholic Church how the Evangelical Church might organize
its own religious revival. The Catholic revival was successful first of all,
he argued, because the Catholic Church recognized in this age of reli
gious indifference the need to return the laity to the fundamentals of
faith and worship, what he called "the ABCs of Christianity. " Second,
unlike Protestant sermons, the themes of the missionary sermons also
had more popular impact because they were cumulative and cyclical.
"We left the church in any case with the wish that those in the Protes
tant Church, cursing and complaining about the efforts of the
Catholics, would instead learn from them a way to revive spiritual life
and to promote the kingdom of God . " Meanwhile, in this worldly and
prosperous Hamburg Hansastadt, Protestants, he concluded, had the
Catholics to thank for reminding them that there was more to life than
r 9 . Pf. Sittel am Bischof Conrad Martin, Hiipstedt, I9 March r 864, Volksmissionen der
norddeutschen Franziskaner, 8 5 .
So
buying and selling, socializing and slumber.2 0 In the absence of an

organized campaign for Protestant revival, Protestants all over Ger
many continued to be drawn to the Catholic missions for Christian
instruction. The liberal-Protestant Bremer Bilrgerfreund did not disap
prove: it was better that secularized Protestants be brought back into
the Christian fold by Catholic missionaries than not at alU 1
Protestants participated in the missions without offense since the
sermons predominantly offered general Christian instruction common
to both confessions (the immortality of the soul, the Trinity, the Ten
Commandments, the divinity of Christ), not exclusively Roman
Catholic doctrine and dogma. When in r 8 5 2 the missions faced prohi
bition by the Protestant state, the Evangelisches Kirchen- und Schul
blatt fur Schlesien und Posen argued, "Even we Protestants have no
reason to be angry about [the Jesuit missions] ; most of their sermons
were without confessional impurities ."22 Protestant attendants and
Catholic priests too believed that the sermons had much to offer
Protestants, not as potential converts to Catholicism but as fellow
Christians. The mission at N ordhausen in the Diocese of Paderborn in
r 86o "wasn't just a mission for Catholics; it was a mission for thou
sands of Protestants too" according to the local priest. 23 District
officials and provincial authorities in the Rhineland, many of whom
had anticipated that the mission sermons would disrupt confessional
peace, were impressed by the relative, though not complete, absence of
confessional polemics .24 The missionaries took care to steer clear of
topics that would alienate Protestants. To be sure, there were excep20. Eaten a. d. Alstertal, Nr. I6, I 862, Aktenstiicke, 301 .
2 T . Bremer Biirgerfreund, 28 May r863, Aktenstiicke, 306.
22. Evangelisches Kirchen- und Schulblatt fiir Schlesien und Posen. Nr. 20, 13 May 1852,
Aktenstiicke, 126.
23. Pf. Baumhoer an den Bischof Konrad Martin, Nordhausen, 24 April 1 860, Akten
stiicke, 283.
24. HSTAD, Best. RD, P, Nr. 1252, "Katholische Orden und Missionen: Betr. vor allem
Niederlassungen und Missionsveranstaltungen des Jesuitenordens," Bd. I , I8 52-87; BM
Schwartz, Brugger, to LRA. Kempen, r9 March r857. Bl. ro; HSTAD, Best. RA, P, Nr. r239.
''Missionaren, Jesuiten, Lazaristen: Ordenstatigkeit derselben in Kirche und Schule,
r 8 3 5-T9r6," LR, Duren, to RP Kuhlwetter, Aachen, 3r Aug. r859, Bl. r64; LHAK, Best. 422,
RBT, Nr. 3963, "Wirken und Verhalten der katholischen Missionen und der Jesuiten,
1 850-1900," LR, Wittlich, to PR Gartner. Trier, 20 Nov. 1866. Bl. 385-86; LHAK, Best. 403,
OPR, Nr. 75n, "Die Jesuiten, I 8 5 5-65,'' RP, Aachen, to OPR Pommer-Esche, Koblenz, I3
Sept. 1859, Bl. 367-77; PD Tilligen, Trier, 24 June 1856, Bl. 147-48; and RP, Aachen, to OPR
Kleist-Retzow, Koblenz, 26 July 1856, Bl. 1 5 7-59. But for a sarcastic attack by a missionary
on Luther's translation of the Bible, see HSTAD, Best. RD. P, Nr. I252, Duisberg, I June
I856, B M to LR Keshler, Bl. 72.
8r
tions, but the zealotry and ultramontanism of the missionaries did not
automatically mean intolerance. This was primarily the case because
the church leadership, the missionaries, and the parish clergy never
considered the missionary campaign a continuation or revival of the
Counter-Reformation of the sixteenth century. To the contrary, even
the Redemptorists, who as a whole delivered even more fervent ser
mons than the Jesuits, believed that polemicizing against Protes
tantism would have been a "sin against truth and charity. "25
Those missionaries who did provoke controversy were immediately
disciplined by the bishops, and the bishops continued to work dili
gently throughout the campaign to maintain harmonious relations
between Protestants and Catholics. A specific incident serves to make
the general point. At the celebration of Ascension Day in r 8 5 5 , during
a mission held in Neufalz near Breslau in the predominantly Protestant
province of Silesia, a young, eager, and inexperienced Jesuit ignited
interconfessional controversy with a sermon that included the enor
mously sensitive topic of mixed marriages. To his confessionally mixed
audience, he exclaimed, "If Catholic parents who are in mixed mar
riages don't baptize and raise their children Catholic, then the parents
and the children are damned. " The local Protestants were outraged,
and the following Sunday the Protestant pastor immediately counter
attacked the Jesuit's sermon from his own pulpit. Copies of his sermon
were quickly published under the title "Words of Reassurance in the
Face of the Denunciation of our Evangelical Confession" and then dis
tributed throughout the community. The local Catholic priest, Father
Phischke, then j oined the fray. He claimed that the Protestant pastor
had exploited an unfortunate incident to attack and spread lies about
the Catholic Church. At his own pulpit, he held up and then with dra
matic flourish ripped to shreds a copy of the pastor's "diatribe" against
Catholicism in front of his sobbing congregation. 26 Higher authorities
and cooler heads in the church, however, knew full well that the success
of the missions depended on prudence and restraint regarding inter
confessional matters. For Bishop Forster of Breslau, therefore, the
mission in Neufalz had been nothing less than a disaster. In his letter to
Father Phischke he angrily argued that "with a single, careless asser
tion from a missionary-an assertion that has no foundation-all the
old prejudices and the old hatred of the Jesuits has been reawakened
2 5 . Weiss, Redemptoristen in Bayern, 1096-97, 1107.
26. Pf. Pliischke an Fiirstbischof Forster in Breslau, Neufalz, 31 May r X s s . Aktenstiicke,
23X-39.
82
and their pious activities hindered perhaps for a long time. " The
bishop of Breslau reprimanded the priest for having thrown oil on fire
and instructed him to reestablish confessional harmony in his commu
nity.27 Interconfessional marriages remained, however, a particularly
inflammatory issue. A year after the incident in Neufalz, the Biirger
meister of Duisburg reported to the Landrat at Kempen that some in
his town suspected a Catholic husband spurred on by the Jesuit ser
mons had so castigated his Protestant wife that she attempted suicide.
She then fell into a fever and died. 28
Some Protestants did disapprove of the missions when they arrived.
Most attending the mission in Dortmund in 1 8 5 3 simply sneered dur
ing the sermons (though three did convert to Catholicism) .29 A group
of Protestants in Langenschwalbach in the Diocese of Limburg
attacked and broke up the mission in 1 8 56 . In 1 864 at Neustadt in the
Pfalz, with a population of eight thousand including over five thou
sand Protestants and over two hundred mixed marriages, the Biirger
meister (himself Protestant) advised the district administration that a
proposed mission would be considered, among other things, an
"anachronism. " He believed that "there is no soil here for a mission"
and that "it will certainly not have any great moral influence. "3
Yet almost everywhere else the missionaries were welcomed with
enthusiasm by the Protestant population. When the Jesuits came to
Damsdorf in the Diocese of Kulm in 1861, Protestants delivered flowers
to the missionaries' rooms and decorated the church and pulpit with
garlands and oleanders) A Protestant layman eagerly defended the
Jesuit mission when it came to Danzig in 1852Y At the Franciscan mis
sion in Neheim the Protestant factory owner contributed to the mis
sionaries travel-expense account.33 One priest reported that at a mis
sion in Ratibor in the Diocese of Breslau, Protestants were so "deeply
27. Furstbischof F i:irster an Pf. Pluschke, Breslau, u June 1 8 5 5 , Aktenstiicke, 240.
28. HSTAD, Best. RD, P, Nr. 1252, BM, D uisburg, to LR Keschler, Kempen, r June r856,
Bl. 72-74.
29. Pf. Wiemann an Bischof Drepper von Paderborn, Dortmund, 20 March r853, Akten
stiicke. 203.
30. Das Bi.irgermeisteramt an das ki:inigliche Bezirksamt, Neustadt a.d.H., 13 Dec. r864,
Aktenstiicke, 329; and Das Burgermeisteramt Neustadt a.d.H . an das ki:inigliche Bezirksamt
Neustadt a.d.H., r2 Jan . r865, Aktenstiicke, 328.
3 1 . Dekan Kammer (?) an den Bischof von der Marwitz in Pelpin, Darmsdorf, 26 Aug.
r86r, Aktenstiicke, 299.
32. Uber die von Missions-Priestern aus dem Orden der gesellschaft Jesu in Danzig gehalte
nen Missionen.
3 3 . Pf. Mi.instermann an Bischof Conrad Martin, 20 March r868, Volksmissionen der nord
deutschen Franziskaner, 94.
83
moved" and "gripped" by the sermons that they wanted to be heard in

confession. 34
Of course, not all Protestants who attended the Catholic missions
did so because they wanted to be part of a religious revival. The direc
tor of a Gymnasium in Danzig took his Protestant pupils to the mission
sermons held in the winter of 1 8 5 3 not for Christian instruction but
because they served as models of eloquent and persuasive oratory.35
For young Protestant seminarians at the University of Heidelberg, the
visit of the mission in 18 51 was also the occasion for an extracurricular
exercise. They went ready to take copious and critical notes on Jesuit
sermons and on matters of Roman Catholic doctrine and dogma.36
Others went to the missions simply because they were curious . One
Protestant author argued that the Jesuits in Hildesheim were mistaken
to imagine that Protestants had come to them to listen with any sincere
reverence. They went, he insisted, merely to see for themselves what all
the fuss was about. The missions and sermons had, no doubt, a certain
attraction as spectacle and entertainment. As a Protestant critic of the
missions explained in 1 8 5 1 , "Protestants are already attracted to the
mission sermons by natural curiosity; why shouldn't people go when
something so spectacular is taking place in their neighborhood? Many
want to see what these monks-now so new to us-are pushing. "37 At
the same time, however, the missions, roving over large sections of
Germany, especially in the Rhineland, a seat of democratic radicalism
during 1 848 and 1 849, tapped into the energies and mass mobilization
that had been both cause and effect of the revolution. The critic
alluded to as much when he observed that "in the same places where
they had made such racket shortly before the revolution, thousands
pawed at the pulpits and confessionals of the Jesuit missionaries . " 38
The Jesuits used the opportunity following the revolution, he argued,
"to extend extensively and intensively the boundaries of their area and
their influence . " "The Jesuits, " he concluded, "have always understood
very well how to travel with the wind. "39
The Catholic missions, therefore, created a rift within Protestantism
between the laity, who generally approved of and willfully flocked to
the missions, and their church authorities, who worried that they were
34.
35
36.
37
38.
39
Pf. Heide an den Kardinal von Diepenbrock. Ratibor, 26 June 1 8 52, Aktenstiicke, 145 .
Bericht des Protestanten Richard Wulckow, Aktenstiicke, 140.
Augsburger Allgemeinen Zeitung, 22 Aug. 1 8 5 1 , Aktenstiicke, 87.
Leibbrand, Missionen der Jesuiten und Redemptoristen, 58-59.
Ibid. , 8.
Ibid. , 24.
84
losing their influence over their own congregations. As a result, Protes

tant pastors began working harder to educate their congregations
about the differences between the Protestant and Catholic faiths. As
one Protestant pastor explained: "So Protestants have also drawn a
profit from the Jesuit missions . Many Protestant Christians are now
better informed about the doctrinal differences and show more interest
in church matters than they did before. In a word, their indifference,
which was the result of a long period of peace in church affairs, has
come to an end. "4
At the same time, the Catholic missionary campaign was an issue to
which state officials in Berlin and the Protestant leadership reacted with
equal measures of disgust and alarm. As mentioned in the previous
chapter, in May r852 Minister of Interior Ferdinand von Westphalen
(himself Catholic but no friend of the Jesuits) and Minister of Educa
tional and Ecclesiastical Affairs Karl Otto von Raumer in Berlin issued
decrees placing the Jesuits under police surveillance, prohibiting
Catholic seminarians from studying in Rome, and banning the missions
in predominantly Protestant areas . The Raumer decrees were immedi
ately met by Catholics with a wave of antigovernment demonstrations
across the German states since they seemed to infringe on the church's
constitutionally guaranteed freedom and to return to the state the right
of the Vormarz period to supervise ecclesiastical affairs. The Catholic
majority in the Rhenish provincial parliament resolved in a petition to
the king that the decrees be revoked. The Conference of Catholic Bish
ops in Cologne condemned the decrees as unconstitutional, while the
Catholic press unleashed a salvo of antigovernment criticisms.4'
As the Catholic popular and ecclesiastical protests continued, the
official Protestant response to the state decrees took shape at the fifth
annual Evangelical Kirchentag convened in Bremen in September
r 8 5 2 . All other issues at the conference became irrelevant as it immedi
ately became a referendum on the Catholic Church's missionary cam
paign and a crucial moment that determined the fate of not only the
Catholic but also the Protestant revival. Anti-Catholic passions ran
high. Red-faced Pastor Ledderhose from Brombach swore, "No flirt
ing with the Roman church! Hate, irreconcilable hate for the infernal
system of Romanism! " Ledderhose believed that the Catholic "Church
40. Die Jesuitenmissionen in Hildesheim und damit Zusammenhiingendes: Worte der
Belehrung und Mahnung an den protestantischen Biirger und Landmann (Hanover: Hermann
Heuer, n.d.), 1 5 .
41 . Hyde, "Roman Catholicism and the Prussian State," I I I .
85
was an abomination from hell. " He was not alone. Pastor Krum
macher from Duisburg pointed out that the Jesuits were doing the
work of the devil, sowing division within Christianity so that he might
more easily destroy it. Superintendent Dr. Sander from Elberfeld
demanded that the "Protestant state" rise against the Jesuits, "who
have been destroying the new Protestant life everywhere it has not been
protected by princes, as a glance at France, Italy, Austria, Bohemia,
etc . , demonstrates . " Professor Piper from Berlin reminded his col
leagues that the goal of the missions was not so much the revival of
Catholicism as the "destruction of Protestantism. " Superintendent
Wachnagel from Elberfeld concluded, "No union is possible with the
Catholics until the pope himself becomes Protestant. "42 Piper intro
duced a resolution supporting the state decrees restricting the missions
and calling on the state to ban the activities of the Society of Jesus.
But cooler-headed and more calculating Protestant authorities had
already grasped that curtailing the missions and banning the Jesuits
would not serve their own best interests. The leading Protestant
defender of the Catholic missions was surprisingly none other than
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg. As a theologian at the University of
Berlin, editor of the prestigious Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, and no
friend of Roman Catholicism, he had tirelessly dedicated his talents and
energies to Protestant throne and altar. Hengstenberg was well recog
nized for his efforts to purge Protestantism of the influences of rational
ism and neohumanism. He worked continuously to join Protestantism
to the campaign to root out all forms of opposition to the will of the
monarchy. It was a matter of course that he agreed with other Protes
tant clergy that the Jesuits were destroying science and Bildung with
what he called "barbarity. " Their sermons, he complained, were with
out any morally edifying content and always catered to the base
instincts of the lower classes. It was precisely for these reasons that the
Jesuits' power, he warned, should not be underestimated since it was
directed not only at the Catholic but also at the Protestant population.
A conservative idealist with an acute sense of pragmatism, Heng
stenberg was, however, not blind to the fact that the Protestant Church
benefited from the missions. He believed that the new challenge posed
by the missions and the temptation they presented to Protestants
would only lift the Protestant Church up out of its slumber. He argued
that confessional coexistence was fortunately sanctioned by the terms
42. Verhandlung des flinften deutschen evangelischen Kirchentages in Bremen, 15 Sept.
1852, Aktenstucke, 159-60.
86
of the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 ending thirty years of bloody war

between Catholics and Protestants across Europe. Not a plea for toler
ance, this was a reminder that confessional conflict, like temptation,
sin, and the struggle between good and evil, was the necessary condi
tion of humankind in the world. This condition was no less necessary
for the spiritual growth of the entirety than it was for the individual: it
exposed humanity's defects, self-delusion, and false sense of security
and ultimately proved to humanity that it could find salvation only in
God. "Prayer, contemplation and temptation," Hengstenberg
explained, "are the components of Lutheran theology. The devil's
temptations ultimately serve the sacred, the angels, the Lord Him
self. "43 For the same reason that God does not kill the devil, he argued,
the state must not ban the Catholic missions. For Hengstenberg the
Catholic Church and the Jesuits, however evil, were mere servants of
the higher cause against spiritual atrophy and religious indifference;
within this manly and muscular Christianity, he recognized that it was
precisely the contest between the churches that promised to justify and
strengthen Protestant conviction.
According to the theology of conservative Protestantism, therefore,
state-sponsored intervention against Catholicism, in fact, ran counter
to the ultimate divine plan for the world and the interests of Protes
tantism. Protestants must welcome the good fight with Roman
Catholicism as the opportunity to fortify their faith, bolster their
resolve, and improve the Evangelical Church. Hengstenberg's eloquent
exegesis on the Protestant condition of faith in the world carried the
day: Professor Piper bowed to Hengstenberg's persuasion, backed
down, and withdrew his resolution. Not only did the Protestant
Church leadership now agree to tolerate, however reluctantly, the
Catholic missions, it also cut support out from underneath the Prus
sian state's antimissionary decrees. Government officials on the scene
in the Rhineland also warned state authorities in Berlin that prohibit
ing the missions would only incite the Catholic population. Without
broader support the state government was now isolated. After all, as
noted, even members of the royal family had approved of and attended
the Catholic missions. Berlin state authorities ultimately climbed down
from enforcing the decrees when after the Catholic success in the elec
tions in the autumn it faced concerted opposition in the Prussian par
liament from the Fraktion of Catholic deputies, the forerunner to the
43 Aktenstiicke, 1 5 7-58 .
87
Center Party, under the leadership of the fraternal duo August and
Peter Reichensperger.
Now already in r852 was an indication of the reasons conservative
Protestant leaders, though anti-Catholic, would nonetheless for their
own theological and pragmatic reasons refuse to j oin liberals and the
state in support of the Kulturkampf legislation of the r 8 7os. Protestant
leaders could agree that lack of Christian faith, rather than the power
of Roman Catholicism or the missions, was the most serious threat to
society. Catholic and Protestant leaders could also recognize godless
ness as the common enemy and Christianity as the common cause that
together might promote a measure of mutual forbearance for reasons
of faith and religious pragmatism. Religious leaders, Catholic and
Protestant, argued at the same time that the churches must be left free
from state regulations in order to attend to their respective evangelical
responsibilities. More to the point, the ecclesiastical leadership of both
confessions insisted that the state must recognize that it had no appro
priate role to play in the great contest between the Catholic and Protes
tant faiths in Germany. It was in this spirit that Protestant pastors, the
ologians, and other religious leaders now unleashed a deluge of
anti-Catholic and hysterically anti-Jesuit literature that pitted Protes
tantism against Catholicism in an uncompromising theological and
moral battle to the bitter end.44 They furiously devoted themselves
throughout the r 8 sos and r86os and into the r87os to the inculcation of
Protestant consciousness and the preservation of Protestant identity.
Primarily for this reason, within the Christian revival, despite the
remarkable intermingling of the religious populations at the missions,
Protestant and Catholic identities became polarized and rigid.
There was, therefore, not only a Catholic popular revival but also
considerable indication of a remarkable revival of Protestant confes
sionalism under way in the r 8 sos and r86os incited quite unintention
ally by the Catholic Church and the Catholic missions. The reawaken
ing of Protestant confessionalism took place in Catholic churches and
44. See. for example, Hermann Reuter. Uber die Eigenthiimlichkeit der sittlichen Tendenz
des Protestantismus im Verhaltni/3 zum Katholicismus (Greifswald: Ki.'mig. Univ.-Buchdruck
erei, [r859]); I. F. Sander, Der Beruf der Protestanten, Rom gegeniiber, in dieser Zeit: Send
schreiben an die evangelischen Gemeinden (Leipzig: Gebhardt und Reisland, r8 53); Erich
Stiller, Grundziige der Geschichte und der Unterscheidungslehren der evangelisch-protestan
tischen und romisch-katholischen Kirche (Hamburg: Robert Kittler, r S ss); Adolf SWber,
Evangelische Abwehr, katholischer Angriffe (Strasbourg: J. Krauter, 1 8 59); and G. Vintzel
berg, Protestantismus und Katholicismus oder die Werthschatzung des evangelischen Glaubens
(Fehrbellin: Im Selbstverlage des Verfassers, r862) .
88
churchyards, where Protestants and Catholics stood literally side by

side at the missions, listened, and indeed knelt and wept together at the
sermons. The Protestant revival was unplanned, reactive, and more
muted than its confessional rival. The meaning of Protestant atten
dance at the missions was admittedly more ambiguous than Catholic
participation, and the popular Protestant revival, like the Catholic
revival, was a highly complex process with variations with respect to
class, region, and gender that still remain to be better understood.
More detailed statistical evaluations are required to complement the
anecdotal accounts offered here. The increase in confessional polemic
must also be weighed against an actual increase in Protestant religious
commitment and practice. Ultimately, the episode of Protestant
revival gave way to the currents of secularization that only increased
after the r87os. As historians have argued, Protestantism was suscepti
ble to continuing migration, urbanization, industrialization, the short
age of churches in large cities, the spreading culture of science and
progress among the middle class, and the development of a large
social-democratic working-class subculture .45 But the eager participa
tion of Protestants at the missions and the campaign by Protestant reli
gious elites to reawaken Protestant identity during the r 8 sos and r86os
does challenge the assumption of an uninterrupted secularization of
Protestants throughout the nineteenth century.
At the same time, Protestant Church authorities believed the period
of interconfessional peace during the Vormarz was over and found
themselves now in the middle of a "Kriegszustand, " a state of war,
with the Catholic Church. In fact, many argued, either for rhetorical
effect or because they believed it, that they faced an hour darker than
any since the Counter-Reformation. With their backs against the wall,
or so they feared, Protestant Church leaders called for an end to divi
sive intraconfessional rivalry between Lutherans, Calvinists, and
45 Hugh McLeod, Piety and Poverty: Working- Class Religion in Berlin. London. and New
York. 1870-1914 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1996) . In his work on Catholics and Protes
tants in Munster and Bochum from r83o to r933, Antonius Liedhegener has examined the
process of Protestant secularization and the Catholic religious revival in response to moder
nity. Antonius Liedhegener, Christentwn und Urbanisierung: Katholiken und Protestanten in
Munster und Bochum 1880-1933 (Paderborn : F. Schl'migh, r997) . Lucian Holscher has metic
ulously studied the process of Protestant secularization in H anover starting in the mid- r 87os.
Lucian Holscher, "Die Religion des Burgers: Burgerliche Frommigkeit und protestantische
Kirche im 1 9 . Jahrhundert," Historische Zeitschrift 250 (1990) : 595-630; Lucian Holscher and
Ursula Mannich-Polenz, "Die Sozialstruktur der Kirchengemeinde Hannovers im 1 9 .
J ahrhundert: Eine statistische Analyse," Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft fiir niedersachsische
Kirchengeschichte 88 (1990): 1 59-2II.
89
Pietists, and between liberal and orthodox Protestants, for the sake of
a united front against the Roman enemy.46 The feverish anti-Catholi
cism and anti-Jesuitism of Protestant Church authorities in the r8 sos
and r 86os helped create the general popular anti-Catholic context for
the more specific liberal and state-sponsored attack on the Roman
Catholic Church in the r87os.
Jesuitphobia and the Protestant Church Leadership
Protestant Church authorities believed that the Catholic missions and

the Jesuits-with whom the Franciscan, Redemptorist, Capuchin, and
Lazmist missionaries were immediately lumped-threatened both
Protestantism and the modem, autonomous state. With the start of the
missions, the Jesuits were vehemently attacked by Protestant pastors,
theologians, and other religious leaders in sermons from the pulpit, in
public speeches, in newspapers, and in pamphlet literature. They can be
read together not simply as a registry of hostility and anxiety but also as
a body of work with shared patterns that can be laid out and traced.
For centuries, in the popular Protestant imagination, the Jesuits had
represented everything that was most wicked in the Roman Church.
Much of this hysteria involving Jesuit conspiracies against monarchs
and the state and stories of sexual intrigue provided the basic stock of
the Protestant anti-Jesuit polemic of the post-1848 period. This dis
course drew on a tradition of anti-Jesuit diatribe that ascribed enor
mous powers to the Jesuit order, a rogue society in the church,
engaged, both liberals and Protestants believed, in a colossal and fan
tastic conspiracy to conquer the world. Jesuits never stopped short of
blackmail and murder to attain their goals, and always they operated
with stealth and cunning. According to formulas that date back to the
Counter-Reformation, for example, Jesuits secretly concocted deadly
serums and administered them to those monarchs of Europe who
stood in the way of their ambitions for world rule. Jesuits pursued an
evil opportunism based on the logic "the end justifies the means" and
justified and defended their methods with the obfuscating and self46. See, for example, Th[eodor] Kliefoth, Wider Rom! Ein ZeugnijJ in Predigten (Schwerin :
Stiller'schen H ofbuchhandlung, 1 852); Daniel Schenkel, Das gegenwartige aggressive Ver
fahren der romisch-katholischen Kirche in ihrem Verhaltnisse zum Protestantismus (Darm
stadt: C. W. Leske's Separat-Conto, d \ 5 7); idem, Deutschlands Erb- und Erzfeind: Mahnruf
an das deutsche Volk (Coburg: F. Streit's Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1 862); Heinrich Wiskemann,
Die Lehre und Praxis der Jesuiten in religiOser, moralischer und politischer Beziehung von
ihrem Ursprung an his auf den heutigen Tag (Cassel: J. Georg Luckhardt, r858).
90
serving casuistry of Escobar. In anti-Jesuit discourse, women were a

particular focus of anxiety since they were purportedly the vulnerable
link in the family. In the confessional Jesuits allegedly used intimacy
and the exchange of confidences to win women over and seduce the
wives of statesmen. Once in the grip of the Jesuits, women were used to
spy on their husbands and gather information and feed it to the Jesuits.
Through women, Jesuits supposedly exerted influence on the decisions
made by their husbands. Jesuits also captured girls for work in con
vents or young men for service in the order. Those who hated Jesuits
believed this kind of criminality was an immutable law of history. The
Jesuits' own illusive and obfuscatory credo, "Jesuitae sint, ut sint, aut
non sint! " (Let the Jesuits be so that they may or may not be!), repeat
edly invoked in anti-Jesuit polemics, was cited as proof of their decep
tion and reactionary fanaticism.47
In the postrevolutionary period, however, Protestant pastors, church
officials, and social and religious observers also transformed with new
inflections and new emphases the discourse of anti-Jesuitism and with it
the patterns of anti-Catholicism. Responding both to the Revolution of
1848 and to the new Catholic revival, they recast or developed new anti
Jesuit and anti-Catholic themes, metaphors, and rhetorical strategies.
Jesuits as hunters and trappers with nets and the Catholic Church as a
huge web, ensnaring whole populations Protestant as well as Catholic,
were prominent tropes in post-1 848 Protestant anti-Jesuit and anti
Catholic discourse. A local Protestant pastor in Ellwangen, K. A. Leib
brand, argued that already by r 8 5 1 the Jesuit and Redemptorist mis
sionaries had dropped "their nets in more than twenty places."48 The
same fears were repeated at the highest levels of the Protestant Church.
According to a member of the Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat, Theodor
Kliefoth, in 1852 the Catholic Church had "spread a net of cunning and
power" over the Catholic population. With a peculiarly contrived com47 See, for example, 0. Andreae, Die verderbliche Moral der Jesuiten in Ausziigen aus
ihren Schriften (Ruhrort : Andreae, 1 X65); and H. A. Bergmann, Die geheimen Instructionen
fiir die Gesellschaft Jesu. Oder: die Staat und Kirche bedrohenden Plane des Jesuitenordens
(Erfurt: Hennings und Hop: 1 X 5 3). both written by Protestant pastors. See also Jesuiten und
Jesuitereien: Wirkliche Begebenheiten und geschichtliche Thatsachen nebst Griinden der
E1jahrung (Berlin : Verlag der Vereins-Buchhandlung, r853); and Wiskemann, Die Lehre und
Praxis der Jesuiten. For a Catholic denial that the "M onita Secreta'' ever existed. see Die Ver
leumder der Jesuiten in Deutschland (Cologne : J. B. Bechem, 1 X 53). For the image of the Jesuit
in Imperial Germany as androgyne (as bisexual and asexual) see R6isin Healy, "Anti-Jesuit
ism in Imperial Germany: The Jesuit as Androgyne ." In Protestants, Catholics, and Jews in
Germany, I800-I9I4, ed. Helmut Walser Smith (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 1 53-X I .
4X. Leibbrand, Die Missionen der Jesuiten, 1 3 .
91
bination of metaphors, he argued that the Catholic Church was like an

"organism" that "spreads itself like a net over the people, its ropes
pressing into every life and into every heart."49 He warned that all Ger
mans of every kind were susceptible to the cunning appeal of the Jesuits.
They would, he argued, offer to the rich their services. They would offer
to the poor generosity, to the ambitious power and praise, and to the
humble their affection and friendship . Finally, in an appeal that would
appropriate and then destroy the most cherished hopes of liberals,
Kliefoth insisted that the Jesuits "will say to the Germans: there will
never be a united, free, strong Germany, as long as we are all not a sin
gle Roman confession. "5
Similar metaphors of entrapment and strangulation run throughout
the postrevolutionary secular liberal anti-Jesuit and anti-Catholic
pamphlet literature. The anonymous Enthiillung der neuesten Umtriebe
der Jesuiten in Deutschland gegen Fiirsten und VOlker argued in r 8 s r
that the pomp o f the Catholic Church played o n the psychology o f the
population especially now when it was exhausted and bewildered by
the traumas of revolution. In the postrevolutionary period, it was,
therefore, no wonder that "Catholicism is now casting its nets over the
worried and weary people . " Because reactionary Jesuits simply used
Catholicism to service the interests of the throne and the absolute
power of the monarchy, it was "no wonder that they ensnared many
statesmen with their nets; no wonder that high-placed Protestant
officials in the state and in the church were openly known as 'secret
Jesuits. "'sr According to another anonymous pamphlet, Die Katholi
sche Religionsiibung in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, appearing in r 8 s r , since
r 848 "a new net of Catholic religious practice and Catholic priests" out
of proportion to the small number of Catholics in Mecklenburg
Schwerin had spread over the state. Its function could only be to sup
press the Lutheran Church and ensnare its membersY The author
explained that since the history of the missions in Mecklenburg
Schwerin recorded an unbroken chain of excesses and never-ending
offenses, the state had the right to impose restrictions on the Catholic
Church and the practice of Catholicism. Protestant pastors imagined
49 Kliefoth, Wider Rom! ror, v, respectively.
so. Ibid . 93
s r . Enthiillung der neuesten Umtriebe der Jesuiten in Deutschland gegen Fiirsten und VOlker:
Nebst einem AbrifJ der Gesellschaft des Jesuitenordens (Leipzig: Christian Ernst Kollmann,
r8sr). 126-27. 101, respectively.
52. Die katholische Religionsiibung in Mecklenburg-Schwerin (Jena: Friedrich Frommann,
1 852), 87.
.
92
the postrevolutionary German landscape covered with a series of webs

and nets laid out by roving Jesuits, trapping the exhausted population
like booty for the Vatican.
That the Jesuits had taken advantage of the social disorientation
caused by the 1 848 Revolution in order to reestablish the power of the
church and to launch an attack on Protestantism was also a prominent
theme among Protestant pastors. Pastor Leibbrand echoed the widely
held belief that the Jesuit missionary campaign to restore morality was
merely a sham.S3 In the hour of the revolution with the masses swept to
and fro by the winds of change, ultramontane authorities in the church
had called upon the Jesuits as part of the plan to reassert the power of
the pope in the German states. Where the Jesuits set up missions, there
the church laid down "roots in the soil of the lives of the people. " Leib
brand envisioned Jesuits roaming across Germany like "troops and
platoons often with the most sparse equipment. " They had swept over
the entire southwest corner of Germany; now they were launching a
strike to the north. Alternatively, Catholicism was a rising flood tide
that threatened to swamp Germany in superstition and stupidity.
Catholicism was an ocean that could be contained only by a Protestant
dam built to protect the population from intolerance, proselytizing,
and conversion.54
For pastors like Leibbrand there were no doubts: the Jesuits, milites
papae, defenders of Roman hierarchy, and the instrument for the
worldwide rule of the Roman Church, opposed to all that was holy and
Christian, were the "deadly enemy of Protestantism. "ss According to
the superintendent of the Elberfeld district synod in an address to
Protestant parishes in 1 8 5 3 , the Jesuits, not democrats and liberals,
were the true revolutionaries that threatened to smash monarchical
and Protestant authority. The Jesuits, he argued, were granted by their
superiors any means including exciting the masses to insurrection
against the authorities "to destroy the Protestant Church; they have
now arisen freely with their missions in our fatherland, in our immedi
ate vicinity . " 56 According to Enthiillung der neuesten Umtriebe der
Jesuiten, however, this could hardly have been a surprise. The goals of
the Jesuits for three hundred years had never been other than "to exter
minate Protestantism along with its roots . " 57 Exploiting the new con53 Leibbrand, Missionen der Jesuiten.
Ibid. , 3 6 , 6 3 , respectively.
5 5 Ibid., 26.
56. Sander, Beruf der Protestanten, 12.
57. Enthiillung der neuesten Umtriebe der Jesuiten, 101.
54
93
stitutional rights won for the church during the revolution, the Jesuits
had spread not just their missions but also the new ultramontane asso
ciations all over Germany. Now the Piusverein, according to the
author, had the audacity to plan a conference in Berlin, "the capital of
Protestant Germany. Another sign of the times ! " The most important
cause of the spread of the Jesuits and Catholicism was, he argued, the
support of reactionary absolutist governments for the church since
they were allies for the subjugation of the people and the reestablish
ment of "blind, unqualified obedience. " 5 8
Many liberal Protestant Jesuit-haters believed that the Jesuits had
taken advantage of the r 848 Revolution not only to launch an attack
on Protestantism and to establish the power of the church but also to
assault the virtues of the Enlightenment-light, truth, and reason
and to attack the welfare of the German fatherland. Pastor H. A.
Bergmann, like other liberals, was disgusted by the excesses of the rev
olution. He echoed a widely held belief when he argued in Die Jesuit
enpest in r856 that the Jesuits were using the chaos ensuing from the
revolution, that "infectious sickness" that had captured hold of the
lower classes, to establish and spread their influence. Now the Jesuits
were a "pestilence" among the people, waging war against the most
sacred liberal beliefs, "against Bildung and the humanity of our time,
against light and enlightenment, against the well-being of the people,
against the welfare of the state and the happiness of the family. " 59 Even
in the midst of Protestant states and cities, he argued, the Jesuits were
holding their missions, hitching people to the "yoke of slavery" with
religious fanaticism and superstition. 6 For Bergmann, as for liberals
Protestant and secular alike, Catholicism was a way of life anathema to
reason, Bildung, and enlightenment. Catholicism, he argued, survived
merely in an empty, outward form, in ostentatious but hollow displays
of ceremony and hierarchy. Italy, for example, offered the pathetic
spectacle of a country
covered over with more cardinals, archbishops and bishops,
priests, monks, masses, Marian cults, sacred pictures, miraculous
5 8 . Ibid. , r r 5 , 127, respectively.
59 H. A. Bergmann, Die Jesuitenpest, 2d. ed. (Berlin: Gebauer'sche Buchhandlung, 18 56),
54; ibid. , rst ed. r852, 57-58 . Dehumanizing Jesuits by referring to them as a sickness, pesti
lence, or pollutant was commonly employed in the Protestant polemic. According to one
writer. the Jesuits were an "evil, which threatened to pollute the people ." Enthiillung der
neuesten Umtriebe der Jesuiten, 1 2 8 . See also Magnus Jocham, Die sittliche Verpestung des
Volkes durch die Jesuiten (Mainz: Franz Kirchheim, 1866), 5-6.
6o. Bergmann, Jesuitenpest, 7
94
relics, indulgences, processions, festivities, fasts, jubilees, celebra

tions and other kinds of papal rubbish than can possibly be imag
ined. The most rampant faithlessness, slander, indeed even con
tempt for the most Holy has emerged here next to the most blind
superstition, next to the most un-Christian fanaticism and bigotry
in such a way that the danger that threatens the hierarchy at its
roots is hardly recognizable .61
The problem was not confined to Italy. This, according to the author,
was the condition "more or less" of all Catholic countries, and he shud
dered when he imagined that the Jesuits might transform Germany, the
home of sober Protestantism, into one of them. According to another
liberal Protestant the Catholic Church was the most blatant contradic
tion of "science, Bildung, and the consciousness of the time . " Yet all
the tortures and persecution of the Inquisition and of the Jesuits, he
argued, could not prevent "the increase of light, and no human power,
even the power of the Jesuits, will ever manage to return the night that
covered the people centuries ago . "62
Protestant and secular liberals who envisioned the Jesuits as a toxin
poisoning the capacity of people to think for themselves, a dark cloud
obstructing light, truth, and reason, shared the authority of an Enlight
enment vocabulary and tradition of Enlightenment anticlericalism
with secular democrats. Radical democrats argued monarchists had
j oined with the Jesuits in the decisive hour to defeat the revolution.
According to one anonymous pamphlet, Die Jesuitenansiedlung in
Westfalen und das Westfiilische Junkertwn, Catholic Junkers, in order
to preserve their traditional privileges and authority, called upon the
Jesuits to join a conspiracy of counterrevolution. The author believed
that the Jesuits, working hand in hand with the government and aris
tocratic reactionaries, had launched a campaign to "reduce the people
to idiocy. " Together they promoted superstition, blind faith, and reli
gious fanaticism among the people, just as they suppressed Bildung,
reason, and enlightenment, the foundations of freedom. The Catholic
aristocracy, meanwhile, gladly j oined in pilgrimages, revered crucifixes
and religious relics, and encouraged hocus-pocus and "similar non
sense" in order to reestablish their hold on the people and resurrect the
patriarchal "good old times. "63
6 1 . Ibid ., 57
62. Enthiillung der neuesten Umtriebe der Jesuiten, 12X.
63. Jesuitenansiedlung in Westfalen.
95
Though united in their animosity toward the Jesuits and in their fear
of the Roman Catholic revival, Protestant Church authorities were at
loggerheads about the proper polemical response to the threat and
about the Protestant Church's capacity to meet this threat. Many
Protestant pastors went into a tailspin of despair. H. A. Bergmann, for
example, was especially pessimistic. He believed that while the Jesuits
were spreading the rule of the pope, converting Protestants, and
reestablishing Catholic predominance in countries throughout
Europe, the Protestant Church was meanwhile "almost dead."64 The
Protestant clergy, Bergmann argued, remained naive, indifferent, and
silent. Since the Protestant Church was unable or unwilling to meet the
challenge of the Catholic revival, he turned and placed his hopes in the
resilience of the people, that is, liberal people. If the Jesuit campaign
and the Catholic renewal could not be matched with Protestantism, he
argued, they must be met, instead, with the power of liberal virtues, the
force of Bildung, and the enlightenment of the people, who, cultivating
"the deepest contempt and hate in their innermost heart, " must
exclaim, "Be gone, Satan ! " 65
As a member of the Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat, Theodor
Kliefoth, however, could not have disagreed more. He called not for a
campaign of Bildung, reason, and enlightenment to meet the Catholic
threat but for a steadfast rededication to Protestant theology against
the lure of "Rome's agents" whispering in the ears of the German
Protestant population. Kliefoth believed that his coreligionists had to
attack the Romans with Protestant resolution and the "Protestant
truth of God. "66 He argued that using rhetoric that drew on the vocab
ulary of the Enlightenment and liberalism was misguided. He did so
not because such concepts were inherently flawed. Instead, a campaign
against Catholicism that emphasized "declarations of 'light, ' 'reason,'
'freedom, ' and 'enlightenment' " had in the current context become, he
argued, useless or disreputable. At another time and in another place
one could combat the Catholic Church with such words and phrases,
but one could not use them now and here; liberal ideals had been dis
credited by the violence and ultimate failure of the revolution. In Ger
many such "high, holy, and sacred words in the last decade have been,
on the one hand, so sullied that a national penance must wash them
clean again and have become, on the other hand, so hollow that they
64. Bergmann, Jesuitenpest, 2d ed . 56.
6 5 . Ibid. , 62, 6r, respectively.
66. Kliefoth, Wider Rom! ror, 93, respectively .
.
96
do not mean anything anymore. "67 In this postrevolutionary period he

warned against invoking the vocabulary of liberalism since this would
only contribute further to the dissolution of its meaning. In the cam
paign against Catholicism and the Jesuits, he could in r852 only rec
ommend looking elsewhere for words and ideas that still had the
capacity to communicate content and direction.
Anti-Catholicism, Protestantism, and the Reconstruction
of Liberalism
The reaction and repression that followed the failure of the Revolution
of 1 848-49 was for liberals a period of defeat, despair, and disarray as
the conservative authorities of the German states retaliated with often
brutal force. In the Grand Duchy of Baden, for example, a tenth of the
revolutionaries who finally surrendered in the last month of the revo
lution at the garrison of Rastatt were lined up and shot down. For their
roles in the revolution, liberal leaders of the revolution like Wilhelm
von Triitzschler and Maximilian Dortu were tried by military courts
and executed. Gottfried Kinkel and Ludwig von Rango were sen
tenced to long prison terms. In the regular courts, both Franz Waldeck
and Johann Jacoby may have been acquitted of charges of lese-majeste
and high treason, but acquittal did not ensure freedom from continued
harassment by state authorities . Franz Ziegler was expelled from the
town of Brandenburg, where he had at one time been Biirgermeister,
while Hans Viktor Unruh was forced out of his position in the civil ser
vice. Herman Schulze-Delitzsch was harassed by the police and not
allowed to practice law. Other leading democratic and liberal lights
like Carl Schurz, Ludwig Bamberger, Friedrich Kapp, and Stephan
Born avoided persecution by fleeing the German states either perma
nently or temporarily. In Baden alone some eighty thousand "forty
eighters" escaped to the United States, Switzerland, or another refuge,
effectively depleting the duchy of its progressive liberal and democratic
population. The resurrected German Confederation abrogated the
"Fundamental Rights of the German People," and the liberal red
black-gold tricolor was hauled down from the palace in Frankfurt
where the Diet of the Confederation sat. The reactionary government
censored the press, dissolved political organizations, and discouraged
electoral participation. Elections, therefore, were marked by apathy
and low voter turnout. 68
67. Ibid. , r o r , v, respectively.
68. Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century, r62-63; Hamerow, Restoration, Revolu
tion, Reaction, 203-4; Sheehan, German Liberalism, 75. 84, 92.
97
The success, meanwhile, of the Catholic missionary campaign and

the Catholic revival added to state reaction and persecution another
assault on the liberal hopes for social reform and progress. Many lib
erals believed that political repression only made the spread of
Catholicism more likely. When in 1 8 54 Pope Pius IX proclaimed the
dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, the father
and venerable exponent of the kleindeutsch school of historiography,
Johann Gustav Droysen, wrote bitterly to his colleague Heinrich von
Sybel that "idolatry . . . belongs to the mob; the more the wisdom of
our governments in Germany turns us into plebeians, the greater the
prospects for the Roman Church. "69 After the collapse of the revolu
tion, liberalism was not merely suppressed by state force; it seemed
now overrun by a more vigorous and ascendant popular Catholic
movement based in religious faith and dedicated to the conservative
monarchical order.
Contrary to the view, however, that under the new pressures of the
1 8 50s the revolutionaries of 1 848-49 simply retreated from politics to
pursue economic activities or settled into private retirement, the maj or
ity of the former Paulskirche representatives as well as many other lib
eral and democratic radicals across Germany either stayed politically
active in spite of persecution or returned to political life after impris
onment or emigration.7 The politicization of German society and cul
ture in the revolutionary era had permanently changed the relationship
between state and society, and within the new postrevolutionary
world, liberals found opportunities to reengage as advocates for eco
nomic, constitutional, and social reform. As part of their commitment
to progress, even during the reactionary decade of the 1 8 50s and into
the New Era of the r86os-the period of renewed hopes for social and
political change-liberal and progressive reformers lashed out at the
Catholic revival with fanatical hostility. In 1 8 5 3 one of the hundreds of
liberal and Protestant anti-Jesuit pamphlets that had emerged with the
Jesuit missionary campaign drew attention to a quotation in the
Deutsche Volkshalle, one of the many new Catholic newspapers
founded after the revolution. The paper asserted in the face of govern
ment interference and in defiance of liberal-capitalist worldliness that it
was "not founded for material reasons. To us all the customs treaties in
the world are trivial compared to a single government measure that
6g. Johann Gustav Droysen to Heinrich von Sybel, 12 Dec. 1R54, in Johann Gustav Dray
sen Briefwechsel. ed. Rudolf Hubner (Stuttgart: Biblio-Verlag, 1967), 2: 300.
70. Christian Jansen, "Saxon Forty-Eighters in the Postrevolutionary Epoch, I R49-1R67,"
in Saxony in German History: Culture, Society, and Politics, I830-I933, ed. James Retallack
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2ooo), I 3 5-50.
98
infringes upon the freedom of Catholic beliefs. A single institution of

the church [the Society of Jesus] is more dear to our hearts than all the
factories of the entire monarchy; and we are convinced that the power
of Prussia in Germany depends much less on the tariff line than on the
Jesuit line. "7r Such comments confirmed the belief current among sec
ular and Protestant liberals that the Catholic Church and Catholics
intended to ensure that Germany remain tied to an antiquated world of
religious zealotry, hostile to modern commercial interests and indus
trial progress.
In the new postrevolutionary world, the conservative political
repression and Catholic reactionary fanaticism often seemed hand in
hand or one and the same. If, however, postrevolutionary critics like
Kliefoth were right, that liberal ideology was exhausted, that words
like light, reason, freedom, and enlightenment had become empty and
useless, liberal leaders in the face of their adversaries were left now
without even a language of political resistance and social reform.
During the period following the revolution and in their efforts to
carry forward the campaign to modernize Germany, liberals out of
necessity searched for new ways to think about many of their most
basic tenets at the most fundamental level of meaning. As they did so,
they found that coupling liberalism and anti-Catholicism was an
especially powerful way to rehabilitate and voice their program for
reform in the postrevolutionary era. Traditionally, historians have
argued that anti-Catholic sentiment was the mortar that held the lib
eral house in Germany together. The Catholic problem provided lib
erals from the left across to the right a common ground to which they
all could continue to return despite their different approaches to and
disagreements concerning social reform and state authority, includ
ing economic policy, military budgets, and particularly the constitu
tional crisis of the r 8 6os. Catholicism was, however, not only a com
mon, liberal problem; unlike with many other problems, liberals of
all shades could agree on what should be done about it. More impor
tant, the liberals' running battle with Catholicism decisively reshaped
German liberalism from a preindustrial, precapitalist movement into
an ideology consonant with middle-class industrial development,
capitalist expansion, and modern social order after r 848. Recogniz
ing that anti-Catholicism was the central obsession of liberals after
7 1 . Quoted in Bergmann, Die geheimen Instructionen. 68.
99
midcentury, determining their programmatic choices and the charac

ter of liberalism itself, helps us identify the historically specific con
tingency of liberal ideology often missed in other studies of nine
teenth-century German liberalism.
Following the defeat of the r 848 Revolution and under the condi
tions of state repression during the r 8 sos, German liberals developed
models of anticlerical, anti-Jesuit, antimonastic, and anti-Catholic
thinking that reoriented and reconstituted German liberalism on a new
basis of legitimacy and authority. The cultural anthropological per
spective of Clifford Geertz offers one way to identify the value of anti
Catholicism for German liberals in the postrevolutionary period.
According to Geertz, thinking, the development of meaning, and the
formation of ideas are best understood as a mental procedure of con
trasting available representations . "Thinking, conceptualization, for
mulation, comprehension, understanding, " he has argued, "consists
not of ghostly happenings in the head but of a matching of the states
and processes of symbolic models against the states and processes of
the wider world. "72 When liberals matched their idealized beliefs about
themselves and their hopes for German society in the postrevolution
ary era against stigmatized images of the Catholic clergy, Catholics,
and the Catholic Church, they were thinking again about who they
were and what they were supposed to be. With Jesuits, monks, nuns,
monasticism, Catholicism, and the Catholic Church as rhetorical
points of reference, they reinvented the language of liberalism, includ
ing individualism, science, education, constitutionalism, and free-mar
ket economics. By identifying the ways liberal aspirations were man
aged in opposition to clericalism, the Catholic Church, and
72. Clifford Geertz, "Ideology as a Cultural System," in Ideology and Discontent. ed.
David E. Apter (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964), 46-76, quotation at 6r. A temper
ate and circumspect use of the methods of discourse analysis in gender and cultural studies
otTers a similar approach. Joan Wallach Scott has argued that meaning is generated by the
juxtaposition of oppositions whereby a "positive definition is always based on '"the negation
or repression of something represented as antithetical to it. And categorical oppositions
repress the internal ambiguities of either category." Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Pol
itics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 7 From a self-avowed post
modernist perspective, Zygmunt Bauman's work on the sociological significance of the Jew
ish minority and its relationship to dominant culture in Germany also illuminates just as well
the fundamental relationship between Catholics and liberalism. Bauman argues that the
invention of dichotomies in the attempt to control ambivalence is specific to the modern, lib
eral vision of social order. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1991).
roo
Catholicism, it is possible to trace the reconstruction of German liber

alism after r848, broadly understood.
For example, in r 8 5 5 the philosopher and theologian Christian Carl
Josias Bunsen in his introduction to Die Zeichen der Zeit used anti
Catholicism to make some sense of the postrevolutionary period, a
period of such disorientation that it required first of all, he believed, a
more concerted effort at honest self-reflection: "What do the signs of
the times mean? Is it ebb tide or flood? Are we in Germany and in
Europe going backward or forward?" he asked. 73 A Protestant liberal,
Bunsen in r 848 had placed his hopes in the Frankfurt National Assem
bly and the unification of Germany under the leadership of Prussia. 74
Now the Nachmarz was a world at the crossroads. Those in it, he
believed, found themselves faced with clear and urgent choices: either
prostration before clericalism or the assertion of national self-determi
nation. "Which, " he asked his readers, "will triumph, church or state?
Clergy or nation? Pfaffenthum or Volksthum?"75 That his book was an
immediate success, selling out within the first month, and that already
by the third month a third edition had to be printed to keep up with
demand demonstrates that Bunsen's questions were of urgent concern
to many Germans in the postrevolutionary period.76 Bunsen's way for
ward coupled liberal social and political ideals with the authority of
cultural Protestantism in a desperate battle against the Jesuits' plan to
destroy Germany. What interests us is the pattern of relentless and
crude oppositions in a diatribe that pitted the evils of "Jesuitism" and
its campaign to stupefy the people against the virtues of Protestantism
and the enlightenment of Bildung. Bunsen saw in the Jesuits-at the
very time that they were holding their missions and repietizing the
Catholic population of Germany-the "complete inversion" of both
divine and human plans for world history and world order. The
"Jesuitical view of the world" was, he argued, "the murderer of the
73. Christian Carl Josias Bunsen, Die Zeichen der Zeit: Briefe an Freunde iiber die Ge
wissenfreiheit und das Recht der christlichen Gemeinde (Leipzig: F. A . Brockhaus, r8 55), q .
7 4 Two addresses sent t o the Frankfurt National Assembly conveyed Bunsen's hopes for
a united and constitutional Germany and establish his liberal credentials: "Die deutsche
Bundesverfassung und ihr eigenthi.imliches Verhaltnis zu den Verfassungen Englands und
der Vereinigten Staaten" (London, 7 May r 848); and "Vorschlag fiir die unverzi.igliche Bit
dung einer vollstandigen Reichsverfassung wahrend der Verweserschaft" (Frankfurt am
Main, 5 Sept. 1848).
75 Bunsen, Zeichen der Zeit, 1 : 3 .
7 6 . See the preface t o the English translation, Christian Carl Josias Bunsen, Signs of the
Times: Letters to Ernst Moritz Arndt on the Dangers to Religious Liberty in the Present State
of the World, trans. Susanna Winkworth (London, 1 856), v.
ror
principle of personality bestowed by and belonging to God. "77 Ignatius

Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, never sought truth for
itself, argued Bunsen, but rather as a means of ruling by the strangula
tion and murder of individuality. Ultimately, "Jesuitism" was at its
essence, according to Bunsen, a form of "drill, not Bildung; an enslave
ment, not a liberation," which encouraged "among the people, not
independence and prosperous development, but a ruinous fluctuation
between anarchy and despotism, like that between skepticism and
superstition. "78
Not just an attack on the freedom of the individual, Bunsen argued,
"Jesuitism" was "irreconcilably hostile to freedom, science, and
humanity. "79 For Bunsen and for German liberals, the Jesuits were the
precise antithesis of liberal-minded Germans. In contrast to "Jesuit
ism, " Germany, Bunsen believed, demanded respect for the individual
and for science, for unfettered progress and freedom. The reestablish
ment of the Jesuit order was at the same time nothing less than a dec
laration of war against Protestantism. A mighty Gotteskanzpf (holy
war) between Protestantism and the Jesuits was, therefore, inevitable.
With solemn conviction, however, Bunsen explained that "the contra
diction between the oppression of conscience and freedom is eternal,
but the banner of the free and moral person waves victoriously over the
battlefield, and on it is written in letters of fire: In hoc signo vinces, " the
words that appeared to Constantine on the Christian cross before his
victory at Milvian Bridge in C . E . 312. While there was hope yet for
Protestant Germans, Bunsen conceded little beyond "laboring for the
kingdom of God among us" could be done to rescue "our [Catholic]
brethren" from the Jesuits. 80 Bunsen's anti-Catholicism indicates how
readily liberals drew upon Protestantism as a cultural resource, evok
ing common Protestant sentiments and employing Protestant symbol
ism to motivate programs for social and political progress.
This was even more the case after r 8 5 7 when in Prussia the transfer
of the conduct of government from Friedrich Wilhelm IV, declared
hopelessly insane by a regency council, to his brother Prince Wilhelm
brought an end to the postrevolutionary period of reaction. He dis
missed the reactionary ministers and in their place appointed a new
ministry more sympathetic to the moderate liberal opposition. The
77
78.
79
8o.
Bunsen, Zeichen der Zeit, 2 : 277-78. 283-83. respectively.

Ibid., 2: 282-8 3 .
Ibid. , 2: 277-78.
Ibid. , 2:286, 284, respectively.
ro2
move signaled, contemporaries believed, a New Era awakening hopes

among liberals for new reforms after a decade of reaction. Adolf
Diesterweg, a progressive liberal, 1 848 revolutionary, and authority on
educational reform, immediately published Padagogisches Wollen und
So!len, a maj or work of pedagogical theory that proposed a sweeping
educational, social, economic, and moral reform. 8' Diesterweg's pro
gressive program was based on what he called the "Grundprincipien
des Lebenskampfes" (basic principles of the struggle for life) in the
contest between Catholicism and Protestantism. At stake in this strug
gle was a comprehensive catalog of choices: "monarchical absolutism"
or a "free constitution"; "protective tariffs" or the "free market";
"guilds" or "free competition"; "patronage" or "self-regulation";
"censorship of the press" or "freedom of the press"; a "state church" or
"freedom of conscience"; "stagnation" or "progress"; "subjection to
authorities in thought and in deed" or "free research and thinking for
yourself. " In 1859 in his essay "Bischof und Padagog," Diesterweg reit
erated the choices between, on the one hand, "Catholic" "absolute
rule, " "bureaucratic administration, " "compulsory guilds," and the
"system of protective tariffs" and, on the other hand, "Protestant"
"constitutional freedom, " "self-management, " "the free market, " and
"free competition . " 82 These "oppositions," as Diesterweg called them,
were reducible to the most basic opposition: "authority or freedom,
Catholicism or Protestantism. " 8 3 Diesterweg's arguments on pedagogy
move from one litany of stark contrasts to another. Absent in his for
mulations is any common ground, any possibility for compromise that
might contribute to ambiguity. The force of Diesterweg's argument
derives from this clarity of irreconcilable antagonisms. For Diester
weg, the opposition between the "principle of Catholic inertia" and the
8 1 . Adolf Diesterweg, Padagogisches Wollen und Sollen: Dargestellt fiir Leute. die noch
nicht fertig sind, aber eben darum Lust haben. nachzudenken (Leipzig. 1 857). In 1848 Diester
weg had seen the revolution as the opportunity to rid Gennany of "Pfafientum" once and for
all. The Rheinischen Blatter ran an address to all teachers summarizing with excerpts an arti
cle by Diesterweg: "Now is the time. to say it in a word, to make an end of Pfaffentum, to
extricate it root and branch wherever we have it in our power." Rheinische Blatter 38 (r848):
2, 15, quoted in Hugo Gotthard Bloth, Adolf Diesterweg: Sein Leben und Wirken fiir Peda
gogik und Schute (Heidelberg: Quelle und Meyer, 1966), r6o.
82. Adolf Diesterweg. "Bischof und Padagog,'' in Samtliche Werke, ed. Robert Alt. Hans
Ahrbeck, Rosemarie Ahrbeck, Ruth Hohendorf, Gerda Mundorf, Gunter Schulze, and Leo
Regener (Berlin: Volkseigener Verlag, 1976), 347-8 5 . The article appeared originally in Pad
agogisches Jahrbuch fiir Lehrer und Schulfreunde 9 (1859): 89-1 56.
8 3 . Diesterweg. Padagogisches Wollen und Sollen, 8 r-83 .
1 03
"principle of Protestant movement" applied to all realms of human

interaction, including religion, society, politics, and education. 84 In the
realm of religious activity the principle of Protestant movement was in
agreement with "rationalism as a method, with the primacy of reason,"
and in contradiction to "supernaturalism, " "the imprisonment of rea
son by belief. " In the spiritual realm, Diesterweg argued, Protestantism
was in agreement with "self-determination, spontaneity, " and in con
tradiction to "the rule of dark feelings, with passive devotion, blind
obedience. " In matters of political life, Protestantism was in agreement
with "the principle of self-government and what goes with it" and in
contradiction to "the absolutist, the aristocratic, and its conse
quences. "85
Diesterweg's "Bischof und Padagog" also developed a series of
Catholic pedagogical principles in opposition to Protestant principles.
According to Diesterweg:
The differences (in part absolute, in part relative opposition)
between Catholic and Protestant principles of education require
no detailed explanation. The following are self evident:
r. education to promote belief in the authorities;
2. education to promote unqualified belief in the church, the
pope, and the anointed priests;
3 the renunciation of one's own inquiry into matters of church
dogma-renunciation of reason;
4 the subordination of the Holy Scripture to catechism, interpre
tation of the same through the infallibility of the pope;
5 the adherence to church practices necessary for salvation
(genuflection, making the sign of the cross, spraying holy
water, praying with the rosary, confession, fasting, pilgrim
ages, penance, mortification, opera operata);
6. the belief in superstition and miracles, etc . ;
compare to
r . the Protestant freedom of belief and conscience;
2. the right (or the duty) of one's own inquiry into the Scriptures;
84. Ibid. , 83.
Xs. Ibid. , 40.
10 4
3 the recognition of individual convictions;

4 the agreement between belief and reason;
5 the attribution of all phenomena to laws (natural and spiri
tual);
6. an education for free self-determination; and with all that fol
lows from these principles and is harmonious with it. Summa:
an upright life dedicated to a firm belief in the common good. 86
Diesterweg throughout his construction of oppositions borrowed
legitimacy from Protestantism as a resource of cultural value to revive
key words in the vocabulary of liberalism: progress, rationalism, indi
vidualism, Bildung, and constitutionalism, and ultimately the principles
of free trade that became increasingly current among liberals in the late
1 8 5os and during the I 86os. 87 According to Diesterweg, Protestantism
like liberalism rested on the presupposition of tolerance; Catholicism,
however, led only to intolerance. But the Protestant tolerance of
Catholics, he argued, must have its limit. Catholic monks and monas
teries served as an example: "No hostility to hoods, cowls, and bald
heads so long as they leave us alone and do not molest us. Peace-but
not at any price! "88 In the face of the Catholic missionary campaign
against Protestantism and the attempt to win over the Protestant pop
ulation, the intolerance of intolerance, he argued, was justified. This
conflict between the confessions could be reduced in its essentials to the
questions "going forward or going backward?" and "more light or
more darkness?" Despite the attempts of the Catholic clergy to lock the
wheels of progress, the struggle, Diesterweg argued, offered the san
guine assurance of the "unfettered progress of light and enlighten
ment. "89 The appeal of the anti-Catholic model for thinking about lib
eral identity and liberal principles apparent in Diesterweg's program
for reform was, however elegant the idealism, precisely its crude and
formulaic character. The cognitive model could be effortlessly and
seemingly endlessly applied to the broad array of programs that con
stituted the liberal prescription for progress in Germany.
For example, at the start of the New Era, in Das gegenwartige
aggressive Verfahren der ronzisch-katholischen Kirche, Daniel Schenkel,
a dedicated and prolific anti-Catholic, sketched out the contours of the
86. Diesterweg, "Bischof und Padagog, " 364.
87. For liberal advocacy of free trade beginning in the r86os, see Langewiesche, "German
Liberalism,'' 225.
8 8 . Diesterweg, "Bischof und Padagog, " 364.
89. Ibid. , 378.
ros
liberal-Protestant polemic against Catholicism. For Schenkel as for

other liberal Protestants, the Catholic attack on Protestant Germany
was part of a daring and comprehensive "system of power, " an
inevitable, enduring, and constant threat: "If the Roman Catholic
Church behaves aggressively against the Protestant Christians, . . . it is
forced to do so," he explained, "by an inner necessity, because it can
not do otherwise, even if it wanted. "9 Establishing a separate society
within society, splitting Germans into two separate and irreconcilable
populations, the Roman Church demanded that Catholics avoid all
religious and civil community with Protestants . Most recently,
Catholics were not only segregated from Protestants in schools and
universities but even in cemeteries. The Catholic Church had intruded
also into the "sacred lap of family life," demanding that all children in
confessionally mixed marriages be raised Catholic. There was no
aspect of life, according to Schenkel, that was now not a matter of con
fessional allegiance. The Roman Catholic Church wanted not only to
establish a distinctly Catholic history and philosophy, but even
Catholic mathematics and ultimately even a Catholic culinary art, he
argued. Schenkel believed that according to the plans of the Catholic
Church, "there would no longer be an area of human thought, cogni
tion, research, knowledge, and business in which the Catholic Christ
ian would not think, do research, know, and conduct business differ
ently than the Protestant Christian. " "Protestant scholarship and
science" could be compared to "Catholic science without shame . " In
contrast to the Catholic Church that denied any freedom to its adher
ents, Protestantism had discovered that there could be no true knowl
edge without the freedom of thought. "Science and art, the life of the
state and of the people, customs and traditions, business and shipping,
agriculture and commerce," all human activities had been transformed
with the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century.9r
Throughout Schenkel's argument, Catholicism is depicted as back
ward and past oriented while Protestantism is progressive and future
oriented; Protestantism is easily consonant with liberalism, but
Catholicism is anathema to liberal ideals. Catholicism, Schenkel
argued, belonged to a time in history when it had been necessary to
Christianize the heathen masses as quickly as possible. However pow90. Schenkel, Das gegenwartige aggressive Verfahren, 3 Schenkel thought that "the
aggressive behavior of the Roman Catholic Church against the evangelical Christians is a
necessary emanation of its being; it must hold itself not only justified but also obligated for
this." Ibid . , 7
9 1 . Ibid .. 13-14. 23, respectively.
ro6
erful and important Catholicism may once have been, now, in this
modern age of progress, "it no longer has any roots in the spirit and
needs of our century, and it no longer carries within itself the fresh
buds of the future. The view, on which Roman Catholicism rests,
belongs to a bygone period of world history. " Monks, monasteries,
and religious orders were at best obsolete and useless. "Currently no
one would dare assert that the Roman Catholic clergy is at the lead of
the spiritual movement of this century, and that the powerful impulses
which the Christian peoples employ to solve their world-historical
problems come from the monks and fraternal orders. " Catholicism, he
argued, was strongest in precisely those areas where spiritual and ethi
cal development were weakest. "Conversely the progress of Protes
tantism goes hand in hand with the progress of civilization, with the
increasing spread of Bildung and knowledge, " leaving behind their
Catholic counterparts to atrophyY
The Jesuits were a particularly fanatical obsession in Schenkel's
anti-Catholic diatribe. They were "the most terrible and irreconcilable
enemy of Protestantism, " an enemy, cloaked in secrecy, "that has
embraced faithlessness and mindless hedonism with open arms. "
According t o Schenkel, while the Jesuit missions seemed to b e held in
Catholic areas for the benefit of the Catholic population, they were, in
fact, usually held in Protestant areas for the purpose of converting
Protestants to Catholicism. Even in Berlin, "the metropolis of German
Protestantism, " missions were being held to convert the Protestant
inhabitants . The more Protestants were ignorant of the basic truths of
their own belief, Schenkel argued, the greater the danger of their falling
into the Jesuit "catch net" of propaganda.93 In r 862 Schenkel further
expounded his anti-Jesuitism in Die kirchliche Frage und ihre protes
tantische Losung. It was precisely the Jesuit order, he explained, that
eradicated any capacity for reform and progress in the Catholic
Church. The Jesuits recognized that with the Counter-Reformation
decrees of the Council of Trent (which met from 1545 to 1563),
"medieval Catholicism closed up its system and exhausted its spiritual
capacity. "94 From then on, from the standpoint of the order, there was
only one command for Catholics in the church, obedience to the papal
seat and its dictates, and only one sin, "the emancipation of the indi92. Ibid .. 22.
93 Ibid., 19.
94. Daniel Schenkel, Die kirchliche Frage und ihre protestantische Losung im Zusammen
hange mit den nationalen Bestrebungen und mit besonderer Beziehung auf die neuesten
Schriften von Dollinger und Bischof von Kettelers (Elberfeld: R. L. Friederichs. r 862), 1 3 8 .
10 7
vidual from hierarchical authority. " The Jesuit order dedicated itself to
the global, supranational rule of the pope and to the subordination of
the state to his commands. "With admirable perseverance," Schenkel
continues, "it always pursued the same goal: the suppression of free
dom and independence of the human spirit. It acquired an art with
which to still the capacities of human intellect without developing the
spirit, to train human willpower without building character. "95 With
out any moral direction or scientific capacity, Jesuits had also lost
themselves in a dark cave of medieval scholasticism and casuistry. As
the agents of ultramontanism, the vassals and servants of an interna
tional, religious world monarchy seated in Rome, the Jesuits whipped
up pro-Austrian sentiment among Roman Catholics and undermined
Prussian nationalist leadership in Germany. Schenkel's demonization
of the Jesuits culminates in the assertion that the Jesuit order, the
encapsulation of all that was worst in Catholicism, was, in fact, ulti
mately dependent on Protestantism for its existence . "It scrapes
together a bare existence only with the help of its opposite, Protes
tantism, which it persecutes with the glowing hate . . . of a crippled
rival."96 Protestantism was the result of national conscience; "Jesuit
ism" the product of the suppression of conscience. Protestantism
rested on the spiritual freedom and the unbound love of truth; "Jesuit
ism" chained the spirit to the slavery of obedience. True to form,
Schenkel's anti-Jesuitism was a ritualized performance, a demonstra
tion of the rhetorically contingent, mutually referential meanings of
"Jesuitism" and Protestantism consonant with the basic tenets of the
language of liberalism: progress, freedom, individuality, science, and a
united Germany under Prussian hegemony.
In step with this kind of Protestant liberal, anticlerical, and anti
Jesuit literature, leading lights of German Kulturprotestantismus cou
pled Protestantism and liberalism in new, national-level, anti-Catholic
organizations. They included notables like Rudolf von Bennigsen,
Johann Caspar Bluntschli, Johannes Miquel, and Daniel Schenkel
himself who j oined together in the Nationalverein (National Associa
tion) founded in 1 8 59 with headquarters in Frankfurt. Soon afterward
Protestant theological moderates like Michael Baumgarten, Willibald
Beyschlag, and Richard Rothe set up the Deutscher Protestanten
verein (German Protestant Association) at the University of Halle in
1 8 6 3 . These associations of middle-class Protestants were designed to
bring together political, civic, and academic notables from across the
95. Ibid. , 138, 140, respectively.
96. Ibid .. 141-42.
ro8
German states; to pursue liberal and nationalist goals; and to form a

united front in the war against the Church of Rome. At its height the
Nationalverein numbered over twenty-five thousand, and while it
remained closed to the wider public, it had considerable success mobi
lizing popular opinion. The bishop of Mainz, Wilhelm Emmanuel von
Ketteler, a leader of the clerical counterattack against liberalism,
understood its formidable influence and charged in 1 862, "the Nation
alverein is an anti-Catholic association, an association that from the
standpoint of rationalistic Protestantism is hostile to the proper place
of the Catholic Church in Germany, an association that is an insult
and an impairment to us Catholics in our belief and in our rights . "97
Meanwhile, Daniel Schenkel repeated in his manifesto of the
Deutscher Protestantenverein the widely held view that while Protes
tantism, "the essential lever of cultural progress," was the foundation
for religious, moral, and intellectual freedom, Roman Catholicism
was, by contrast, an attack on the cultural development and on the
moral and scientific progress of the century.98
The historian Adolf M . Birke has argued that German liberals as the
heirs of the Enlightenment saw the "Catholic principle" as the embod
iment of theological, spiritual, and political reaction, wholly irreconcil
able with the modern Zeitgeist.99 The church's effort to revive Catholi
cism intensified a popular piety and mobilized a mass culture that
stood in sharp contrast to the belief in progress and science. Bildung,
the cultivation of intellect and spirit, was likewise claimed by liberals as
Protestant. It was the hallmark of the individual Burger as opposed to
the superstition and dogmatism of the Catholic "mob. " The contem
porary historian Johann Gustav Droysen, who believed that the nation
was not simply a political power but also an agent of morality, culture,
and progress, helped inculcate a worldview that during the decade of
the founding of the empire became the conviction of Protestant liber
als : Catholicism was synonymous with ignorance, submission, and ple
beianism. 100 That Catholicism was fit only for the ignorant mob, not
97 Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, "The N ationalverein," excerpted in Schenkel, Die
kirchliche Frage, 105.
98. Daniel Schenkel, Der deutsche Protestantenverein und seine Bedeutung in der Gegen
wart nach den Akten dargestellt (Wiesbaden: C. W. Kreidel, 1868), 98. Quoted in Adolf M .
Birke, Bischof Ketteler und der deutsche Liberalismus: Eine Untersuchung iiber das Verhiiltnis
des liberalen Katholizismus zum biirgerlichen Liberalismus in der Reichsgriindung (Mainz:
Matthias Grunewald Verlag, r97r), 52.
99 Ibid . , 43-44.
100. See Langewiesche, Liberalismus in Deutschland, 68; Smith, German Nationalism,
27-28.
10 9
for educated Protestant individuals, Droysen had already confirmed in

a trip to Bavaria in 1852: "There is no question," he explained in a let
ter to his brother Karl, "that this heathenish Catholicism is better
suited to and accepted by the masses than Protestantism, which really
demands from every individual an improvement, a personal elevation,
and ennoblement. " 10 ' In r864 Pope Pius IX issued one of the most
important documents of Vatican history. In the Syllabus of Errors the
pope rejected as one of the "principal errors" of the century the notion
that "the Roman Pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself and come
to terms with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization . " It was this
document that reminded the eminent liberal Kulturprotestant Heinrich
von Treitschke "what good luck it is to be Protestant. Protestantism
has the capacity for endless, continuing Bildung. " r o 2
This increasingly close identification of liberalism with a Protestant
legacy of anti-Catholicism at midcentury was one important step in the
reconstitution of liberalism as anathema to Catholicism. Prominent
anti-Catholic reformers like Christian Bunsen, Adolf Diesterweg, and
Daniel Schenkel aligned a broad social, educational, political, and eco
nomic program with a cultural tradition of Protestantism in the effort
to reconstitute and motivate their prescription for the German nation
after the defeat of 1 848-49 . Together they represent a significant
Protestantization of German liberal aspirations for reform. Even as
many liberals claimed Protestantism as their cultural heritage, liberal
ism, however, had virtually no claim on Protestant religious institu
tions. The Protestant Church leadership, most pastors, and the theo
logical professoriate were conservative agents of antiliberalism,
committed to the tradition of monarchical authority. Leading liberal
dissidents in establishment Protestantism were disciplined, eventually
forced out of, or left on their own accord the traditional Protestant
religious institutions. ro3
For example, Enlightenment metaphors of darkness and light were
central to the anti-Jesuit discourse of the clerical leadership of the
Friends of Light and their "free congregations," a religious dissenting
movement that joined Protestantism to liberal rationalism as it rebelled
against the conservative theology and structure of the established Evan
gelical Church. In A. L. Stachelstock's Licht und FinsternifJ oder die
ror . Johann Gustav Droysen to Karl Droysen, 17 Sept. 1852, in Hubner, Briefwechsel,
2: 130.
ro2. Both quotations in Langewiesche, Liberalismus in Deutschland, r 8 r .
r o 3 . Andrew C. Gould, Origins of Liberal Dominance: State, Church, and Party in Nine
teenth- Century Europe (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1999), 84-85 .
no
freien Gemeinden und die Jesuiten, which appeared in 1861, Germany is

the battleground for a campaign of the modern heirs of the Enlighten
ment against the reactionary "Jesuitism" of the Middle Ages. Stachel
stock considered himself a "lightning bolt of truth" : Germans, he
claimed, stood in face to face, life or death combat with the Jesuit pro
ponents of obfuscation, treachery, and dogma. 104 Jesuits are "the men of
darkness, " "black brutes, " winged hunters in the cold night-bats and
screech owls-that must be driven out of Germany with all means of
light: candles, night lamps, torch fires, and the break of dawn, the
metaphors of spiritual illumination, reason, and intellect. The defeat of
the Revolution of 1848, the hope for a liberal, enlightened, and modern
Germany, Stachelstock argued, was smashed by the "Loyolaites, "
medieval agents of reaction: "It is as if all of hell opened up to repeat
once again if only as farce the Walpurgisnacht of the Middle Ages. "
During the decade o f reaction following the revolution a new Holy
Roman Empire had been established in Germany with priests spreading
superstition and stupidity. According to Stachelstock, "reaction and the
single-minded Priesterschaft along with their dependents wrapped the
unbiased point of view in gloom by casting suspicion upon and scream
ing about the revolutionary liberalism of the free congregations."r o s
Now, Stachelstock argued, the current period stood in sharp con
trast to the period of reaction. Germans found themselves at the "dawn
of a beautiful time," a new day of free, fresh air. There was, however,
much work to be done. Stachelstock called upon his readers to j oin him
in the fight "to defend the freedom to know, to think, and to defend
our state against the insane self-conceit of orthodoxy and the ruinous
phantasmagoria of Jesuitism. " 106 While, according to Stachelstock, the
Mittelstand could be counted upon to despise the Jesuits, large num
bers from the upper and lower strata of the population had been
seduced by the order, caught in its net of religious fanaticism. The
Jesuits had been able to establish a network of informants and lackeys.
Male and female house servants, for example, who fell under their
sway in the confessional became tools, "secret spies" who passed infor
mation to the Jesuits. Nevertheless, Stachelstock insisted that Ger
mans despite their long imprisonment could stand on their own feet
and despite the long night could still open their eyes to the sun. In
order to save themselves from the Jesuits, Germans had to embrace the
104. A. L. Stachelstock, Licht und FinsternifJ oder die freien Gemeinden und die Jesuiten
(Altona: Verlagsbureau, rR6r).
ros. Ibid IO, 33-34. respectively.
ro6. Ibid ., 12, r6-q. respectively.
.
III
Enlightenment, for only the Enlightenment had the virtues and power
to defeat the Jesuit menace. "Who , " he asked, "wrested power from
the hands of the Jesuits? . . . . Who brought an end to the most non
sensical and unreasonable dogmas? Who allowed us to free ourselves
from the belief in interminable damnation in hell? Who saved us from
the torture that the servants of the Inquisition had practiced with such
virtuosity?" "The Enlightenment, again the Enlightenment, and
always the Enlightenment! " r o7
Of particular concern to Stachelstock were the illicit business prac
tices of the Jesuits or what he called "Jesuit economics. " Stachelstock
pointed to the alleged illegal trade of the Jesuits in Spanish America
and the West Indian colonies and to what he claimed had been the
Jesuits' fraudulent bankruptcy of France. He argued that the " Loy
olaites" had carried these practices into modern times. According to
Stachelstock, the millions that the Jesuits had amassed were not
obtained simply through deceit and begging but by usury and through
currency-exchange businesses and stock-market investments, all man
aged with exceptional cunning and diligence. Immediately after they
reestablished themselves in France, for example, the Jesuits had started
a booming wine business. The wine business was only surpassed by the
lucrative retail trade conducted by the missionaries. Stachelstock
argued missionary work was the occasion for "horse-trading" and
exploitation. At stalls set up at the entrance of churches, the mission
aries presented a grotesque spectacle, lining their pockets with the pro
ceeds from the gullible, all too eager to buy up hymnals, missionary lit
erature, religious pamphlets, rosaries, crucifixes, sacred hearts, rings,
skulls, scapularies, religious pictures, figurines, "and other hocus
pocus" sold in all sizes and at all prices. The Jesuits preferred to hold
their missions in the large cities and avoided the poor villages since
"there was nothing for them to fish for there. "r o8 The Jesuits also con
ducted a lucrative business renting or subrenting to speculators church
pews during the missions, and in France, where the order was illegal,
capital and property were siphoned through front men to the Jesuits.
The "Jesuit economy," Stachelstock argued, particularly exploited
women. Although Jesuits otherwise favored the company of young
women, in their retail trade they preferred to employ old women as
their agents. These women peddling religious figurines were an espe
cially exasperating display of stupid idolatry: " 'Hey! Hey ! ' called one
ro7. Ibid ., r6-1 7 .
r o 8 . Ibid ., 74
rr2
of these mission entrepreneurs to another, who had staggered and

dropped a figurine from her arms, 'don't let the good Lord fall in the
mud ! ' What priests and what gullibility! What men and what gods ! " 109
According to Stachelstock, Jesuits continued their exploitation of
women with a lucrative factory-based industry that concealed their
enormous greed behind a facade of magnanimity. The church estab
lished and administered female religious orders, congregations for girls
from all social strata, and philanthropic institutions for servant girls;
however, Stachelstock explained, these girls were not just held to rigid
moral rules and piety but, in reality, also subjected to a regime of hard
labor in "work convents. " Here the girls produced for the profit of the
Catholic Church goods for the commercial market. They received as
daily wages only the minimal amount needed to support their lives.
There was more at stake in this attack on "Jesuit economics" than
mere derision. According to Stachelstock, the Jesuit system coupling
exploitation and philanthropy threatened burgerlich competitors. The
cheap labor of girls in the "work convents," for example, undercut the
business interests of the Burgertum: "In this way the work convents
could bring their products to the market at prices that were not possi
ble for burgerlich factory owners who had to pay their workers proper
daily wages. " The businessman or middle man who dealt in "convent
goods" was, therefore, soon the most dangerous competition for every
one else, and many businessmen felt they were victimized by "the hyp
ocritical form of religion and philanthropy. " 110 In many industrial
towns, "work convents" quickly captured all the female workers in the
vicinity. According to the argument, they drove wages so low that girls
from the lower classes could no longer manage an existence by "honest
means" and "forced by poverty, fell into the arms of depravity. "
"Work convents" ultimately destroyed the virtue o f women, driving
them into prostitution. Legitimate burgerlich economics, based on a
free, self-regulating labor market, stood in contrast to illicit, exploitive,
and destructive "Jesuit economics. " According to Stachelstock, the
"Gotterdammerung," the final reckoning with the Jesuits, was coming
and none too soon. While arguing "never before have the oppositions
appeared so sharp and divisive, " he assured his readers that truth
would in the end prove victorious despite the recalcitrance of the
"Dunkelmanner" (men of darkness) . ' "
109. Ibid ., 7 5
110. Ibid ., 8 7 .
1 1 1 . Ibid. , 88, 103-4, respectively.
II3
"Jesuit economics" was the bleak alternative to the liberal economic

principles emerging during the 1 8 5os and 186os. Their political hopes
dashed during the revolution, squeezed by state reaction and threat
ened by the Catholic revival, liberals began to emphasize the impor
tance of and need for economic reform and industrial growth. They
now developed the reassuring promise of economic advancement and
material achievement. This was the age of the new aggressive entrepre
neur and the impressive economic boom, the period during which Ger
man economic power first became apparent. By 1856 the liberal
National Zeitung announced the new spirit that characterized the time:
"What idealistic efforts strove in vain to do, materialism has accom
plished in a few months . " 112 The Bremen businessman Wilhelm Kies
selbach criticized the older brand of liberalism for not recognizing that
"a politically independent Biirgertum must be based on economic inde
pendence."n3 When liberal political activities resumed with the New
Era, liberal leaders continued to emphasize economic issues. The lead
ers of the new Kongress deutscher Volkswirte (Congress for German
Political Economy), which held its first general meeting in 1858, con
trasted their plans for the economic foundation for progress and more
practical orientation toward national issues with what they considered
to have been the heady and misguided idealism of the Frankfurt
National Assembly. The Kongress deutscher Volkswirte was only one
of many new participatory organizations devoted to economic issues
and the advocacy of specific economic interests . By the 186os, liberal
popular periodicals and academic journals also gave much more atten
tion to economic matters. Publications such as Bluntschli's
Staatsworterbuch devoted more room to the economy than they had
before 1 848. The post-1 848 edition of the Staatslexikon, the most
important model of Vormarz liberalism, now gave more attention to
commercial and industrial affairs, deleting the earlier entry "Secret
Societies" and replacing it with "Joint Stock Companies. " n4
With the new devotion to economic affairs, liberals developed a
growing faith in the principles of a free economy. Liberals increasingly
insisted that the regulation of industry and trade was only counterpro
ductive and ultimately destructive. Releasing the resources of society,
many believed, would yield prosperity and progress. The virtues of an
u2. This and the following are based on Sheehan, German Liberalism. 79-94, quotation at
84.
1 1 3 . Quoted i n ibid . , 8 8 .
u 4 . Ibid ., 8 4 . See also James J . Sheehan, German History. I770-I866 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1989) , 731-3 5 .
I I4
unharnessed market were enthusiastically endorsed not only by com

mercial and industrial entrepreneurs but also by intellectuals, bureau
crats, small manufacturers, and craftsmen who believed they stood to
gain as they pursued their respective interests in a deregulated econ
omy. The brief depression from 1 8 5 7 to 1859 did nothing to blunt the
general enthusiasm for laissez-faire economics. In early r861, the liberal
group in the Prussian parliament known as Young Lithuania adopted
a program that was a typical repudiation of the regulation of industrial
production : "We shall recommend the liberation of trade bonds which
still exist in our customs duties and consumption taxes to the detriment
of the broad masses, and we shall also support a revision of the manu
facturing laws, so that regulations which are oppressive and which
remind us of the antiquated guild system are repealed, and after the
abolition of police concessions free scope is given to all industrial ener
gies. " II S
It would be a mistake, however, to conflate liberalism after 1850 with
laissez-faire economics or the specific interests of the capitalist bour
geoisie. Not all liberals endorsed without qualification a free economy,
and most continued to stress the idealism and the principles of educa
tion, "independence," and culture, the heritage of Vorman liberalism.
Nevertheless, an age of Gewerbefreiheit and Handelsfreiheit, deregula
tion and free trade, had arrived. Throughout the late 1 8 50s and early
1 86os, state after state pursued arrangements that facilitated the
exchange of goods within the Zollverein (German Customs Union),
removed restrictions on economic activity, rebuffed the arguments of
guild organizations, and embraced the factory system. Between the
opening of the New Era in 1 8 5 8 and the end of the war with Denmark
in r864, sixteen of the German states had accepted capitalism. By r 866
the number increased to over twenty, and by r 869 the number was
thirty. II6 By r 8 5 7 new, large banking houses-Schaafhausen, the
Darmstiidter, Disconto Gesellschaft, Berliner Bank, and Credit
Anstalt in Leipzig-were set up to meet the demand for investment
capital and to participate in the formation of corporations. During the
1 8 50s and 1 86os almost three hundred joint stock companies were
established with a combined capital of over twenty-four hundred mil
lion marks. II 7
In the summer of r 866, Prussia's decisive victory over Austria cate
gorically foreclosed any hopes for a grossdeutsch solution to the GerI I 5 Quoted in H amerow, Restoration, Revolution, Reaction, 244-45.
l l 6 . Ibid., 246-48.
117. Sheehan, German History, 735-76.
rrs
man national question, a German state unified under the aegis of the
House of Habsburg. The fact that Prussia and Austria had come to
blows made German Catholics apprehensive. Many Catholics had
placed their sympathy with the Austrian monarchy and its population,
which was 95 percent Catholic. Now with the Austrian defeat they were
thrown into despair. The life hopes of August Reichensperger, a leading
Catholic politician and spokesman, came crashing down. He wrote in
his diary, "Everything that belonged to my ideals has collapsed. " n8 The
prominent Catholic politician Hermann von Mallinckrodt could only
think, "The world stinks."ng Even worse, Cardinal Antonelli exclaimed,
"The world is collapsing! " and it was his apocalyptic conclusion that
was repeated by Roman Catholics across Germany. 12 Catholics, who
had been in the maj ority in the German Confederation that had
endured since r 8 r 5 , now found themselves a minority within the North
German Confederation: within the new confederation there were
twenty million Protestants and eight million Catholics. Catholics, there
fore, believed they were among the losers of r866. 121
The Catholic response is understandable given the exaltation of the
victory in Prussia as a vindication of liberalism and Protestantism.
Unlike Pietists and conservative Lutherans, Protestant liberals wel
comed the defeat of the Catholic Habsburg as the foundation for the
German nation. Their achievement, they believed, was the triumph of
Prussian progressiveness and virility over the backward, internally
weak Catholic monarchy; Prussia's new hegemony in central Europe
was celebrated as the guarantee of the cultural legacy of the Reforma
tion, the Enlightenment, philosophical idealism, and bourgeois neohu
manism. 122 According to Johann Gustav Droysen, for example, the
r r 8 . Entry for r6 October r 866, quoted in Lill, "Die deutschen Katholiken und Bismarcks
Reichsgriindung," 346.
u9. Quoted in Eda Sagarra, A Social History of Germany, 1684-1914 (New Yorlc Holmes
and Meier. 1977), 230.
r2o. Hiibinger, "Confessionalism, r 6 r .
r 2 r . Ibid. See also Adolf M. Birke, "German Catholics and the Quest for National Unity,"
in Nation-Building in Central Europe, ed. Hagen Schulze (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1987),
sr-63, esp . 59
122. For the shock and disappointment of the Catholic population, the reaction of politi
cal Catholicism to the defeat of Austria, and the significance of the victory for Protestant
Prusso-German nationalism, see Birke, "German Catholics"; Walter Bussmann, "PreuBen
und das Jahr r866," A us Politik und Zeitgeschichte: Beilage zur Wochenzeitung "Das Parla
ment" 24 (r966): r9-27; Kari-Georg Faber, ''Realpolitik als Ideologie: Die Bedeutung des
Jahres r866 fiir politisches Denken in Deutschland," Historische Zeitschrift 203 (r966) : r-45;
Fritz Fischer, "Der deutsche Protestantismus und die Politik im r 9 . Jahrhundert," His
torische Zeitschrift qr (r95r): 473-5r8; Li11, "Die deutschen Katholiken und Bismarcks
''
rr6
victory was a "triumph of the true German spirit over the false, the
spirit of 1 5 1 7 and r 8 r 3 over the Roman spirit. " 123 The military cam
paign against Austria, he believed, was the final act in the campaign of
Protestant national freedom against the rule of Rome.
For like-minded liberals, the Jesuits' persistent missionary campaign
on Prussian soil seemed all the more impossible to reconcile with the
quick and decisive triumph on the fields at Konigsgratz. The victory
over Austria was, therefore, an important moment in the reconstruc
tion and dissemination of anti-Catholicism. As one observer com
mented in r 866, "the reproaches, which for a long time have been made
against the Catholic Church, that it makes the people stupid, makes
them useless for biirgerlich life, destroys the mind, places obstacles in
the way of progress in science and culture, seem at present to be all
consuming. The main reason for these accusations and complaints is
the fact that the Jesuits may hold missions in almost all the dioceses of
Germany, preach, and hear confession. "124 The continuation of the
Catholic missionary crusade despite the defeat of "Catholic Austria"
broadened and deepened anti-Catholicism. No longer predominantly
in the pamphlet literature of Protestant pastors and theologians or
among liberal intellectuals, politicians, and social observers, the prob
lem with Catholicism was now a ubiquitous topic in all reaches of Ger
man society, culture, and politics.
Catholic Antiliberalism, Liberal Catholics, and
the Kulturkampf
While leading liberal authors used diatribes against "Jesuitism" and

Catholicism to revive or reorient basic liberal tenets during the New
Era, authorities of the Catholic Church and in the Catholic press
defined Catholicism in diametrical opposition to liberalism. By the
Reichsgriindung"; H. Miiller, "Der deutsche politische Katholizismus in der Entscheidung
des Jahres 1 866,"' Blatter fur pfalzische Kirchengeschichte und religiOse Volkskunde 33 ( 1966) :
46-75; W. Real, "Die Ereignisse von r866-r 867 im Lichte unserer Zeit," Historisches
Jahrbuch 95 (r975): 342-73; and George C. Windell, The Catholics and German Unity,
J866-187I (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954) .
r23. Quoted in Wolfgang Hartwig, "Von Preu13ens Aufgabe in Deutschland zu Deutsch
lands Aufgabe in der Welt: Liberalismus und borussianisches Geschichtsbild zwischen Rev
olution und Imperialismus," Historische Zeitschrift 23r (r98o) : 265-324, quotation at 3r6. (In
1 5 1 7 Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door at Wittenberg initiating the Protes
tant Reformation . In r 8 r 3 the Prussian army defeated Napoleon at Leipzig and drove him
out of Germany.) Similarly, Droysen argued, "with this victory we finally became master of
the miserable situation of r 5 r 9'' (the year Charles V, king of Spain and devout Catholic,
became emperor of the Holy Roman Empire). Quoted in Smith, German Narionalism, 28.
T24. Jocham, Die sittliche Verpestung des Volkes, s-6 .
I I7
early r86os ultramontane newspapers were arguing that, though mis

guided, the hostility of the liberals and progressives and Freemasons
toward Catholicism was understandable. However, according to
church authorities, the position of the liberal Catholic had become so
self-contradictory as to be incomprehensible; subscribing to both liber
alism and Catholicism was simply an impossibility. As early as r 862,
for example, the Freiburger Katholisches Kirchenblatt declared in a
notice under the heading "The Liberal Catholic" :
We can grasp that there are Carbonari, nationalists, Voltaireans,
free thinkers who are assaulting the bulwarks of the Catholic
Church. They all have one goal, one motive: it is general subver
sion-the revolution! When they therefore inscribe on their ban
ners, "Death to the Pope ! " they are only following the logic of
their convictions. But what we cannot accept, what is beyond our
ability to comprehend, is the so-called liberal Catholic. (Emphasis
in the original.)'25
According to the paper, the "hypocritical freedom of false liberalism"
consisted of "saying anything, writing anything, doing anything for the
purpose of slander. " By contrast, a "real Catholic" accepted without
question what the church both taught and condemned. Obeying the
traditions of Christian history as directed by Rome was the hallmark
of the "good Catholic, " as the paper explained; a "liberal Catholic"
was a "bad Catholic, " who excluded himself or herself by choice from
the community of the Catholic Church. '26 The Syllabus of Errors in
r 864 established as a matter of doctrine that the church considered lib
eralism and Catholicism incompatible. This position was further hard
ened by the church with the announcement of the First Vatican Coun
cil in r 869 and the plans to proclaim the infallibility of the pope on
matters of dogma and doctrine. In February of that year, a notice
drawing the line between "liberal Catholics" and "true Catholics"
appeared in Civilita Cattolica, the official j ournal of the Vatican,
founded by Pope Pius IX in r 8 so and published by the Jesuits under a
director appointed by the pope himself:
Liberal Catholics are afraid the [Vatican] Council may proclaim
the doctrines of the Syllabus and the infallibility of the pope, but
they do not give up hope that it will modify or interpret certain
125. Freiburger Katholisches Kirchenblatt, 4 (r862): 347 Quoted in Gotz von Olenhusen,
"Klerus und Ultramontanismus in der Erzdiozese Freiburg,'' I I 3 .
I 2 6 . Ibid ., II4.
rr8
statements of the Syllabus in a sense favorable to their own ideas,

and that the question of infallibility will either not be mooted or
not decided. True Catholics, who are a great maj ority of the faith
ful, entertain opposite hopes. They wish the Council to promul
gate the doctrines of the Syllabus . . . [and] will accept with delight
the proclamation of the pope's dogmatic infallibility. '27
This article, representing as it did the pope's own views in an age of
mounting ultramontanism, was bound to have a significant impact on
the Catholic clergy and laity.
With such crude and uncompromising proclamations pitting "true"
and "loyal" against "liberal" and "bad" Catholics, directed not out
ward against adversaries but inward against the laity itself, the church
reached a new level of intolerance, not to mention distrust, within its
own ranks. It did much to antagonize middle-class Catholics, and it
embarrassed and angered important Catholic political and religious
leaders who had, after all, campaigned for Catholic rights under the lib
eral banner of religious freedom. These included Ludwig Windthorst,
the formidable leader of political Catholicism, and Wilhelm Emmanuel
von Ketteler, the highly respected bishop of Mainz and politically the
most important figure in the German episcopate, both of whom led the
surprisingly vocal if short-lived opposition to papal infallibility. They
now worried, and rightly so, that the church's exclusion of liberals from
Catholicism would undermine their efforts to unify Catholicism in Ger
many and lead to schism. 1 28 As the Catholic press announced the new
antiliberal discipline, the Katholikentage (which had first convened in
1848 and soon became the national assembly of the German Catholic
associations) and priests at the local level brought direct pressure on the
laity. Again it was often women who most readily accepted the new
orthodoxy and then promoted compliance by exerting their influence
on husbands and family in private life. Now, for example, even a promi
nent notable like the Oberbiirgermeister of Bonn, Leopold Kaufmann,
experienced the power of the Catholic popular movement. When the
mayor proposed marriage to Elisa Michels, the pious daughter of a
wealthy merchant in Cologne and fifteen years his junior, he bent to her
precondition that he drop his membership in the Freemasons. 129 The
close of the liberal and state campaign against the Catholic Church at
127. Quoted in Anderson. Windthorst. 121.
r2X. Ibid ., 1 21-22.
129. Merge!, Zwischen Klasse und Konfession, 1 8 5 .
I I9
the end of the 1870s did nothing to abate the antiliberal fervor of the
church. Even well after the Kulturkampf was over, an entry concerning
liberalism in a Catholic Church lexicon in 1 891 told its readers that lib
eralism was responsible for all the ills of the world from its creation to
the present day. "The snake in Paradise already spoke the temptations
and false promises of liberalism. " "The most decisive liberal principles
emerged with the Reformation, " and "the most progressive socialism"
represented its current sad fruiU3
As the church stepped up its efforts to purge liberals and liberalism
from its own ranks, liberal Catholics found themselves increasingly
torn between middle-class membership on the one hand and loyalty to
their church on the other. They had always been disturbed by the raw
power of the missions to unleash unseemly displays of religious fanati
cism, women kissing the Jesuit robes and men reduced to tears in pub
lic. Biirgerlich Catholics looked down on the Catholic peasant masses
for the same reason the secularized and assimilationist Jewish bour
geoisie looked down on the generation of Yiddish-speaking, bearded
and sidelocked Ostjuden emigrating from Eastern Europe. Middle
class Jews did so even as this impulse conflicted with the desire to assist
fellow Jews obviously in need of philanthropic care. r3r Biirgerlich
Catholic prejudice against more common Catholic folk stemmed from
a social sense of insecurity: like biirgerlich Jews who wanted to socially
integrate, who tried to "fit" and "pass" in the predominantly Protes
tant culture of the middle class, many middle-class Catholics were self
conscious about their status within that milieu. They married into
Protestant families; they shared their professions, their education, their
metropolitan lifestyle, and the bourgeois prejudice against the lower
classes. Ultimately, however, they worried that the antimaterialist,
antiliberal fervor of ultramontane Catholicism and the popular
Catholic revival compromised by dint of confessional association their
social credentials as members of the Biirgertum.
Politically, Catholics continued to support liberal candidates during
130. H. Gruber, S.J. [Society of Jesus] , "Liberalism," in Kirchenlexikon oder Enzyklopiidie
der katholischen Theologie und ihrer Hilfswissenschaften, ed. Wetzer and Welte (Freiburg,
r89r), P9I2f, quoted in Langewiesche, Liberalismus in Deutschland, r87.
1 3 1 . Steven E . Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and
German-Jewish Consciousness, I80D-I923 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982);
Sander L. Gilman. Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, r986); Michael R . Marrus, The Unwanted:
European Refugees in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, r985); Jack
Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers: East European Jews in Imperial Germany (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1987).
120
The W a r against Catholicism
the conflict over the reform of the military, the budget crisis, and the
constitutional battle of the r86os. In heavily Catholic Westphalia and
Rhineland, Catholic voting for liberals was, in fact, overwhelming;
during the Prussian elections, Catholic voting districts (those with pop
ulations more than 55 percent Catholic) elected liberal candidates three
to one over clerical candidates. Catholic parish clergy on occasion pre
ferred liberal candidates in the r86os, not just to government and con
servative candidates but also to Catholic candidates of the Catholic
political Fraktion in the Prussian parliament. It was even possible for
Catholics to elect such later prominent liberal Kulturkiimpfer as
Rudolf Virchow and Carl Hermann Kanngiesser. Deputies with
Catholic constituencies also supported liberal positions on key issues
in the Prussian parliament. Of deputies from Catholic districts in the
Rhineland and Westphalia, 66 percent joined those liberals who
rejected the r 866 Indemnity Bill excusing Bismarck for his extraconsti
tutional collection of taxes (55 percent of all Rhenish and Westphalian
deputies rejected the bill though only 25 percent of all deputies did
so) . 132 But the Syllabus of Errors with its condemnation of progress,
rationalism, and liberalism; the promulgation of papal infallibility,
construed by liberals as an attack on the autonomy of the individual
and the modern state; and the continued antiliberal agitation of the
Catholic press and clergy made it increasingly unlikely at the end of the
r 86os that biirgerlich Catholics could continue to avoid the question of
ultimate loyalty.
By the time of the Kulturkampf, as the historian Thomas Mergel has
argued, the Catholic middle class split as its members found new, often
tenuous identities relative to Catholicism and liberalism. !33 Some
Catholic Burger prioritized Catholicism while not necessarily becoming
antiliberal. These would include those who rose to become politicians in
the Center Party, leaders of political Catholicism, and managers of
major Catholic newspapers during the Kulturkampf. Other middle
class Catholics emphasized liberalism without completely rejecting
Catholicism. Many of them were civil servants, university professors,
lawyers, and judges who had a certain connection to the state and the
government due to their profession, family tradition, and social attach132. Margaret Lavinia Anderson and Kenneth D. Barkin, "The Myth of the Puttkamer
Purge and the Reality of the Kulturkampf: Some Reflections on the Historiography of lmpe
rial Germany," Journal of Modern History 54 (1982): 647-86, esp . 681, 681 n. 82; Anderson,
"The Kulturkampf," 84-88 .
1 3 3 . The ensuing follows Merge!, "Ultramontanism, Liberalism, and Moderation,"
165-66; and idem, Zwischen Klasse und Konfession.
r2r
ment. As social progressives, they recognized the need for modern ele
mentary school reform and, therefore, the need to break the hold of
clerical control on education. 134 They believed that Catholic orders and
charitable foundations sapped capital that would otherwise finance
industrial growth and economic expansion. They also resented the
heavy-handed role of the Jesuits, who, they believed, had seized an ille
gitimate amount of authority within the church hierarchy and under
mined the traditional position of the priest in parish life. At the same
time, however, they resented what they considered an arrogant and ille
gitimate attack on the autonomy of the church by liberals and the state.
Another group of Catholic Burger unequivocally moved over to mil
itant liberal anticlericalism. With the promulgation of infallibility, they
openly defied the papacy, rejected Roman Catholicism, and estab
lished the Old Catholic Church. Old Catholic Kulturkampfer now
fought ultramontane Catholicism with no less and perhaps more feroc
ity than did Protestant and secular Kulturkampfer. It warrants repeat
ing that one of the most unrelenting proponents of Kulturkampf legis
lation including the Jesuit law was Eduard Windthorst, Old Catholic
and no less than the nephew of Ludwig Windthorst, leader of the Cen
ter Party. (The latter could himself be at times a difficult friend of the
church, berating and defending the Jesuits in the same moment.) Like
the Windthorsts, the distinguished Bachem family that published the
Kolnische Volkszeitung also had its embarrassment: the brother-in-law
of Josef Bachem was a Kulturkampfer and "bootlicker of Bis
marck. " I 35 For its part, the Catholic Church turned its back on and
never forgave Catholics who had had any part in the Kulturkampf
against the church. Catholic liberals, therefore, often had to take the
consequences of their beliefs and actions literally to the grave. When
Max von Forckenbeck-a national liberal; president of the Reichstag
at the height of the Kulturkampf; and, he believed, a good Catholic his
entire life-died in 1 892, his family members received the condolences
and gratitude of the most prominent dignitaries and officials of the
state. But the establishment of the Church of Rome denied his family
the right to give him a Catholic burial, I 36
Such cases serve as reminders that the prosecution of the Kul
turkampf bridged the confessional divide as it cut through Catholic
middle-class families. Historians have shown that the Kulturkampf
was hardly the arid affair confined to verbal duels over policy between
134. Mergel, "Ultramontanism, Liberalism, and Moderation,'' 169.
135. Ibid. idem, Zwischen Klasse und Konfession, 264-65 .
r 3 6 . Langewiesche, Liberalismus in Deutschland, r87.
122
church and state officials and deputies in parliamentary chambers that

it has often been made out to be.1 37 The passions and pressures of the
Kulturkampf permeated daily life . Between Catholics and Protestants
it warped popular perceptions, poisoned friendships, and wrecked
social and business associations . Among middle-class Catholics, how
ever, it cut deeper into private life, often straining marriages between
liberal husbands and pious wives and souring relations between broth
ers and sisters, in-laws and cousins. At the same time, well into the next
century and beyond, liberal Catholics felt torn now by their faith,
believing as they did that they were never fully at home in their own
church.
Electoral behavior with the founding of the empire and during the
Kulturkampf offers another indication of how Catholics decided the
dilemma politically between liberal and Catholic identity. Most liberal
Catholics may not have gone as far as Eduard Windthorst in his enthu
siastic leadership of the attack on the Roman Church during the Kul
turkampf. But as one historian who has carefully examined the elec
tions of the empire has calculated, Catholics did make up a sizable
percentage of those voting during the first two (universal male) Reich
stag elections for the liberal enemies of political Catholicism. 138
According to these tabulations, in r87r between the signing of the
Treaty of Frankfurt, which brought the war against France to victori
ous conclusion, and the start of the Kulturkampf, 23 percent of
Catholic voters supported the Center Party in Prussia, 28 percent sup
ported the Center in the non-Prussian states (including those with
heavily Catholic populations in Hesse, Baden, Bavaria, and Wiirttem
berg), and 25 percent supported the Center across Germany. At the
same time, I I percent of Catholic voters in Prussia, 34 percent of
Catholic voters in the non-Prussian states, and 21 percent of Catholic
voters in all of Germany supported the liberal parties. They voted for
National Liberal and Liberale Reichspartei candidates who were anti
clerical, favored the creation of the kleindeutsch empire under the
hegemony of Prussia, and enj oyed the backing of the governments of
the south German states.
In the r874 elections in Prussia, the Kulturkampf brought with it a
1 3 7 . Anderson, Windthorst; Blackbourn, Marpingen; Ross, Failure of Bismarck's Kul
turkampf
1 3 8 . Sperber, Kaiser's Voters, 157-71. Ji.irgen Winkler's calculations for voting according
to confession are close to Sperber's calculations. Ji.irgen Winkler, Sozialstruktur politische
Tradition und Liberalismus: Eine empirische Liingsschnittstudie zur Wahlentwicklung in
Deutschland I87I-I933 (Oplanden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1995), 125-28, 169.
123
profound change in the percentage of Catholics voting for the Center

Party. In Prussia, as the antichurch campaign reached its climax with
the closing of the Jesuit and other religious orders, the imprisonment of
bishops, and the banning of priests from their parishes, the percentage
of eligible Catholics voting for the Center doubled, jumping from 23
percent in r87r to 45 percent. But the percentage of Catholic voters
supporting the liberal parties remained constant at II percent in Prus
sia in the middle of the Kulturkampf. Those numbers dropped to r8
percent in the non-Prussian states and 14 percent in all of Germany.
Catholic eligible voter turnout reached a remarkable 8o percent, a
height not to be reached again until 1907. The historian Thomas Nip
perdey has estimated that at the same time the proportion of practicing
Catholic adult males climbed to almost go percent across Germany.r39
If so, then the point is that across Germany the percentage of Catholic
males estranged from the church, the percentage of Catholics voting
liberal, and an estimate of the middle-class percentage of the Catholic
population roughly correlate. Noteworthy is that the correlation is
especially accurate for Prussia, where the confrontation between liber
als and Catholics, state and church was most intense. In the non-Prus
sian German states, where bishops were not imprisoned and vacant
parishes were supplied with priests, the public practice of Catholicism
continued with minimal state interference.
Beyond matters of social-cultural prejudice; a distaste for the exu
berant piety of Catholic common folk; anti-Jesuit sentiment; and
resentment toward neo-orthodox, heavy-handed ultramontanism,
middle-class Catholics had other good reasons, they believed, to vote
for the liberal parties rather than for the Center Party. Since the Cen
ter as a political party did not simply represent Catholic confessional
interests, middle-class Catholics did not reject the party for reasons
solely having to do with matters of faith and church. The party may
have been imbued with a specifically Catholic confessionalism in its
politics, but the leadership of the party was thoroughly laicized and
jealously guarded its autonomy from the church in Germany and from
Rome. It was the party's lay leadership that decided the social and eco
nomic policy of the party in accordance with the political realities
specific to the individual German states; like the leadership of other
parties, therefore, it pursued policies that reflected the interests of its
primary constituency. In the case of the Center the constituency that
139. Thomas Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch: Deutschland 1870-1918 (Munich: C. H .
Beck Verlag. rg88), 23.
1 24
overwhelmingly provided the rank and file of party support was Mit
telstand shopkeepers, craftsmen, small businessmen, and peasants. For
the sake of this support, the party advocated for agricultural tariffs, for
antimargarine laws, and for restrictions on meat importation. More
important, the party campaigned for the restoration of the guild sys
tem and other anti-industrial legislation meant to protect the tradi
tional position of craftsmen . Even though Ludwig Windthorst and
those close to him tried to subdue the more ardent anti-free market
and procorporatist demands of others in the party, most leaders of the
party employed anti-industrialist and anticapitalist rhetoric in order to
attract agrarian, petit bourgeois, and working-class votes. 1 4 Protec
tionist legislation benefiting the agrarian sector and procorporatist
measures on behalf of the guild system meant that the Center shared
economic policies with the conservatives, but the Center Party's eco
nomic policies had little to recommend themselves to more progressive
middle-class Catholics interested in industrial development and capi
talist economic growth.
That Catholics voted for the liberal parties and in doing so opposed
the clericalism of the Center Party challenges the conclusions of impor
tant historians of political Catholicism who have argued that confes
sion was the most significant determinant of political behavior in nine
teenth-century Germany, especially during the Kulturkampf.
Margaret Lavinia Anderson has argued that by r873 a Catholic bloc
had formed that would continue for the next sixty years . Religion
remained, she argues, the most important variable in elections;
Catholic voters were lost to liberalism in the late nineteenth century. '4'
David Blackbourn has more specifically argued that the Catholic mid
dle class remained loyal to Catholicism and the Center Party during
the Kulturkampf. Catholic middle-class leaders "rallied instinctively, "
he argues, to the defense of the church against state repression:
Catholic members of the traditional middle-class professions, lawyers,
businessmen, and academics, might have looked askance at papal
infallibility, the Jesuits, and popular piety, but their religious loyalties
ultimately trumped class loyalties during elections. 142 These arguments
are in line with Stanley Suval's influential general study of Wilhelmine
140. David Blackbourn, "Catholics and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Centre Party
and Its Constituency," in Populists and Patricians: Essays in Modern German History (Lon
don: Allen and Unwin, 1987), 188-214; idem, Class, Religion, and Local Politics.
141 . Anderson, "The Kulturkampf' ; idem, Windthorst.
142. Black bourn, "Catholics and Politics," 202; Blackbourn and Eley, Peculiarities of Ger
man History, 262.
125
election politics that concluded that religion, ethnicity, nationality,

and race-not class-were the more significant lines of political
demarcation, and research has maintained in general that confession
was the single most important line of cleavage in the German elec
torate. r43 At the same time, Karl Rohe, in his reexamination of the
sociology of elections and political parties in the imperial period, has
argued that we must be prepared to think anew, not just in terms of the
social characteristics of individuals (e .g., religious identification) but
also in terms of cultural characteristics, that is, mentalities and ways of
life, if we are to identify and understand voting patterns, particularly
those that deviate from the traditional expectations. 144 In the case of
most bourgeois Catholic men, we are left in the aggregate with the
impression that they were more bound to their middle-class social
milieu than to their confessional identification though this does not
apply to those bourgeois Catholic women who remained dedicated
Catholics.145 Catholic middle-class men continued to share even during
the heat of the Kulturkampf the anticlerical, anti-Jesuit, procapitalist,
and industrial culture of the liberal, predominantly Protestant middle
class. If so, there was an important dimension of class conflict to the
Kulturkampf that arrayed the middle class, including the Catholic
middle class, against the aristocrats and popular masses who joined the
Catholic revival and defended the church against state repression.
As this chapter has argued, from the r8 sos through the r86os and
into the r 8 7os, Protestant religious elites and church leaders eagerly
j oined in the attack against the Jesuits, the missionary campaign, ultra
montanism, the Catholic Church, and Catholicism. In their attempt to
reawaken and preserve Protestant identity in the face of the Roman
Catholic revival, they unleashed a torrent of hysterically anti-Catholic
sermons, speeches, newspaper and j ournal articles, brochures, pam
phlets, essays, and books that were widely disseminated throughout
German society. The Protestant revival and backlash against resurgent
Roman Catholicism generated anti-Catholic attitudes that endured
throughout the rest of the century and beyond. Specifically, the
attempt to revive Protestant identity and the animus toward Catholi
cism that accompanied it provided the larger context for the Kul
turkampf. The Protestant revival concurrent with the Catholic revival
I43 Stanley Suval, Electoral Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 19R5); Sperber, Kaiser's Voters, 274.
144 Karl Rohe, ed., Elections, Parties, and Political Traditions: Social Foundations of Ger
man Parties and Party Systems, 1867-1987 (New York: Berg. I 990) . 3
I45 See also Sperber, Kaiser's Voters, 279.
126
has been missed by historians, yet it does much to account for the
breadth and depth of the popular anti-Catholic sentiment prominent
after midcentury. Without recognition of not only the Catholic but
also the popular Protestant revival, it is difficult to account fully for the
rise of Catholic and Protestant nationalist conflict in Germany. 146 At
the same time, prominent liberals employed the authority of cultural
Protestantism to legitimate and mobilize support for their broad pre
scription for reform after the defeat of r848-49 from the decade of
reaction through the New Era.
Even so, it is important not simply to conflate Protestantism and lib
eralism after midcentury and to recognize that persistent popular
Protestant anti-Catholic culture did not itself define the character of
the Kulturkampf. The anti-Catholic fervor of the Protestant religious
leadership that added heat to and popularized the campaign against
the church was a continuation of the animosity toward Roman
Catholicism, the authority of the pope, and missionary proselytizing
that was as old as the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Indeed, the
Kulturkampf with its coercive legislation represented a fault line over
which many Protestant anti-Catholics for religious and confessional
reasons were not prepared to step. As we have seen, conservative
Protestant leaders who were led by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg and
who were as passionate about their anti-Catholicism as anyone else
had already rejected state interference in the affairs of the Roman
Catholic Church and specifically the missionary campaign in r 8 5 2 . It
should not be surprising, therefore, that later in the r87os conservative
Protestants, deeply offended by the attack on religion by liberals and
by their onetime champion Chancellor Bismarck, moved during the
course of the Kulturkampf into opposition to the state government
alongside Catholics.
When liberals first proclaimed a "great cultural struggle" on the
floor of the Prussia parliament, they specified that it was a secular cam
paign to free society from the fetters of religious power and to compel
the state to recognize its duty to make this possible. r47 Liberals always
intended the Kulturkampf to be wider and more than another Protes
tant anti-Catholic campaign in part precisely because they realized
such a campaign would narrow and weaken the front against the
146. This is an element that could be joined to the study of nationalist conflict between
Catholics and Protestants in Smith, German Nationalism.
147. The speech in which Rudolf Virchow proclaimed. "I am convinced that we are
engaged in a great cultural struggle,'' is found in SBHA (Berlin: W. Moeser, r X so, et seq.),
session 28, I7 Jan. 1 8 7 3 .
1 27
Roman Catholic Church, more important because they recognized

such a campaign would lack the drive for social predominance and
broad progressive reform at the core of their attack on Catholicism.
Catholic national liberals (like Max von Forckenbeck), Catholic pro
gressives (like Anton Allnoch), Old Catholic progressives (like Eduard
Windthorst), thoroughly secular progressives (like Rudolf Virchow
and Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch), and Jewish national liberals (like
Ludwig Bamberger and Eduard Lasker) who joined the Kulturkampf
did so not because, it goes without saying, they were Protestant. 1 4 8
They made common cause with Kulturkiimpfer because they were lib
eral, modern, and middle class. The Kulturkampf should be under
stood, therefore, as a specifically middle-class, liberal movement that
j oined with the power of the Bismarckian state to create a socially, cul
turally, and economically modern nation-state. 1 49
148. For biographical information including religious affiliations (with designation of

both Catholics and Old Catholics) of Prussian parliamentary and Reichstag deputies, see
Bernhard Mann, ed., Biographisches Handbuch fur das preujJische Abgeordnetenhaus,
J867-I9I8 (Dusseldorf: Droste Verlag, 19XX); and Max Schwarz. ed . . MdR Biographisches
Handbuch des Reichstages (Hanover: Verlag fur Literatur und Zeitgeschehen. 1965).
149. These comments contrast again with Smith, German Nationalism, which argues that
the Kulturkampf was an attempt to consolidate a national high culture based on a literary
canon of "enlightened Protestantism. " See Smith, German Nationalism, 19-37. See also
Hartwig. "Preul3ens Aufgabe."
CHAPTER 3
The Anti-Catholic Imagination:

Visions of the Monastery
Not only the Catholic missionary crusade but also the dramatic
increase of monastic and conventual religious orders was an indication
of the new vitality of Roman Catholicism in the German states. In 1 8 72
Johann Friedrich von Schulte, an Old Catholic and professor of
canonical and Germanic law, was one of many liberals who compiled
exhaustive statistical surveys of the Roman Catholic religious orders
and congregations that had spread across Germany since 1 848. He
looked with alarm at what he found. Recent official statistics available
in 1865 and 1 866 and Schulte's own meticulous count recorded together
in Die neuren katholischen Orden und Congregationen besonders in
Deutschland indicated that there had been in the past seventeen years a
veritable revolution in the number of monasteries and congregations in
Prussia. 1 Before 1 848 there had been in the German states only a few
male Benedictine, Carmelite, and Franciscan monastic orders. Female
congregations and closed orders, hardly worth enumerating, had
included only a few Ursuline, Dominican, and Carmelite nunneries.2
Over a twenty-four-year period, while the Prussian state had been
engaged in three successive wars and devoted itself to the establishment
r. Johann Friedrich von Schulte, Die neueren katholischen Orden und Congregationen
besonders in Deutschland (Berlin: C. G. Uideritz'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1872) . During
the Kulturkampf, Schulte was a National Liberal deputy in the Reichstag from r874 to r879
representing a voting district in Dusseldorf. See Schwarz, MdR Biographisches Handbuch,
199. 299. Schulte was a dedicated Kulturkampfer and wrote extensively on the problem of the
Catholic Church and Catholicism. His works include Kirchenpolitische Aufsiitze aus den
Jahren, 1874-1886 (GieBen: E . Roth, 1909); Die Macht der romischen Piipste iiber Fiirsten,
Lander, Volker, Individuen nach ihren Lelnen und Handlungen seit Gregor VII: Zur Wiirdigung
ihrer Unfehlbarkeit beleuchtet (Prague : F. Tempsky. r87r); Ober Kirchenstrafen (Berlin, 1 8 72).
2. Schulte, Die neuen katholischen Orden und Congregationen, 8 .
!28
The Anti- Catholic Imagination
1 29
of the empire, Schulte argued, monasteries had been "shooting up

everywhere like mushrooms out of the ground. " 3 Now, he believed, the
body of the nation found itself riddled with pockets of ultramontane
fanaticism and anti-Prussian recalcitrance, rogue states within the
state.
Monks and monasteries, nuns and nunneries were a singular obses
sion for liberals like Schulte . Liberals repeatedly counted and
recounted the number of monasteries and convents emerging in the
German states from r 848 through the founding of the empire up to the
closing of contemplative monastic orders on Prussian soil with the
Congregations Law of r 8 7 5 , one arrow in the quiver of Kulturkampf
legislation directed at the Roman Church. The ecclesiastical authori
ties of the Catholic Church in Germany apparently did not feel the
need (for they surely possessed the means) to compile periodic and
comprehensive statistical accounts of the number, increase, and pro
liferation of monastic orders and congregations during the nineteenth
century.4 Detailed statistical compilations registering the number of
male contemplative monasteries; female closed convents and open
congregations devoted to philanthropic work; religious orders; and
monks, friars, nuns, sisters, and novices were, however, published in
all the major liberal journals and newspapers . They were periodically
reviewed and updated, and the amount of attention paid to monitor
ing empirically the new monasteries and religious orders suggests in
itself one level of antimonastic anxiety: to liberals, monasteries and
convents seemed to be unfolding like a shroud across the German
landscape, supposedly reducing populations within their reach to stu
pidity and subservience. At the same time liberals concentrated their
attention on monasteries and convents because they offered especially
productive material for the creative work of the imagination. Liberals
fixed on the convent and the monastery as medieval artifacts that
seemed to represent the worst of Roman Catholicism, its fanaticism,
superstition, submission, and ultimate uselessness, just as they
justified now the liberal bourgeois program for social, cultural, eco
nomic, and moral reform.
An exploration of the liberal relationship to monasticism and
monasteries offers opportunities for deep insight into the cognitive
3 Ibid ., 14, 49
4 The Catholic Church in Germany did not compile statistics in the nineteenth century.
Relinde Meiwes. "Arbeiterinnen des Herrn "': Katholische Frauenkongregationen im 19.
Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, zooo). 74
1 30
practice of anti-Catholicism in the postrevolutionary period. This

chapter, therefore, trains analysis on three especially rich and revealing
cases involving antimonasticism and anticonvent hysteria from the
decades after the Revolution of r 848 to the founding of the empire
before the Kulturkampf itself was legislated and directed against the
Catholic Church. The antimonasticism prevalent in the most popular
liberal family journal of the period reflects the ways liberals could use
monks and monasteries as points of reference to which they could
repeatedly return as they oriented themselves in the new age of the free
market and industrial growth. The sensational story of a Carmelite
nun raped and held prisoner in a convent dungeon, which was widely
circulated in liberal newspapers, warned young women away from a
religious life dedicated to the church. More important, with fantastic
convent atrocity stories liberals thematized the complex trauma they
themselves experienced as they shaped an anti-Catholic identity fol
lowing the defeat of the r848 Revolution. Finally, on the eve of Ger
man unification, riots against a settlement of Dominican monks in a
suburb of Berlin generated a series of liberal antimonastic rallies and
petitions that elaborated by means of contrast the expectation for the
modern nation in an age of industry and progress. The unseemly vio
lence of a mob attack helped prominent liberals in the Prussian parlia
ment recognize that their organization and judicious leadership were
ultimately required to redress by means of a Kulturkampf the monas
tic and larger Catholic problem in Germany.
The Monastic Revolution
Prussian state authorities were disturbed by the rapid spread of monas

teries and congregations especially in the peripheral, predominantly
Catholic areas to the east and west with their suspect Polish and
French ethnic populations. In r873 the official government report in
the Statistische Correspondenz indicated that the outbreak of monas
teries and increasing number of monks and nuns had been particularly
dramatic in the Rhine Province. In the Diocese of Cologne in r 8 so
there had been only 272 monks and nuns. By r 8 72 the number of
monks and nuns in this diocese alone had risen to 3 , r 3 r . Cologne
quickly earned the designation "Rome on the Rhine," an apparent lit
eral case of ultramontanism, a reach of the pope's arm over the Alps.
Meanwhile in the three dioceses of Breslau, Posen-Gnesen, and Kulm
there had been before r 8 5 3 a combined total of only 236 monks and
r3r
nuns. By r 872 the number had jumped to 1,986. Of particular concern

was the presence of foreign monks and nuns who were members of reli
gious orders in regions whose ethnic populations were already accused
of insufficient loyalty to the Kaiser and the nation. In six monasteries
with 154 monks in the Diocese of Cologne in r 8 72, 29 were foreigners.
In r87r of the 96 members of two monastic orders in the Diocese of
Breslau, 2 were non-Germans, and in four nunneries with 942 mem
bers, 49 were not German nationals .s At the high point of the mission
ary campaign and popular antimonastic fervor in r 869, the Prussian
parliament deemed the problem important enough to commission its
own report on the increase of monks and proliferation of monasteries.
Table r indicates the number of male orders, monasteries, and regular
clergy in Prussia registered by the Prussian parliament.
Schulte accused the Roman Church of spreading its influence and
seeking converts by introducing religious orders and establishing
monasteries not only in Catholic areas but in Protestant areas of Prus
sia as well. Table 2 indicates that the male monasteries were, however,
located on the periphery of Prussia, in the predominantly Catholic
southwest in the Rhineland and to the east in Breslau and Posen.
Meanwhile, in the Dioceses of Ermland and Osnabriick, which had rel
atively small Catholic populations, monasteries were absent. Accord
ing to Schulte's estimates there were in heavily Catholic Bavaria and in
Hesse-Darmstadt an additional 73 male monasteries with over r, roo
members, bringing the total in Germany to 170 monasteries with over
2,200 monks, novices, and lay brothers. The number of monastic
clergy in each diocese, Schulte concluded, exceeded the requirements
of its population. Table 3 indicates the increases in the number of male
monastic clergy for four Prussian dioceses for roughly the decade of
the r86os, increases that Schulte argued were far beyond the relative
needs of the dioceses.
If the rapid establishment and spread of male monasteries were
alarming, the growth of the female orders and congregations was even
more so . In Prussia by r 869 there were now 6 female monastic orders,
including Ursuline, Women of the Good Shepherd, Benedictine,
Carmelite, Elizabethan, and Clarissen, with a total of 41 closed con
vents. In addition, there were 690 female religious congregations with
4,497 nuns and 867 novices and lay sisters dedicated to teaching girls
5 Newspaper clipping in HSTAD, Best. RD, Nr. 29314, "Jesuiten,'" Bd. 3, r 874-I9I3. For
a detailed compilation of the increase in nuns and male monastics in Prussia in the nineteenth
century, see Meiwes, Arbeiterinnen des Herrn, 73-8 8 .
1 32
TABLE 1 .
Male Religious Orders in Prussia in 1869
M onasteries
Regular
Clergy
Novices or
Lay Brothers
Franciscan
30
1 82
113
Brothers of
Charity
Jesuit
22
20 5
39
14
1 23
Lazarist
25
Redemptorist
47
16
Dominican
17
Brothers of the
Christian
Schools
Poor Brothers
[of St. Francis]
Capuchin
Priests of the
Holy Ghost
Trappist
Benedictine
47
32
3
3
16
9
0
21
Munster
Cologne, Limburg
12
12
23
0
10
Cologne
Freiburg (in
Hohenzollern)
Posen
Order
Congregation of
St. Philip Neri
Augustine
Total
Hildesheim
7 40
Source: "VerzeichniB der Zahl der Kloster, "
Breslau, Posen, Kulm,

Cologne, Trier,
Fulda, Munster,
Paderborn, Hildesheim, Freiburg
(in Hohenzollern)
Breslau, Cologne,
Trier, Limburg
Breslau, Posen,
Cologne, Trier,
Munster, Paderborn,
Freiburg (in
(Hohenzollern)
Kulm, Cologne,
Paderborn, Hildesheim
Cologne, Trier,
Munster, Limburg
Breslau, Posen,
Cologne
Cologne, Trier
Breslau, Cologne
3
97
Dioceses
226
995-97 .
and women and caring for the poor, the orphaned, and the sick,6
According to Schulte's calculations there were in Bavaria, meanwhile,
an additional r82 institutions, including Ursuline, Benedictine,
Dominican, Franciscan, and Redemptorist with 2,470 membersJ
6. See " Ubersicht der in Preul3en vorhandenen Stationen geistlicher Orden und Genossen
schaften,'' in SBHA (Berlin : W. Moeser, 18 70), 10. Legis. Per. 3 Session, 1869-70, Anlagen 2,
Aktenstuck no. 221, 17 Dec. 1 869, rooo-1002 .
7 See Schulte, Die neuern katholischen Orden und Congregationen, r6-r8, for a complete
TABLE 2.
Distribution of Male Religious Orders in Prussia in 1869
Diocese
Monasteries
Regular
Clergy
Novices
and Lay
Brothers
28
218
48
13
1 40
23
825,882
12
86
39
1 .539, 8 5 1
Cologne
Trier
Breslau
Munster
Posen
Paderborn
Limburg
Kulm
Hildesheim
Freiburg (in Hohenzollern)
Fulda
Ermland
Osnabruck
Total
Catholic
Population
I ,420. 1 08
65
706,752
49
14
920 , 3 07
58
627,083
41
40
2 3 1 ,083
22
41
529 . 8 34
10
8 1 , 1 70
30
63,46 1
21
17
1 52, 000
268,000
1 5 6,805
97
740
23 1
7, 522, 3 3 6
Source: "VerzeichniJ3 der Zahl d e r Kloster, "
TABLE 3.
133
995-97 .
Increases in Male Monastic Clergy in Four Dioceses in Prussia,
1 859-69
Diocese
Breslau
Cologne
Trier
Paderborn
Totals (approx.)
Number in Year
in
in
73 in
44 in
3 1 6 in
Number in Year
81
1 8 62
95
118
1 8 62
209
1 8 59
117
1 8 62
63
1 8 62
484
Source: Schulte, Die neueren katlzolischen Orden,
1 5.
in
in
in
in
in
Increase
( 1 7 . 3%)
1 8 69
14
1 8 69
91 (77 . 1 'Yo)
1 8 69
1 8 68
1 8 69
44 ( 60 . 3%)
1 9 (4 3 . 2%)
1 6 8 ( 53 .2%)
Of the 41 male monasteries and female religious orders and congre

gations in the Diocese of Cologne, a hotbed of monastic activity, only
4 had been established prior to 1 848; all the others had been founded
since the revolution. Of the 26 monasteries or orders in the Diocese of
Paderborn only 1 Franciscan and 4 female orders existed before 1848;
all the remaining had been founded since the revolution. According to
Schulte, only since then had the Dominicans, Jesuits, Liguorians,
Lazarists, School Brothers, Franciscans, Trappists, and Brothers of
the Holy Spirit set up residences. The increase was especially dramatic
in predominantly Protestant Prussia relative to Catholic Bavaria. In
statistical breakdown of the number of female monasteries and congregations, their loca
tions, and the number of nuns and sisters.
1 34
Bavaria the majority of female religious orders had been established

before 1848. In Prussia, however, 90 percent of the female orders had
been established since 1 849. 8
Paul Hinschius, professor of law at the University of Berlin and a
National Liberal deputy in the Reichstag, was another liberal particu
larly taken by the rampant spread of monasteries. He was so disturbed,
in fact, that he wrote Die Orden und Kongregationen der katholischen
Kirchen in PreujJen, in which he carefully traced the growth of monas
teries and religious orders in Prussia since 1 848.9 While there had been
15 settlements of male religious orders in Prussia prior to that year, 13
additional settlements had been established between 1 848 and 1 8 5 5 , 9
between 1 8 5 5 and 186o, 13 between 186o and 1865, and 21 between 1865
and 1 8 72 (with an additional residence established sometime between
1 8 5 7 and r 868). 10 Hinschius calculated that a total of at least 57 new
male monasteries or residences had been established since 1848. Hin
schius also counted year by year the growth of female institutions.
According to his account, as of 1 8 72 there were 836 female closed con
vents and residences in Prussia. Only 67 had existed prior to 1 848. Dur
ing the three years immediately following the revolution, 27 female
conventual institutions had been established. From 1 8 5 1 to 1855,
another 85 convents were founded. From 1856 to 1 86o, there were 146
more founded, and from r86r to r865 another n 8 . Finally, 139 were set
up from 1866 to 1 870, and in the three years from r87r to r873 another
28 were added. At the height of the church-state conflict in 1 874, Min
ister of Educational and Ecclesiastical Affairs Adalber Falk thought
Hinschius's work so important that he made it required reading for
state authorities. r r
Schulte argued that the establishment of large numbers of orders
and congregations was due to the resurgence of "Catholic life," the
mounting power of the clergy, and the rising tide of ultramontanism
after the revolution. He and other liberals also believed that the spread
of monasticism was one more link in the chain of reaction against lib
erals: the growth of monasteries and the rising number of monks, bul8. Ibid .. 23.
9 Paul Hinschius, Die Orden und Kongregationen der katholischen Kirchen in PreujJen:
Ihre Verbreitung, ihre Organisation. und ihre Zwecke (Berlin: Verlag von I. Guttentag, r874) .
ro. Ibid . , 30.
I I. HST AD, Best. RA, Nr. I 0699. "Orden der Gesellschaft Jesu bzw. die AusfUhrung des
Gesetzes I 8 72, I 872-I883." Ministerium der geistlichen Unterrichts- und Medicinal Angel. to
die saemmtliche Koenig. Regierung und Landrate, Berlin, 3r July r 874, Bl. 2ro.
135
warks against rationalism, industry, and progress, were ultimately the

work of the "conservative circle" that continued to fear and despise lib
eralism. 12 Yet Schulte disagreed with others who insisted that the char
itable institutes were simply sinkholes, draining capital that might oth
erwise spur economic growth or flushing otherwise productive labor in
useless service to the Roman Church. He argued that the female con
gregations provided valuable social services. They cared for the sick
and the orphaned, provided for small children, and undertook the edu
cation of girls and young women who would have been abandoned to
lives of poverty or prostitution, in either case a burden to the state.
Schulte's point was that the problem with female charitable institutes
was not inherent to the subject but rather one of proportion. The num
ber of women dedicated to philanthropic work in the religious orders
was in excess of the actual need. On the other hand, in contrast to ser
vices provided by female philanthropic congregations, he argued,
"there existed no need in Germany for the establishment of male
orders regardless of the tasks they pursued. "'3
It was clear to liberals that the monastaries had not just dramatically
increased. The monastic orders had also become more powerful. Lib
erals over and over argued that the new monasteries were augmenting
their influence by exploiting illegitimately the laws of association and
assembly codified in the Prussian constitution of 1850 that guaranteed
their independence from state supervision and control. According to
liberals, the monastic missionaries condemned the liberal revolution
while enjoying the privileges they had been won as a result of that rev
olution. Equally troubling, previously monks in the religious orders
had at least been citizens of German states. Now the membership of
the monasteries, like that of the convents, was international. The new,
ultramontane monks recognized only the central authority of Rome
and therefore represented foreign agents within the state. Most impor
tant, the monastic orders, liberal and state observers believed, exer
cised more influence on the Catholic population than ever before.
Protestant as well as Catholic liberals believed, and state authorities
agreed, that the monastic clergy had, in fact, established a firmer foun
dation and exerted more power among the Catholic parishioners than
the parish clergy themselves. Completely committed to the bishops and
12. Schulte, Die neuern katholischen Orden und Congregationen. See 48-49, quotation at
54
13. Ibid. , 5 5
1 36
the papacy, members of the religious orders, Schulte argued, were sol
diers in "an army of the pope," whose spiritual officers were the Jesuits.
According to Schulte, monastics belonged to an army that numbered
between forty thousand and fifty thousand soldiers, including regular
and secular priests, seminarians, and members of Catholic associa
tions. Military discipline was imposed by monastic superiors with
unlimited authority, which they were free to exert with physical force,
an infringement, liberals insisted, upon the individual rights of the
Staatsbiirger (state citizen) . By r 8 72, leading liberal antimonastics had
developed a case against the religious orders that Prussian state
authorities found sufficiently convincing. Because the new congrega
tions and orders were a threat to the state, "hostile to all patriotic sen
timent, " the guarantee of the Catholic Church's autonomy by the laws
of association and assembly had to be terminated and the monasteries
and convents brought under the supervision and jurisdiction of the
state, in accordance with the Congregations Law of r875. 14
Reading the Gartenlaube: The Liberal Journal as an
Antimonastic Map
During the postrevolutionary period, among the liberal elite the dra
matic spread of monasteries along with the missionary campaign, pop
ular pilgrimages to religious sites, and the rise of ultramontanism was
cause for alarm. Antimonasticism was a prominent theme in all maj or
liberal broadsheets, including newspapers like the Breslauer Zeitung,
Crefelder Zeitung, Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Kolnische Zeitung,
National Zeitung, and Vossische Zeitung; finer literary journals like
Grenzboten and Die Gegenwart; the academic Preu}Jische Jahrbiicher;
and satirical journals like Ulk, Berliner Wespen, and Kladderadatsch.
The liberal illustrated j ournal the Gartenlaube is, however, an espe
cially instructive document of liberal antimonasticism. It was the most
widespread family journal as well as the single most successful period
ical of any kind in Germany. Since its founding in r 8 5 3 the number of
subscribers to the journal had risen from 5,000 to no less than roo,ooo
in r 86o, and by r867 it had reached over 225,000, an impressive statistic
by the standards of midcentury j ournalism. rs By the founding of the
empire, the Gartenlaube had become the journal of the German midI4 Ibid . , 49-50 n. r, ss. 5 7-5 8 .
1 5 . F o r circulation figures for the Gartenlaube see Friedrich Hofmann, ed . Vollsti:indiges
Genera/register der Gartenlaube (Leipzig, r8 82), ii.
.
1 37
die-class family, the most representative organ of its tastes and preoc
cupations. 1 6
The journal's founder, editor, and owner, Ernst Keil, saw himself as
a popular educator in the best tradition of the Enlightenment. Genera
tions of the Gartenlaube subsequent to the death of Keil in 1 876 are
characterized more by the kitsch for which the journal is perhaps bet
ter known. In its first generation, however, the Gartenlaube was a ded
icated champion of bourgeois Bildung and the virtues of progress and
science. During this period the Gartenlaube represented the heartland
of liberalism not only politically but socially and culturally. Indeed, the
Gartenlaube is an ideal example of the nineteenth-century journalism
that brought the public sphere into the bourgeois realm of domesticity,
literally, as its title indicates, into the family arbor. Reading the
Gartenlaube was supposed to be a family affair, and its articles and
illustrations were designed as the basis for leisurely discussion and
entertainment in the circle of family and friends. According to the jour
nal's editors, "It is supposed to be a paper for the home and for the
family, a book for large and small, for everyone in whom a warm heart
beats against the ribs, who still likes goodness and virtue. " I 7 At the end
of the year, editions of the Gartenlaube were typically collected in
hefty, leather-bound volumes. As Hausbucher these handsome vol
umes were prominently placed in the parlors of middle-class homes not
only for ready reference but also as bourgeois accoutrements signifying
class status and respectability.
Editions of the Gartenlaube from its founding in the early 18 5os
through the 1 8 70s can be read as an ideological map in which monks
and monasteries are key points of reference in the cultural and social
terrain of the middle class. Cultural anthropologists and cultural his
torians have recognized that artifacts, documents, and texts are car
tographies that set, plot, reflect, and demarcate the boundaries of
social and cultural norms, experience, identity, and ideology. It is in
this sense that the Gartlenlaube is an antimonastic map of German lib
eralism. Images of monks and monasteries are contoured, shaped, and
r6. See Ernest Bramsted, Aristocracy and the Middle- Classes in Germany: Social Types in
German Literature, I8JO-I900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1964), 204. According
to Bramsted the Gartenlaube was the "most representative family-j ournal of the liberal bour
geoisie between r8so and 1900," and "the periodical wanted to be the organ of a middle-class,
liberal enlightenment. Its readers were to be informed . . . about the significance of a liberal
middle-class in a united fatherland." Ibid. , 205 .
1 7 . Gartenlaube (1853) : r .
138
positioned on its pages according to procedures of acknowledged and

unacknowledged preference and prejudice. In the layout of the journal,
images of monasticism are managed relative to those that depict ser
vice to the nation in ways that helped the middle class orient culturally
and socially in the decades after the Revolution of 1 848. Throughout
these years the Gartenlaube laid out hundreds of illustrations of and
articles about monks and monasticism that liberal, biirgerlich families
used by means of contrast to identify themselves and each other and to
negotiate their way through the decade of reaction, the founding
period of the German Empire, and the Kulturkampf. With the use of
competing images and stories, the Gartenlaube romantically idealized
the types of service and leadership required for capitalist industrializa
tion, scientific progress, and the building of the nation.
Editions of the journal throughout the r 8 sos, r86os, and r 8 7os
always featured or included articles about Catholicism, church doc
trines, popular Catholic superstitions, clericalism, Jesuits, the mission
ary campaign, ultramontanism, monks, nuns, convents, and monastic
life. 1 8 The first article, for example, in the series Rom am Rhein (Rome
on the Rhine) , which describes the development of ultramontanism in
the Rhineland, calls attention to the church's attempt to assert control
over individual rights and marriage. 1 9 The clergy established in
Catholic law that as a condition for all confessionally mixed marriages
the couple must promise to raise their children Catholic. This, accord
ing to the article, was an assault on personal freedom, and "since the
Protestant Church on its side defends the right not to have to make
such a pledge, a brazen confessional wall splits those whom love has
j oined and who have in common the fatherland, Bildung, customs, and
all the other relations of life."2 0 The Catholic Church with its intoler
ance, the article explained, simultaneously attacked individual rights
and marriage, the foundation of the family. The article also assaulted
the pilgrimages that had become more numerous with the revival of
popular Catholicism at midcentury. Pilgrims such as the more than
r X . Henry Wassermann's examination of the Gartenlaube's positive portrayal of and
benevolent attitude toward Jews contrasts sharply with the journal"s intolerance of Catholics.
Henry Wassermann, "Jews and Judaism in the Gartenlaube," Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook
23 (1978): 47-60.
19. The Gartenlaube ofiered the following definition of ultramontane: "'An ultramontane
in our sense is anyone who has his fatherland in Rome, who wants to place all vaterlandisch
and state interests under the influence and rule of the Roman Church and its interests as rep
resented by the pope ." Rom am Rhein, Nr. r, Gartenlaube (rX67): 23-25, quotation at 23.
20. Ibid .. 24.
1 39
one hundred thousand who journeyed from all over Germany to pay
homage at Cologne to the relics of the three kings of the Epiphany
were denounced for their disorder and "superstitious mischief. " Espe
cially unseemly at the site were the displays of gullibility that only lined
the pockets of the church: monks blessed and then hustled herbs that
they claimed held miraculous powers for warding off evil spirits.
Priests turned the site into a market where they set up a lucrative busi
ness selling rosaries, sacred pictures, crucifixes, and religious figurines
that, apparently even more than the three kings, attracted the attention
of the pilgrims.
Jesuits presented a particular problem since they pinched the raw
nerve of nationalism. According to another article from the series Rom
am Rhein, Jesuits had swept over Germany. In the Rhineland and
Westphalia they had set themselves up in Paderborn, Munster,
Cologne, Aachen, Bonn, and Koblenz. Making the situation worse,
the Jesuits were not primarily German but French, Belgian, and Swiss.
"And we do not know whether there is some kind of control over them
through the existing laws limiting nationalities and freedom of move
ment. There is no talk of their applying for citizenship . Only the
approval of the generals of their order and their provincial subordi
nates is needed for their invasion . "2' Not only was he a non-German (a
problem for German national security), the Jesuit had also abrogated
his own individuality and humanity. "He has to suppress within him
self all natural and human emotions. He has to rip from his heart all his
parents, brothers and sisters, and friends, and he must with blind obe
dience follow his superiors . " Like zealots, the Jesuits roamed the coun
try doing their work among the people. "Here they make a great
impression, preaching, hearing confessions; there they erect stone
crosses in public places before which the pious kneel and throw up
their arms even many years later. They also carry religious discord into
almost completely Protestant areas. "22 During the war with Catholic
Austria in r866, argued the article, the ultramontanism encouraged by
the clergy in the Rhineland undermined the Prussian war effort. When
asked to give a blessing for the wounded, a priest in a town on the
Rhine retorted: "I don't give anything to the Prussians. " According to
the article, priests instructed Catholics called into the army not to
shoot at the Austrians but to fire their rifles overhead or, better, to
throw them down when they stood opposite the Habsburg armies. A
2 r . Rom am Rhein, Nr. 3. Gartenlaube (r867) : 135-37. quotation at I 3 5
2 2 . Ibid.
1 40
Prussian soldier reported that his confessor denied him absolution

when he refused to promise to shoot over the heads of the Austrians.
Despite the denials of the church, "In this way [the Roman Catholic
clergy] tried to undermine loyalty and to thwart the interests of the
state and promote those of Rome. "23
In the Gartenlaube it was antimonasticism, however, that best ser
viced and represented liberal interests. Its pages were filled with articles
describing tours through monasteries, curious monastic rituals,
overnight visits to monasteries, and the nefarious intrigues behind
monastery walls. In "Ein Besuch in einer Klosterbrauerei" (A visit to a
monastic brewery), visitors to a Franciscan monastery were shocked,
for example, to discover bustling monastics attending to their impro
vised beer vat, quaffing steins of brew, and lining up business. The
illustration, "In einer baierischen Klosterbdiustube" (A monastic
brewing room in Bavaria) , provides the documentation, and the reader
is assured that this is no exaggeration but on the contrary "a thor
oughly true, characteristic representation of monastic life" (fig. 5) .24
The drawing, dated 1869, is typical of the repertoire of Eduard
Grutzner (whose kitsch depictions of beer-guzzling, corpulent monks,
incidentally, made him later the favorite artist of Adolf Hitler) .25 At a
monastery near Constance, monks were found feasting and drinking
without restraint. ("Don't scream, ladies. ") In its library, no books
about science or art could be found, only records condemning life in
this world and, hypocritically, ledgers cataloging the monastery's
inventories, wealth, and extensive properties. 26 In "Hinter der
Klosterpforte" (Behind monastic gates) the sad case of "Sister X" of
Orleans in France is proffered as an admonition. An innocent young
woman, her heart shattered by a broken promise of marriage, falls vic
tim to the influence of her confessor, a Jesuit, who is soon able to bring
her "fully into his power." He convinces her to visit a monastery with
out the knowledge of her parents. There she comes under the sway of
the nuns, "who play their roles with the most complete mastery" and
persuade the girl to break all ties with her family and the world. "At the
moment, when Loyola's boys . . . have the audacity to declare a Ver
nichtungskrieg (war of extermination) against all of modern learning, "
the example of Sister X provided an instructive case in point.27
23.
24.
25.
Press,
26.
27.
Ibid. , 136.
"Ein Besuch in einer Klosterbrauerei," Gartenlaube (1870) : 412-1 5, quotation at 412.
Brigitte Hamann, Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprentice (Oxford: Oxford University
1999), 36, 72.
"Drei Tage in einem Karthiiuserkloster,'' Gartenlaube (1871): 428-30, quotation at 428 .
''Hinter der Klosterpforte,'' Gartenlaube (r87o): 72-74. quotation at 72.
qr
Fig. 5 "In einer baierischen Klosterbraustube," Gartenlauhe (1870): 413. An arti

cle in the Gartenlauhe describes a visit to a monastery in Bavaria. The accompany
ing illustration, "A Monastic Brewing Room in Bavaria," by Eduard Griitzner,
was, according to the article, "a thoroughly true, characteristic representation of
monastic life."
Articles about monks and monasteries could be cited at length.28

One, however, is especially instructive and serves to make the argu
ment. The final paragraph of the article "Der Ostermorgen in einem
Franciskaner-Kloster" (Easter morning in a Franciscan monastery)
offers a reflection on the character of monastic life.
28. Other major articles running in the Gartenlaube from the 1 86os through the Kul
turkampf and indicating the journal's obsession with monasteries include, for example, "Ein
ehemaliger Klostergarten" (r 86o) : 308; "Eine Klosterschule" (r 86o) : 507; " Das Renchthal
und die Klosterruine Allerheiligen im Schwarzwald" (r86r): 6os-6; "Aus dem Klosterleben"
(r862) : 696; Land und Leute, Nr. r7, "Das Gespensterkloster in Schwaben" (r864) : 408; "Ein
seltner Monch" ( r 86s): 404-8 ; "Klosterzelle und Familiestube" (r 867): 260-63; "Schwerer
Klosterdiensf' (1871): 361;''Eine Todtenbeschworung im Kloster" (1872): 790-91; " Kloster
hofe" (r873): 25; Bis zur Schwelle des Pfarramts, Nr. 3, "Tm Kloster" (r873): 386-9r; "In den
Hallen des "Schweigens' und des "Mirakels"' (r873): 6r9-2r ; A us dem osterreichische Kloster-
1 42
Vague, overly emotional fanaticism, bitter experiences, and harsh

disappointments of a heart that is not sufficiently strong to bear
the repeated blows of fate, deficient strength and courage after
failed and smashed hopes in the fight for a new foundation for a
bright future-these may well be in most cases the motives that led
the way [to life] behind these walls. And then there remains the
thought that man is not born to indulge the small joys and sor
rows of his own heart in quiet self-confinement, but that he, on the
contrary, should if only in small ways and in modest places join in
the work of mankind, that he only as a working member of human
society can claim and reach that measure of happiness that is
allotted to mortals. 29
The illustration that accompanies the article depicts the portly Fran
ciscan friar on Easter morning, a caricature, effeminate and ultimately
pathetic, eagerly accumulating gifts and happy to be in the company of
women (fig. 6) .
That the monk represented all that the resolute liberal character
found contrary as he faced the challenges of a world being remade
became unavoidable for readers simply moving their gaze down the
page. Immediately following this description of the monk appears
Bilder aus der kaufmannischen Welt, Nr. 2, "Im Bankiergeschaft"
(Images from the business world, Nr. 2, The banking business) . "Busi
ness with money!" is the article's j oyous opening. With the announce
ment "Money is recognized as the most significant Grofimacht on
earth, " a reminder of the pragmatic shift to a new Realpolitik of eco
nomic interests, the article takes the reader on a tour of a banking
house and its staff. In the private rooms, the director receives the
reports of his subordinates and approves or denies credit with equal
measures of cool detachment. The reader is introduced to the Haupt
cassirer, "a man of truly stoic composure . . . . Neither the clang of gold,
nor the appearance of such a great sum of cleanly engraved cash can
fluster him." Nearby are the Cassendiener diligently counting and
packing coins. "These are tried and true men, and although within a
leben, Nr. r, "Das Noviziat und der Aufenthalt im Seminar zu Prag" (1874) : 483-85; Aus dem
osterreichische Klosterleben, Nr. 2. "Hausliche und theologische Erziehung" (1 874) : 6 r 6-r8;
"Am Klostergarten'' (1874): 738; "Klosterzelle und Gedankenhelle" (1879) : 740-41.
29. ''Der Ostermorgen in einem Franciskaner-Kloster,'' Gartenlaube (r864) : 407-8, quota
tion at 408 .
1 43
Fig. 6. "In der Sacristei eines Franciskaner-Kiosters am Ostermorgen," Garten

laube (1864): 405. On Easter morning effeminate Franciscan friars happily accu
mulate gifts.
year they count through many millions, they are endowed with strong
nervous systems. " The position of Cassenbeamte, responsible for the
quick handling of sums in small amounts with the public, "requires a
practiced man . " In the Comptoir it is hardly allowed to look over the
shoulders of the calculators since no one would want to disturb the
work: Herr Hauptbuchhalter is busy reckoning debits and credits in
thick books. No slackers here . These are the exacting and even-keeled
empiricists, the lieutenants of financial opportunity and sergeants of
capital on whom the industrial-capitalist future depends.3
Throughout the journal, an entire vision of a specific social order
opens up on a grand scale with recurring and contrasting images of
30. Bilder aus der kaumannischen Welt, Nr. 2, "1m Bankiergeschaft," Gartenlaube (r864) :
408-u, quotations at 410 and 41 1 .
1 44
monks and monastic life. Take, for example, the serialized story "Des
Kaufmanns Ehrenschild" (The businessman's badge of honor) , which
describes the loyalty and solidarity two friends share with each other as
public men of business and civil service)! Or take another article from
the series Bilder aus der kaufmannischen Welt, which introduces a
London auction house. The spectacle of a single day of business looks
like a scene "out of an Arabian fable . " The sales figures in a single year
alone, the reader is told, are so vast that they defy any attempt to com
prehend them. The article recommends that they might be better
grasped by comparing them to "a certain poetic magic . . . like that soli
tude in a moonstruck forest or the splendor of the sun on an Italian
sea."32
This flourish of contrived romantic sentiment was typical of articles
and illustrations depicting what might have otherwise seemed mun
dane accounts of middle-class society, expectations, and service. For
example, in the article "Der Herr Director" from the series Aus der
Beamtenwelt (The world of the civil service) the reader is introduced to
the "wondrous nomenclature of Beamtentum" from Subalternbemnte
through Canzlei-Director and the higher level of Canzlei-Rath to,
finally, Geheimer-Rath and Prasident. This, however, is no banal
rehearsal of civil service bureaucracy but rather the chronicle of Herr
Canzlei-Director's final hours of life. Despite serious illness he attends
to his professional duties into the evening and then goes on to fulfill his
obligations at the soiree hosted by a colleague. He returns home to bed
and, attended by his wife, realizes he must prepare for his end. Instruct
ing his wife with a final breath, he knows even at this moment where his
duty belongs: "I wrote a letter to the Prasident this morning . . . give it
to him . . . tomorrow. " In the letter he excuses himself from his profes
sion and thanks his Pdisident for the many years of dutiful service he
was able to offer him. The reader is assured that in the newspaper obit
uaries Herr Canzlei-Director was praised as a model of civil service.
"To the same degree as his devotion he had the trust of his superiors
J T . "'Des Kaufmanns Ehrenschild,'' Gartenlaube (r86r): 56r-64.
32. Bilder aus der kaufmannischen Welt, Nr. r, "'Ein Londoner Auctionshaus. " Garten
laube (r863): 762-64, quotation at 762. "The power of a metaphor derives precisely from the
interplay between the discordant meanings it symbolically coerces into a unitary conceptual
framework and from the degree to which that coercion is successful in overcoming the psy
chic resistance such semantic tension inevitably generates in anyone in a position to perceive
it. When it works, a metaphor transforms a false identification . . . into an apt analogy; when
it misfires. it is mere extravagance." Clifford Geertz, "Ideology as a Cultural System," in Ide
ology and Discontent. ed. David E. Apter (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, r964). 46-76,
quotation at 59
1 45
and the respect and love of his colleagues. His name will remain forever
in most honored remembrance. " 33 The four-part story "Ein Beamten
leben" (The life of a civil servant) is a similar account of civic duty and
pathos. A Kreisgerichtsdirector in the Ministry of Justice is known
publicly throughout his district and beyond as a diligent and orderly
man, "an excellent judge, industrious, and above all a man of unwa
vering righteousness and spotless honor. " In his private life he quietly
endures the certain knowledge that his beloved young daughter will die
of a terminal illness. On the very day that he receives notification that
he is to be promoted to the prestigious position of Obergerichtsprasi
dent his life is suddenly plunged into crisis . His devoted wife and the
dutiful mother of his family defaults on a credit payment. She is pre
pared to leave the family, to sacrifice herself for the sake of his honor.
Instead, the Gerichtsdirector shoulders the responsibility himself and
resigns his position. He, however, is resurrected by his unimpeachable
public reputation. At the close of the series, he stands before the Prasi
dent of the Ministry of Justice who pronounces as a judgment, "But
you are a man of honor. You cannot be a thief. "34
Similarly, articles in the series Deutschlands groBe Werkstatten
(Germany's great workshops) celebrate the industrial entrepreneur
and his factory. "Bei dem Locomotivenkonig" (The locomotive king)
describes "the indescribable, " "the great impression" made by the
locomotive construction plant in Berlin established by Albert Borsig.
"One is filled with genuine respect when one thinks about how this
great factory was built from small beginnings and only with the indus
try and application of a single man. "35 Borsig's iron smelting plant
Konigin-Marienhiitte at Zwickau is "the great triumph of German
spirit and energy."36 Likewise, thanks to the determination and inge
nuity of Johann Lothar Faber, a pencil maker near Nuremberg, Ger
many had now surpassed all other countries in the manufacture of pen
cils.37 At the colossal locomotive plant at Chemnitz founded by
Richard Hartmann "we see with pride and j oy how German industry is
increasingly self-confident and energetic, how it promotes the well33 "Der Herr Director,'' Gartenlaube (1857): 519-22, quotations at 521 and 522, respectively.
34. "Ein Beamtenleben," Gartenlaube (r86r): 769-72, 785-88, 8r s-r6, 8r8-r9, quotation at
8I9.
3 5 . Deutschlands grof3e Industriewerkstatten, Nr. 4, " Bei dem Locomotivenki:inig,''
Gartenlaube (1867): 554-58. quotations at 554
36. Deutschlands groBe Industriewerkstatten, Nr. 5, "Die Ki:inigin-Marienhiitte bei
Zwickau," Gartenlaube (r869): 283-87, quotation at 283.
37 Deutschlands groBe Industriewerkstatten, Nr. 2, "Die Faber'sche Bleistiftfabrik in
Stein,'' Gartenlaube (1865): 748-5 1 .
1 46
being, independence, and autonomy of the German people and com

mands the respect of foreigners. "38 Borsig, Faber, and Hartmann
energetic, diligent, perseverant, and self-made men-were celebrated
as the German equivalents of England's Samuel Smiles, Josiah Wedge
wood, and Richard Arkwright. Just as important, such men, the arti
cles argue, in pursuit of their own individual gain never lost sight in the
economic competition with England and the United States of the need
to advance German industrial development by taking advantage of
new ideas and technological inventions in the spirit of the modern age.
And still at the factory in the small village of Griesheim near Darm
stadt industrial production is effortlessly wedded to the German
primeval landscape. "We see how in this current time even the roman
ticism of the forest, which sustains us with Waldculture, goes hand in
hand with industry, whose progress rests on the application of science
and the investment of large amounts of capital. " 39
During the 1 86os every edition of the Gartenlaube featured a story
about an industrial plant; a visit to an industrial exhibition; or the
introduction of a new, steam-driven machine. In these articles indus
trial mills that billow smoke contrast sharply with images of "Jesuit
economics, " "work convents," and "Catholic business" are given
impressive two-page spreads. The industrial iron rolling and hammer
ing plant established in the industrial suburb of Moabit in northwest
Berlin contrasts with the monastery, a useless anachronism in the
modern age of industrial expansion. The plant included huge, steam
powered hammers and steam-driven machines that produced together
such a deafening thunder that they gave the impression "all the Larm
geister of hell had been unleashed" (fig. 7).4 A New Era that included
new hopes not just for political liberalization but also for economic
growth and industrial development was exemplified by the machine
building plant at Chemnitz. The factory employed two thousand
workers; included forty separate buildings with five steam-driven ham
mers, five huge vertical cranes, and nine mighty steam-powered
machines; and occupied an area of approximately 16o,ooo square
yards (fig. 8) .4 1 With the impressive bird's-eye view of the steel casting
3 8 . Deutschlands groBe Werkstatten, Nr. 3, "'Die Schopfungen eines Zeugschmiedege
sellen: Gartenlaube (r 866): 59-63. quotation at 63.
39 Deutschlands groBe Industriewerkstatten, Nr. 3, "'Die Griesheimer Klenger,'' Garten
laube (1867) : 132-3 5, quotation at 1 3 5 .
4 0 . "B orsig's Etablissement i m Moabit b e i Berlin Die GuBstahlfabrik des Bochumer Ver
eins," Gartenlaube (rX67): 556-57.
41 . "'Die Konigin-Marienhi.itte bei Zwickau," Gartenlaube (r 869) : 284-1\ 5.
1 47
Fig. 7 "Borsig's Etablissement im Moabit bei Berlin," Gartenlaube (1867):

556-57 One in the series entitled "Germany's Great Workshops," the illustration
of the iron rolling and hammering plant established by Albert Borsig in the indus
trial suburb of Moabit in northwest Berlin contrasts with the monastery, a useless
anachronism in the modern age of industrial expansion.
plant of the Bochumer Association, readers of the Gartenlaube could

envision huge industrial plants stretching the length and breadth of
Germany (fig. g) .42
In the layout of the j ournal the two-page illustration "Der Her
rgottshandler" (The merchant of God) immediately follows and con
trasts with the illustration "GuBstahlfabrik des Bochumer Vereins"
(The Bochum Association steel casting plant) . Now the scene has
switched to the impoverished and nomadic Catholic family. The father
42. "Die GuBstahlfabrik des Buchumer Vereins,'" Gartenlaube (r875): 544-45.
148
Fig. 8. "Maschinenbauanstalt, Chemnitz," Garteulauhe (1866), 60-61. A New

Era that included hopes not just for political liberalization but for also economic
growth and industrial development was exemplified here by the machine building
plant founded by Richard Hartmann at Chemnitz.
is trying to provide for his barefoot wife, newborn infant, and dirty
children in rags by peddling crucifixes, religious trinkets, and figurines.
A priest takes a moment to interrupt his hand of cards and literally
looks down his nose (fig. ro) . In the accompanying poem "Zwei Herr
gottshandler" (Two merchants of God) the priest resents not only the
intrusion but, more important, the competition: "Leave me alone, you
tramp ! You're all as stupid as cows. I'm not going to buy God from
you. I sell Him myself. "43 This is the world of "Roman Catholic busi
ness, " and the church demands its monopoly, not the free market of
either goods or ideas . The illustration "Arme Leute-fromme Leute"
(Poor people-pious people) depicts Catholic family members break43. "Zwei Herrgottshandler," Gartenlaube (r875): soo.
1 49
Fig. 9 "Die GuBstahlfabrik des Bochumer Vereins aus der Vogelschau," Garten
laube (1875): 544-45 With formidable, two-page illustrations like that giving a
bird's-eye view of the steel casting plant of the Bochumer Association, readers of the
Gartenlaube could envision huge, industrial plants that spewed smoke and filled the
entire German landscape.
ing their backs, faces to the ground, as they haul a cart up a mountain.
A church stands below in the valley. A Jesuit and a monk merely move
aside. The mother has to carry the baby too. The children are bare
foot, and even the grandmother is pulling. The load might bring them
all down, but the father does not forget to doff his hat (fig. n). In the
accompanying poem he pleads as they pass, " 0 , pray for us to Holy
Mary that she lighten our cart!" The church authorities respond,
"God the Father has laid on the load! Praying is therefore of no use.
You have to pull! "44 The reader can linger on the instructive image of
pitiful Catholics trying to climb up and out of their poverty but held
44 "Arme Leute-fromme Leute," Gartenlaube (r873): 6rg.
rso
Fig. 10. "Der Herrgottshiindler," Gartenlaube (1875): 496-97. The father of an

impoverished Catholic family peddles crucifixes, religious trinkets, and figurines.
The priest literally looks down his nose and exclaims: "Leave me alone, you tramp !
You're all as stupid as cows. I'm not going to buy God from you. I sell Him myself."
back by the freight of their own religious submission. Even the dog has
it better.
Imposing illustrations of Germany's great industrial mills make a
striking comparison to images of useless monasteries in decay, the
vision of an age now over. But in the illustration "Die Ruinen der
Abtei Allerheiligen" (The ruins of the abbey All Saints) monastic ruins
in the Black Forest of Bavaria also provide an occasion for an excur
sion by the bourgeoisie at leisure (fig. I2 ) .45 Ivy now covers the belfry,
portals, and arches. Pines have returned to the spot, and the scene
45. See also the accompanying article, "'Das Renchthal und die Klosterruine Allerheiligen
in Schwartzwald." Gartenlaube (r86r): 605-6 .
rsr
Fig. 11. "Arme Leute-fromme Leute," Gurtenluuhe (1873): 619. With the illus
tration "Poor People-Pious People," readers can linger on the pitiful image of
Catholics trying to climb up out of poverty, laboring against the freight of their own
religious submission. Even a dog has it better.
makes an appeal to the romantic sentiment. There is a nostalgic evoca

tion of the monastery as material culture from the medieval past that
provides readers a holiday from the preoccupations of the industrial
age. More emphatic is the illustration "Der Friedhof auf dem Oybin"
(The cemetery on the Oybin) accompanying an article about a visit to
monastic ruins near the city of Zittau in Saxony on scenic Mount
Oybin overlooking the slopes of the Neisse River valley and close on
the border with the Austrian Empire (fig. 13). The monastery was built
in 1 369, dedicated in 13 84, and wrecked in 1 577 by a bolt of lightning.
The church, one "from the better period of Gothic architecture," is
1 52
Fig. 12. "Die Ruinen der Abtei Allerheiligen," Gartenlaube (1861): 6os. Here
monastic ruins provide an occasion for an excursion by the bourgeoisie at leisure.
The scene offers the monastery as material culture from the Middle Ages that read
ers could use as a holiday from the preoccupations of the industrial age.
now no more than a hollow shell on a hillock. Tall elms stand at the
ruins and provide a shelter of shade. In the cemetery, flora, thick and
unchecked, approach the gravestones to claim the dead, and fresh bou
quets, "still wet with the tears for loved ones," sweetly scent the air.
The monastic ruins in backdrop are a gesture of romantic pathos to the
Middle Ages, and a mother and daughter-hand in hand, in the shad
ows, alone, and a husband and father gone but not forgotten--com
plete the tender sentiment.46 This lyrical scene is reminiscent of visits to
other cemeteries at monastic tourist sites: the "majestic effects" of the
view overlooking the sea at the gravesite by the churchyard at Cam
posanto , Naples; the church cemetery in Prague, "as profound and
46. "Auf dem Oybin," Gartenlaube (1874) : 31-35, 47-48, quotation at 47
1 53
Fig. 1 3 . "Der Friedhof auf dem Oybin," Gartenlaube (1874): 49 Visions of the
monastery like that on Mount Oybin provided a momentary flight from the modern
age of "bureaucratic sobriety" (bureaukratische Niichternheit), emotional detach
ment, and industrial development.
melancholy as a Nachtfantasie [fantasy of the night] " ; the "imposing

and dignified graveyards" at Pisa and Verona; and the expansive ceme
tery in Munich. But they cannot compare. The author has nowhere else
been able to find "a death site that is so full of the magic of luxuriant
nature, so infused with the romantic, as that at the small churchyard
on Mount Oybin. "47 Visions of the monastery provided the liberal
bourgeoisie with both a contrast to and an escape from the modern age
of "bureaucratic sobriety" (bureaukratische Nuchternheit), emotional
detachment, and rational calculation, a flight from the world of huge
industrial mills that it had done so much to build.
47 Ibid.
1 54
At the same time, readers might consider in another article the sci
entific conclusions of "the most distinguished and learned of all living
national economists" confirming " the fact that precisely the Protestant
countries have achieved the highest degree of economic maturity. "
According to the article, economic growth stagnated in (Catholic)
Spain, Italy, and the South American states. In Belgium the clerical
party once in power pursued a economic policy according to which
"capital was Catholicized and taken out of the hands of Protestants
and Jews. The enterprise ended in disaster."48 Other articles through
out the journal sing the praises of freethinking rationalists, celebrate
inventors, and glorify scientists unfettered by religious dogma.
These people, standing on the firm and unshakable ground of sci
ence that they have themselves established on the foundation of
nature with cool scientific spirit, with remarkable zeal and indus
try, and with glowing enthusiasm, place a lever beneath the world
as it has hitherto appeared in order to lift it out of its socket with
Archimedian strength. They put in its place a new world truth dis
covered by science, born in an enlightened spirit, and baptized
with the fire of an inspired poetical enthusiasm.49
The scientist is the Franciscan friar on Easter morning turned inside
out.
Articles that model the scientist, the civil servant, and the industrial
ist contrast with "Ein Besuch im Kloster" (A visit to a monastery) . In
a monastery near Aachen, microcephalic "ape men" have been discov
ered. The Gartenlaube included a detailed account of these creatures:
These beings are born with craniums and brains that are much too
small. The forehead is at most two fingers high and sharply
flattened toward the back. The cranium is only a little larger than
the size of a man's fist. The eyebrows protrude forward. Thick lips
and jaws, which are armed with large, powerful teeth, jut out even
farther. The skull is so small and flat that the ears reach as high as
the top of the head. The expression of the eyes and of the whole
face is sometimes pleasant, sometimes angry, but almost always
more like that of an animal than that of a human being. They
48. "Ein klerikaler lndustrie-Ritter," Gartenlaube (1870) : 425-27, quotations at 425.
49 Gartenlaube (r866): I7I. Quoted also in Bramsted, Aristocracy and the Middle- Classes,
205 .
155
don't speak but rather utter only inarticulate sounds and guttural
tones . 5
Of the two "ape men" who lived alongside the monks at the monastery,
only "Emil N.," eighteen years old, has survived in his unfortunate
condition. The article includes his portrait, which, the reader is told, is
an accurate illustration except that it "gives him perhaps too much of
an intelligent expression in his eyes" (fig. q) Y The rector of the
monastery points upward with his finger and repeatedly asks Emil,
"Where is God?" Finally the microcephalic understands, spastically
points upward, and blurts unintelligibly. The article includes a second
illustration, the grotesque spectacle of Emil dressed in a monastic robe,
dancing to music while pointing up to the heavens (fig. r s) Y The sug
gestion is, of course, that the microcephalic and his monastic masters
merely "ape" each other and, therefore, live equally ridiculous and
pathetic lives.
In their study of the popular American journal of nature and science
National Geographic, cultural anthropologists Catherine A. Lutz and
Jane L. Collins have examined the meanings produced by the layout
choices regarding the format, size, order, and placement-of pho
tographs . Design principles, they argue, that determine the sequencing
of images in the j ournal give priority to thematic content over other
considerations, including aesthetics. Editors recognize that the juxta
positions of content in the layout of the journal produce the "third
effect" : additional meanings, at once social, cultural, and political, are
evoked in readers as they consider images placed side by side in terms
of information, order, and relative size.S3 When on the pages of the
Gartenlaube editors and then liberal family readers matched articles
about bourgeois life against those about monastic life, and illustrations
of the factory against those of the monastery, they were thinking about
who they were and what the German nation was supposed to be
socially, economically, and morally. They surveyed an array of biirger
lich identities in positions of authority, leadership, and service. By
means of contrast, they romantically fantasized about the stalwart
banker, the dutiful civil servant, the dedicated industrialist, the level
headed rationalist, the enlightened scientist. These were the captains of
so. "Ein Besuch im Kloster,'" Gartenlaube (1 868): 203-5. quotation at 203.
sr. Ibid.
52. Ibid. , 205 .
5 3 . Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins, Reading National Geographic (Chicago: Uni
versity of Chicago Press. 1 993). 74
Figs. 14 and 15. "Emil N., achtzehn Jahre alter Mikrocephale," Gartenlaube
(1868): 204; and (facing page) "Emil N. beim Anhoren von Musik," Gartenlaube
(1868): 205. Emil N., a microcephalic " ape man," was discovered at a monastery
near Aachen. Emil dances to music while pointing up to the heavens. He merely
"apes" his monastic masters, who live equally pathetic lives.
1 57
progress, modern heroes meeting the challenges of industrialization

and nation building. They were liberal, masculine, nationalist, and all,
no doubt, Kulturkampfer role models. For in this age of progress, the
monk and the monastery could be, at best, only social and economic
deadweight; a drain on capital; medieval leftovers from a bygone age
of dogma, superstition, and stupidity. At worst they were treasonous
ultramontane agents of the Vatican, enemies dedicated to the destruc
tion of a unified, modern, and dynamic German nation.
The Nun in the Dungeon: Liberalism as a Convent
Atrocity Story
In the summer of r869, as the papacy prepared to convene the Vatican

Council, anti-Catholicism and anticlericalism in Germany reached a
crescendo . The satirical liberal Berliner Wespen, for example, ran an
illustration depicting monks preparing for the council: "liberalism, "
"Lutherism, " and "press" are stacked like logs on a bonfire. Under the
banner "Inquisition, " heretics are hanging by the neck from a scaf-
1 58
fold. 54 It was in this context that people all over Germany were soon
captivated by the grisly drama of a Catholic nun held prisoner in a con
vent in Cracow, capital at that time of the Province of Galicia in the
Austrian Empire . According to liberal newspapers a young nun, Sister
Barbara Ubryk, of a closed and "barefoot" Carmelite order had been
imprisoned in the convent in a cold, dark, dank dungeon barely eight
feet long by six feet wide. Here she had lived alone since r 848. For
twenty-one years, she survived on rotten potatoes and water. A
cesspool drained into her cell. Mud, vermin, and her own waste cov
ered her naked, shivering body. According to her testimony given later
before the Austrian state courts, Sister Barbara maintained a tenuous
hold on sanity during her imprisonment only with fervent prayer and
by repeatedly counting the individual strands of hair on her head one
by one by one.ss
Finally state authorities heard a rumor about Sister Barbara's
imprisonment and appeared before the convent gates. Despite the
denials and protests of the mother superior, the confessor of the con
vent, and the other nuns, the officials entered and demanded that they
be taken to Sister Barbara. When they located and opened the dungeon
door, they recoiled and gasped with horror. There in the dark crouched
a "completely naked, wild, half-mad female. " According to liberal
newspapers, she was the picture of death. " She was emaciated. Her
face had hardly any flesh. Her eyes were hollow. Her eyebrows and
lashes had entirely fallen out. Her pupils were dull. " "I'm hungry; pity
me, " she meekly pleaded. "Give me some meat, and I'll behave . " 56
Why had Barbara been locked away down in the dungeon? She said
that she had broken the vow of celibacy. Feeble though she was, Bar
bara then gathered what little strength she had. She threw herself
54 Berliner Wespen. 4 July 1869.
55 National Zeitung, 26 July 1869; Vossische Zeitung, 27 July 1869, 29 July 1869. B arbara
Ubryk's own account of her captivity, allegedly, can be found in The Convent Horror: Or The
True Narrative of Barbara Ubryk, A Sister of the Carmelite Convent at Cracow, Who Has
Been Walled Up in a Dungeon (Philadelphia: C. W. Alexander, r869). Other sensationalist
accounts include S . J. Abbott, The Empress and the Carmelite Nun, or Twenty-one Years in a
Convent Dungeon (London: Convent Enquiry Society, 1902); The Convent Horror: The Story
of Barbara Ubryk Twenty-one Years in the Dungeon Eight Feet Long, Six Feet Wide (Aurora,
M o . : Menace, 1 89o) ; and A. Rode, Barbara Ubryk oder die Geheimnisse des Karmeliter
Klosters in Krakau (Munich: Neuberger und Kolb, r 869) . See also Michael B. Gross, "The
Strange Case of the Nun in the Dungeon, or German Liberalism as a Convent Atrocity
Story," German Studies Review 23 (2000) : 69-84.
56. National Zeitung, 26 July r 869, 27 July r869; Vossische Zeitung, 27 July r869, 29 July
r 869.
1 59
against the other nuns screaming, "But these here are also impure;
they're not angels ! " And she threw herself at the confessor, shouting,
"You monster! "57 While Barbara was led from the convent to the
insane asylum, the confessor and the mother superior were arrested.
According to the liberal National Zeitung, here was an "episode from
the Inquisition in the nineteenth century, " a scene that "even Dante
with all his powers of imagination could not depict . " 5 8
Reports arriving from Vienna gave detailed accounts of the reaction
of the Cracow population to Barbara's brutal treatment. Not the pop
ular mob but rather hundreds from "the better strata," the "Burger,
not of the crowd," according to the newspapers, gathered at the
Carmelite convent. 59 So enraged were they that they abandoned their
regard for propriety, took up battering rams, and forced their way
through the gates of the Carmelite convent. They smashed the win
dows and destroyed the courtyard. Shouting "away with the nuns! "
they stormed into the convent building and invaded the inner cham
bers . The police and military finally forced the rioters to retreat. 60 Dur
ing the following day, however, large crowds gathered again in front of
the convent. At night they were joined by a procession from the sub
urbs. Numbering about four thousand, the crowd repeated the attack
on the convent until cavalry dispersed it with drawn sabers. 6 ' A mob
gathered again, worked itself into a frenzy, shouted "down with the
Jesuits! " and headed to the Jesuit house. They smashed the windows,
pressed through the gates, scaled the walls, chased and beat the Jesuits.
The mob then moved on with shouts, "to the Franciscans ! " and "to the
other nunneries! " where the attacks were repeated.62 In the morning,
cavalry and infantry reinforcements occupied the grounds of the
monasteries and closed and patrolled the streets . While municipal
authorities sympathized with the bitter and "legitimate" feelings of the
population about "the medieval, inhuman deed, " they also made
appeals for the return to peace, order, and law.63
Throughout the next months, this dramatic and curious story57 Vossische Zeitung, 27 July rR6g; National Zeitung, 27 July rR69. The clear suggestion
according to Barbara's testimony reproduced in the Convent Horror: Or The True Narrative
is that she had been drugged, raped by the convent's confessor, and then intimidated into
silence by the mother superior.
5 8 . National Zeitung, 27 July 1869.
59 National Zeitung, 26 July rR69; Vossische Zeitung, 27 July rR69.
6o. National Zeitung, 26 July r869, 27 July r 8 69; Vossische Zeitung, 27 July r869.
6 1 . Abbott, The Empress, IO-I I .
6 2 . National Zeitung, 2 6 July 1869; Vossische Zeitung, 27 July 1 869, 29 July 1869.
63. Vossische Zeitung, 29 July r869, 30 July r 869.
r6o
what became known as the Ubryk affair-became a public obsession

as it continued to unfold in liberal newspapers throughout Germany.
The horror story of the barefoot Carmelites at Cracow confirmed sus
picions about unregulated female behavior. Beyond the authority of
men, alone and unsupervised, women in convents ultimately became
the victims of their own propensity for religious fanaticism. Soon after
Sister Barbara was released from her dungeon, reports in liberal papers
of a room-by-room search of the convent offered a disturbing if also
fascinating peek behind closed doors into female communal life. On
the table in the refectory was a human skull, a constant memento mori
for nuns who had forsaken the material world beyond the convent. The
adjacent room was a veritable museum of tools for torture. Here,
according to the newspapers, large eighty-pound crosses were carried
by the sisters on their backs to atone for their sins. Heavy marble
stones on long straps were used to whip their breasts. The nuns pressed
crowns with thorns or large nails on their heads; they whipped each
other with knotted ropes. The "torture chamber, " according to the
newspapers, included long belts with needles or nails that were
strapped around the nuns, piercing their flesh.64
As news of Sister Barbara's imprisonment spread across Europe and
the United States, all-too-familiar convent atrocity stories sprang up in
the liberal press. According to the Vossische Zeitung, "Different cities
are reporting that old and recent acts of barbarism have occurred in
these medieval institutions of lazy daydreaming . "65 According to lib
eral newspapers "no more than fourteen days have passed" since a
tragedy similar to that in Cracow occurred at the convent of the Sisters
of Mercy near Prague. A nun was imprisoned for violating her vow of
chastity. She hanged herself in despair. The mother superior insisted
that the nun had been insane and had tried to flee the convent. An
examination of her corpse disclosed that she had been four months
pregnant.66 Two other nuns had, according to the papers, mentally col
lapsed under the strain of the stringent rules of convent life and had to
be removed to an insane asylum.67 In the town of Briin a skeleton was
found behind a wall in a former Dominican monastery.68 At the same
time, at a Carmelite convent in Posen skeletons had been unearthed.
Several nuns, according to the report, had apparently been walled in or
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
National Zeitung. 3 Aug. 1 869; Vossische Zeitung. 4 Aug. 1869.

Vossische Zeitung, 31 July 1869.
Ibid.; National Zeitung, 31 July 1869.
Vossische Zeitung, 31 Aug. 1 869, 1 Sept. 1 869; National Zeitung, 31 July 1869.
Vossische Zeitung, 3 Aug. 1869.
r6r
hurriedly buried. The story of "Sister X" that appeared in the Garten
laube was true to form. An emotionally vulnerable young woman, her
heart broken by a breached promise of marriage, was cunningly
enticed into a convent without the knowledge of her parents and then
held captive.69 Meanwhile, liberal papers reported that at a Dominican
monastery in Dusseldorf a monk was accused of sexually abusing
five-, six-, and seven-year-old girls.7 In an article repeated in the Vos
sische Zeitung, the Rheinische Zeitung was alarmed to find nuns in
charge of the education of children at a convent in Dusseldorf. Their
methods of instructing and punishing the children included "incarcer
ation in a death chamber in a convent, etc., etc. "7r It is the "etceteras"
here that repay attention since they admit a measure of wry self
reflection: the convent narrative had become so formulaic and well
rehearsed that its atrocities hardly needed specification.
Both exploiting and feeding the appetite for information about Sis
ter Barbara and the secrets of female monasticism promised, no doubt,
higher circulation and lucrative rewards for newspapers, journals, and
independent authors . One writer in a seemingly superhuman effort
managed to produce in four weeks a twelve hundred-page tome enti
tled Barbara Ubryk oder die Geheimnisse des Karmeliter-Klosters in
Krakau. 72 The titillating advertisement for the book in one liberal
newspaper promised that "centuries of darkness and secret crimes"
were exposed "in their naked truth. " "Horror will grasp the hearts of
even the most hardened men. "73 Readers were not disappointed. In the
book, they were treated to all the gruesome details of Barbara's misery.
Included also is the verbatim official report of Barbara's physical and
mental condition during her stay in the insane asylum. Before the
court-appointed medical personnel, she stripped off her clothing,
according to the document, and "winked quite unambiguously at the
men . " Sister Barbara, the physicians concluded, was a case of nympho
mania, a condition of lunacy she had endured since her adolescence
and ultimately attributable to her religious fanaticism. Because she had
69. "Hinter dem Klosterpforte," Gartenlaube (r87o) : 72-74.
70. Vossische Zeitung, 14 Aug. r869.
7 1 . Rheinische Zeitung, I I Aug. r869. reported in Vossische Zeitung, 19 Aug. r869. See also
Vossische Zeitung, I4 Aug. r869.
72. Rode, Barbara Ubryk, r2r3-44.
73. A two-page advertisement for the book appeared in Vossische Zeitung, 25 Aug. r869.
For incredulous readers who doubted that such a large book could be produced so rapidly,
the publisher in the preface to the book explained that these and other chapters had already
been written. Only the concluding chapter on Sister Barbara had been hurriedly written and
added to the volume in order to take advantage of the moment.
r62
been imprisoned in the convent and denied the services of a mental

institution where she properly belonged, there was, sadly, no hope for
her recovery.74 The author's conclusion based on an account of con
vent atrocities through the ages confirmed the worst suspicions: "If
only Barbara Ubryk were the only one so unfortunate to have been
secretly imprisoned! But she is lucky compared to thousands of other
victims in the convents. There is hardly a monastery in which monks or
nuns were not buried alive and cruelly martyred. In all the state
archives there are documents concerning former monasteries that
record such atrocities. "75 Such stories provided evidence for anti
monastic petitions to the Austrian government reproduced in the lib
eral German press. They argued that the atrocity at the Carmelite con
vent proved how inadequately present legislation protected "modern
culture, biirgerlich freedom, humanity, and the Enlightenment against
their irreconcilable enemies. "76 Meanwhile, at a convention in Vienna
German journalists proclaimed it "a debt of honor for every thinking
man to enter the lists" for the abolition of monasteries and the expul
sion of the Jesuits. They expected deputies to the Prussian parliament
to fulfill their obligations to do so as well. 77
In the larger context of the convent atrocity narratives of the anti
Catholic culture of nineteenth-century Germany, the incarceration of
Sister Barbara is reminiscent of the kind of legend used profitably by
Jacob Burckhardt to explore the dimensions of the elite culture of
Renaissance Italy. It was, as he would have argued, "one of those stories
that are true and not true, everywhere and nowhere. "78 Hardly new,
accounts of atrocities in convents were part of a tradition of popular
anticonvent and antimonastic literature throughout the century. In lurid
stories in pamphlets, books, journals, and newspapers, unsuspecting
young women were lured into convents, where they were subjected to
sexual exploitation that led invariably to madness, suicide, or murder.
Stephan Gatschenberger's Enthullungen aus bayerischen Klostern aus der
neueren Zeit, published in r868, was at the time of the Ubryk affair only
74. Rode, Barbara Ubryk, r 220-34. Sister Barbara's nymphomania was reported also in
Vossische Zeitung. 5 Aug. r869.
7 5 Rode, Barbara Ubryk, 1238-39.
76. Vossische Zeitung, 5 Aug. 1869. The Vossische Zeitung paid rapt attention to the anti
monastic petition movements in Cracow, Vienna, and Prague . See Vossische Zeitung, esp. 29
July r869, r Aug. r869, 5 Aug. r 86g, 7 Aug. r 869, 8 Aug. r869.
77. Kissling, Geschichte des Kulturkampfes 1 : 329; Anderson, Windthorst, 123.
78. Jacob Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (Stuttgart: Alfred Kroner Ver
lag, 1976). 21-22.
r 63
the most recent example.79 The ribald melodrama of nuns and convents
belonged especially to the anticlerical satire of the Enlightenment and
the French Revolution and included, for example, Aufgefangene Briefe
einer Nonne an Ihren Beichtvater, appeming in 1781, and Joseph Richter
Obermayer's Bildergalerie klosterlicher Mif3brauche, published in 1784. 80
Again during the Revolution of r848, nunneries were portrayed in liberal
satirical journals like the Leuchtkugeln as "depraved dens" of "bickering
nuns" where "violent force was exerted on young nuns and candidates
for the order."81 The journal portrayed a young nun "walled in and
chained, surrounded by evil nuns in the convent. Yearningly she gazes
out into unattainable freedom! " Her "sad sight, " a woman without any
hope for love, inspired the verse:
Long live the freedom to love!
But so long as nuns are not free and happy,
There is no freedom to love! 82
Antimonastic attacks on nuns continued in the decade of reaction with
the appearance of Wolfgang Menzel's novel Furore: Geschichte eines
Monchs und einer Nonne aus dem Dreif3igjahrigen Kriege, published in
r 8 s r , and then afterward with A. L. Stachelstock's Licht und Finsternif3
oder die freien Gemeinden und die Jesuiten, appearing in r86r, which
included the portrait of monks and nuns meeting in secret tunnels to
exchange sexual favors.83 Similar fanciful diatribes included R. Som
mer's Vernunft gegen Pfaffenpolitik und Nasenweisheit, published in
r865, and Gemalde aus dem Nonnenleben oder enthiillte Geheimnisse in
79. Stephan Gatschenberger, Enthiillungen aus bayerischen K!Ostern aus der neueren Zeit
(Wi.irzburg: Selbstverlag der Verfassers, 1868). See also for other examples Klostergeschichten
oder Betriigerein der Pfaffen und Monche (Chemnitz, r 8 7 r); Magdalena Paurnann oder die
eingekerkerte Nonne irn Angerkloster zu Miinchen (Munich: J. J. Lentner'schen Buchhand
lung, 1870); Mernoiren einer Nonne (Munich, 1 8 74); and Mernoiren der Schwester Angelika,
einer entlaufenen Nonne des Klosters zu Cork (Leipzig, 1873).
8o. Aufgefangene Briefe einer Nonne an Ihren Beichtvater (n . p . : Sebastian Hartl, 178r);
Joseph Richter Obermayer. Bildergalerie klosterlicher MifJbriiuche (Frankfurt am Main,
1 784).
8 1 . Leuchtkugeln, Bd. 1 , N r . 6, 1848, quoted i n Friedheim Ji.irgensmeier, Die katholische
Kirche irn Spiegel der Karikatur: Der deutschen satirischen Tendenzzeitschriften von 1848 bis
1900 (Trier: Verlag Neu, 1969), II2.
82. Leuchtkugeln, Bd. r , Nr. 22, r848, quoted in Ji.irgensmeier, Katholische Kirche, I I 2 .
8 3 . Wolfgang Menzel, Furore: Geschichte eines Monchs und einer Nonne aus dem
Dreij]igjiihrigen Kriege (Leipzig: F . A. Brockhaus, r8 5r); Stachelstock, Licht und FinsternifJ,
54-5 5
r 64
1 870.84 Pfaffenwesen, Monchsscandale und Nonnenspuk: Beitrag zur

Naturgeschichte des Katholizismus und der Kloster, written by a certain
Lucifer Illuminator, appeared in 1 8 71 on the eve of the Kulturkampf.85
In his study of religious conflict and national identity, Helmut Smith
has pointed out that gendered discourse, central to the German nation
alist tradition in general, was particularly important to Kulturkampf
anticlerical poetry. Valiant German men typically rescue innocent
young women in the confessional from the prurient intentions of their
priests. 86 But the most elaborate fantasies of heroism and liberation
involve nuns. In "Die N onne" the poet Bernhardt Endrulat yearns to
save a young woman, "a pale child," from "silence and death" and
from "the dark madness" of the convent. 87
On the surface, recycled stories about nuns, imprisoned in dungeons,
sexually abused, walled in and left to die, or driven to insanity or sui
cide, provided under the guise of humanitarian outrage titillating scan
dals, sensational and pornographic entertainment. But these stories
were hardly gratuitous artifacts of culture. They provided a discipli
nary service within bourgeois society, warning young women of the
punishment that awaited them if they abandoned their responsibilities
as wives and mothers by entering the religious life. A full-page illustra
tion in the liberal satirical magazine Kladderadatsch reveals the deep
meaning at another level of the convent atrocity story (fig. 16). 88 At the
height of the Ubryk affair, the classic female figure of Liberty is
identified with the long-suffering nun, specifically with Sister Barbara.
Wearing the liberty cap, she is imprisoned in a cell. Her arms are shack
led to the table, and her ankle is chained to an iron ball. Forlorn and
weary, her head heavy and held up by an arm, she gazes in a moment
of melancholic self-reflection at her once proud and high hopes, "Lib
erte, Egalite, Fraternite, " now mocking reminders of ideals defeated
and forgotten . The classic female image of liberalism is now a nun in a
84. R. Sommer. Vernunft gegen Pfaffenpolitik und Nasenweisheit: Erstes Referat aus dem
Rubenschen Nachlass (Leipzig: Spielmeyersche Buchhandlung, r 865); Gemalde aus dem Non
nenleben oder enthullte Geheimnisse (Munich, 1870) .
8 5 . Lucifer Illuminator [Daniel von Kaszony] , Pfaffenunwesen, Monchsscandale und Nun
nenspuk: Beitrag zur Naturgeschichte des Katholizismus und der Kloster (Leipzig: Gustav
Schulze, r87r).
86. Smith, German Nationalism, 36.
8 7 . Bernhardt Endrulat, "Die Nonne," in Gegen Rom: Zeitstimmen Deutscher Dichter, ed.
Ernst Scherenberg (Elberfeld: Badeker'sche Buch- und Kunsthandlung, 1 8 74). 2 1-22, quoted
also in Smith. German Nationalism, 36.
8 8 . Kladderadatsch, 8 Aug. r869.
r65
Fig. 16. "Nichts Neues unter der Sonne!" Kladderadatsch, 8 August 1869. In the
illustration "Nothing New under the Sun," liberalism after the Revolution of i848
has become a convent atrocity story. Identifying with nuns imprisoned and sexually
abused, German liberals thematized their own psychological trauma in Bismarck's
authoritarian state during an age of Catholic popular reaction.
dungeon. The Oberin (mother superior) spies unnoticed through a win

dow on her naked body. (The figure is labeled Oberin.) The Oberin is
unmistakably a man with a full beard and mustache and, one can
imagine, about to repeat the brutal crime. She is the monstrosity, the
hermaphrodite or "she-man": in liberal social-sexual ideology the
woman who refuses to assume her natural role and duties as wife and
mother and makes a mockery of male authority. 89 Surreal and trau
matic, this is a remarkably frank and self-conscious depiction of the
liberal nightmare.
R9. Chapter 4 examines the image of "Mannin" (she-men), in religious congregations
threatening to break down the gender-specific distinction between public and private .
r66
The image helps us understand why the convent atrocity story was
such a phantasmagoric obsession for liberals. That Sister Barbara had
been imprisoned in r 848, the year of the revolution, is not a mere coin
cidence but the entire point of her misfortune. The "Krakauer
Schauferballade" (The Cracow ballad of horror) appearing in the lib
eral j ournal Berliner Wespen had already connected the defeat of the
r 848 Revolution with Sister Barbara's imprisonment and brutal treat
ment.
Forty-eight! The storm of freedom
Rages across the world.
In the quiet convent
The nun is secretly put away.
With the Carmelites
Lives one pious, chaste and pure,
But to claim their inheritance
They walled the sister in.
Her ghastly screams and whimpers
Vainly plead for pity.
The mother superior only snickers:
My dear child, you're damned!
Up above in the convent
They live pious and happy.
While year after year the poor girl
Tosses in the putrid straw.
Her hair grows gray and wild,
Her body mere skin and bones.
For twenty-one long years
The girl endures the torture.
The dungeon door is burst open,
Oh, wicked malice!
She stumbles out, a skeleton,
A grisly sight of madness.
Saved at last and secure,
The wrong at last made right.-
r67
Are they humans or are they devils,

Who do this "For the Glory of God"?9
Here freedom and the liberal aspirations of r848 are personified as a
nun-defeated at the moment of the revolution; shackled and alone, all
but dead; then liberated, and recalled to life only after twenty-one
years of imprisonment. The Kladderadatsch illustration of Liberty
imprisoned repeats the identification of the nun with the defeat of the
revolutions in Europe in r 848. Its caption reads: "The nun Barbara
Ubryk has hardly been freed from her dungeon in Cracow, when one is
already on the trail in Paris of another woman who since r 848 has been
held in prison in humiliation. Furthermore other poor nuns in shackles
are said still to be languishing in various other countries. " The refer
ence in the last sentence would, of course, include Germany. German
liberalism was the convent atrocity story. In the liberal imagination,
Sister Barbara was liberalism's body bound and raped. In the Ubryk
affair, as their loathing of nuns and Catholicism expressed itself in a
creative leap of fantastic transference, liberal men thematized their
own deep-set psychological trauma with their defeat in the revolution.
There is another point. The title "Nothing New under the Sun" indi
cates that the liberal identification with the nun was already familiar to
readers of the Kladderadatsch; it had become routine mental work.
Liberals who identified with the nun, therefore, consciously belied the
bravado of liberalism. At the same time that they imagined a manly
fight with the church that would only lead to their triumph, they cre
ated and suffered fits of anxiety and inadequacy that demolished this
confidence . The nightmare scene depicts the liberals' experience of
emasculation as their own hopes are dashed by "obscurantism" and
"medievalism. " Defeated in r 848; then suppressed by reactionary gov
ernment during the r 8 sos; split politically during the constitutional
conflict with Bismarck in r862-66; faced now with the power of the
revived Catholic Church, liberalism was still in r 86g an ideal waiting to
be realized. Similar sentiments of despair had already been expressed
by a cartoon in the Berliner Wespen: the arms of a nutcracker labeled
(Vatican) " Synod" and "Council" are breaking a walnut marked "sci
ence" and "reason . "9r There is a final point. The fantasy of Sister Bar
bara is a marker of the liberal obsession with the relations of power
between men and women. At once raped and emasculating, she depicts
90. "Krakauer Schauerballade." Berliner Wespen. r Aug. r869.
9 1 . Berliner Wespen. 26 Dec. r869.
r68
one way in which fears of sexual inadequacy and fears of women were
deeply implicated in anti-Catholicism, a theme we can note here and
develop in chapter 4
Catholics and the Catholic Church hardly remained silent during the
liberal attack on female convents. Catholic newspapers and spokesmen
claimed that Sister Barbara had long suffered from mental illness and
had been locked away for her own protection. Drawing on the stock of
Catholic prejudices, Catholic papers assumed that the whole affair was
the invention of the "democratic Jewish" and "Freemasonic press . "92
Such responses were predictable and are not in themselves particularly
remarkable. More important is that the Catholic and liberal exchange
during the Ubryk affair was an especially well-developed example of
the way Catholics and liberals locked in a rhetorically dependent rela
tionship, promoting each other's cultural productivity of meaning by
reappropriating vocabulary, symbols, and metaphors. When liberal
papers claimed that the convents and their atrocities were throwbacks
to the Dark Ages, Catholic papers like the Freiburger katholischer
Zeitung condemned the capitalist exploitation of women in the modern
age of industrialized labor.
In huge industrial plants thousands of miserable women and girls
suffer, yearning for salvation. From early morning until late in the
evening they are forced to do hard work, pitiable heathen slaves,
92. References to anti-Jewish prejudice in the Catholic Church and press are found in
Berliner Wespen, I Aug. I 869, and National Zeitung, IO Aug. I 869. References to the slander
of the "Jewish and Freemasonic press" are found in the Catholic Freiburger katholische
Kirchenblatt reproduced in Vossische Zeitung, 19 July r869. For Catholic anti-Judaism and
anti-Semitism in nineteenth-century Germany, see Olaf Blaschke, Katholizismus und Anti
semitismus im deutschen Kaiserreich (Gottingen : Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, I 997); idem,
"Wider die Herrschaft des modern-judischen Geistes: Der Katholizismus zwischen tradi
tionellen Antij udaismus und modernen Antisemitismus," in Deutscher Katholizismus im
Umbruch zur Moderne, ed. Wilfred Loth (Stuttgart: W . Kohlhammer, 1991), 236-63; Rudolf
Lill, '"Die deutschen Katholiken und die Juden in der Zeit von I 850 bis zur Machtubernahme
Hiders," in Kirche und Synagoge: Handbuch zur Geschichte von Christen und Juden. ed. Karl
Heinrich Rengstorf and Siegfried von Kortzfleisch (Stuttgart: Klett, r968-72), 2:377-94; Hel
mut Walser Smith, "Religion and Conflict: Protestants, Catholics, and Anti-Semitism in the
State of Baden in the Era of Wilhelm II,'' Central European History 27 (1994) : 283-314; idem,
"Learned and the Popular Discourse of Anti-Semitism in the Catholic Milieu of the Kaiser
reich," Central European History 27 (r994) : 3r 5-28; Uriel Tal, Christians and Jews in Ger
many: Religion, Politics, and Ideology in the Second Reich, I870-I9f4, trans. Noah Jonathan
Jacobs (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), 85-9 5; for the popular Catholic attitude
toward Freemasons, see Sperber, Popular Catholicism.
r69
and indeed often in an atmosphere equal to the stench of Ubryk's

cell. Rude, obscene talk gushes from the mouths of many supervi
sors and demoralized co-workers; these defenseless women have
to endure even worse . . . . The greed and the hatred for the church
of many money-grubbing industrialists even force the unfortunate
[women] to miss mass on Sundays and holidays. So their bodies
are not only exploited for work; their souls are also condemned to
eternal damnation.93
In the attempt to deflate liberal anticonvent allegations, the Catholic
paper co-opted and pushed inside out the vision of nuns imprisoned in
the convent. It offered Sister Barbara in the dungeon as now the "factory
atrocity story, " young women locked away in the industrial plant, part
of the larger attack on an increasingly materialistic and secular German
nation.94 For liberals and progressives, the Catholic Church's opposition
to female factory labor only served to confirm its image as a brake on the
wheels of progress, a boulder in the path of industrial growth.
Of course, the Catholic hostility to industrial production and Sun
day factory labor was nothing new. Even before the r 848 Revolution,
for example, the Catholic Allgemeine Kirchen-Zeitung in Darmstadt
reported on the Magdeburger Borde, a largely rural area experiencing
industrialization in Saxony. According to the newspaper, the factory
owners in that region were
veritable enemies of the human race, for their God is money, their
temple is the brewery or distillery, or the factory with its incense
like smoke. Their hymn is the roaring of the boilers and the throb
bing of the machine . . . . When they think they can get away with
it, they frequently break the law against Sunday labor, which
indeed cannot be enforced to the letter. When they are forced to
conform to the law, and thus talk of their day of rest, then they
often mean by this simply that they are spending one day
93. Article from Freiburger katholische Zeitung reprinted in Vossische Zeitung, 19 July
1869.
94 The paper also attempted to undercut the liberal attack on the convent by accusing of
hypocrisy liberals who had drawn so much attention to Ubryk at the same time that prison
ers were incarcerated during the revolution in Italy. "Compared to the Italian dungeon,
Ubryk's cell is nothing. European liberalism shows no concern for these victims of the revo
lution who have been buried alive. It only has sympathy for mentally ill Polish people and is
horrified that Ubryk's room was not sufficiently ventilated.'' Quoted in ibid.
1 70
indulging in even more sensual pleasures than usual. Hardly any

one talks of going to church, or communing quietly with himself,
or of composing his mind in a religious sense, and rousing his feel
ings to the contemplation of the Deity, neither on Sunday, nor, it
need hardly be said, on weekdays .95
Here again is the familiar argumentative topos with its mocking rever
sal of images. The industrial mill-the secular house of material wor
ship with its "incenselike smoke," "hymns" offered up with thumping
machinery, and "attendance" required on the Sabbath-is the reap
propriation of the vision of the parish church that wedded God and
community in the tranquil, premodern Heimat.
And then again in the liberal imaginary the church harbored its own
peculiar form of industrial production: convents, female religious,
congregations, and philanthropic institutions for girls all were mere
fronts for factories that secretly churned out religious products for sale
on the market for the profit of the Roman Church.96 What made the
factory production in the "work convents" illegitimate according to
liberals was not the employment of women and girls but their employ
ment in a commercial activity that competed with reputable, biirgerlich
business. Since work convents paid lower wages to their labor, they
were able to undercut market prices and shut down competition.
"Work convents, " liberals claimed, drove wages so low that their
female workers had no other way to survive but to supplement their
meager income with prostitution. Liberals could satisfy themselves
with a conclusion based on the objective application of logic and
deduced from the first principles that governed the free market. In
accordance with the iron laws of wages and prices the convent became
again the whorehouse already familiar in anticlerical discourse.
The "Moabiterklostersturm": The Nation as the Antithesis
of the Monastery
According to the National Zeitung, the fact that the Catholics of Cra
cow, "a not so much pious as bigoted city that once was called Polish
Rome," had attacked the Carmelite convent and the Jesuit residence
9 5 Quoted in Richard J. Evans, "Religion and Society in Modern Germany," Rethinking
German History: Nineteenth- Century Germany and the Origins of the Third Reich (London:
HarperCollins, I987), rzs-s s. quotation at I43
96. See the argument in Stachelstock, Licht und FinsternijJ, 87-8 8 .
I 7I
could only be a significant sign of the times, irrefutable proof of the

extent of monastic depravity. The attacks by angry mobs were under
standable. They were not merely an expression of the bitterness toward
the Carmelite convent but of the long-accumulating hostility toward
religious orders and monastic life in general.97 If in the heart of
Catholic Poland monasteries were intolerable, the paper argued, they
were even more so in Protestant countries like Prussia. Diatribes like
those on the pages of the Gartenlaube for the past decade had prepared
and contributed to an atmosphere of antimonastic fervor.
Amid the hysteria that was both cause and effect of the Ubryk
affair, it was perhaps no surprise that on an early August Sunday in
1 869 an angry crowd gathered before the newly consecrated chapel in
the Moabit district of Berlin. Here four Franciscan friars had estab
lished an orphanage . They were soon joined by two Dominican
monks who came to attend to the spiritual life of workers in the neigh
boring factories. Liberal newspapers claimed, however, that a dozen
Dominican and Franciscan monks had established a "monastery" in
the middle of Berlin's industrial suburb. 9 8 The crowd before the
Dominican chapel prepared themselves for the rituals of Katzenmusik
(cat music), the version in central Europe of charivari, the symbolic
shaming in public of those who deviated from the prescribed codes of
community behavior. Cat music included taunts, howls, and high
pitched screeches; its usual victims were those who had violated the
norms of sexual conduct-prostitutes and women who cheated on
their husbands. Within the cultural logic of symbolic action, cat music
at a "monastery" indicated that monks in the anticlerical imagination
were linked to feminine and deviant sexual behavior. Shorn of all
facial hair at a time when beards, muttonchops, and mustaches were
features of masculine fashion, monks looked emasculated and femi
nine, and, indeed, in antimonastic discourse monks and members of
religious charitable organizations were no better than "begging
women. " Cartoonists in leading journals apparently could hardly help
themselves: wherever there are chubby, bald monks, they invariably
assume dainty, "feminine" postures: half bent, hands clasped, simper
ing, eyes cast upward. At the same time, sensational stories of a delin
quent relationship between a Dominican priest from Dusseldorf and a
young woman and in late summer allegations that another Dominican
had sexually abused two female children contributed to the wildest
97 National Zeitung, 29 July 169.
9. Windell. Catholics and German Unity, 2 3 5 .
1 72
antimonastic fantasies. Monastics now in Moabit represented, there

fore, a sexual taboo, a threat to the basic codes of social conduct. 99
Soon howls and taunts escalated to stone throwing and shattered win
dows . Rioters pelted the monks and splattered their residence with
horse excrement off the street. roo As was the habit with cat music, local
authorities turned a blind eye, condoning a popular rite that was inte
gral to the maintenance of moral order. 101
At the same time, for liberal, middle-class Berliners a Dominican
"monastery" in the middle of a productive industrial suburb of Berlin
was an absurd incongruity. Already in the 1 84os and 1 8 5os the facto
ries of Berlin had begun to move out to Moabit and Wedding. By the
late 1 86os they had become the centers of industrial pride and achieve
ment and were to become under the empire among the most impor
tant sites for heavy production. Now, however, according to the lib
eral National Zeitung, the speech given by a priest at the consecration
of the chapel had been a public scandal, an insult to industrialization.
Moabit had been described by the Catholic clergy as a symbol of
"excess; the chase after material success; modern, steam-driven indus
try which knows and pursues only earthly purpose . " "Was any of
this, " the paper asked, "appropriate and edifying for the ears of the
factory owners present?" The priest giving the speech had spoken of a
'"Goliathian struggle' [Goliathkampj] that should be waged against
this symbolic place and the Zeitgeist, a Goliathian struggle led by a
few praying monks! " The speech was a provocation, claiming that on
this site of industrialization, "here in Moabit, where one is so urgently
needed, " a "monastery" was to be established; "here in Jerusalem, a
99. Ross, Failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf, 19, 26.
wo. Vossische Zeitung, 11 Aug. 1869. Accounts of the rioting at the Dominican residence
include but are not limited to Heinrich Bruck, Geschichte der katholischen Kirche in Deutsch
land im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Munster: F. Kirchheim, 1905), 282-86; Thomas Linden
berger, "Berliner Unordnung zwischen den Revolutionen,'' in Pobelexzesse und Volkstumulte
in Berlin: Zur Sozialgeschichte der StrajJe (I8JD-I980) , e d . Manfred Gail us (Berlin: Verlag
Europiiische Perspektive. 1 984), 49-77. esp . 49-50; Ross. Failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf,
26-27; Bernhard Strasiewski, "Die Dominikaner in Berlin. ein kirchengeschichtlicher
Uberblick," Wichmann Jahrbuch 21-23 (1967-69) : 30-41, esp . 35-36; Windell, Catholics and
German Unity, 235; and Kurt Wernicke, "Der "Moabiter Klostersturm, ' " Berlinische
Monatsschrift 3 ( 1 994) : 3-14.
IOI . For the tradition of cat music in nineteenth-century Germany, see Sperber, Rhineland
Radicals, 86-87. See also Carola Lipp, "Katzenmusiken, Krawalle und 'Weiberrevolution ' :
Frauen im politischen Protest der Revolutionsjahre," in Schimpfende Weiber und patriotische
Jungfrauen: Frauen im Vormiirz und in der Revolution I848f49, ed. Carola Lipp and Beate
Bechtold-Comforty (Moos and Baden-Baden: Elster. 1986), 1 1 2-30.
1 73
new Rome will arise ! " 10 2 An editorial in the Vossische Zeitung com
plained that the establishment of a monastic contemplative order
for monks devoted not to work but solely to prayer-struck a blow
against the achievements of labor and industry in Moabit.
In Moabit, the seat of thriving commercial activity, in what was
one of the most inhospitable sand wastes now belonging to the
most renowned representatives of industry, which produces pros
perity and wealth for many thousands, where under the direction
of philanthropic factory owners schools, public institutions, and
savings associations thrive, in short, where work shows its most
beautiful and ethical side, . . . this mere prayer industry [ Gebetsin
dustrie] is now setting up a place for canting the rosary and for
contemplating the five miracles of Christ. 103
The Berliner Wespen picked up the characterization of the
monastery as a Gebetsindustrie, producing only useless prayer with
mindless puppets of the church. In a cartoon two monks are rigged to
a machine that hoists them into various positions for prayer. The cap
tion reads, "the new machine-prayer plant in Moabit has stirred up
great interest everywhere . But it should be closed again . " 1 04 In an age
demanding productive labor and efficiency, the monasteries were the
models of waste. The notion that useful work was antithetical to the
monastery was repeated in the Vossische Zeitung. The paper reported
that in a speech delivered at an assembly in Vienna, a speech to which,
according to the paper, Berliners too should pay close attention, the
goal of the state was moral and economic. "The latter is based on
work; but monasteries are dedicated to futile contemplation . " 10 5 Liber
als constantly worried that the church might undermine an ethic of
work with useless religious rituals. At the height of the Ubryk affair the
Vossische Zeitung reported the view that the Jesuits sow devotion and
102. The speech was reprinted in the National Zeitung, 6 Aug. r869. See the article "Eine
seltsame Kirchenweihe." National Zeitung, 8 Aug. r869; Vossische Zeitung, 8 Aug. r869.
103. Vossische Zeitung, 8 Aug. r869. According to the article Berlin had no less than six
Roman Catholic orders and congregations; in Prussia, despite their having once been abol
ished, 700 monasteries with 6,ooo members had spread like a "pestilence ." Meanwhile the
number of Jesuits in Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands had doubled
under Pope Pius IX and according to the article had risen during the same time from 640 to
2.190. "The rest of the world has the remaining 6-400. much too many."
ro4. Berliner Wespen, 22 Aug. r869.
105. Vossische Zeitung, 12 Aug. r869.
1 74
destroy production: wherever there have been Jesuits, "people have

been drawn into a daily routine of devotion instead of reserving obser
vance to the day of rest as prescribed by religion. The people have
descended into misery and laziness, frittering away the time for labor
with praying in the church. "r o6
The monastic order, according to the liberal press, was no more than
"a brotherhood of beggars . " Producing nothing of value themselves,
monastics only lived off the labor of others. In the industrial suburb of
Berlin, according to the Kladderadatsch, they could be nowhere more
inappropriate, nowhere more an outrage : in Moabit "where the flames
of work glow, I there the beggar is thriving again! "r o 7 Not just a drain
on the resources of society, the monastic life, according to an article
that ran in the Vossische Zeitung, provided an embarrassing model for
a destitute population that might otherwise through rehabilitation
eventually contribute to the productive labor force. "We have enough
beggars, and it would certainly not contribute to their decrease if the
people . . . see that [monks] go begging entirely undisturbed from house
to house, while the poor father of a family, exhausting himself for a lit
tle piece of bread for his starving children, is cleared out and punished
by the wardens of the law." ro8 The example of monks begging only
sanctioned similar behavior among the poor, undermining the ethic of
labor.
A "monastery" in Moabit for the Berlin public was not only an
affront to industrialization and productive work. After a month of
grisly articles about Sister Barbara, convent atrocity cases, and stories
about "lascivious" monks and "captive" nuns, the monastery had also
become a site for prurient fantasy. The press continued to offer the
public stories of monks and nuns kissing and groping each other while
strolling among Moabit's factories and meeting at night in monastic
tunnels. rog Berliners streamed to the site hoping to catch glimpses of
"the nuns, " "underground passages," and other "monastic secrets . " n o
Curious crowds of several hundred pressed up to the gates of the
chapel in Moabit and taunted the monks with j okes and questions.
ro6. Vossische Zeitung, 7 Aug. r869.
ro7. See the "Bettelbriiderlied," Kladderadatsch, rs Aug. r869. See also Vossische Zeitung,
1 7 Aug. r869, for monks as beggars.
roll. Vossische Zeitung, 27 Aug. r869.
109. Kladderadatsch, 15 Aug. r869. In a cartoon in Kladderadatsch captioned "Pious Archi
tecture" a nun and monk meet secretly in an underground tunnel between the monastery and
the convent. Kladderadatsch, 22 Aug. r869.
no. Jiirgensmeier, Katholische Kirche, 126.
1 75
One asked if too much praying with the rosary caused calluses on the
hands. m On Sundays the site was the destination for a family outing.
Going to a "monastery" in Moabit was, as the Kladderadatsch self
mocked, not just for the "riffraff. " It was an occasion worth dressing
for.
Hurrah! We're there too .
We have to g o there!
The police are indulgent,
Letting us view the thing from outside,
free but without entry!
Come, Mother, dress yourself up,
The new hat with roses.
Augusta, take the red shawl;
Little Karl, you're off to the scandal!
Quick, put on your new pants!"2
The Protestant Church leadership meanwhile believed that Domini
can and Franciscan monks in the heart of the predominantly Protes
tant capital of Prussia were an unacceptable provocation. One Protes
tant pastor recommended that Berliners assemble in thousands in
protest before the "monastery." Together they would sing "the old
Protestant fight song," "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." That, he
believed, would be a memorable sight, "truly Evangelical and Protes
tant . " " 3 The monastery provided an attraction as a historical relic, a
vestige from a distant age that both enticed and strained the bourgeois
modern imagination. According to the Vossische Zeitung, "The busy
Burger and artisan, indeed, even the more educated man and specialist
of the present age, can only with great strain transplant himself back
into the dead days of the Middle Ages. " An age so unlike the present,
the paper explained, "it was without public schools, the Enlighten
ment, and the dissemination of morals. " Monks had been the sad
examples of that time. While one diligently studied in his cell, accord
ing to the paper, hundreds of others indulged their lavish tastes and
carnal desires. From within the walls of the monastery "only the
u r . Vossische Zeitung, 18 Aug. 1869. For the curiosity of the crowds, see Vossische
Zeitung, 19 Aug. 1 869; and National Zeitung, 17 Aug. 1869.
I I 2 . "'Neuester Schwindel." Kladderadatsch, 22 Aug. 1969.
II3. Quotations in Kissling. Geschichte des Kulturkampfes 1 :330.
1 76
screams of women and children, only the howl of dogs, only cursing
and the sound of hard drinking" could be heard. n4 The monastery was
the vision of sloth and promiscuity, a medieval anachronism in the age
of industry and reason.
Associations like these only fueled Berlin's antimonastic frenzy.
According to a cartoon in the Berliner Wespen, all of Berlin would
soon be in danger of being overrun by religious orders. No story or car
toon seemed too outlandish to run in the press: "A Future Scene from
Berlin" depicts two monks raping a woman in front of the factories in
Moabit. At the same time, " Sisters of the Good Heart" are too busy
whoring on the street to take any notice. A heretic is burned at the
stake in an auto-da-fe while a monk with a torch and a dagger is cllarg
ing into "Jew Street. " Meanwhile the courthouse has been taken over
by the "Inquisition," and the Ministry of Education crumbles to the
ground in neglect.ns It was not long thereafter that, as in the case of the
Berliner Wespen, monks were fully dehumanized, transformed into
reptiles, snakes, crabs, bats, life-destroying parasitic worms, and ter
minal diseases. Monks were trichina, burrowing into healthy flesh,
consuming the body from the inside out. They were a cancer from
which one never recovered. nG Not only dehumanizing, such nightmar
ish visions also exposed, despite outward bravado, the deep-seated
doubt among liberals about their ability to rid themselves of the monks
and monasteries infesting the German social body.
In mid-August after a barrage of antimonastic images-monks as
indigents uselessly reciting the rosary, as lazy beggars siphoning off
social resources and tumbling nuns, as mindless puppets of the church,
or as various kinds of vermin-a crowd again gathered before the
Dominican chapel. As a character in Kladderadatsch complained with
a measure of facile irony, Berliners had become by now fully saturated
with such visions: "I've had it up to my neck with nuns; monks fill me
with disgust. Gondolizing through half of Germany during the last
four weeks-everywhere the same story! Monastic tales, walled-in
skeletons, castrated Abelards, mad Heloises. " II 7 The mob formed in
the evening, chanting insults and hurling stones and excrement. Night
fall provided the cover for the frontal attack. The mob, armed with
IJ4.
115.
116.
IR69.
II7.
Vossische Zeitung, I S Aug. I869.

Berliner Wespen, 15 Aug. rR69.
Berliner Wespen, 29 Aug. rR69. For monastics as vermin see Berliner Wespen, 1 2 Sept.
Kladderadatsch, I S Aug. I869.
177
crowbars, axes, and clubs, ripped down the fence, stormed into the
courtyard, and smashed into the chapel. Rioters took charge of a
transport loaded with stones, unleashed a hailstorm, destroyed the
windows, and brought down the steeples. The monks fled for their
lives, and the mob continued its work until two o'clock in the morning.
The following evening authorities did not wait for several hundred
men, women, and children to finish the job. Eighty mounted policemen
with military reinforcements charged the rioters with drawn sabers.
The streets were cleared and order restored in Moabit. Police patrolled
the neighborhood. Thirty police officers (later reduced to five) were
stationed in the courtyard of the chapel and remained there for eleven
weeks at public expense to prevent further disorder. As an after
thought, the police president explained that there had been an unfor
tunate misapprehension: this was not a monastery in the strict sense of
the word but a chapel and orphanage. n R
Meanwhile, fears spread that the "monastery" in Moabit only sig
naled the start of more and more monasteries in Berlin and through
out Germany. According to the Vossische Zeitung, monks in Austria
would think that in Prussia, where the Protestants were "extraordi
narily tolerant, " monks lived undisturbed and that Prussia would
therefore be ideal for the spreading of ultramontane propaganda. "If
it ever comes to this, it will be a great shame for our state . " " 9 The
Kladderadatsch ran a cartoon, "A Country Outing from Austria, "
depicting monks arriving in Moabit. A monk and a nun are kissing
but still manage to trundle a load of bricks with a mortar. They are on
their way to wall her in. Other monks are boozing themselves into a
stupor and hauling an assortment of tools for inquisitional torture . 120
The journal explained that the Dominicans and Franciscans had
merely opened the gates to other horrors: the Capuchins, Carthusians,
and Carmelite nuns were already planning to settle in the city. They
were expected to be j oined by Jesuits, Benedictines, Augustinians, and
Cistercians, along with "fakirs" and "dervishes. " 121 The National
Zeitung blamed the invasion on the unwillingness of the Prussian gov
ernment to take the steps needed to dam the flood. While in 1 8 5 5 the
number of monasteries in Prussia had been 69, the number in 1 864
reached 243; in 1 8 5 5 there had been 976 monks and nuns, but now in
r r 8 . Vossische Zeitung, r 8 Aug. 1 869, 19 Aug . 1 8 6 9 . See also Ross, Failure of Bismarck's
Kulturkampf 26-27.
u9. Vossische Zeitung, 17 Aug. r869.
120. Kladderadatsch, 15 Aug. r869.
121. Kladderadatsch, 22 Aug. r869.
1 78
1 864 there were 5,259. In 1 866 the number of monasteries had jumped
to 48 1 . The paper argued that the increasing number of male and
female monastic institutions in Prussia was dangerous to the state
(staatsgefiihrlich) ; the best defense was to strengthen the resolve of
"free men and the Biirgertum. " 122 Monasteries and the church, the
paper demanded, must be countered with the manly virtues of
Enlightenment liberal idealism: "If monks spread darkness and
idiocy; spread light and knowledge! If the church preaches passivity
and subjection; preach independence, manliness, freedom ! " 123 The
Vossische Zeitung preferred a more direct solution. Although there
was nowhere a more tolerant people than those of Berlin, the paper
explained, the slap delivered by the speech at the consecration of the
chapel in Moabit must be met with a "balled fist. "124
In the weeks following the "Moabiterklostersturm," as the incident
became known, liberal and progressive community leaders tapped into
and encouraged popular, street-level antimonasticism. They organized a
series of public rallies and assemblies in order to obtain signatures for
petitions demanding the abolition of monastic orders in Prussia. '25 At one
such meeting, a speaker warned that the significance of the establishment
of a monastery in Moabit should not be underestimated. He encouraged
everyone to remember the efforts of the monks to take over the education
of children. He was referring to an article in the Berliner Wespen that had
argued that the "fat, indulgent monks," "the asses P. Francisco and P.
Domino," intended with the assistance of the "Gray Sisters" to take over
education in Moabit. According to the speaker, girls in particular were in
danger, and he drew on the story of Sister Barbara in Cracow:
The Gray Sisters will drill you well.
They'll be mothers to you in the future.
They'll flagellate themselves, pray, and then wall you in.126
The speaker pointed out that the monks had above all played on the
hearts of women, manipulating them emotionally-and not without
dire consequences. 127 Nuns who took over the position of the mother
122. National Zeitung, 25 Aug. r869.
123. National Zeitung, 6 Sept. 1 869.
124. Vossische Zeitung, 6 Sept. 1869.
125. Kissling, Geschichte des Kulturkampfes 1 : 330; Bruck, Geschichte der katholischen
Kirche, 283.
126. Berliner Wespen, 29 Aug. 1869.
127. Vossische Zeitung, 18 Aug. 1869.
1 79
and then abused her children and monks who preyed upon women
undermined the authority of the father and broke apart the family. Sim
ilar antimonastic assemblies and petition drives were organized in other
cities as well. At a rally of over five thousand in Dresden, for example,
a resolution was passed declaring that "monastic life, because it is an
obsolete and dangerously hierarchical institution, runs in every respect
directly counter to the humane demands of our time. " The resolution
added, "medieval monasticism not only did not contribute to the indi
vidual's natural and reasonable growth . . . , it also decisively hindered
it. "128 Across Germany, wherever antimonastic assemblies were held,
Catholics tried their best to disrupt the proceedings. In Berlin, the pub
lic assemblies sponsored by Progressives became theaters of political
combat. Catholics invented tactics that were later employed effectively
against the rallies of political opponents during the Kulturkampf and
then again throughout the rest of the century. Led by Missionsvikar
Eduard Muller, Catholics packed the meetings, disrupted them with
hisses and catcalls, and drowned out speakers with hymns. Where
Catholics comprised the majority, they demanded the floor, called for a
"podium election," installed their own chairman, and took charge of
the meeting. At other antimonastic public assemblies where such tactics
could not prevail, Catholics simply incited riots in order to force gen
darmes to intervene and close down the meetings. 129
Despite the impressive organization and effectiveness of the
Catholic counterattack, liberal and progressive associations succeeded
in drawing up twelve antimonastic petitions, eleven in Berlin and one
in Elbing, to be sent to the Prussian parliament. 13 In the fall of r 86g
these petitions recorded a new level of antimonastic hysteria at the
same time that they also registered the demands for liberal modernity
in Germany. Four separate petitions sponsored by the bookbinder
Robert Krebs; Gustav GroBmann; Rohr, May, and associates; and
F. RomsHidt demanded the abolition of all monasteries, ecclesiastical
seminaries, and religious charitable institutions, Catholic and Protes
tant, without hesitation, as of r January r87o and then "for all eter
nity." The petitions asked that no one ever again be allowed to assume
the probationary position of a novitiate in preparation for monastic
life. The petitions also recommended that monastic property and
128. National Zeitung, 22 Sept. r869.
129. For tactics developed by Catholics to disrupt the meetings of political opponents, see
Anderson, Practicing Democracy, 298-305.
130. The petitions are summarized and quoted in SBHA, Anlagen 2, 990-I007 .
r8o
assets be appropriated by the state. Finally, the petitioners called for

the revocation of the Prussian state's concordat with the papacy, the
Circumscriptions Bull of 1 8 2 1 . One petition, representing a public
assembly of citizens in Berlin, complained to Parliament that monas
teries and nunneries had been for hundreds of years "hotbeds of super
stition, sloth, and fornication" among the German people. Yet monas
teries continued to exist despite the edict of 30 October 1810 prohibiting
monastic orders. Despite "this century of freedom and work" they
even continued to spread right under the eyes of the Kultusminis
terium. r3r Petitioners asserted that it was a matter of honor for all
"thinking men" to work for the abolition of monasteries and the expul
sion of the Jesuits by all legal means, and they expected the Prussian
national deputies to do their duty.
Another set of petitions sponsored by Dr. Holthoff and associates,
Ferdinand Benary and associates, master carpenter Riithnick, Dr.
Kache and associates, Schroder and associates, and Raaz and associ
ates called upon the deputies to uphold the law according to the edict
of 30 October 1810 and to forbid the establishment of any more monas
teries, "not only those that are called by that name but also those that
try to hide what they really are behind the names hospital, orphanage,
etc." '32 The petition sponsored by Riithnick asked Parliament to deter
mine the legal status of monasteries within the monarchy. The petition
insisted that monasteries were not independent associations but rather
religious corporations not sanctioned by the edict of 30 October 1 8 10.
If Parliament determined that religious orders were not legally sanc
tioned according to the edict, then the "monastery" in Moabit should
be closed. The petition from Elbing sponsored by Jachmann and asso
ciates argued that monasteries disturbed religious peace and unity.
Further, "monasticism because of its religious views [Anschauungen]
belongs to a bygone age no longer understandable to us. Monastic
vows and monastic life are in complete contradiction with the spirit of
our time, with the spirit of freedom and industriousness [Arbeit
samkeit] . The contemporary goal of the monasteries is to spread ultra
montanism and papal authority. "133 As these petitions indicate,
monasteries and monastic life provided affirmation of the tenets of
modern identity. In these petitions as in the antimonastic campaign of
the liberal press throughout Germany, the nation-social, economic,
1 3 1 . Ibid., 990-9 1 .
132. Ibid.
1 3 3 . Ibid. 991.
r8r
and moral-was the antithesis of the monastery. Again the contrast

may have been coarse, but antimonasticism was a powerful and com
prehensive survey of the principles of bourgeois respectability and
national character. With the monastery as the reference, a whole range
of binary oppositions-sloth/industry, obsolescence/progress, fanati
cism/reason, celibacy/family, prurience/propriety, subservience/free
dom, medieval/modern-completed a vision of illegitimate/legitimate
social and cultural order.
In the fall, these petitions were duly received by the Prussian parlia
ment and directed in the regular manner to the Committee for Peti
tions. The situation was politically explosive. Catholic deputies in the
Prussian parliament as well as the Catholic population in general
feared the petitions would lead to a state crackdown on the indepen
dence of the church comparable to the "church reforms" in Baden. Bis
marck himself appears not to have interfered in the committee's delib
erations, though in r869 he no doubt preferred to avoid a maj or
confrontation in Parliament that would only further strain the cause of
national unification. '34 The chair of the commission, Constanz von
Saucken-Julienfelde, representing an electoral district in Gumbinnen,
was a Progressive. The commission's vice chair and senior member,
Professor Rudolf von Gneist, representing an election district in Dus
seldorf, was a National Liberal. Gneist's attitude toward the whole
affair and the petitions even before the committee received them was a
foregone conclusion: among Catholics, he had become known as
"Klosterstiirmer-Gneist. " A rabid anti-Catholic, he was later as a
prominent Kulturkampfer called by Adalbert Falk to the Kultusminis
terium and an important author of antichurch legislation. The com
mittee was composed of twelve from liberal parties and seven from
conservative parties. All deputies sitting on the committee were Protes
tant with the exception of Aloys Goeddertz, a Catholic and a member
of the left center Freie Vereinigung, representing an election district in
Cologne. As the most junior and least influential, he appears at the
bottom of the list of deputy members of the committee.
The committee completed its work on I7 December r 86g. Its seven
teen-page double-column report offers insight into the attitude of the
liberal leadership toward the monasteries and suggests its answer to the
larger Catholic problem on the eve of the unification of Germany.
Given the committee's predominant political and religious composi
tion, the sentiments it expressed collectively sympathizing with the
I34 Windell. Catholics and German Unity, 236-37.
r82
petitions and condemning monasticism were no surprise. r35 The com

mittee noted that antimonastic antipathy was principally directed not
at religious philanthropic organizations but at mendicant monks and
Jesuits. "The Franciscans and the Dominicans represent in any age
the 'Freikorps of the papal army,' the Jesuits a 'Bodyguard . ' " Even
so, the committee based on a systematic account of state law even
handedly refuted the petitions' arguments that the religious orders
were not legally sanctioned. The committee confirmed current legisla
tion, including the fundamental statute of the Catholic Church of r82r
and the constitution of r 8 so, that guaranteed the autonomy of
Catholic religious orders in the monarchy. The report concluded that
the allegation that a Franciscan and Dominican monastery had been
established in Berlin was false. The monks had in fact established an
orphanage for young boys. At the same time, the committee's recom
mendations to Parliament included the introduction of legislation
proscribing the establishment of monasteries, religious orphanages,
hospitals, and educational institutions in the future. Furthermore, the
committee recognized "that in many ways legal regulation of the
entire field of religious societies equally for all provinces seems desir
able . " 136 It concluded, therefore, that the government should secure
the enactment of such legislation by the North German Confedera
tion while taking measures immediately to eliminate inconsistencies in
existing legislation.
On 8 February r 8 7o, when the committee's report was placed on the
agenda for debate in the Prussian parliament, the state's parliamentary
spokesman, Count Bethusy-Huc, tried to table the report. He made an
ardent plea that Parliament not throw the nation into endless religious
turmoil. Nevertheless, on 9 February, the showdown Bismarck hoped
to avoid on the floor of Parliament took place when Catholic deputies
demanded that the report be addressed. Catholic deputies insisted that
the report undermined the basic principles of the Prussian constitution
that guaranteed the independence of the church. Hermann von
Mallinckrodt, prominent leader of the Catholic deputies in Parliament,
submitted a motion that the issue be placed at the top of the agenda for
the session of the following day. He shouted that the report was a
gauntlet thrown down at the feet of all Catholics and "we do not intend
I 3 5 For party and confessional affiliations of the Commission members see Schwarz,
MdR Biographisches Handbuch.
r36. SBHA, Anlagen 2, roo7.
r83
to let it lie there . " '37 Ludwig Windthorst rose and added, "In my long
parliamentary life no document has ever been introduced that con
tained more provocative insults toward a large segment of the mem
bership of the House and toward a large segment of the population of
this country." A noisy demonstration immediately erupted on the
floor. When order was restored and Windthorst could again command
attention, he once more took up Mallinckrodt's warning: "We cannot
permit the gauntlet that has been thrown at our feet to lie without
regard."'38 Again Parliament broke into protests. After order was
finally restored by the chair, Mallinckrodt's motion went down in
defeat in a standing vote.
During the next few days, Catholic deputies backed off and then
dropped the debate on the committee's report on the petitions relating
to the Moabiterklostersturm. Much more, however, was made of the
episode outside Parliament in the German Catholic political public.
The antimonastic rioting in Berlin and its aftermath were among the
principal reasons Catholic politicians and the religious leaders con
cluded that an organized political party was needed to protect Catholic
interests . Within the next few months the task of reconstructing the
Center Party in Prussia was taken up by Peter Reichensperger, Her
mann von Mallinckrodt, Ludwig Windthorst, and others . l39 Mean
while, in its report the Committee on Petitions had also indicated a
measure of its own displeasure with the unseemly rioting against the
monks and the destruction of property within Berlin, the seat of law
and order in Prussia. The report in its very first sentence reproached
the citizens of the city for their "uncivil excesses" associated with the
opening of a Dominican "monastery" on 4 August 1869. qo After the
two decades of antimonastic hysteria that included the Ubryk affair
and culminated in the violence of the Moabiterklostersturm, liberal
notables recognized that they had to choose their anticlerical partners
with a degree of circumspection. Dealing with the spread of convents
and monasteries in Prussia-like the larger problem of Catholicism
could not be left as a matter for renegade mobs under the cover of
night. Indeed, civil courts ordered the Berlin municipal authorities to
compensate the Catholic Church the sum of 425 thalers for failing to
137.
I38.
139.
qo.
SBHA, 9 Feb . 1 8 70, 2039-40.

Ibid ., 2040-4!.
Windell, Catholics and German Unity, 239.
SBHA, Anlagen 2, 1007.
r 84
sufficiently provide for the safety of the monks and their property. r4r
The campaign against the church had to be orderly, led by elites, and
prosecuted by appropriate legislation with the judicious application of
state force. It was therefore the Moabiterklostersturm that provided
the experience that served as the foundation for the liberals' partner
ship with the authoritarian power of the Bismarckian state in a Kul
turkampf against Catholicism and the Catholic Church.
I4I . Ross. Failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf, 27.
CHAPTER 4
The Women's Question, Anti

Catholicism, and the Kulturkampf
Historians have viewed the Kulturkampf of the 1 8 70s not simply as an

attempt to preserve the secular state from the reach of the Roman
Catholic Church but alternately as a defensive campaign against the
threat of political Catholicism, an attempt to rebuild the German
nation after unification according to the precepts of high-cultural
Protestantism, or a battle between the "modern" outlook of liberal
nationalists and "backward" Catholics. 1 On the one hand, the Kul
turkampf was a complex and broad enough campaign against the
church to include all of these dimensions. On the other hand, these per
spectives and even the composite picture they together provide exhaust
neither the points of view nor the kinds of analyses needed to under
stand the significance of liberal anti-Catholicism in general and the ori
gins of the Kulturkampf in particular. Several significant and inter
linked issues and developments current in German society, culture,
and politics in the decades after 1848 together gave the Kulturkampf its
peculiar meaning and furor. These not only included the emergence of
mass militant Catholicism, confessional rivalry, social and class ten
sions, and the political participation available to men with the new
democratic franchise. They also included the liberal-bourgeois ideol
ogy of public and private, the revival of the women's movement, and
the increasingly prominent and conspicuous role of women in the
Catholic Church and Catholic life, all issues that have not received
sufficient attention in the history of the Kulturkampf.
r . For these three arguments, see, first, Anderson, 'The Kulturkampf'; idem, Practicing
Democracy; idem, Windthorst; second, Smith, German Nationalism; and finally, Blackbourn,
Marpingen; idem, "Progress and Piety.''
r85
r86
Though these concurrent issues at first glance might seem unrelated,

they were, in fact, so tightly interwoven in the attitude of middle-class
liberals toward Catholics and Catholicism that they often became
indistinguishable. The challenge is to unravel the close-knit themes and
developments analytically, to explore the significance of the compo
nent strands, and then to reassemble the strands in order to appreciate
the meaning and origin of the Kulturkampf in their complexity. This
kind of analysis reveals that for German liberals, both progressives and
nationalists, two new challenges to the bourgeois social, political, and
sexual status quo-the revival of popular Catholicism during the 18 5os
and 186os and the resurgence of the women's movement in the mid
I 86os-were inextricably intertwined. The Catholic Church, per
sonified as a woman, and Catholics, as they participated in the mis
sions and practiced their faith in public, undermined the separate
spheres of public and private, one reserved, according to liberal social
and sexual ideology, for women in the life of the family and the other
reserved for men in the world of social and political citizenship. In the
estimation of liberal men, the problem of Catholicism was at the same
time the problem of women in public. It followed that the Kul
turkampf, the liberal attempt with the sponsorship of the state to solve
the Catholic problem, was deeply enmeshed in the Frauenfrage, the
women's question, that hotly debated issue involving the position of
women in society and their access to work, public life, and ultimately
politics. Roman Catholics, because they seemed irrational, dependent,
and untrustworthy, were as unacceptable in the liberal vision of the
modern nation as women, for the same reasons, were in the public
sphere . Deeply inscribed in anti-Catholicism was, therefore, the sexism
typical of the liberal middle class. To phrase it another way, for liberal
Kulturkampfer the issue with Roman Catholicism was never simply
religious . It was biological, a matter of sex type, and the most ardent
and dedicated among them revealed the strain of gynephobia and
misogyny embedded in the anti-Catholic campaign.
In this analysis the Kulturkampf ultimately emerges as a
Geschlechterkampf, a contest between men and women, for the public
sphere during a period undergoing profound social and political trans
formation. Concentrating new light on the Kulturkampf from this
angle permits a fresh evaluation of the origins of liberal anti-Catholi
cism in the period following the 1848 Revolution and of the meaning of
the anti-Catholic campaign in the 1 8 7os. It makes clear why liberals
across the spectrum from left to right banded together with such dedi
cation and fury with the incessant invocation of masculine bravado
The Women 's Question, Anti- Catholicism, and Kulturkampf
r87
against the Catholic Church as a threat to middle-class social, political,

and sexual hegemony. The confluence of several significant develop
ments, including Catholic popular and political resurgence, the
reemergence of the women's movement and the women's question, the
democratic franchise and middle-class fears of mass culture, and finally
German unification and with it fears of French revanchism, explains
the timing of the Kulturkampf in the first decade of the new empire.
This chapter is, therefore, the center and pivot point of our evaluation
of liberal anti-Catholicism in the nineteenth century.
The Reemergence of the Women's Movement
Not only the popular Catholic revival but also the German women's
movement had its origin in the decade of ideological, religious, and
political fervor that culminated in the Revolution of 1848. The early
German women's rights movement developed in the hundreds of dis
senting separatist religious movements that emerged in both Catholic
and Protestant congregations during the prerevolutionary period. The
most successful of these new congregations was the movement first
organized in 1 845 under the leadership of an excommunicated priest,
Johannes Ronge. Ronge and those who followed him called themselves
Deutschkatholiken, German Catholics, as distinct from Roman
Catholics. Initially, German Catholics mobilized to protest the popu
lar pilgrimages encouraged by the papacy and conservative Catholic
leaders in 1844 to the Holy Shroud at Trier. A half million pilgrims
made the journey within the space of seven weeks to see the garment
purportedly worn by Jesus on the cross, making this the largest of all
similarly organized religious displays of the first half of the nineteenth
century. This important watershed in the awakening of Catholic piety
was regarded by German Catholics as a grotesque spectacle of humbug
and stupidity. They coupled their disgust toward the Trier pilgrimages
with a general resentment for the authoritarianism, ultramontanism,
and anti-Enlightenment position of the Roman Catholic Church. In
response German Catholics turned toward rationalism and Enlighten
ment principles and used them specifically to oppose clerical celibacy,
the Latin mass, and auricular confession. Through their criticism of
Roman Catholicism ran a current of Vormarz German patriotism.
German Catholics were nationalist liberals, calling for the subordina
tion of the Catholic Church to a unified and liberal German state .
Soon Protestants too joined the dissenting German Catholics
because they were drawn by the energy of the movement and because
r88
they had become alienated from an Evangelical Church they believed

had become too remote, conservative, and hierarchical. Together
Catholic and Protestant dissenters broke off from the established
churches and founded their own democratically run congregations.
They devoted themselves to individual freedom of belief, humanist
Christianity, confessional reconciliation, and the separation of church
and state. The German Catholic movement grew most quickly in
regions where Catholics were the minority in a mixed population or
where the Roman Catholic Church failed to receive the support of sec
ular authorities . Most of the early congregations were started in Sax
ony, but eventually more than half the congregations were located in
Prussia. The largest German Catholic congregation was in Breslau in
Prussia, where one thousand people signed a membership declaration
of separation in early r845 and over eight thousand j oined the congre
gation by r847. By contrast, there were only seven German-Catholic
congregations in Catholic Baden by r847. By r 848 the total member
ship in the German Catholic movement had grown to between one
hundred thousand and one hundred fifty thousand, and it was rapidly
becoming the largest protest movement of any sort in prerevolutionary
Germany. 2 Everywhere dissenters enjoyed the support of many liberals
who saw the dissenting movement as an opportunity to reopen politi
cal and social issues and to press forward demands for reform.
One study of the religious politics of gender in prerevolutionary
Baden has argued that the feminism of the German-Catholic dissenters
was not as radical as other historians have believed. Here the dissent
ing movement's call for women's emancipation was compromised by
the politics of the private sphere and male sexual rights . In these
conflicts, the dissenter's liberal male leadership continued to uphold
the importance of marital union, the family, and the essential differ
ences between men and women .3 This should hardly come as a surprise
given the prevailing social and cultural ideology of the Restoration and
Vormarz. Even so, this study agrees with other work on the dissenting
congregations that in several respects German Catholics experimented
2. Gould, Origins of Liberal Dominance, 74-75; Herzog, Intimacy and Exclusion, 3-4,
59-60, 85-87. 1o8-1o.
3 Herzog, Intimacy and Exclusion. Compare to Sylvia Paletschek, Frauen und Dissens:
Frauen im Deutschkatholizismus und in denfreien Gemeinden, 1842-1852 (Gi5ttingen: Vanden
hoeck und Ruprecht, 1990); and Catherine M. Prelinger. Charity, Challenge, and Change:
Religious Dimensions of the Mid-Nineteenth Century Women 's Movement in Germany (New
York: Greenwood. 1987).
r89
with egalitarianism.4 In doing so, they made important contributions

to the origins of the first organized women's movement in Germany.
For example, dissenting congregations included full suffrage rights for
women in congregational meetings, promoted the social emancipation
of women, and demanded equal treatment of women before the law.
Women in the German Catholic congregations also entered into pub
lic positions of prominence in fund-raising and philanthropy. The
leadership exercised by German Catholic women was otherwise
unheard of in mid-nineteenth-century German society. Louise Otto
(later Otto-Peters), the most celebrated women's rights activist of nine
teenth-century Germany and herself a member of a German Catholic
congregation, believed that the prominence of women in the dissident
movement constituted an invasion of the public of unprecedented
importance for the emancipation of German women. In Hamburg, for
example, German Catholic women organized the Hamburger
Hochschule fiir das weibliche Geschlecht, a college that offered a secu
lar higher education for women from all social classes and a bold,
unique institution in the context of contemporary Germany.
During the r 84os the women's movement centered in the dissenting
congregations shared in the enthusiasm for political and social eman
cipation that created the Revolution of r848. The politicization of Ger
man society that came with the revolution only furthered the radical
ization of women in the congregations. Many in fact now joined the
demand for women's emancipation with the revolution's demands for
political change and German unification. At the height of the revolu
tion, new women's organizations were founded in many cities, dedi
cated not simply to charitable work but rather now to women's social,
educational, and political rights, including the right to vote. After the
defeat of the revolution and under the heel of the conservative reac
tion, however, the women's movement in Germany abruptly collapsed
due to repression and censorship . The new Law of Association and
Assembly of r8so in Prussia forbade the participation of women in any
meetings sponsored by political organizations or parties. Though in
Baden, Hesse, Wiirttemberg, the free Hansa city-states, and some of
the smaller polities, association laws were not as restrictive, in other
states such as Bavaria and Saxony the prohibitions against women at
political clubs and assemblies at this time were even more severe.
Throughout Germany, feminist newspapers folded and women's orga4. Paletschek. Frauen und Dissens; Prelinger, Charity, Challenge, and Change.
1 90
nizations shut down, and in Hamburg the Hochschule fiir das weib
liche Geschlecht closed its doors.
Throughout the reactionary r8 sos and into the early r86os the orga
nized women's movement was all but forgotten. It was not until the
mid-r 86os, during the breathing space offered by the New Era and the
renewal of liberal pressures for political reform during the constitu
tional crisis with Bismarck, that the women's movement reemerged at
the national level. New organizations took up and promoted demands
specifically for middle-class women's rights to education and employ
ment. The immediate impetus was the need to establish access to
appropriate vocational and professional opportunities for the rising
number of single bourgeois women who either could not be supported
by their families or insisted now on assuming greater responsibility for
themselves. In r865 the Allgemeine Deutscher Frauenverein (ADF) or
General German Women's Association was founded in Leipzig, orga
nized and led by women who had been activists during the revolution,
chief among them Louise Otto, who became the association's presi
dent. During its first years the membership of the ADF grew dramati
cally, and by the mid-r87os it reached eleven thousand. During the
r87os and r 8 8os and into the r 8gos the ADF was the most important
organization of the German women's movement. Soon after the
founding of the ADF, the Verein zur Forderung der Erwerbsfiihigkeit
des weiblichen Geschlechts or the Association for the Advancement of
the Employment Skills of the Female Sex was established in Berlin.
For the sake of convenience it was called the Lette Association after its
founder and chairman, Wilhelm Adolf Lette, a national liberal, one
time representative to the Frankfurt National Assembly, and later a
deputy in the Prussian parliament. The Lette Association promoted
the vocational and professional education of women and demanded
the removal of all obstacles and prejudices curtailing their employ
ment. In r869 it helped women's organizations in Berlin, Bremen, Bres
lau, Brunswick, Kassel, Karlsruhe, Darmstadt, Mainz, Hamburg, and
Rostock join together to found the Verband deutscher Frauenbil
dungs- und Erwerbsvereine, the Union of German Women's Educa
tional and Employment Associations. S
I n contrast t o the women's organizations that had close ties t o the
democratic and liberal movements of 1848-49, the ADF, now under
5 Ute Frevert, Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liber
ation, trans. Stuart McKinnon-Evans (New York: Berg, 1989). 1 1 7 .
I 9I
the threat of the Law of Association and Assembly, steered clear of any
affiliation with political parties and organizations. While the ADF
pressed for wider social emancipation for women, it assiduously
avoided a political program. The ADF leadership concluded that it
was premature to press for women's suffrage, and the demand for
equal political rights that had been raised by women's rights activists in
1 848 was set aside at least for the time being. It accepted the notion that
women had to prove themselves worthy of the vote through educa
tional and professional progress. Here feminism was circumscribed by
a liberal ideology that postulated that citizenship rights, including the
franchise, were not inherent to the individual. Instead political citizen
ship was a responsibility that one exercised only after acquiring the
characteristics of sufficient social and cultural maturity: education and
independence, both manifested in the ownership of property. Leaders
therefore believed that for the present it was necessary for the organi
zation to devote itself to the improvement of women's education and
to vocational and professional opportunities, especially medicine, and
to charitable work directed toward working-class young women. Ini
tially the Lette Association expressly rejected political rights for
women. The first report of the association in 1 866 stated that nothing
could be further from its aims than the "so-called emancipation for
women in the social not to mention the political sphere . "6 After the
death of Adolf Lette in 1 868, however, the Lette Association moved
toward the position of the ADF on the issue of women's political
rights. It no longer categorically rejected women's suffrage but rather
argued that women should gradually and patiently move toward the
right to vote after having first achieved the right to employment and
education. By 1 8 76 the ADF and the Lette Association had signed a
j oint declaration outlining their similar views on women's suffrage . It
was not until 1894, however, that the women's organizations began to
agitate for suffrage.
In other respects as well the activists who revived the women's move
ment broke from the feminist theory and praxis of the Vormarz and
1 848. They stressed that the women's movement was not now a cam
paign in the service of personal, individual "emancipation" but rather
of humanity and social reform. Leaders of the women's movement
insisted that they neither advocated "free love" nor challenged the pri
macy of marriage and the family. They distanced themselves from the
6. Quoted in ibid.
1 92
caricature of the emancipated women and offered assurances that they

neither dressed like men nor smoked cigars .7 It is tempting to regard
the insistence of the new women's movement on the "natural vocation"
of women as mothers and wives and the reluctance of women activists
to assert a full equal-rights ideology as acquiescence before the author
itarian state and as timidity toward the class to which most of them
belonged.8 Feminist goals were, however, not simply limited to the
expansion of educational and professional opportunities. Many femi
nists of the r86os and r 8 7os believed that their right to education and
employment was linked ideologically to their right to j oin actively and
productively in the public concerns of society and the nation.9 They
believed that the participation of women in social service was a duty of
citizenship comparable to military service for men . These feminists,
therefore, insisted on the interdependence of the family and nation, or
private and public spheres; they connected motherhood in the home
with their role in the nation understood as the "great social house
hold." They argued that modern society with its industrial traumas,
working-class malaise, housing shortages, mounting alcoholism, and
rampant prostitution had become callous, masculine, and dehumaniz
ing. Modern society, they therefore believed, required the emotional
attendance and maternal ministering of women. Women activists
believed that it was the cultural task of women to contribute their
humanity to the inhuman world of men. On the other hand, however,
the lone radicals Hedwig Dohm and Lily Braun refused to be bound by
a movement based on women's "natural" virtues and talents and never
abandoned the demand for women's equal political rights.
While the reorganized women's movement that emerged in the mid
r 86os was fundamentally different from the radical feminism of the
revolution, it did push what contemporaries called the women's ques
tion to the forefront of national attention. r o The women's question
unleashed an impassioned debate, and in the mid- r86os and for the rest
7. Herrad-Ulriclee Bussemer, Frauenemanzipation und Bildungsbiirgertum: Sozial
geschichte der Frauenbewegung in der Reichsgriindungszeit (Weinheim and Basel: Beltz Ver
lag, 1985), 22.
8 . Richard J. Evans, The Feminist Movement in Germany, !894-1933 (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1976); Bussemer, Frauenemanzipation.
9 Ann Taylor Allen, Feminism and Motherhood in Germany. I80D-I9I4 (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1991). See also Frevert, Women in German History, 126.
10. For a discussion of the topologies of feminism in Germany, see Richard J. Evans, "The
Concept of Feminism: Notes for Practicing Historians," in German Women in the Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Centuries: A Social and Literary History, ed. Ruth-Ellen B. Jones and Mary
Jo Maynes (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 247-58 .
1 93
of the century it was on everyone's lips. Already in 1 866 Louise Otto

could happily claim, "In the political doldrums in which we currently
live the women's question has leaped into the foreground. It now dom
inates to such an extent no one earlier would have thought imaginable.
No one can pick up a newspaper, no association, no meeting can take
place in which the question is not discussed. " ' ' Within the women's
movement, novelists Emma Laddey wrote Auf eigenen Filssen (On her
own feet) and Aus freier Wahl: Charakterbilder aus dem Frauenleben
(By free choice: Character portraits from the lives of women), and Wil
helmine von Hilleren wrote Aus freier Kraft (By her own means), nov
els that proffered, as their titles indicated, positive alternatives to the
roles traditionally prescribed to women . '2 Meanwhile exasperated
social critics complained:
Women's question!-women's association! !-women's emancipa
tion! ! !-Everywhere, at all social gatherings and at just about
every public assembly, these themes are constantly debated with
genuine passion. All the political and literary magazines are rush
ing to print articles about them. Women have already set up an
entire series of j ournals dedicated to the "representation of their
interests. " An avalanche of books and brochures all concerning
the "burning question" of "women's emancipation" has over
whelmed the literary market. They want to examine it from his
torical, physiological, legal, and God-only-knows-what other per
spectives.
Enough, this "emancipation" is a theory as laughable as it is
impractical like all the other theories of the communists and the
socialists . Beyond this laughable aspect, however, "emancipa
tion" also has a very serious and dangerous side about which we
should not remain quiet particularly as it concerns women. The
ultimate consequence is namely nothing less than the abolition of
marriage and the destruction of the family. (Emphasis in the origi
nal.)r3
rr. Louise Otto-Peters, "Altes und Neues aus der Frauenwelt 1," Deutsches Wochenblatt,
Nr. 8, r8 Feb . r866, 6o, cited in Bussemer, Frauenemanzipation, r6.
r 2 . Emma Laddey, Auf eigenen Fiissen: Erzahlungen (Stuttgart, r87o); idem, Aus freier
Wahl: Charakterbilder aus dem Frauenleben (Stuttgart, 1874) ; Wilhelmine von Hilleren, Aus
eigenen Kraft, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1872) . See Bussemer, Frauenemanzipation, 20.
1 3 . Otto Glagau, "Gegen die 'Frauenemancipation' 1 , " Der Bazar, Nr. 22, 8 June 1 870, r 8 r ;
idem, "Gegen die 'Frauenemancipation' II,'' Der Bazar, Nr. 24, 2 3 April 1 870, 196; quoted in
Bussemer, Frauenemanzipation, 14-15 , 54
1 94
Since middle-class women by the end of the eighteenth century were

not only confined in fact to the private household but also served as the
personification of domesticity, the women's question challenged tradi
tional family order and potentially threatened to undermine gendered
public and private spheres, the central ideological cornerstone of nine
teenth-century bourgeois society. Women activists affirmed the "nat
ural" role of woman as wives, but the claim that women belonged also
in the public was of particular concern to bourgeois associations and
liberal newspapers and journals. During the r 8 sos and early r86os the
liberal press had not given any attention to women's issues, but now an
intense debate about women's education and work took place on its
pages. The Vossische Zeitung continuously ran reports about the
debates concerning the women's question taking place in various orga
nizations, the establishment of the Lette Association, female voca
tional training and education, the women's suffrage movement in the
United States, and the advantages and disadvantages of women's
emancipation.
By r86g, when the attention of the nation was fixed on the intensity
of the Catholic missionary campaign and then riveted on the fate of
Sister Barbara in the dungeon, the women's question had become an
explosive topic. In that year appeared John Stuart Mill's On the Sub
jection of Women, which was immediately made available to the Ger
man public in a translation by Jenny Hirsch, cofounder of the ADF
and leader of the Lette Association. Mill made a forceful case for the
full equality of women, including the right to vote, and attacked the
claim that women were predetermined by nature for matrimony and
motherhood. Mill even went so far as to argue that "what is now called
the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing-the result of
forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in oth
ers . " 14 Mill denied that "anyone knows, and can know, the nature of
the two sexes, as long as they have only been seen in their present rela
tion to one another."'5 His previous works on women's emancipation
and women's right to vote had attracted little attention in Germany in
the context of the r 8 sos and early r 86os, but with the reorganization of
the women's movement such revolutionary views sent a shock wave
through the public debate of the women's question. His message did
not merely challenge men of any political disposition; it challenged lib14. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty with The Subjection of Women and Chapters on Socialism.
ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1989), 1 3 8 .
1 5 . Ibid.
1 95
erally inclined women, whose activism in comparison to Mill's views

seemed to fall well short both in theory and practice.
Mill, the leading authority on liberalism across the English Channel
in the home of classical liberalism, now became the point of departure
for any debate concerning, in particular for feminists, the orientation
of the women's movement and in general for the larger public, the role
of women in contemporary society. Across Germany, liberals were
now forced to respond to Mill and to articulate their views concerning
women in marriage, family, public, politics, and society. Even so, the
debate remained largely one sided. Positive liberal responses were
confined to the call for the improvement of vocational and professional
opportunities for unwed women who might contribute their otherwise
unused labor for the good of the national economy. Liberal men from
the left to the right, with the exception of a notable few like Franz von
Holtzendorff, cochairman of the Lette Association, overwhelmingly
rejected outright the notion that women were autonomous individuals,
defined not simply by marriage and the family but entitled to equal
social, legal, political, and citizen rights. The well-respected liberal pro
gressive social reformer Arwed Emminghaus, who otherwise believed
that the women's question had the potential to revitalize the educa
tional system, dismissed Mill's demands for the full social and political
emancipation of women as an English problem, one that in Germany
had long since been settled.16 On the issue of women, Mill was just as
easily dismissed by other German liberals on the right. Upon Mill's
death in r873, Heinrich von Treitschke callously reduced his life to two
sentences: "He had an atrocious bluestocking for a wife with whom I
couldn't have lived for eight days. She impressed the good-natured fel
low, but then he came to the ridiculous idea that women should be
equal to men." r7 Authoritative, never at a loss for an opinion, and with
a particular penchant for summation, it was Treitschke who delivered
the final German liberal verdict on Mill. 18
r 6 . Bussemer, Frauenemanzipation. 69.
17. Quoted in Ute Frevert, "Mann und Weib, und Weib und Mann ": Geschlechter-Differen
zen in der Moderne (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1995), 96.
18. Joan Wallach Scott has argued in the context of the conflict between nineteenth-cen
tury liberalism and feminism that "feminist claims revealed the limits of the principles of lib
erty, equality, and fraternity and raised doubts about their universal applicability ." Joan
Wallach Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights ofMan (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1996). xi. In nineteenth-century Germany. the relationships and
tensions between liberalism and feminism still remain remarkably understudied topics . For
an exception and important start, see Herzog, Intimacy and Exclusion. For a study of social
and institutionalized antifeminism during the Wilhelmine period, see Ute Planert, Antifemi
nismus im Kaiserreich (Gottingen : Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1998).
1 96
Kulturkiimpfer, the Women's Question, and Misogyny
Numerous historians in recent years have shown that the ideology of

gender difference was fundamental to nineteenth-century middle-class
identity-not just in Germany but throughout the West. 1 9 A review of
the revival of the women's movement for access to the public in Ger
many has, however, served to set the context in which to recognize that
the link between gender and Catholicism was embedded in German
liberals' social, cultural, and political self-understanding. While in
Germany the connection between anti-Catholicism and fears of
women in public has not been adequately identified by historians of
culture and society, it is an important key to understanding the nature
of liberalism and the origins of the Kulturkampf. 2 Closer inspection
1 9 . There is a large body of literature on the public sphere as theorized by Jiirgen Haber
mas in Strukturwandel der Dffentlichkeit: Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der biirgerlichen
Gesellschaft (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1962). An accessible introduction to his original argu
ment is idem, "The Public Sphere," New German Critique 3 (r974) : 49-55 . For a broad theo
retical and historical critique of the public space since Habermas's original conceptualization
see the contributions in Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1992) . The long tradition in Western thought of assigning men and women to
public and private spheres is outlined in Jean Bethke Elshtain, Public Man. Private Woman:
Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, r98r). As an
example of the ideological foundation of politics and theoretical division between public and
domestic, see Linda J. Nicholson, "John Locke: The Theoretical Separation of the Family
and the State," in Gender and History: The Limits of Social Theory in the Age of the Family
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 133-66 .
For a discussion in the German context of the division of men and women according to the
alleged natural and unalterable characteristics of their sex, see Karin Hausen, "Family and
Role-Division: The Polarisation of Sexual Stereotypes in the Nineteenth Century; An Aspect
of the Dissociation of Work and Family Life, in The German Family: Essays on the Social
History of the Family in Nineteenth- and Twentieth- Century Germany. ed. Richard J. Evans
and W. R. Lee (Totowa, N . J . : Barnes and Noble, 198 1), 5 1-8 3; and idem, " O ffentlichkeit und
Privatheit: Gesellschaftspolitische Konstruktionen und die Geschichte der Geschlechter
beziehugen. " in Frauengeschichte- Geschlechtergeschichte. ed. Karin Hausen and H. Wunder
(Frankfurt am Main : Campus, 1996), 8r-88. See also Frevert, "Mann und Weib. " For Ger
man middle-class male and female roles and relations, see the following in Biirgerinnen und
Biirger: Geschlechterverhaltnisse im f9. Jahrhundert, ed. Ute Frevert (Gc1ttingen : Vanden
hoeck und Ruprecht, r988): Ute Frevert, "Bilrgerliche Meisterdenker und das Geschlechter
verhaJtnis: Konzepte, Erfahrungen, Visionen an der Wende vom r 8 . zum 19. Jahrhundert,"
1 7-48; Karin H ausen, '" ' . . . eine Ulme fur das schwankende Efeu' : Ehepaare im Bildungs
burgertum; !deale und Wirklichkeiten im spaten r 8 . und 19. Jahrhundert,'' 8 5-rq; and
Yvonne Schutze, '"Mutterliebe-Vaterliebe: Elternrollen in der burgerlichen Familie des 19
J ahrhundert," n8-3 3.
20. For an important start and point of departure for an analysis of liberal attitudes toward
Catholicism and women in Germany see the comments in Hugh McLeod, "Weibliche From
migkeit-mannlicher Unglaube? Religion und Kirchen im bilrgerlichen r9. Jahrhundert," in
Biirgerinnen und Burger: Geschlechlterverhaltnisse im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Ute Frevert (Gottin
gen : Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1988), 134-56, esp . 143; and Blackbourn, Marpingen, 261-63.
1 97
reveals that for German liberals the women's question and the
"Catholic problem" were one and the same. Their attitude toward
women was necessarily an expression of their attitude toward
Catholics. It was no mere coincidence, therefore, that leading liberals
from the political left across to the right were as agitated by and out
spoken on the topic of women in public as they were about the
Catholic Church, "Jesuitism, " monasticism, and ultramontanism.
Prominent Kulturkampfer like the progressive Rudolf Virchow and
educational reformer Jiirgen Bona Meyer and nationalist liberals like
Heinrich von Sybel and Johann Bluntschli, for example, all came pub
licly forward in the debate on the women's question. Their positions
were clear: they were ardent opponents of women's emancipation, and
from the left across to the right they offered cogent and representative
liberal attitudes toward the feminist movement. Taken together their
views suggest what was at stake in the liberal animus toward Roman
Catholicism and the Catholic Church.
Rudolf Virchow-leader of the Progressive Party in the Prussian
parliament, world-renowned pathologist, and the one who later coined
the term Kulturka mpf-immediately attacked the emergence of the
women's movement in r865 with the publication of Uber die Erziehung
des Weibes fur seinen Beruf Typical of his bourgeois society, Rudolf
Virchow believed it was self-evident, an axiom of nature, that men par
ticipate in the public sphere while women remain at home . He argued
that it was a mistake to think that women should "enter the market of
public life and actively participate in the disputes of the day."21 Only in
the home as wives and mothers could women serve the fatherland and
humanity. It was the duty of the wife to preserve the home as an
enclave of harmony, stability, and peace, a sanctuary to which men
could return after fighting the day-to-day battles of public life. The
emancipation of women from the home, Virchow argued, could lead
only to the destruction of the family and to communal rearing of chil
dren . He argued that the entire future of the human race was threat
ened by the emancipation of women from their assigned role as care
takers of the home.
Virchow was joined from the liberal right by the historian Heinrich
von Sybel, editor of the prestigious Historische Zeitschrift, in r 8 74
founder with colleagues at the University of Bonn of the anti-Catholic
Deutscher Verein (German Association), and later author of Die
Begriindung des Deutschen Retches durch Wilhelm I, the official history
2 r . Rudolf Virchow, Uber die Erziehung des Weibes fiir seinen Benif (Berlin: T. C. F .
Enslin, r865).
1 98
of the founding of the German Empire. Sybel was spurred to action by

Mill's radicalism, and he led the liberal counterattack with the publi
cation in r 87o of "Uber die Emancipation der Frauen. " Sybel
explained that the belief in the equality of the sexes, the demand that
women not be viewed and treated differently by law and by society,
was though regrettable not surprising. It was a consequence of the
democratic spirit of the age. However popular, the campaign for equal
rights for women amounted to throwing sand against the wind: the
separation of male and female Lebenssphare (spheres of life) outside
and inside the family was an immutable law of nature. The raising of
children had to be a task left to the wife for the self-evident reason that
"the crude hand" of the father was useless. A career for the mother out
side the home would lead to the demise of her health, the destruction of
the household, the ruin of her children, and the betrayal of the entire
purpose of her existence . While "the mother must care for the children
and the house and for nothing else," the husband attended to affairs
outside the home and represented the family in public, "engaging in the
battle of life with the weapons of the law. "22 If, according to Sybel, the
wife was the "living soul" of the house, the husband as "the logician
and dialectician" was its master. The separate spheres of life and duty
were the consequence of the fact that women were sentimental, not rea
sonable, beings. In women nature has substituted "the methodological
development of reason" with "an innately fine and quick total senti
mentalism. "23 While women rely on their immediate feelings to form
impressions, men make judgments based on logic and reasoned discus
sion in public. Bourgeois liberals relied on the general principle that the
more an occupation required the capacity for reason, the less appro
priate it was for women.
Sybel allowed that some women because of their talent for caretak
ing might contribute to medical and religious charitable work. But the
woman who attempted the professions of philosophy, law, politics,
economics, industry, literature, or journalism was a hermaphrodite,
the image of the woman, dressed in man's clothing and smoking a
cigar, an embarrassment to the family, to the public, and to the state.
According to Sybel, a professional woman was a Mannin, a she-man
who was "worth precisely as much to the world as the weiblicher Mann
22. Heinrich von Sybel. " Uber die Emancipation der Frauen." in Vortrage und Aufsatze
(Berlin: A. Hoffmann, r8 74), 59-79, quotations at 67 and 69.
23. Ibid., 70.
1 99
[effeminate man] . "24 Since the husband represented the wife, whose
interests were supposed to be identical, and women were unfit for pub
lic responsibility, it followed that granting women political rights was
both redundant and harmful to the state. Sybel despised democratic
systems that presumed "mere birth" as the qualification for the vote. In
1 867, as a member of the parliament of the North German Confedera
tion, he had voted against the universal, direct, equal male franchise.
The error of the suffrage of the N orth German Confederation was that
it now compelled one to concede on principle that a right granted to
"the most stupid cobbler's helper and crudest Negro" could not be
denied to an educated woman.25 Johann Bluntschli echoed the argu
ment that suffrage for women would be both "dangerous for the state
and ruinous for women ."26 Liberal men could not imagine the politi
cization without the defeminization of women. In the shock following
the introduction of universal male suffrage in 1 867, Robert von Mohl,
the liberal professor of civil law, also warned against the tendency to
go to extremes and tear down all the dams that experience and reason
had erected. If nothing could be done to prevent universal male suf
frage, he argued, one could at least prevent even more damage by pre
venting the vote for women .27
Jiirgen Bona Meyer, the respected proponent of progessive educa
tional reform, also took up the women's question in the series
Frauengeist und Frauenbildung, which appeared in the liberal literary
j ournal Gegenwart in 1 872.28 In contrast to Sybel, Meyer argued that
women did not lack the capacity for logical reasoning. It was rather, he
explained, their incapacity to discipline their excessive emotions that
24. Ibid .. 73
2 5 . Ibid. , 74 Suggesting that "even less-democratic liberals recognized feminism's link
with liberal ideology," Amy Hackett not only conflates democratic and liberal ideology but
on this point also seriously misjudges Heinrich von Sybel, who she argues was "torn between
his liberal premises and his prejudices about women and the overwhelming majority of liber
als during the r87os and 8os.'' Amy Hackett, "Feminism and Liberalism in Wilhelmine Ger
many, r890-T9T8," in Liberating Women 's History: Theoretical and Critical Essays, ed.
Berenice A. Carroll (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, r976). r27-36, see r29.
26. Johann Caspar Bluntschli, ed., Deutsches Staatsworterbuch (Stuttgart: Expedition des
Staatswi:irterbuch, 1 8 5 7-70), r r : r30.
27. Robert von Mohl, Politik (Tubingen: H. Laupp, r869), 2:20. For liberal opposition to
women's political rights, see Frevert, "Mann und Weib, " 109-25 .
2 8 . Jurgen B ona Meyer, Frauengeist und Frauenbildung, Gegenwart r (r872): r82-84,
323-25; 2 (1872): 8 5-87, ror-2. Meyer was also the author of Zum Bildungskampfunserer Zeit
(B onn: Adolf Marcus, r875) and Der Wunderschwindel in unserer Zeit (B onn : Max Cohen
und Sohn, r878).
200
made them unsuitable for participation in public life. Suggesting a con

siderable amount about the bourgeois persona in public, Meyer
explained, "Given the pressures of burgerlich and state professions . . .
it is often necessary that the will, without feelings, even in opposition to
feelings, do what cold duty or naked necessity requires. "29 Unlike men,
who are able to check their emotions, he argued, women have more
irritable nervous systems and more excitable passions, which impair
their capacity for clear and sustained thought. The strict separation of
male and female Arbeitsgebiete (spheres of work) was required to
quarantine within the household the inability of women to master their
emotions. The work of the state, of science, of law and art, liberal men
like Meyer agreed, required decisions based on rational disputation. In
opposition to women's rights activists, who argued that the nation,
"the great social household," urgently needed an infusion of feminine
virtues, Meyer believed that the progress of civilization, culture, and
the nation depended on a public life without the distraction of both
unseemly and debilitating feminine sentiment. Only in the home could
the woman as mother and wife profitably contribute her natural sense
of harmony and beauty. The predisposition of women for sentiment
and emotion also meant that they were by nature more inclined to reli
gion than men, who, due to their even temper, remained for the most
part religiously indifferent.
What is interesting for our purposes is not the ideology of separate
spheres itself, which has already sustained an entire generation of
research on nineteenth-century society and, in fact, is now so well
established in historical literature that it has become an integral part of
the master narrative of the West, but more specifically the coupling of
this ideology with anti-Catholicism in Germany. As prominent Kul
turkampfer defended the ideology of separate spheres against the rad
icalism of the women's movement, they made sense of the state and the
church in terms of gender and the relationship between genders. For
example, in a set of widely read essays in the Gegenwart, Johann
Bluntschli, dedicated anti-Catholic and fanatical Jesuit hater, argued
that in the Catholic feudal ages the church was understood as the soul
and the state as the body of one being, a notion, he believed, still prop
agated among the people by the Jesuits. In the modern period, how
ever, the church and the state had separated and become two separate
bodies. Just as all human beings were by nature either male or female,
it followed that the state and church were two different sexes. What
29. Meyer, Frauengeist und Frauenbildung, Gegenwart I (rR72): 323-2 5 .
201
science had only belatedly discovered in the modern period, Bluntschli

patiently explained, language had long ago recognized: in the lan
guages of modern Europe the state is gendered masculine (e.g., der
Staat, l 'etat, el estado, il stato) and the church feminine (e.g., die
Kirche, l 'eglise, Ia iglesia, la cheisa) .3 Like other liberal men, Bluntschli
believed the state was "defined by an inherently masculine will" and
endowed with "the self-confident, masculine Volksgeist. "31 Conserva
tives agreed that of course the state was male: political offices of
authority could only be occupied and administered by men.
As liberals coded public life and the state as masculine, they coded
the domestic sphere and Catholicism as feminine. The church just like
a woman was inclined toward revelation and sentiment rather than
knowledge and thinkingY In the war with the Catholic Church and
the forces of militant ultramontanism, the enemies of all modern cul
ture, science, Bildung, liberalism, and progress, Bluntschli warned that
the state must remember that the church uses her feminine wiles to
exploit the weaknesses of her opponent to her advantage.33 If the state
is a man, he argued, then the church is like a woman, or more precisely
a vamp, who gives the appearance of innocence yet knows full well
how to sway a man now one way with her charms, now another way
with her tears. She may no longer have enough power to launch a holy
crusade as she did in the Middle Ages, but she has become "a very fash
ionable lady" who can still whip up confusion within the state.34 Liber
als like Bluntschli liked therefore to think about the relationship
between the state and the church as a dyad, a man and a woman,
locked in a dysfunctional and tension-ridden competition, a condition
they believed surely not the fault of the man. It was impossible for lib
erals to think about the relationship at least under the circumstances as
a healthy and supportive marriage between equals or as a relationship
between a brother and a sister, naturally bound by mutual respect if
not affection.
30. Johann Caspar Bluntschli, "Deutsche Briefe tiber das Verhaltniss von Staat und
Kirche: Der Dualismus von Staat und Kirche," Gegenwart r (rX72): Xr-Xz; idem, "Deutsche
Briefe uber Staat und Kirche: Der Staat als Geisteswesen." Gegenwart I (I872): 97-98. See
also idem. Uber den Unterschied der mittelalterlichen und der modernen Staatsidee (Munich:
Literarisch-artistische Anstalt, r 8 5 5), rs-r 6.
3 r . Bluntschli, " U ber das Verhaltniss des modernen Staates zur Religion," in Gesammelte
Kleine Schriften (Nordlingen: C. H . Beck, r 8 8 r), z : r 48-8o, quotation at 154.
32. Bluntschli, "Deutsche Briefe uber der Verhaltniss von Staat und Kirche.'' See also
idem, " Uber das Verhaltniss des modernen Staates zur Religion," 174.
3 3 Bluntschli, Charakter und Geist der politischen Parteien (N ordlingen: C. H. Beck,
rX69), so.
34 Ibid.
202
At the same time, if the Catholic Church was an aging lady, then lib
eralism was a young man, assertive and in the prime of life. The model
was again offered by Bluntschli, who argued in his widely read Charak
ter und Geist der politischen Parteien that liberalism was "a young man,
who has his formal education behind him and steps forward into life
fully aware of his strength and self-confidence ."35 He has abandoned
speculation and fantasies for logical discourse: he tests the ground on
which he stands and upon which he plans to build with scientific criti
cism and precision. He is equally mature, seasoned by experience. Lib
eralism, Bluntschli explains, is no revolutionary. He has no desire to
tear things down or to be contrary. He is interested, rather, foremost in
the pursuit of truth. According to Bluntschli, the liberal man lives his
life energetically organizing, testing, evaluating, improving, or discard
ing. Liberalism is tireless, looks carefully, and then moves incessantly
forward, and unlike reckless radicalism he patiently prepares the pre
sent for the future. While he supports legitimate and necessary author
ity, blind obedience to absolute authority is incompatible with his
character. If he must choose revolt for the sake of progress as a final
resort, he will restore social and political order based on law as quickly
as possible. For Protestant national liberals like Bluntschli, Luther in
his battle against the pope and against the hierarchy of the bishops was
the best model of liberalism that ultimately had been driven to revolt
against the tyrannical authority of the pope . Indeed, in the face of the
condemnation of modern liberalism by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of
Errors, Bluntschli was sure that Christ himself, when he came again to
save the world and pronounce the final judgment, would be a liberal.
Above all, liberalism was distinguished by his strength of character
and his desire for independence and freedom properly understood. For
true liberalism freedom was not some abstract notion, a "mathemati
cal equality" espoused by the radicals of the French Revolution. Free
dom was organically rooted in the personality of the individual. Even
so, the liberal is not merely given his freedom as a gift. He earns his
freedom through the experience of life and through his dedication to
Bildung. Liberalism loathes the notion that "a mindless mass of
humanity ruled by superstitions" could ever be as free as "a manly
Volk exercising thought and will . " 36 Bluntschli admitted that in public
life liberals were still at the beginning of their development, but no one
could deny the progress of liberalism within the respective liberal par3 5 Ibid. , I I 9 .
36. Ibid. , 128.
20 3
ties. The experience of defeat in 1 848 had only deepened and broadened
liberalism. The settlement and alliance with Bismarck in 1867 following
the constitutional crisis and the first wars of unification against Den
mark and then against Austria had proven the mature development of
liberal practice and theory since the revolution. It was the hard lessons
of Realpolitik and the association with Bismarck that had strength
ened liberal politics for the better, conditioned it into greater exertions
of masculinity: "the spirit and character of the liberal parties became
more manly."37
At the center of liberal anti-Catholicism was, therefore, not religion
but biology, not mere religious intolerance but a more fundamental
sexism. Due to their incapacity for sustained, disciplined thought,
women were seen as more susceptible than men to the irrationalism,
excessive emotion, and superstitious nonsense of Roman Catholicism
and the Catholic Church. Stories endlessly circulated about the
influence that the clergy was able to exert on unsuspecting and inno
cent young women. Such fears were only confirmed by Prussian state
authorities, who were particularly concerned about the Jesuits' alleged
control over Catholic women. At Aachen, Police President Hirsch
reported to District Governor Friedrich Kiihlwetter that in the con
gregational assemblies of the parish churches, Jesuits were competing
against the local clergy for the loyalty of the women. Jesuits, he
reported, were "applying all their oratorical skill to win over the mem
bers for themselves . . . . They are especially training their attention on
the women in the congregation. " 38
If Jesuits thought that there was little hope of winning over the hus
band, liberals and state authorities believed they turned to the "weaker
sex" as the back door to the family. In 1848 liberals had fought the
monarchy in the streets and on the barricades; now in the battle with
the church, according to the liberal j ournal Grenzboten, "the woman is
the barricade behind which the priest takes cover if he cannot reach the
husband directly. "39 According to liberal newspapers, j ournals, books,
and pamphlets, Jesuits coaxed women in the confessional into reveal
ing the secrets of the family and then used their confidence and inti
macy to sever the bonds of loyalty between wives and husbands and
daughters and families. Women were then recruited as the church's
37 Ibid . 132.
3 8 . LHAK, Best. 403, Nr. 7 5 I I , PP Hirsch, Aachen, to RP Ki:ihlwetter, Aachen, ro Oct.
r865. Also HSTAD, Best. RA, P, Nr. r239, PP, Aachen, to RP Kilhlwetter, Aachen, ro Oct.
1865.
39. Grenzboten r (1875): 72.
.
204
"spies within the family. " It was, therefore, not merely the zealous
proselytizing of the Jesuits that made them such hated enemies but
their "crude exploitation of the weakness of the female sex" and their
"peace-destroying interference in the life of the family," the foundation
of bourgeois order.4 "Woe to the man to whom the Jesuits are not well
disposed; it is a matter that concerns the peace of his house. "4' The
woman who shared his bed might be an agent of the Jesuits, and her
husband might imagine he was literally sleeping with the enemy, a sex
ual anxiety peculiar to liberal Jesuitphobia. The Vossische Zeitung
reported as a warning: "Wherever the Jesuits showed up, they sowed
discord within the family circle; society was thrown off the track of
progress and Bildung declinedY
As an example of the malicious influence of Jesuits on impression
able young women and of their ability to turn daughters against
fathers, one writer related the story of a merchant's daughter who
attended confession at a Jesuit mission. The eternal damnation with
which the confessor had threatened her had, according to the account,
a deep and destructive impact on her psyche . Her anxiety only
increased with each visit. Worried about the condition of his daughter,
the father pleaded with her not to go to the mission so often . "You're
Satan. Stay away from me! " she screamed. Her mental derangement
led her to the insane asylum. Several days later she threw herself out of
the window to her death.43 The paterfamilias believed he not only had
to do battle in the professional and civic contests of daily public life; he
also had to safeguard his family and private life against the Jesuits who
threatened to destroy it from the inside out. Destroying the family was,
according to liberals, only the means to the end. The real goal of the
Jesuits was the usurpation of the state . An example is again Johann
Bluntschli's belief that "the indirect influence of many confessors and
court priests on administration and policy is still prevalent in many
states. If they do not manage to win over the heads of state themselves,
they often know how to stir the female heart and to use women to rule
over men."44
From the perspective of the gendered discourse of Catholicism and
liberalism, the war between liberals and the Catholic Church takes on
40.
41 .
42.
43.
44
Stachelstock, Licht und Finsterni/3. 36.

Ibid . , 69.
Vossische Zeitung. 7 Aug. r869.
Stachelstock, Licht und Finsterni/3. 78-79 .
Bluntschli. "' U ber das Verhaltniss des modernen Staates zur Religion," I SS
20 5
the dimensions of a more fundamental conflict between men and

women for access to the public and the defense of the private. The his
torian of nineteenth-century German liberalism Dieter Langewiesche
has pointed out that according to liberals, women were not among
those in the population who could become, either now or in the future,
emancipated and independent members of bourgeois society, and their
thinking on this did not change until late in the century.4s It was, there
fore, not simply that liberalism was closed to women due to the r 8 so
Law of Association and Assembly in Prussia prohibiting women from
j oining political associations and parties. The Law of Association was
instead only a codification of the prevailing liberal ideology concerning
character, maturity, independence, and the respective positions of
women in the home and men in society.46 Public meetings and volun
tary associations promoted the emergence of civil society in Germany
and served as the institutional foundations crucial for the ideological
development and social inculcation of liberalism. But liberals like
those in Leipzig also saw public voluntary associations as a means to
cultivate Bildung, independence, Selbststatigkeit (self-reliance), and
Gemeinsinn (civic sense), all the characteristics ultimately of manli
ness.47
If practicing Catholicism was feminine and subservient, standing up
to the power of the church required exertions of masculinity, public
character, and independence. For example, consider the response
already mentioned in the previous chapter in the liberal press during
the Moabiterklostersturm of r86g: the National Zeitung argued that
the resolve of "free men and the Burgertum" offered the best defense
against the rising number of monks and monasteries in Germany.48
The paper urged its readers to practice "independence, manliness, and
freedom" against monastic "darkness and idiocy, " "passivity and sub
jection. "49 In r873 a liberal political manifesto in the Crefelder Zeitung
demanded the election of a candidate who was a "man" who, in the
face of the ultramontane opposition, wanted "political freedom and
45. Langewiesche, "Nature of German Liberalism," ror .

46. Blackboum, Marpingen, 261.
47. Pall Bj ornsson, "Liberalism and the Making of the 'New Man' : The Case of the Gym
nasts in Leipzig, r845-187r.'' in Saxony in German History: Culture, Society, and Politics,
I8JO-I933. ed. James Retallack (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 1 5 1-65 .
48. National Zeitung, 25 Aug. r869.
49 Ibid. , 6 Sept. r869.
206
independence based on sound, intellectual Bildung. " s o The president of

the Reichstag from 1 874 to 1 8 79, Max von Forckenbeck, a liberal
nationalist and himself a Catholic, called upon his colleagues to offer a
"manly defense" of their parliamentary accomplishments . Heinrich
Kruse of the liberal KO!nische Zeitung was congratulated for the
paper's "firm, manly role" in the campaign against clericalism. Hein
rich von Sybel as president of the anticlerical Deutscher Verein of the
Rhine Province was applauded by its executive committee for his
"manly demeanor" in the face of unjustified oppositionY At the level
of intragroup dynamics, chest-thumping displays of bravura rallied
liberal men in the homosocial fight against the Catholic opponent. At
the level of social-sexual ideology, the incessant invocation of mas
culinity in the face of Catholicism served to define and to defend the
public space against women.
In liberal psychology the other side of the militant Catholic revival
was, therefore, always the woman in public, or, to carry the point to its
conclusion, when liberals feminized Catholicism, the consequent anti
Catholicism was misogyny. For example, consider again Johann
Bluntschli, for whom nothing produced as much candid disgust as the
coupling of Catholicism and women. As he traveled through the
Rhineland in the late 186os, he observed women praying in the convent
at Aachen "with the expression of idiocy and boundless, pathetic stu
pidity. "sz For Bluntschli, his gynephobic and misogynistic anti
Catholicism could have traumatic repercussions. As he simultaneously
waged war against women's emancipation and the Catholic Church, he
relentlessly tortured himself with visions of impotence and castration
at the hands of the Jesuits and ultramontane clergy. His entire corpus
of anticlerical literature since the middle of the 186os and the rise of the
women's movement is fraught with these nightmares. In r868, in "Uber
das Verhiiltniss des modernen Staates zur Religion" he argued that in
ultramontane Catholicism medieval romanticism and the drive for
power within its hierarchy had been mixed into a poison . Princes and
peoples who imbibe too much of the toxic brew lose their capacity to
govern the modern state. "Their political character is emasculated. " 53
According to Charakter und Geist der politischen Parteien, published in
so. HSTAD, RD. Nr. 2619, "Die Anordnung der Schulpfleger bzw. Kreisschulinspek
toren (Ieath.) und Forderung des Schulwesens durch die Geistlichen," Bd. r. r X72-73. news
paper clipping from Crefelder Zeitung. 23 Oct. rR73.
s r . Forckenbeck, Kruse, and Sybel quoted in Blackbourn, Marpingen. 26r.
52. Ernst Walter Zeeden, "Die katholische Kirche in der Sichte deutschen Protestantism us
im 19. Jahrhundert," Historisches Jahrbuch 72 (1953): 433-56, quotation at 44X .
5 3 . Bluntschli, " U ber das Verhaltniss des modernen Staates zur Religion," 156.
20 7
1 869, Bluntschli believed that wherever the power of ultramontanism

reaches, not only are economic progress curtailed, industrial produc
tion hampered, the Bildung of the upper classes ruined, and science
enslaved by the church. "The state is castrated and devalued. " 54 His
Wider die Jesuiten (1872) argues that a nation or any part of a nation
under the sway of the Jesuits becomes not just superstitious, ignorant,
spiritually crippled, and blind. Jesuits "castrate" a nation's character.
The proof he cited was southern Europe. 55 "Romische Weltherrschaft
und deutsche Freiheit, " written for his collection of essays in Rom und
die Deutschen (1872) argues, "The rule of priests always means the cas
tration of the people . " If the papacy had succeeded in establishing
absolute authority during the Middle Ages, "the European people
would have had to sacrifice their masculinity."56 In Bluntschli's view,
priests, Jesuits, and the Catholic Church were incessant, merciless
attacks on manhood. It is tempting to dismiss his traumatic visions as,
to be sure, an interesting but after all extraordinary case of anti
Catholic paranoia. But Bluntschli was exceptional only to the extent
that he was always particularly candid and eager to give expression to
the liberal dysphoria.
In the anti-Catholic imagination it was the confessional, seemingly
dark and mysterious, that was the site for particularly concentrated
and creative work.57 It therefore provides especially illuminating exam
ples of misogynistic anticlericalism. Here in the dark and quiet church,
alone, close, and in whispers, confessors, liberals imagined, used their
power to undo and then entrance women.58 An illustration in the
Gartenlaube depicts a young woman on her knees, hands outstretched
and raised in emphatic submission at the feet of her confessor.
"Enough, Oh, woman! Stop humiliating yourself! " is the j ournal's
apostrophe (fig. 17). The poem "Am Beichtstuhl" (The confessional)
by Ernst Scherenberg that accompanies the article was subsequently
published separately with a volume of other anti-Catholic verse.59 It
54 Bluntschli, Charakter und Geist, 37.
5 5 Bluntschli, Wider die Jesuiten (Eberfeld: Verlag von R. L. Friederichs, r8 72), r 6-I 7 .
56. Bluntschli. Rom und die Deutschen, part r, Romische Weltherrschaft und deutsche Freiheit (Berlin, I8 72), I 5 .
57 On the topic o f Catholic women and their confessors, see Edith Saurer, "Frauen und
Priester: Beichtgespri.iche im fri.ihen 19. Jahrhundert," in Arbeit, Frommigkeit und Eigensinn:
Studien zu historischer Kulturforschung, ed. Richard van Di.ilmen (Frankfurt am Main: Fis
cher Verlag, 1990), r4T-70.
58. See Geoffry Cubbitt, The Jesuit Myth: Conspiracy Theory and Politics in Nineteenth
Century France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 234-41.
59. Ernst Scherenberg. "Am Beichstuhl." in Gegen Rom! Zeitstimmen Deutscher Dichter,
ed. Ernst Scherenberg (Elberfeld: Bi.ideker'sche Buch- und Kunsthandlung, r 8 74), 79
208
Fig. 17. "Am Beichtstuhl," Gartenlaube (1874): 151. An illustration in the Garten
laube depicts a young woman, on her knees in emphatic submission to her confessor.
"Enough, oh, woman! Stop humiliating yourself !" is the caption.
immediately became the favorite in the substantial repertoire of Kul

turkampf poetry and reads in part:
You too, my Volk, have knelt in the dust
For a hundred years before the Roman tyranny;
The church has robbed you of your best part
Rid yourself now of her yoke!60
6o. Gartenlaube (I874): r so-s r .
20 9
The "best part" of the Volk could only have been its manly indepen
dence and character or, not to put too fine a point on it, for gynepho
bic liberals like Bluntschli, the male genitalia.
As the power of the confessional reduced the nation to feminine sub
servience, it also represented anxieties of sexual rivalry with priests. In
another illustration in the same journal a young woman, "beautiful
despite sorrow and distress," dutifully awaits the summons of the priest
to enter his dark confessional. His one-eyed peek from behind his cur
tain and wide, tight simper indicate that he is going to enjoy himself.61 If
women's religious fanaticism was nymphomania, current too as we
have seen in the convent atrocity story, such psychological pathologies
immediately explained why women so eagerly went to confession or
entered the religious life. In an illustration in the Berliner Wespen, exu
berant, giggling nuns line up before the confessional. "Confessor: Pious
sisters, do you want to endure the utmost for the church and carry on
until the last? All: With pleasure! "62 Liberal men recognized and
enjoyed hyperbole, no doubt, but if taken seriously such images provide
insight into the liberal psychology that coupled anti-Catholicism and
antifeminism during the reemergence of the women's question. The
image of Catholic women disarming men of their masculine faculties of
reason with their disingenuous tears and charms, and the nightmare of
the church and Jesuits as women castrating men, revealed the deep
seated misogynistic strain running through liberal anticlericalism. If for
liberal men the war against Catholicism required the exertion of man
hood, it was manhood itself that was at stake.
Kulturkampf and Geschlechterkampf
The liberal ideology of the sexes in society reflected the shifting pat
terns of faith and worship within Roman Catholicism in Germany.
Since the late eighteenth century women had been playing an increas
ingly prominent and visible role in the Catholic Church and in the pop
ular practice of Catholicism. 63 Historians have argued that this consti6r. Gartenlaube (rX74) : 39X-99.
62. Berliner Wespen. 23 April 1 875.
63. The discussion concerning the more prominent role of women in both Catholicism and
Protestantism in the nineteenth century has become substantial. It includes but is not limited
to McLeod, "Weibliche Frommigkeit" ; Rebekka Habennas, "Weibliche Religiositat-oder
Von der Fragilitat biirgerlicher Identitaten," in Wege zur Geschichte des Biirgertums:
Vierzehn Beitrage, ed. Klaus Tenfelde and Hans-Ulrich Wehler (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck
und Ruprecht, 1 994), 1 2 5-48; Norbert Bush, "Die Feminisierung der ultramontanen From-
zro
tuted a feminization of the church, a transformation occurring not just

in the German states but also in England, France, and the United
States throughout the nineteenth century.64 To liberal observers and
critics of the growth of Catholicism like Johann von Schulte and Paul
Hinschius, however, the role of women in Catholicism seemed espe
cially critical in the German states after the r 848 Revolution. 65
Nowhere was this more evident than in the growth of female reli
gious orders and congregations. Prior to the revolution, there were in
Germany only a few Ursuline, Dominican, and Carmelite female
orders and a handful of female religious congregations . According to
statistics compiled by the Prussian parliament in r869, however, there
were now in Prussia thirty different female orders and congregations.
Table 4 indicates that according to the state compilation the number of
women belonging to six different female orders with forty-one con
vents totaled 924 including nuns, novices, and lay sisters. Table 5 indi
cates that by r 869 there were fourteen different open congregations
with 690 convents or residential institutions. The number of women in
migkeit," in Wunderbare Erscheinungen: Frauen und katholische Frommigkeit in 19. und 20.
Jahrhundert, ed. Irmtraud Gotz von Olenhausen (Paderborn: F. Schoningh, 1995), 203-20;
and Meiwes. "Arbeiterinnen des Herrn. " For indications that the church was becoming more
feminine, see also Lucian Holscher, "Moglichkeiten und Grenzen der statistischen ErfaGung
kirchlicher Bindungen," in Seelsorge und Diakonie in Berlin: Beitriige zum Verhiiltnis von
Kirche und Groj3stadt im 19. Jahrhundert und beginnenden 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Kaspar Elm
and H ans-Dietrich Loock (Berlin : W. de Gruyter, 1990). 39-62. For a critical appraisal of the
feminization of religion, see Caroline Ford, "Religion and Popular Culture in Modern
Europe," Journal of Modern History 65 (1993) : 1 52-75; and for the German case, see the
objections by Margaret Lavinia Anderson, "The Limits of Secularization: On the Problem of
the Catholic Revival in Nineteenth-Century Germany," Historical Journa/ 38 (1995): 647-70,
esp. 654.
64. For France, see Ralph Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789-1914
(London: Routledge, 1989); and Claude Langlois, La Catholicisme aujeminin: Les congrega
tionsfran(:ais a superieure generate au XIX siecle (Paris: Cerf, 1984) . For the United States. see
Richard D . Shiels, 'The Feminisation of American Congregationalism, 1730-1835." Ameri
can Quarterly 33 (1983): 46-62; and Barbara Welter, "The Feminization of American Reli
gion, 1 8oo-186o," in Clio 's Consciousness Raised: New Perspectives in the History of Women,
ed. Mary Hartmann and Lois Banner (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), 136-57. See also
Mary Ewens. The Role of the Nun in Nineteenth- Century America (New York: Arno Press,
r978). To make a comparison to the Roman Catholic female religious orders and congrega
tions in England, see Susan O'Brien, " Terra Incognita: The Nun in Nineteenth-Century Eng
land," Past and Present, 121 (1988): 1 10-40; and idem, "French Nuns in Nineteenth-Century
England,'' Past and Present, 161 (1997): 142-80. There is no study of the images of nuns in
Germany comparable to Susan Casteras's study of English nuns, "Virgin Vows: The Early
Victorian Artists' Portrayal of Nuns and N ovices," Victorian Studies 24 (1981): 1 5 7-84.
65. Schulte, Die neueren katholischen Orden und Congregationen; Hinschius. Die Orden
und Kongregationen der katholischen Kirche.
TABLE 4.
Female Religious Orders in Prussia in 1869
Order
Ursuline
Women o f the Good Shepherd
Benedictine
Carmelite
Elizabethan
Clarissen
Total
Convents
N uns
Novices or
Lay Sisters
24
368
214
83
45
60
31
36
33
32
11
41
612
312
Source: " Ubersicht der in Preul3en vorhandenen Stationen geistlicher Orden,"

1 000- 1 002.
TABLE S.
Female Religious Congregations in Prussia in 1 869
Congregation
Sisters of Mercy
School Sisters
Our Dear Lady
Sisters of the Poor
Child of Jesus
Our Holy Catherine
Sisters of Christian
Charity
Recollects
Salesians
Sisters of the Sacred
Heart of Jesus
English Frauleins
Sisters of St. Gertrude
Sisters of St. Salvat or
Sisters of St. Michael
Association for the
Improvement of
Female Servants
Total
N ovices or
Lay Sisters
Convents
Sisters
521
2,986
626
63
299
84
31
235
23
480
11
19
1 37
17
15
1 33
13
37
13
77
40
39
36
17
15
16
690
15
15
12
11
4,497
8 67
Service
care for the sick
education
education
education
education
education
education
education
education
education
education
education
education
moral
improvement
Source: " Ubersicht der in Preul.len vorhandenen Stationen geistlicher Orden," 1 000-1 002.
212
these congregations totaled 5, 364 including sisters, novices, and lay sis
ters. The number of women in religious orders and congregations in
Germany now dramatically surpassed the number of men in religious
orders. In I865, according to Schulte, the ratio of men to women reli
gious in Prussia was I to 3 3 and in Bavaria I to 3 . 2 5 . In Hesse the ratio
had risen to I to 8, and in the other German states there were no male
orders at all. In Austria, by contrast, there were 500 more men than
women in closed religious orders and open congregations. 66 The
Catholic Church did not compile its own statistics, but the dispropor
tionate number of women in the service of the church was readily
understood by Catholics. When in May I 872 during the intense debate
on the controversial anti-Jesuit bill in the Reichtag the rabid Jesuit
hater Rudolf von Gneist alleged the "head count today is already more
than 2o,ooo," he did nothing to make it clear whether he meant the
number of priests across Germany or Jesuits everywhere in the world.
Center Party deputies immediately shouted out "Nuns! Nuns! " 67
Schulte explained that there were several reasons for the dramatic
growth of female congregations since I 848. He believed it was becom
ing increasingly difficult for women, especially in the midsized cities, to
find a partner for marriage. Contemporaries also agreed that bour
geois families were apparently no longer able to provide financially for
their unmarried adult daughters. At the same time, Schulte argued that
housing was becoming scarce and food more and more expensive. In
general, therefore, women were finding it increasingly difficult to earn
sufficient wages to support themselves on their own. Since many
women could no longer rely on marriage as a strategy for material
security, many from the "better strata" were now turning to the con
vents. Besides providing security, life in the convent also offered an
escape from the life of a housewife, a life that young women knew
required working all day, staying up nights to care for sick children,
and attending the whimsical moods of a husband. Meanwhile, in the
convent young women, he believed, soon adjusted to getting up early
at the appointed hours and to praying throughout the day. Every
thing-eating, sleeping, praying-was determined by the clock. For
66. Schulte, Die neueren katholischen Orden und Congregationen, 36. According to Relinde
Meiwes the number of women in religious orders and congregations in Prussia jumped from
579 in 1 8 5 5 t o 8,011 by 1873. The number of male monastics lagged behind, increasing from
397 to 1,037 in the same period of time. Meiwes, "Arbeiterinnen des Herrn, " 77 Meiwes's sta
tistical tabulations should be weighed against mine. In any case at issue here is the liberal per
ception of the dramatic increase in female orders and congregations and that increase relative
to male orders.
67. Anderson, "Limits of Secularization," 653-54 n. 26.
213
young women all this seemed to ensure a life of peace, harmony, punc
tuality, prayer, and the labor of love. "Not bad, " Schulte thought.
"Why wouldn't many girls prefer being a nun to enduring a life full of
pain and misery as a maid, seamstress, washer, the wife of a petty
bureaucrat, artisan, or worker?"68
Schulte, clearly, had little real appreciation for the realities of a life
dedicated to work in the female religious congregations . Female reli
gious who belonged to nursing orders would have disagreed with his
rosy portrait. The so-called Gray Sisters, for example, were required to
work 250 day shifts and 180 night shifts in hospitals and infirmaries
staffed by the order. Under the physical and emotional strain the
health of the nuns rapidly broke down. Most died from overexertion
before they were fifty years old. 69 Yet liberal men echoed Schulte's atti
tudes. They argued again and again that the nunneries drained the
pool of women available for marriage, undermining the woman's role
ordained by nature as wife and mother, the "living soul" of the private
sphere. Since convents, Sybel explained, had not the least relationship
to the household and the family, they lent nothing to the education of
girls for their true duties.7 Virchow argued that female congregations
divested the family of girls and young women and then subjected them
to dogmatic religious indoctrination. The convents offered little
instruction of practical worth and even less of intellectual value, and
they did nothing to prepare young women for their roles as house
wives.71 He believed that female congregations served neither the fam
ily nor the state but only the interests of the church. They broke apart
the natural unity of the family and depleted German society of wives
and mothers.
Schulte connected the dramatic proliferation of female congrega
tions to the new demands for access to the social and political public,
the rising tide of democracy, and the reemergence of feminism. Reli
gious convents and orders were viewed as small social republics within
the state, pockets of communism and the women's movement. "Their
increase during our time is explained in part by the socialist current
and by the pressure of women for emancipation . " Female congrega
tions, he continued, were also part of the larger attempt to "Christian
ize capital," to place industry, factories, and craft work under the
authority of priests and nuns. Schulte concluded, "If this were done,
68.
69.
70.
71.
Schulte, Die neueren katholischen Orden und Congregationen, 40.

Ross, Failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf, 87 n. 52.
Sybel, " U ber die Emancipation der Frauen," 78.
Virchow, Uber die Erziehung des Weibes, 21-22.
2 14
clerics would rule the world. "72 The new congregations were also
French enclaves within Prussia. They were often controlled, according
to Schulte, by French mother superiors who imported French forms of
Catholicism. Possession of French prayer books, for example, was a
sign of devotion, and French words were used to designate religious
offices and religious congregations. Schulte echoed the common opin
ion among liberals that the new congregations, especially the teaching
institutions, were laced through with ultramontane militancy, spread
ing hatred of Prussia. Female religious congregations and orders were
also sites for concentrated concern about unsupervised female associa
tion. The story current in the summer of r 869 of Sister Barbara, impris
oned for twenty-one years by the nuns of a barefoot Carmelite order in
Cracow, seemed to provide the proof that without paternal discipline,
women would degenerate into religious fanaticism, barbarity, and
nymphomania. 73
The distrust of and hostility toward Catholic women increased with
the threat of French revanchism and with the church-state battle of the
r87os. The article "Die katholische Frau als Werkzeug der Feinde
Deutschlands" in the Grenzboten argued, for example, that Catholic
girls confined within the walls of the convent were molded into sub
missive, single-minded agents of the church.74 In the convent schools
they heard almost nothing about the fatherland and its history. The
girls learned just as little about the German poets; in the convent
schools they promised not to read Goethe and Schiller. They were
taught, according to the article, from an early age not to marry Protes
tants and that tolerance for other religions was a sinful act of indiffer
ence. Every day their heads were filled with stories about miracles and
devils. After women left the convent, they preferred "the most miser
able novels from the lending libraries, French above all . " "They
remain forever submissive daughters of their church and diligently go
to confession. They believe it is a mortal sin to question the sanctity of
their priests and the power of the church alone for salvation . " Most
women, according to the article, never recovered from the indoctrina
tion that took place in the convents. "They are that for which they were
raised: blind tools of the church. "75 When such articles were allegedly
72. Schulte, Die neueren katholischen Orden und Congregationen, 42.
73. The story of Sister Barbara's incarceration and its meaning are explored in detail in
chapter 3
7 4 "Die katholische Frau als Werkzeug der Feinde Deutschlands,'' Grenzboten I (r874):
234-37
7 5 Ibid. , quotations at 235, 235-36.
215
written by Catholic clerics or laity, as in the case of the article in the

Grenzboten, which included the byline "a Catholic woman," there was
an added air of authenticity.
The form of religious life that especially flourished among Catholic
women after 1 848 was the active congregation devoted to public phil
anthropy. This too was part of the feminization of the church. But the
point is just as much that the new female religious congregations were
part of the movement by women to gain access to the public. The
growth of the religious congregations was part of the revival of
women's demands for independence, emancipation, and larger social
relevance. For many Catholic women the new religious congregations
offered opportunities for women to take their fate into their own
hands. Many women joined these congregations not because they were
religious fanatics or because they believed (or their families believed)
their prospects for marriage were bleak. They joined because they real
ized that they could combine as sisters in orders a religious life with
their own aspirations for a professional life. They found rewarding
work in public as teachers, nurses, welfare workers, and administrative
personnel in Catholic schools, hospitals, orphanages, asylums,
women's shelters, and reformatories for young women. In religious
congregations, women pursued an associational life outside the home
and filled valuable roles in public service to the sick and poor.76
Liberals immediately recognized the significance of the new, more
influential, visible role that women were now playing in society
through the philanthropic work of the congregations. Schulte
explained, "In the old orders women are completely dead to the out
side world. But in the new congregations they often have a far-reach
ing influence. The new congregations pursue mostly social work,
including education and instruction, caring for the poor and the
sick. "77 Liberals repeatedly argued that the charitable agencies estab
lished by female religious orders only served to extend the reach and
76 . This is the refreshing argument ofTered by Relinde Meiwes, "Religiositat und Arbeit
als Lebensform fiir katholische Frauen: Kongregationen im 19. Jahrhundert," in Frauen
unter dem Patriarchal der Kirchen: Katholikinnen und Protestantinnen im 19. und 20. Jahrhun
dert, ed. Anselm Doering-ManteufTel, Martin Greschat, Jochen-Christoph Kaiser, Wilfried
Loth, and Kurt Nowak (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1995). 69-8 8; and idem, "Arbeiterinnen
des Herren, " which argues that the Catholic female religious congregations represented one
important component of the larger women's movement. Meiwes makes important arguments
about the spread of female congregations, the character of conventual life and philanthropic
activity, and the "feminization" of church personnel, and my arguments here should be
weighed against her study.
77 Schulte, Die neueren katholischen Orden und Congregationen, 8 .
216
promote the power of the church . Behind the cloak of humanitarian

ism, nuns allegedly took advantage of the vulnerable condition of the
poor and invalid to indoctrinate them with dogma and convert Protes
tants to Catholicism. Eduard Zeller's influential liberal treatise system
atically outlining the right of the state to supervise and restrict church
affairs argued that care for the sick and the poor was the proper and
exclusive responsibility of the secular state . Catholic philanthropic
institutions should be taken over, he explained, because they could not
be trusted as the state could be trusted with the competent administra
tion of social health and welfare. 78 Zeller's complaint at least seemed
measured, but the hysterical violence directed toward charitable insti
tutions was indicated by a liberal academic in the journal Im Neuen
Reich: they were the same as "phylloxera, Colorado beetle and other
enemies of the empire. "79
At the same time, for critics the Catholic missions taking place all
over Germany were disgusting displays of women in public at their
worst. Women, kneeling or prostrate at the feet of the missionaries,
apparently mentally and emotionally unhinged, not only flooded the
public with irrationalism. 80 Social observers also warned that mothers
at the missions threatened to destroy the family. If mothers had sur
rendered themselves to fanaticism, it was the children who suffered
most. According to one critic, with the break of dawn large numbers of
women from all social strata were fleeing from their duties at home and
streaming to the sermons at the Jesuit missions . Caring for the house
hold and for the children was left to the men or otherwise simply aban
doned. "You very often see children hungry and freezing in the streets.
They wander around unattended, crying in front of the doorways and
calling for their mothers. 'The mother? And where is the mother?'
'At the mission! At the mission! ' sob the poor orphans. "8 1 In another
story, a mother locked her two small children in her home and left for
the mission . Unsupervised, one child fell into the fire and was burned
to death; meanwhile "the mother was practicing pious exercises with
her Jesuit confessor . " 82
Since the missions were extraordinary events, there was, of course,
78. Eduard Zeller, Staat und Kirche (Leipzig: Fues's Verlag. r 8 73), 248.
79. Kissling, Geschichte des Kulturkampfes 3 : 5 8 . Cited also in Blackbourn, Marpingen,
257; and idem, "Progress and Piety." 149.
8o. Allgemeine Zeitung, Nr. 316, 1 8 52, Aktenstiicke, 174.
81. Stachelstock, Licht und FinsternijJ, 76-77.
82. Ibid., n
217
considerable truth to the accusation that they disrupted the normal rou
tines of family life and community affairs. When the Franciscan mis
sion came to Dahl in 1857 even the parish priest admitted in a report to
the bishop of Paderborn that "all the grownups streamed to the church,
and many houses were just left to the children. "83 Another priest
reported that families ate only cold food during the weeks of the mis
sions so that mothers would be free to attend the sermons. 84 Women
who flocked to the missions and religious associations, joined the pil
grimages, and attended church events were, therefore, not simply a pub
lic nuisance. They betrayed their responsibilities as mothers and care
takers of the home. But in another sense as well women who brought
their Catholicism out into the open represented a breakdown of the dis
tinction between public and private: if Catholicism was a woman, "irra
tional" and "fanatical, " it belonged, if anywhere, at home.
Women not only j oined the new religious congregations and partici
pated in the missions in large numbers. Women also assumed more
prominent and conspicuous roles in Catholic communities and in the
popular practice of Catholicism. The promulgation of the Immaculate
Conception of the Virgin by the Vatican in 1854 and the new forms of
Marian devotion, including hymns, prayers, and liturgical practices,
all encouraged by the missionary associations, were part of the grow
ing predominance of women in the lay popular practice of Catholi
cism. 85 It was Mary who in the Catholic life of prayer served as the
intermediary for her son Christ, and it was Mary who according to the
church instructed Saint Dominic to distribute and teach the rosary, the
prayer cycle that included the Hail Mary. For Catholic women, vener
ation of the Virgin may have sanctified virginity, motherhood, and
other "female virtues" including humility, forbearance, and graceful
suffering, but the Mother of Jesus also offered an image of feminine
power, grace, and authority. In the world of Catholic women, the pres
ence of the Virgin Mother of Jesus and with her the model for feminine
behavior were constant. It was inculcated through the recitation of the
Hail Mary; in the endless pins and pictures that bore Mary's image;
8 3 . Pf. Sachs an Bischof Conrad Martin, Dahl. 3 April 1857. Volksmissionen der nord
deutschen Franziskaner, 46-47.
84. Ibid., T2.
8 5 . Michael N. Ebertz, "Maria in der Massenreligiositat: Zum Wandel des popularen
Katholizismus in Deutschland. in Volksfrommigkeit in Europa: Beitriige zur Soziologie pop
ulmer Religiositiit aus 14 Liindern, ed. Michael N. Ebertz and Franz Schultheiss (Munich:
Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1986), 65-84. On Marian devotion encouraged by the missions, see Gatz,
Rheinische Volksmission, T26.
218
and with the millions of women who bore her name, the most common
name in the Catholic population, if not in all of Germany.
At the same time, women were drawn to the Catholic Church
because it offered one of the few social and public spaces available to
them outside the workplace. Following a visit by missionaries to their
communities, women established their own religious organizations.
For wives and mothers, the religious associations offered friendship
circles in which they could share and discuss their problems and the
rare opportunity, if only for a short while, to flee from the responsibil
ities of the home and the family. At the same time, religious organiza
tions were attractive to women because they offered a measure of inde
pendence from male supervision, even if the priest, of course,
remained. 86 Most important, joining the new religious associations set
up by the missionaries was one of the new opportunities for women to
play more important roles in Catholic communities and in the popular
practice of Catholicism. Women eagerly pursued the chance to assume
organizational and leadership positions otherwise denied to them by
men and did so with the assurance that it was a religious duty. For all
these reasons, the new female religious organizations became so popu
lar and successful that among the laity, women often dominated the
religious life of the parish. Schulte complained that communities in
many Catholic regions had become "mere ladies' societies. " 87 Mean
while, liberal newspapers like the Vossische Zeitung did not fail to
notice the large attendance of women at the public assembly of the
Catholic Association in Dusseldorf in r 86g. 88 Even despite the legal
ban on female participation in political clubs and gatherings, in pre
dominantly Catholic cities hundreds of women participated in "lecture
evenings" dedicated to clear political questions like state supervision of
schools. 89 The dominance of women in the new religious associations,
assemblies, and meetings was only one part of their expanding role in
the church. Women helped organize pilgrimages, too, and their partic
ipants, liberals complained, were mostly female.
The missionary crusade, the new religious congregations, charitable
86. See McLeod, "Weibliche Frommigkeit," 145. See also Sperber. "The Transformation
.,
of Catholic Associations . For France, see Martine Segalen, Mari et femme dans la societe
paysanne (Paris: Flammarion, 1980), 1 56-5 8. For England, see L. Davidoff and C. Hall, "The
Architecture of Public and Private Life: English Middle-Class Society in a Provincial Town,
1 780 to 1 8 50," in The Pursuit of Urban History, ed. Derek Fraser and Anthony Sutcliffe (Lon
don: E. Arnold, r983), 327-45.
87. Schulte, Die neueren katholischen Orden und Congregationen, 4I.
8 8 . Vossische Zeitung, I I Sept. r869.
89. Anderson, Practicing Democracy, 127.
219
societies, church associations, pilgrimages, and shifting devotional pat

terns were dramatically changing the lives of Catholic women. All
introduced women to public life. Obviously, the church fathers were
decidedly no more feminist than they were democratic. Indeed, they
continued to see women as large children requiring supervision,
morally weak vessels prone to sin, sexually dangerous and untrustwor
thy-a deep-seated Catholic conviction that tarred the feminine as far
back biblically as Eve in Eden . The church's teachings circumscribed
women in the home and upheld matrimony, procreation, and mother
hood as the paramount responsibilities of women . To be sure, the new
opportunities for women within the church were also confined and
qualified. On the subject of women, the Catholic Church leadership
and liberals shared views rather more than either could recognize or
would admit. But all this should not blind us to the opportunities
opened up by the Catholic revival that had been previously unavailable
to young women and mothers in German society. At the very time that
liberal critics complained that the Roman Church was "antimodern"
and "backward, " exploiting "naive" women to enhance the power of
the church, Catholic women found within the church opportunities to
organize together, enter professional life, expand their roles within
their communities, and exercise authority. By comparison, it would
only be much later and then only rarely that the German labor move
ment would be able to mobilize and employ so many women. It was
not the case, therefore, that Catholic women were lagging behind mid
dle-class secular and Protestant women in their demand for access to
public space. Already in the 1 8 50s and early 1 86os, even while the bour
geois women's movement had disappeared and well before the found
ing of the Allgemeine Deutscher Frauenverein in 1865, Catholic
women were coupling religious life with public life in open religious
congregations, associations, assemblies, and the missions in ways gen
erally not available to women or not desired by women at the same
time in Protestant bourgeois culture.
Protestant middle-class women had, of course, engaged in public
philanthropic work, charitable activities, and poor relief initiatives
since the early decades of the century, in, for example, national organi
zations like the Vaterlandischer Frauenverein (Patriotic Women's
Association), a nursing sisterhood established in 1866 after the Austro
Prussian War, and through various local and municipal societies. The
participation of Catholic women in public was, however, both quanti
tatively and qualitatively different than that of their Protestant social
counterparts. The flood of Catholic women in the years after 1 848
220
entering the public through female congregations, church organiza

tions, parish life, and religious devotion was faster, more dramatic, and
therefore more conspicuous than the engagement of Protestant
women. To contemporaries the influx of Catholic women in public
looked like a sudden expansion, a virtual explosion relative to the
number of Protestant women who remained committed to philan
thropic work and church affairs. The engagement of Catholic women
was more impressive precisely because it was new and, more impor
tant, because it was coupled with the power of the missions and the
revival of popular Catholicism. Women of the Protestant middle class
may have j oined in public work through secular organizations like the
Vaterlandischer Frauenverein, with a membership in r873 of some
thirty thousand, in the spirit of nationalist service and through other
municipal charities in the spirit of civic volunteerism. But Catholic
women joined in philanthropic work as a consciously pious act of
Catholic faith. Their work in hospitals, asylums, schools, orphanages,
shelters for women, and correctional homes for wayward women was,
like their religious worship, suffused with and empowered by female
forms of religious devotion such as the Marianism specific to Roman
Catholicism.
It was this in part that provoked a backlash from critics convinced
that Catholic sisters in public work could not be trusted to provide
without prejudice for those in their care. Schwester Adolphe, oder die
Geheimnisse der inneren Verwaltung des biirgerlichen Invalidenhauses in
Mainz, published anonymously in r863, was meant to expose a case in
point.9 It gives a detailed account of the Sisters of Mercy, who
included among their nursing duties at the St. Rochus Hospital in
Mainz subjecting their invalid "inmates, " physically dependent and
emotionally susceptible, to a daily regime of incessant prayer. In one
instance among others, an eighty-year-old invalid, Adam Hattemer by
name, former saddler by trade, was ordered by the sisters to attend
church every day, twice a day, in the cold despite his frail condition.
Two weeks after making a complaint he was a corpse.9 1 According to
the account, the Sisters of Mercy were clearly doing more harm than
good. All this meant that Catholic middle-class women were entering
the public sphere in quite different ways, with greater attention and
with more controversy, than Protestant women. It was Catholic
women in every aspect of their religious life, whether in their charitable
activities or attending the missions, not Protestant women, who
90. Schwester Adolphe, oder die Geheimnisse der inneren Verwaltung des biirgerlichen
Invalidenhauses in Mainz (Frankfurt am Main: Druck von R. B aist, r863).
9 I . Ibid., 40-4T .
221
seemed to critics to be doing the demonstrable damage to the tradi

tional separation of public and private.
Meanwhile, most Catholic men did not directly contest the partici
pation and relative autonomy of Catholic women in the religious
associations and activities. Instead biirgerlich Catholic men preferred
their own separate and secular associational life, joining the numerous
political and social organizations closed to women . This was only typ
ical of the gendered attitude middle-class men held toward religious
practice. They were for the most part not pious themselves, and they
particularly resented the priests' claim to authority over them.
Nonetheless, they valued the power of religion to inculcate moral
behavior among people, that is to say other people, and believed a cer
tain piety in their wives and daughters, their presence at church and in
religious associations, to be respectable and entirely appropriate to
their sex. At the same time, Catholic workers retreated in large num
bers to the tavern, that other refuge of male fellowship . It was here
that they developed together anticlerical and secular attitudes Y
Many o f them felt betrayed by their priests, who i n reply t o their com
plaints about oppressive working conditions and starvation wages
counseled only prayer, forbearance, and obedience. One well-known
example was the clay miner Nikolaus Osterroth from the Bavarian
Palatinate, who has left eloquent testimony not only of his physically
crippling work but of the indifference of his parish priests to it. In the
taverns after church in the company of co-workers he learned to curse
the parish priests (mere "Center Party men, " he called them) along
with the mine owners.
How did the priest use his influence? Instead of defending the
rights of the oppressed, whose leadership he regarded as his
monopoly, he preached submission and patience to the workers.
He sat at the table of the rich and accepted their gifts that they had
wrung from the poor, instead of reminding them that their actions
were hardhearted and unchristian. Instead of saying to the mine
owners, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, " he said to the
exploited and raped workers, "You are servants, and servants you
must remain; God wills it for your salvation. "93
92. For the tavern as a center of male anticlericalism and hostility to the missions, see
Sperber, Popular Catholicism, 62-63.
93 Nikolas Osterroth, "Nikolaus Osterroth, Clay Miner," in The German Worker: Work
ing Class Autobiographies from the Age of Industrialization, ed. Alfred Kelly (Berkeley: Uni
versity of California Press. 19X7), r6o-X 7. quotation at 169.
222
Finally Osterroth abandoned his faith. In his case apostasy culminated

in his political conversion from the Center Party to social democracy.
Liberal men hoped Catholic men would sooner or later turn their
backs on Catholicism not because their p1iests were too often blind to
the reality of their lives but because the religion itself was, they
claimed, ridiculous. Catholic women were hopelessly lost to Catholi
cism, liberals concluded, but Catholic men, after all, were endowed
with the faculty of reason and might finally use it to shed the feminine
veil of Catholicism. By r 868 even Bluntschli thought there were some
grounds for hope. He believed that the maj ority of educated Catholic
men no longer accepted the teachings of the church; they had left it, he
presumably thought, to women and the ignorant.94 One historian of
religion and secularization in the nineteenth century has concluded
that Catholicism not just in Germany but also in England, France, and
the United States became feminized both because more women j oined
the church and because men fled from it, a process that accelerated
with the increasing size of the industrial working class in the course of
the nineteenth century.95
The larger measure of piety among Catholic women, their participa
tion in religious associational life, and their part in the public activities
of the church helped prepare them to play another role as public pro
testers during the Kulturkampf. The antichurch campaign immedi
ately generated a determined popular Catholic resistance, and state
authorities found they were unprepared to meet the open defiance of
Catholics. State officials mistakenly assumed that resistance to the
Kulturkampf would emanate from a finite number of readily
identifiable pockets within the Catholic population: the clergy, the
Catholic lay leadership, and a few Catholic associations like the
Mainzverein (Mainz Association) .96 Instead the response of the
Catholic population was widespread and spontaneous. So dramatic in
fact was the agitation of the Catholic population that it was not until
the outright revolution of 1918 that imperial Germany would again see
such levels of collective action against state authority. It was, however,
the predominant role of women in the passive and active resistance to
the Kulturkampf that was especially surprising to liberals and state
authorities alike. Catholic women from the upper, middle, and lower
classes across Prussia in cities and rural areas organized themselves,
attended rallies, flooded cathedral squares in demonstrations, collected
94 Bluntschli, "' U ber das Verhaltniss des modernen Staates zur Religion," r66.
9 5 McLeod, "'Weibliche Frommigkeit,'' 1 34-56.
96. Ross, Failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf, 1 3 2 .
223
signatures for statements of solidarity, wrote newspaper editorials, and

marched in support of their church leadership. A good example was
the over one thousand Catholic aristocratic women in Cologne, includ
ing the wives of local Landrate and judicial officials, who publicly
expressed their support for the bishop . Again during the summer of
1 874, thirty-five women of the Westphalian aristocracy created a pub
lic scandal when they were arrested and put on trial for lending their
support to the bishop of Munster who in an address had allegedly
insulted the majesty of the law. Such episodes were repeated across
Prussia in almost all episcopal centers, where long processions of
women paid tribute to their bishops as an act of piety.97
Behind the scenes, the prominent women of parishes orchestrated
other forms of passive resistance to the state. They arranged the social
ostracization of so-called state pastors or May priests, clerics who
agreed to the state's demand that they take an oath of allegiance in
accordance with the antichurch May Laws of 1873 and 1 874. Women
of the parish organized the boycotts of shops and businesses of Kul
turkampf sympathizers and informers, and they also took direct action
against the state. Frequently they demanded the participation of their
husbands; often they simply acted by themselves. When state authori
ties auctioned off the furniture of the bishop at Freiburg, a bevy of
Catholic women came armed with umbrellas. They threatened to
thrash anyone who might try to bid against the Catholic community's
designated buyer, whose j ob was to purchase the furniture and then
return it to the bishop .98 At a school in a town in Upper Silesia the
intervention of the army was required to break up a group of women
who had assembled to guard religion classes held by priests not autho
rized by the state. At another town close by the army was called in
again to put down women rioting against a school where classes were
conducted by an Old Catholic.99 Catholic women paid the price for
their defiance of police proscriptions against public demonstrations
and scenes of support for the church leadership : they were arrested,
charged fines, and sent to jail. Girls too had their own particular kind
of public role to play, infused with the symbolism of, at once, youthful
innocence and feminine defiance, in scenes that infuriated Kul
turkampf supporters. When in 1 874 the young priest Julius Busch
returned to his hometown after nineteen days of internment at
Koblenz for refusing to abide by the terms of the May Laws, he was
97 Ibid. , I33 n. 45
98. Anderson, Windthorst, I74
99. Anderson, Practicing Democracy, 126.
2 24
met by a cheering crowd of about a thousand parishioners on the bank

of the Moselle River. In a ritual reenacted in villages, towns, and cities
across Germany whenever interned priests returned to their congrega
tions, girls dressed in white formed a circle around the priest, and one
stepped forward to hand him a bouquet. roo
Policemen and gendarmes, soldiers, mayors, municipal officers and
commissioners, civil servants, deputies, and other authorities who tried
to implement Kulturkampf legislation and the will of the state repeat
edly found themselves pitted against Catholic women protesters who
mocked, heckled, jeered, and beat them with umbrellas. Officials often
coupled the scandal of Catholic women demonstrators with that other
form of disreputable female presence in public. In a typical incident, a
representative of the state squared off against a crowd of angry women
and declared them "all a bunch of prostitutes . " This was the standard
rhetorical assassination of the reputation of women outside normal
social conventions and male control, and the official made clear that he
meant "especially those of you who go to wretched masses and those
who help that theater of apes. " He also railed against "the uselessness
of husbands who are stupid enough to go along just to show their
spunk. "r o1 Liberals assumed that Catholic men demonstrated not
because they believed in the cause but either because they were mere
ruffians or because they were forced to do so by their wives. Liberals
routinely branded particular kinds of popular resistance and mass
demonstrations that had to be contained with policemen as "female"
even if those participating in the agitation were actually men. r o 2 This
was the case, for example, with the crushing crowds that so emotion
ally greeted bishops released from imprisonment that they had to be
held back by the gendarmes. Liberals believed these and other demon
strations were "female" despite the fact that they were clearly orga
nized by prominent Catholic men and led by priests.
Meanwhile, the Catholic confessional and political leadership incul
cated the image of the Catholic community in its time of crisis as
inspired at its best by the feminine virtues of stamina and common
sense. Catholic deputies on the floor of the Prussian parliament and in
the Reichstag and Catholic journal and newspaper editors in their
columns invented the "Catholic woman" who gave a levelheaded voice
to Catholics collectively in the face of the liberals' extravagant accusa100. Ross, Failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf, 142.
101 . McLeod, "Weibliche Frommigkeit," 143.
roz. Blackbourn, ''Progress and Piety," r so.
225
tions against the church. r o 3 The feminine character of Catholic agita

tion against the Kulturkampf inculcated by both liberals and Catholics
became so prominent that it even colored the attitude of those at the
highest level of state government. At a dinner party in January r875
Bismarck during a season of especially heated combat with Ludwig
Windthorst expressed particular concern about those "feminine
influences" that complicated the campaign against the Catholic
Church.r o4 Bismarck's confession that evening that he hated
Windthorst as much as he loved his wife was a remarkably telling
instance of the sexed dynamics and tension-ridden con:flation that
laced relationships in the discourse of the Kulturkampf.
Kulturkampf altercations, therefore, took on more and more the
appearance of a Geschlechterkampf, a running battle between men
and women for access to the public, between men charged with public
authority on the one side and wives, mothers, young women, and even
girls on the other. This was the element of the ordeal, distorted and
exaggerated, that repeatedly focused the attention of Kulturldimpfer
and state authorities. Everywhere, Catholic women on the loose
attending the missions, joining assemblies and associations, participat
ing in pilgrimages, and organizing anti-Kulturkampf protests were not
just a nuisance. For liberal men, these were women who literally did
not know their place. Their open defiance was a formidable challenge
to the state at the same time that the state's exertion of physical force
against the "weaker sex" was a public embarrassment to its authority.
Their loyalty to the Roman Church with acts of religious faith and
state resistance and more fundamentally Catholicism itself gendered as
a woman defied the strictures of society organized according to public
or private.
Class, Democratization, and Anti-Catholicism
Not only the women's question, the women's movement, and the ide
ology of separate spheres but also social class were enmeshed in the lib
eral anticlericalism and anti-Catholicism. Liberals routinely argued
that Catholicism was practiced only by aristocrats, useless leftovers
from the feudal ages, on one end of the social scale and by the allegedly
backward working and rural peasant class on the other end. The liberal
ro3. Anderson, Practicing Democracy. 127.
104. Pflanze. Bismarck and the Developmen t of Germany, 2:24 1 .
226
National Zeitung, therefore, merely repeated the well-worn stereotype

when it stated that Catholicism was "a religion of the uneducated. At
its top it has priests, a few princes and nobles, behind it a following of
speechmakers, sophists, and miracle-workers: the great part of its
members are workers and peasants. " ros Liberals, self-professed middle
class heroes of culture, science, industry, and progress, did nothing to
veil their contempt for the Catholic peasants, whom they considered
dirty, ignorant, and submissive . Bluntschli and Virchow, who were on
opposite ends of the liberal political spectrum, held interchangeable
opinions on the topic. Bluntschli argued that "ultramontanism plays
on the uneducated, the natural need for authority, and the traditional
and acquired beliefs of the masses. " 1 06 As early as 1 849, when Virchow
visited Silesia during a typhoid epidemic, he reported that the rural
population, submissive as it was to the clergy, was "lazy, unclean, dog
like in its devotion, and inflexibly averse to any physical or mental
exertion . "r o 7 "The people," he explained, "are physically and morally
weak and need some kind of tutelary guidance. " 1 08 Later, in the 1870s,
in an age that he believed should have been enlightened, rational, and
scientific, Virchow attacked the Catholic population's obsession with
miracles and observed that "the regions along the Rhine are com
pletely dazzled by them . " 1 09 In 1 8 54 the eminent liberal historian
Johann Gustav Droysen wrote to Heinrich von Sybel that the new ven
eration of the Virgin Mary was a form of "idolatry" suitable only to
the "mob. "rr o
Meanwhile, not just liberals but Protestants and social democrats
too tirelessly bemoaned the Bildungsdefizit, the backward educational
status and lackluster academic performance of the Catholic popula
tion, in every possible venue, including in books and newspaper and
j ournal articles, at public meetings, and on the floor of the Prussian
parliament and the Reichstag. According to critics, the problem in gen
eral seemed to be due to a deep-seated Catholic indifference to if not
105. Quoted in Blackbourn, "Progress and Piety," 149.

106. Johann Caspar Bluntschli, "Zwei Feinde unsres Staats und unsrer Cultur," Gegenwart 3 (1872): 31o-r r, quotation at 310.
107. Blackbourn, Marpingen, 290.
wX. Blackbourn, "Progress and Piety," 149.
109. Rudolf Virchow. Uber Wunder: Rede gehalten in der ersten allgemeinen Sitzung der 47Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und Arzte zu Breslau am I8. September, 1874 (Breslau,
1874), 3
110. Johann Gustav Droysen to Heinrich von Sybel, 12 Dec. 1 8 54, in Hubner, Johann Gus
tav Droysen Brieji1echsel, 2 : 300.
227
disdain for knowledge and learning since Catholic religious culture

appeared to value only faith and obedience. This evaluation was big
oted, but work on Catholic reading habits suggests that it was not until
the r89os that Catholics became interested in becoming intellectually
cultivated according to the dominant culture's standards of taste and
sensibility as a way to emerge from their social "ghetto " and redraw
the boundaries of national participation. m Sybel himself believed that,
in the Rhineland at least, the problem was more specifically the dismal
failure of the Catholic Gymnasia. A quarter of the students could not,
he complained, write grammatically correct German; as many as three
quarters could barely read an easy Latin or Greek text.m Sybel's dis
gust for the apparently hopeless intellectual inferiority of Rhenish
Catholics was so intense that it was literally palpable: in the Prussian
parliament in r 8 79 he explained that he always broke out with "goose
bumps" whenever a student from the Rhineland enrolled for his
courses at the University of Bonn. He was delighted whenever a gen
tleman from the eastern provinces signed up . "3
Critics of Catholic culture ultimately blamed priests for the intellec
tual inferiority of Catholics. Liberals endlessly complained that
Catholic priests were just peasants themselves and, therefore, as
unwashed, ignorant, and blind as those they led. Liberal papers recy
cled story after story about the embarrassing social inferiority of
priests. The Vossische Zeitung, for example, explained to its readers
that "the Catholic priest is with few exceptions a peasant's son. He is
kept away from the university, . . . from association with educated cir
cles, especially from educated ladies. He therefore remains a peasant
and retains the manners, the ways of thinking, of the under classes . " It
followed that the Catholic priest was in the best position to understand
and influence "the crude masses. " In contrast to the rustic and socially
disreputable Catholic priest, the paper argued, the Protestant pastor
was either the son of a pastor or a Burger. He attended the university
and naturally associated with those in the educated circles. The Protes
tant pastor could, therefore, never be popular among the masses. r r 4
Though Catholics understandably objected to such self-serving and
I I I . Jeffrey T. Zalar, "The Process of Confessional lnculturation: Catholic Reading in the
'Long Nineteenth Century,"' in Protestants, Catholics, and Jews in Germany, I800-I9I4, ed.
Helmut Walser Smith (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 121-52.
rr2. Heinrich von SybeL Klerikale Politik im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Bonn: M. Cohen
und Sohn, 1874), 95-96.
u3. Anderson and B arkin, 'The Myth of the Puttkamer Purge," 679.
1 14. Vossische Zeitung. 26 Aug. 1869.
228
prejudiced characterizations, the Vossische Zeitung was in point of fact

not far off the mark. While most priests in Germany at the beginning
of the century had been recruited into the Catholic Church mainly
from the urban classes, later in the century priests came from over
whelmingly rural backgrounds . Irmtraud Gotz von Olenhusen in her
research on the Catholic clergy in Baden demonstrates that Catholic
priests, in fact, were routinely drawn from the lowest level of the rural
social scale. The German priesthood largely came from outside the
processes of urban and industrial growth under way throughout the
country.rrs It does not follow that this was another indication that the
Catholic Church was a recalcitrant anachronism out of touch with the
"modern" spirit of the age . Like nineteenth-century liberals, some
recent historians of Catholicism in Germany have not recognized that
the ultramontane revival, however conservative, was with its mass
organization, mobilization, and commercialization, and reliance on
communication and transportation as much part of the age as urban
ization and industrialization. 1 1 6 Here, however, was precisely the para
dox. The church was quite ready and able to embrace modern means in
its fight against capitalism, materialism, rationalism, and science that
threatened to corrode the foundations of faith. I I 7
The Vossische Zeitung was also by and large not mistaken when it
argued that Protestant pastors failed to wield the same religious, social,
and political influence on their congregations as Catholic priests.
r r s . Gi.1tz von Olenhusen, "Kierus und Ultramontanismus."
n 6 . For examples of work that have argued that antimodernism was fundamental to the
ultramontane movement and the church's ideological and political response to modernity,
see, in addition to Gi:itz von Olenhusen, "Klerus und Ultramontanismus"; also idem, "Ultra
montanisierung des Klerus''; Christoph Weber, "Ultramontanismus als katholischer Funda
mentalismus, " in Deutscher Katholizismus im Umbruch zur Moderne, ed. Wilfried Loth
(Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer), 20-45. See also the critical comments by Anderson, ''Limits of
Secularization," 661; and David Blackbourn, "The Catholic Church in Europe since the
French Revolution: A Review, " Comparative Studies in Society and History 33 (r99r): 778-90.
Zalar argues that his work on Catholic reading habits suggests that research has overempha
sized the success of the clergy in creating a reactionary subculture against modern influences.
There is an interesting and not yet resolved debate concerning the significance of popular
Catholic reading habits in the nineteenth century. In contrast to Helmut Walser Smith's
analysis of Catholic reading material, Zalar argues Catholic reading shows that the bound
aries separating official German intellectual and aesthetic culture from the Catholic milieu
have been drawn too sharply. See Zalar, "Process of Confessional Inculturation "; and Smith,
German Nationalism, 20-37, 8o-86.
117. See Altermatt, " Katholizismus: Antimodernismus mit modernen Mitteln?"; Michael
Kli:icker, Katholisch-von der Weige bis zur Bahre: Eine Lebensmacht im Ze1jall? (Munich:
Kosel-Verlag, 1991), 23-27; and Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte I8oo-I866: Burger
welt und starker Staat (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1983), 412-1 3 .
229
Catholic priests remained formidable and for the most part uncon
tested voices at the center of Catholic communities, particularly in
small towns and the villages of the countryside. Protestant pastors by
contrast were socially removed from the experience of the Mittelstand
and working-class members of their churches . In addition they were
usually merely one voice to be heard among other educated, socially
established, professionally respected, and politically elite authorities in
Protestant society.
Liberals and authorities believed the ignorance and social inferiority
of priests and their flocks was one important explanation for the level
of violence in the anti-Kulturkampf protests. The open rebellion by the
population of Essen in r 8 72 against authorities who had tried to close
the local Jesuit residence and chapel was one of the first indications
that Catholics when provoked could turn into a violent mob. Catholics
openly battled the police in the streets for several days, and the riots
culminated in an attack on the home of a suspected liberal Freemason.
Battalions of infantry were required to restore order. "8 In r874, state
officials were disturbed by the sight of "strange people, most with
blank, stupid faces" who flooded into Cologne in large numbers from
the countryside to join in anti-Kulturkampf agitation. The Magdebur
gische Zeitung claimed that the Catholic mob got drunk, roamed the
streets in a stupor, and looked for trouble. The paper warned that if the
Catholic ruffian element "ever got power into its hands, one could
expect the very worst. " Officials in east Prussia worried that they
would have to battle Catholic Poles of "the poorest and least educated
classes. " I I 9
When exasperated state authorities met Catholic crowds with the
use of force, they justified it in terms of Catholic recalcitrance. In r875
reports of the appearance of the Virgin Mary in the village of Marpin
gen in the Saarland attracted thousands of pilgrims from all over Ger
many. District officials called up a company of infantry to disperse the
pilgrims in a futile and misguided effort to crush ignorance with out
right brutality.120 At the same time liberal circles were hardly surprised
u 8 . Essener Zeitung, 25 Aug. 1872; Vossische Zeitung, 7 Sept. 1 8 72; HSTAD, RD, Nr.
20T T T , "Jesuiten oder Orden der Gesellschaft Jesu und verwandte Orden," Bd. r, r 870-72,
newspaper clipping from Berliner Borsen Zeitung, n.d.; HSTAD. RD, Nr. 20II2, ''Jesuiten
oder Orden der Gesellschaft Jesu und verwandte Orden," Bd. 2, 18 72-73, newspaper clipping
from Spenersche Zeitung, 6 Sept. 1872; HSTAD, RA, Nr. 10699, "Orden der Gesellschaft Jesu
bzw. die Ausflihrung des Gesetzes vom 4 Juli 1 8 72," PP and LR to Regierung, Abtheilung des
Innern, Aachen, 4 Dec. 1872, Bl. 88-89.
II9. These examples and quotations in Ross. Failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf, 1 3 3 .
1 2 0 . Blackbourn, Marpingen, 263-67, 271-74.
2 30
that the whole affair was due to the rumors started by three peasant
girls. An article entitled "Moderne Krankheitssymptome" appearing
in the liberal literary j ournal Grenzboten argued that religious appari
tions were attributable to the overexcitement of the imagination, van
ity, and "tendentious consciousness" of girls. I 2 I In these cases the face
of bourgeois class prejudice is again unmistakable, but the impression
that anti-Kulturkampf violence seemed to be the work of the Catholic
lower classes often incited by women or girls and led by clerics was not
wholly inaccurate. Middle-class Catholics as a whole shied away from
anti-Kulturkampf violent agitation. As members of the Biirgertum
they were reluctant to participate in demonstrations against authority
and alarmed by disorderly conduct that damaged private property. 122
Indeed, they were often proponents of the Kulturkampf themselves.
The issue was not simply that the "crude" and "dangerous" Catholic
masses were intellectually inept, socially contemptible, and given to
violence. Just as important, "ignorant" and "unruly" Catholics in the
age of democratic suffrage posed a political problem. Following the
victory against Austria in 1 866, Bismarck called to life direct, equal,
male suffrage with the founding of the short-lived North German Con
federation. Then when King Wilhelm of Prussia was hailed as German
Kaiser at Versailles in 1 871 during the war against France, the new
empire inherited the most progressive franchise in Europe. Germany's
leap into a new age of democratic suffrage threatened to overthrow the
status quo and challenged the liberal concept of politics. Liberals in the
new political order pointed to the proclamation of infallibility by Pope
Pius IX in 1 8 70 as the root of the problem. The new papal proclama
tion might have pertained only to matters of dogma, but it seemed to
make the Roman Church's positions, including those regarding the
ballot box, matters of absolute obedience . If so, voting Catholics now
expressed the will of a foreign power in domestic politics. According to
liberals, the new Catholic voters were not autonomous individuals free
to cast their ballots as they saw fit but a voting bloc. In point of fact,
critics said that liberal candidates addressed their constituencies as fel
low "citizens, " but the new Center Party called its supporters "the
Catholic people" or the Catholic "flock . " 123 Opponents of the Center
121.
(1876),
122.
r23.
Moderne Krankheitssymptome, r: "Der religiose Madchenspuk," Grenzboten 3

2I-26.
Ross, Failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf, 134 n. 48.
Black bourn, "Catholics and Politics in Imperial Germany," 200.
231
referred to Catholic political practice as "ballot Catholicism. "rz4 Liber

als then looked on with disgust when on the morning of the first elec
tions in the new empire in March r 8 7r priests instructed their congre
gations how they should vote. After mass, priests took their
parishioners to the polling stations_ I 25 For Bluntschli as for many oth
ers this was simply unbearable.
The same class of people that considers it intolerable that the state
approves legislation without its representation, that takes part
independently in the state's administration of justice as jurymen
and aldermen, that constantly limits the entire political and eco
nomic administration of the state with its control, and that elects
its own mayors and district magistrates is also the class that sub
mits itself to the unqualified authority of the pope and [Vatican]
Council, the bishops and their ecclesiastical seats. 126
Bluntschli thought it was hypocrisy that Catholics on the one hand
offered themselves like children to the despotism of the Roman Church
yet on the other hand insisted that they exercise the public and political
responsibilities of citizenship in the nation. Sybel echoed the concerns
about the lack of maturity and independence among Catholic voters
and the growing power of the Center Party, which seemed to enjoy the
unqualified obedience of its constituency. He feared that the tight-knit
organization of the Center Party would eventually overwhelm liberal
voters, who, in contrast to Catholics, valued their personal freedom
more highly than their discipline.
The more democratic the current of the times becomes, the more
power is going to be exercised by a party that can control more
than a million and a half voters with military command. Though
liberals may still be numerically superior to [the Center Party], it
compensates for this with the force of its discipline. Its voters and
deputies in Parliament vote like one man according to the orders
of their leader. By contrast, on the liberal side it is precisely per
sonal independence and loyalty to one's own convictions that are
r24. Anderson, Practicing Democracy, I33
r25. For an example, see Margaret Lavinia Anderson, "Voter, Junker, Landrat, Priest:
The Old Authorities and the New Franchise in Imperial Germany." American Historical
Review 98 (1993): I448-74, esp. I45I-52.
126. Bluntschli. Charakter und Geist, 54-55 .
232
highly valued. These may be high virtues, but they are not always
tempered with moderation, and they often degenerate into right
eousness and factiousness. 127
There is the hint here of envy. Liberals immediately recognized the
advantages of reliable voters delivering ballots en masse and the vulner
ability of parties constituted by Honoratioren who jealously guarded
their idealism and independence in a new age of democracy determined
ultimately by large bloc votes. The impact of the democratic franchise,
the role of the Center Party, the influence of clerical electioneering, and
the consequences of the Catholic population "practicing democracy"
reshaped German political culture. 128 The first elections in the empire,
which included an aggressive Catholic turnout for the Center, looked
like a disaster according to liberals. Immediately following the elec
tions, Heinrich von Treitschke complained in r87r that universal male
suffrage was "an invaluable weapon of the Jesuits, which grants an
unfair advantage to the powers of tradition and stupidity. " '29 In a
democratic age that gave the Catholic "masses" the vote, when political
decisions were not determined by the reasoned argument of indepen
dent gentlemen but by the brute power of voting blocs, the liberal virtue
of independence seemed now a liability, an irony that lay at the center
of the liberal fear of and enmity toward the Center Party. The alleged
femininity of Catholics coupled with their subservience to a despotic
authority beyond the empire, therefore, made them not only unfit for
political responsibility but also a threat to the liberal politics, liberal
political hegemony, and the independence of the state. Over and over
liberals warned that with the Catholic voting bloc at its disposal, the
Catholic Church was not simply a "private society" but a public power
against which the state had to defend itself. '3
In the Rhineland, the Deutscher Verein was organized to coordinate
and mobilize liberal opposition against the rising tide of political
Catholicism. Sybel heralded the association as an attempt at "intensive
personal engagement with the masses of the Volk" though there is at
the same time an indication here of the continuing attachment to an
127. Sybel, Klerikale Politik. rr6-r7.
rz8. Anderson, Practicing Democracy.
129. Heinrich von Treitschke, "Parteien und Fractionen (r87r),'' in Historische und politi
sche Aufsiitze, 7th ed. (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1 9 1 5), 3 : 6o8.
130. See, for example, Zeller, Staat und Kirche, 63-64, 97. For Zeller's considerable
influence on prominent liberals see Keith Anderton, "The Limits of Science : A Social, Polit
ical, and Moral Agenda for Epistemology in Nineteenth-Century Ge1many" (Ph.D. diss. ,
Harvard University, 1993), 308-rz.
233
individual, face-to-face mode of political persuasion. 131 The claim of

Pope Pius IX in a letter to Kaiser Wilhelm I in August 1873, first pub
lished by the Staatsanzeiger in October 1 873, that everyone who had
been baptized Christian belonged to the pope only confirmed liberal
fears.132 According to the National Zeitung, the letter was nothing less
than a declaration "that the war, which is already under way, is sup
posed to be carried through by the curia until the German Empire is
destroyed. " "The Jesuits through the mouth of the pope," the paper
continued, "have spurred on the German priests and Catholics to the
most fierce battle against the fatherland. " I 33
So similar were the problems with women and the masses that they
were ultimately conflated in liberal anti-Catholicism. Liberals believed
that their own masculine independence, civic spirit, and Bildung were
as uncharacteristic of the lower classes as they were of women . Priests
seemed to be able to sway and manipulate the lower-class masses in the
same way and for the same reason that they were able to control and
use women. Like women, the masses were irrational, prone to excite
ment, and predisposed to religious fanaticism and were, therefore, eas
ily manipulated by the clergy. To cite Bluntschli once again, the Jesuit
order "worked sometimes secretly through 'pious women' on weak
men, sometimes openly through the stirred-up masses. " 134 Just as lib
erals conceived of Catholicism as a mob, the nineteenth-century bour
geoisie, not just in Germany but throughout Europe, thought of the
masses and mass culture as a woman; authentic culture belonged alone
to men. 1 35 Theories of mass behavior such as those developed by
French social psychologists, including Hippolyte Taine, Gabriel
Tarde, and particularly Gustave Le Bon in his enormously popular
Psychologie des Joules (appearing in English as The Crowd), repre
sented the belief already current in the latter half of the century that
mobs, impulsive, irrational, and prone to violence, were distinguished
by their "feminine" (as well as mentally ill, alcoholic, and savage) char131. Quoted in Sheehan, German Liberalism. 150.
132. Letter of Pope Pius IX to Kaiser Wilhelm I, 7 Aug. rX73, in The Age of Bismarck:
Documents and In terpretations, ed. Theodore S. Hamerow (New York: Harper and Row,
1973), 163. For a liberal reaction see Johann Caspar Bluntschli, Die rechtliche Unverant
wortlichkeit und Veranwortlichkeit des romischen Papstes: Eine volker- und staatsrechtliche
Studie (Ni:irdlingen : C. H. Beck, 1876). 8 .
1 3 3 . Quotations in Theodor Wacker, Friede zwischen Berlin und Rom? Geschichtliche Erin
nerungen aus der Bliithezeit des Kulturkampfes (Freiburg im Breisgen, 1879), 11-12.
134. Bluntschli, Charakter und Geist, 36.
135. Andreas Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman : Modernism's Other,'' in After the Great
Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, r986), 44-62. See also Sidonia Blatter, Der Pobel die Frauen, etc. : Die
Massen in der politischen Philosophic des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin : Akademie Verlag, 1995).
2 34
acteristics. 136 According to Le Bon, "The simplicity and exaggeration

of the sentiments of crowds have the result that a throng knows neither
doubt nor uncertainty. Like a woman, it goes at once to extremes . . . .
A commencement of antipathy or disapprobation, which in the case of
an isolated individual would not gain strength, becomes at once furi
ous hatred in the case of an individual in a crowd." '37 Le Bon argued
that crowds upon closer examination also exhibited a peculiar religious
sentiment, necessarily accompanied by intolerance and fanaticism, and
religions, he believed, were founded on crowds that sought happiness
in worship and obedience.
But the confounding of women, religious fanaticism, and the masses
is only half the point. In the liberal imagination Catholicism as a femi
nine and stupid mob threatening to overwhelm and disorient the pub
lic was intertwined with other enemies inside and outside German
borders. The Gartenlaube argued that Catholicism, especially monasti
cism, was also a form of communism. The journal claimed that the
possessions of the church were the common property of all its mem
bers . '38 To cite Bluntschli once again, he argued in "Zwei Feinde unsres
Staats und unsrer Cultur" that ultramontanism and communism were
two enemies of the state and culture that despite their differences
shared many characteristics. Communists and the Catholic clergy
might despise each other's beliefs, but they were j oined in their mutual
desire to destroy the authority of the state. Jesuits and ultramontanes
might represent the past and the communists might claim to represent
the future, but both shared an aversion to the present. Both fed on the
lower classes, and both were international movements. Both played on
the irrationalism of the masses and directed mob violence against the
state and society. Bluntschli argued that the present age distinguished
itself from the age of the Enlightenment by the democratic dissemina
tion of rights among the "Volksclassen " and the "terroristic tendency"
of the present age to erupt into violence in the form of ultramontanism
and communism. The state, he therefore warned, must arm and ready
itself now for the inevitable war against both ultramontanes and com
munists. !39
r36. Susanna Barrows, Distorting Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late Nineteen th-Cen
tury France (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981). This is the point made in
Blackbourn, "Progress and Piety," 149-50.
1 3 7 . Quoted i n Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman," 5 3 .
1 3 8 . See, for example, "Aus dem osterreichischen Klosterleben," Gartenlaube (1874),
483-85, 616-18.
139. Bluntschli, "'Zwei Feinde .''
235
Bluntschli's fears were repeated over and over by other prominent

liberals. Emil Friedberg, member of the Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat
and a prominent architect of Kulturkampf legislation, believed in an
ultramontane-socialist alliance. Both ultramontanes and socialists,
Friedberg explained, "deny the right of the state [to exist] and try to
root it out; both ultimately suffer from notions of property that lack
legal precision, even if the ultramontanes demand the property of their
neighbors . . . for the Roman pope and, therefore, only indirectly for
themselves while the socialists demand it for their own direct use . " 14
For Friedberg it was only logical to assume that the "socialist-interna
tional" would join the "ultramontane-international" in a war to reduce
the German Empire to rubble and to declare victory over its separate
states. This was a war from which Germans should not flinch; indeed,
it would be welcomed: "violence will be beaten down to the ground
with violence, and the strength of our people is too great to be crippled
by the ultramontane-socialist league . In order to lay holy steel on the
body of the state, perhaps it is just as well if the social boil breaks
open . " '4' Heinrich von Treitschke too warned that priests, instead of
preaching peace and reconciliation to the masses, were "allying them
selves with the apostles of communism and glorifying revolt against the
law as a battle of light against darkness . " '42
In r 872, in a catalog of the mistakes in the recent history of France
that Germany should endeavor to avoid, Sybel freely mixed his fear of
French radicalism with anticlerical hysteria. The horror of the Paris
Commune of r87r-which included the arrest of thirty-eight thousand,
execution of twenty-eight thousand, and deportation of seventy-five
hundred Communards-was, he argued, the inevitable consequence of
the hierarchical establishment of the French Catholic Church. "If Ger
many has the desire to see the situation in Paris repeated on its own
soil, it only needs to establish its ecclesiastical life along the principles
of the French Church: unqualified submission of the laity to the
priests, the priests to the bishops, the bishops to the pope. Then we
would experience the Communes in Germany too . " r43 And according
to Sybel it was again the French Catholic clergy that had whipped up
140. Quoted in Birke, "Zur Entwicklung und politischen Funktion des biirgerlichen Kul
turkampfverstiindnisses," 2 7 2.
141 . Emil Friedberg, Das deutsche Reich und die katholische Kirche (Leipzig: Duncker und
Humblot, rl\72). 4o-4r .
142. Heinrich von Treitschke. "Die Maigesetze und ihre Folgen," in Zehn Jahre deutscher
Kampfe: Schriften zur Tagespolitik (Berlin : G. Reimer, 1 879), 432-44, quotation at 438.
143. Heinrich von Sybel, "Was Wir von Frankreich Lemen Ki:innen," in Vortrage und
Aufsiitze (Berlin: A Hoffmann, 1874), 336-47, quotation at 342. The pamphlet was first pub
lished in 1872.
236
the hatred against Prussia that had brought war in 1 8 7 1 . Those who
were neither members of the "black" nor the "red" international move
ments, according to Sybel, should therefore be thankful that Germany
had prevailed. 144 Writing shortly after the Franco-Prussian War and
the founding of the empire and with reference to the protection offered
the papacy in Rome by Napoleon I during the campaign for Italian
unification, Emil Friedberg warned, "If Napoleon I openly confessed
that he has achieved political goals through the Franzosirung
[Frenchification] of the papacy and wants to win political supremacy
over the Catholics, how much greater is the threat today. " Now the
population had been organized into a fanatical army of Catholic asso
ciations. "Today the bishop of all the German dioceses sits in Rome
and places himself under the tutelage of the French government. "145
Liberal newspapers and journals j oined in the hysterical conspiracy
theory, and no accusations seemed too outlandish. The National
Zeitung argued that the pope had formed an alliance with the French
in order to destroy the German Empire. '46 When Catholics protested
Sedan Day, the anniversary of the Prussian triumphant battle against
the French army, by flying the papal flag, liberal nationalists took this
as an indication of pro-French sentiment.
As the Kulturkampf gathered momentum, the liberal election cam
paign of 1 874 was more vigorous and harsher than it had been three
years before. National Liberals in Baden were no longer called Center
Party deputies . They were known only as Reichsfeinde, enemies of the
empire, or as Franzosenvertreter, representatives of the French.147 In
that same year, on the fifth anniversary of the victory at Sedan, the
executive committee of the Deutscher Verein distributed election
leaflets reminding citizens of the Rhineland that France had been allied
with the Jesuits against Germany. 148 Such associations were politically
marketable to be sure. But the connection between socialists, the
French, Jesuits, and the rabble was so deeply ingrained in anticlerical
discourse that it was featured in Wilhelm Busch's best-selling allegory
Pater Filucius, a combination of cartoon and malicious verse. "Pater
Luzi looking ominous secretly sneaks about the house" plotting to stir
144. Heinrich von Sybel, "Das neue deutsche Reich," in Vortriige und Aufsiitze (Berlin : A.
HotTman, r874). 305-30. The article originally appeared in r 8 7 r .
145. Friedberg, Das deutsche Reich und die katholische Kirche, quotations at 26-27.
146. See quotation from the National Zeitung in Wacker, Friede zwischen Berlin und Rom?
12.
147. Sperber, Kaiser's Voters, 166.
14X. HSTAD, Best. RK, Nr. 2723, "Die Enthebung der katholischen Geistlichen von der
lokalen Schulaufsicht und deren Nachfolger. rX 74-IX75, Bl. X.
237
up some mischief. He teams up with a ragamuffin socialist, "an Inter

Nazi," and with a Frenchman, Jean Lecaq. The trio is easily outwitted
by the master of the house. They are roundly thrashed, and a swift
defenestration lands them where they belong: in a pool of filth. r 49
By the early r 8 7os all the various threats in this age of militant
Catholicism and the women's movement and democratization and
nascent socialism and French revanchism could no longer be managed
separately in the liberal imaginary. The burden of such a formidable
array of enemies meant that they were collapsed into a single meta
enemy. This had the advantage of psychological efficiency: a blow,
imaginary or actual, delivered against the Jesuits, Catholics, feminists,
French revanchists, or communists seemed to be a blow delivered
against them all. There was also little incentive among liberals to sepa
rate out their various enemies, since each by mere association with the
others was all the more discreditable. To cite once more Sybel as an
example, when he referred to the clerical party as the "enemy, " threat
ening the empire from the inside just as France threatened the empire
from the outside, he consciously gendered the word feminine (Feindin) .
"Whoever promotes the wishes of the clerics in important matters, " he
added, "also opens the borders to the foreign enemy of the empire. " r so
That these enemies were collapsed together in the liberal imagination is
illustrated by a cartoon in the Berliner Wespen in 1873 (fig. 1 8). In "The
Political Concert Hall" the "European Ladies Orchestra" is rehears
ing. A woman is reading from a music score marked " Commune. " She
is blowing over the neck of a bottle labeled "petrol, " a reference that
would have conjured the memory of the ruthless petroleuses-Com
munard women who according to legend in their desperation set the
French capital ablaze in the final week of senseless self-destruction.
Another woman whips up French hatred for Germany, clanging
together cymbals while pounding on a bass drum labeled "revan
chism. " And another plays the trombone, following the score of the
communist "International. " A fourth woman, wearing the unmistak
able broad black hat with curled rim of the Jesuits, plucks the strings of
a double bass marked " Germania, Majunke. " The leading Catholic
newspaper and its priest-editor and Center Party deputy Paul Majunke
are the puppets of the Jesuits. Another woman plays a bassoon to the
149. Wilhelm Busch, "Pater Filucius'' in Wilhelm Busch: Historisch-Kritische Gesamtaus
gabe, ed. Friedrich B ohne (Wiesbaden: Vollmer Verlag, rg6o), 2 :347-80. See also Healy,
"Anti-Jesuitism in Imperial Germany," r 6 5 . The connection between Jesuits, socialists, and
the French is made in Gross, "Kulturkampf und Unification," 564-66.
r so. Sybel, Klerikale Politik, r r g .
238
Fig. 18. "Aus dem politischen Concertsaal," Berliner Wespen, 10 October 1873. A
range of liberal enemies-Jesuits, the Catholic press, women in public, French
revanchism, and Communards-are brought together in the "political concert hall."
The "European Ladies Orchestra" is conducted by a female pope.
tune of financial ruin. Conducting the "orchestra" in the front is,

finally, a woman who wears, of course, the papal crown. '5' The cacoph
onic ensemble looked laughable, to be sure, but it provided only a
moment's comic relief from the fears that otherwise incessantly
haunted German liberals.
Women in public; French revanchists in Alsace and Lorraine;
Catholics everywhere; Jesuit missionaries roaming across Germany;
priests, monks, and nuns; the Center Party and its press organs; com
munard arsonists; the democratic rabble, all were enemies allied within
and against the new empire. Liberals believed their influence had to be
met with the full force of the state, destroyed in a campaign that
required an effort no less than war. What has emerged in an explo
ration of liberal gender ideology and the women's question is a com
plex array of imperatives that shaped the campaign against the
Catholic Church and Catholicism in the r 8 7os. The Kulturkampf
unleashed following the founding of the empire should be understood
not as it has so often been portrayed as simply an attack on the Roman
Church for the sake of the autonomy of the state, a political campaign
against the introduction of universal male suffrage, an assault on
r s r . "A us dem politischen Concertsaal," Berliner Wespen, ro Oct. r873.
239
"backward" Catholicism, or an effort to impose Protestant culture on

the German nation. To be sure, the Kulturkampf was in part all of
these . In themselves, however, they do not ultimately account for the
deep-seated fury of the Kulturkampf, a campaign whose origins were
seated in the r8 sos and r86os during the Catholic popular revival and
the reemergence of the women's movement. From this perspective, the
Kulturkampf was a complex attempt during a period of dramatic pres
sures for change to orient and preserve liberal modernism, an entire
political, social, and sexual order that rested ultimately on the distinc
tion between public and private life.
CHAPTER
Kulturkampf, Unification, and

the War against Catholicism
In July r87o in a coincidence of history, the French government

declared war on the North German Confederation within a day of the
Vatican Council's proclamation of papal infallibility. The third of the
wars of German unification had begun . Soon the French army was
forced to retreat and then was pinned down and humiliated at the bat
tle of Sedan. Paris was taken, France defeated, and the German states
were reconstituted in a united empire under the aegis of the Prussian
monarchy. For many nationalist liberals, France laid low and Ger
many unified, two dreams realized at once and with the same stroke,
proved almost too much to bear. Shortly after the new Kaiser's procla
mation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles on r8
January r87r, Heinrich von Sybel voiced in a letter to his colleague
Hermann Baumgarten the general feeling so euphoric that there
seemed practically nothing more worth living for. "How have we
deserved God's grace to be permitted to experience such great and
mighty things? And for what shall one live hereafter? That which has
been for twenty years the object of all our wishes and efforts has now
been achieved in such a bounteous, magnificent way. Where shall I at
my age find a new purpose for living?" 1 This was a question for which
Sybel and other liberals who felt like him soon found an answer. In the
heady years following the triumph over France, with the nation united
and the external borders of the new empire fixed, liberals found
r. Letter from Heinrich von Sybel to Hermann Baumgarten, 27 Jan. 1871, in Deutscher
Liberalismus im Zeitalter Bismarcks: Eine politische Briefsammlung, ed. Julius Heydorff and
Paul Wentzcke (Osnabri.ick: Biblio Verlag. 1967). 2 A94 See also Pfianze, Bismarck and the
Development of Germany, 2:172.
Kulturkampf, Unification, and the War against Catholicism
241
another cause worth their wholehearted dedication. They committed

themselves now to a war against the Roman Catholic Church and with
it the consolidation within Germany of modern society, culture, and
morality.2
Liberals recognized that this would be no less a challenge than the
war against France had been. They believed that realizing the ideals of
the Enlightenment, unifying the empire, and cultivating German spirit
had, ironically, been made all the more difficult by the spoils of victory.
The annexation of Alsace-Lorraine as a Reichsland (imperial province)
on the southwestern periphery was doubly problematic. Its conquered
inhabitants were not only French; they were also overwhelmingly
Catholic. In this new territory the Protestant population of 25o,ooo
was outnumbered by 1 ,2oo,ooo Catholics. The Catholic demographic
density of Alsace-Lorraine was among the highest in Germany, and
the population was well supplied with priests. Nationalist liberal jour
nals like the PreujJische Jahrbiicher, Grenzboten, and Im Neuen Reich
repeatedly complained that the French Catholic Church continued to
exert a powerful hold on the population) There were reasons to believe
their fears were well grounded. According to one stipulation of the
Frankfurt Treaty, French bishops retained at least provisional author
ity over dioceses in Alsace and Lorraine . At the same time, Catholic
priests in the Reichsland, where the Prussian attack on Catholic Aus
tria in 1 866 was still in recent memory, equated Germany with Prussia
and Prussia with Protestantism. A Catholic priest, writing to the
bishop of Strasbourg in March 1871, explained that the Prussians were
universally despised in Alsace- Lorraine. The bishop of Angers warned
King Wilhelm of Prussia, the new Kaiser of Germany, that Alsace
2. On the problem of the social and cultural consolidation of imperial Germany, see Eley,
"State Formation, Nationalism, and Political Culture," 277-3or, and especially for the role
of the Kulturkampf following unification. 284, 290. For the Kulturkampf as "simply the next
stage of unification," see idem, " Bismarckian Germany," 20-25 . See also James J. Sheehan,
"What Is German History? Reflections on the Role of the Nation in German History and
Historiography," Journal of Modern History 53 (r98r): r-23. For the concept of the German
Empire as an ''unfinished nation'' see Theodor Schieder, Das deutsche Kaiserreich von 1871 als
Nationalstaat ( Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, r96r).
3. See "Zur Statistik des Klosterwesensin ElsaG-Lothringen," Gegenwart 3 (r873): I 7-2o;
"Deutsche Aufgaben in ElaG-Lothringen," Grenzboten 2 (r87r): 565-76, 62I-32, 657--68,
747-56; "Der Staat und die Bischofswahlen in ElsaG-Lothringen," Grenzboten 2 (1 874): 227-35;
"Zur innern Wiedergewinnung ElsaJ3-Lothringens,'' Grenzboten 3 (r874): ro6-r3; "Der innere
Situation des Reichslandes," Im Neuen Reich 3 (rR73): 507-12, where Alsacian Catholics are the
"submissive tools of the clergy"; " Ultramontane Umtriebe im ElsaJ3," Im Neuen Reich 3 (rR73):
527-36; "Staat und Kirche in ElsaJ3-Lothringen," Im Neuen Reich 9 (r879): I3I-43; "Die
katholische Kirche im ElsaJ3 und in PreuJ3en,'' PreujJische Jahrbiicher 27 (r87r): 7r6-39.
2 42
would never belong to a Prussian monarch.4 The annexation of the

population of the Reichsland seemed to compound the problem of the
Catholic Polish-speaking population in the east already suspected of
unreliable loyalty to the Kaiser and empire. The acquisition of Alsace
Lorraine only made the need to "Germanize" the empire by destroying
Roman Catholic clerical power all the more apparent.S
Now that liberals believed they were at the height of their power,
with the nation united and no need to fear that a move against the
church might prevent the acceptance of unification in the largely
Catholic southern states, there seemed no reason to delay the attack
against the enemy within .6 The final provocation had already come in
the form of the Vatican Council's proclamation of papal infallibility.
In this age of modern science and progress and at the moment of
nationalist pride in the modern state, the Vatican declaration was for
liberal Germans not only a grotesque aberration but also an assault on
the independence of the state. Papal infallibility seemed to require the
allegiance of German Catholics not to the Kaiser but to the pope and
the subordination of the sovereignty of Berlin to the rule of Rome. In
his paradigmatically liberal attack on papal infallibility, Die papstliche
Unfehlbarkeit und das vatikanische Koncil, the prominent National
Liberal deputy Paul Hinschius argued that the Vatican's proclamation
was nothing less than a "death sentence" passed against the modern
state. 7 Though an extravagant assertion, this was an opinion widely
shared among liberals. When in February r 8 72, little more than a year
after the founding of the empire, the liberal National Zeitung argued
that Germans could now no longer accept suppression at the hands of
the Catholic Church, it merely echoed the predominant liberal point of
view. The German, the paper explained,
will not tolerate a spirit that comes from Rome either among his
people or in any of his churches . He does not want clerical rule
4 Dan Silverman, Reluctant Union: Alsace-Lorraine and Imperial Germany, 1871-1918
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, r972), 9r.
5 Ibid.
6. Evans, German Center Party, 4L
7 Paul Hinschius, Die papstliche Unfehlbarkeit und das vatikanische Koncil (Kiel : Univer
sitiits-Buchhandlung, r87r). See also idem, Die Stellung der deutschen Staatregierung
gegenuber den Beschlussen des vatikanischen Koncils (Berlin : J. Gutentag, 1871). Hinschius
was a major architect of Kulturkampf legislation. For a similar systematic refutation of
papal infallibility, see Johann Caspar Bluntschli, Die rechtliche Unverantwortlichkeit und Ver
antwortlichkeit des romischen Papstes.
Kulturkampf Unification, and the War against Catholicism
2 43
and the people reduced to stupidity. He wants, rather, enlighten

ment, an honest conscience, and work. Attaining a new, as yet
never achieved, level of moral freedom, a national morality that is
shared by Germany's churches and confessions, that is the task
for this founding period of the new empire. 8
For liberals and progressives a campaign against the power of the
Catholic Church had become an urgent matter. It was not only neces
sary to secure national unity. It was also required to preserve the very
existence of the new empire. Catholic leaders read the mood now
prominent among liberals. According to the Catholic Badische
Beobachter, "The liberal leaders declare that the war is now just really
starting; we have made peace with France; with Rome, we will never
make peace."9 The campaign that was launched against the church in
the name of German unity, the modern state, science, progress, Bil
dung, and freedom became known as the Kulturkampf, a "cultural
struggle" or a "battle for culture, " legislated by liberal elites and
enforced with the power of the state. In the dramatic formulation of
one historian, however, it was no less than a Vernichtungskrieg, a war
to exterminate the Roman Catholic Church as a spiritual-religious and
political power. 10 This war against the church was waged with legisla
tion enacted primarily in Prussia with concurrent campaigns in Baden
and Hesse and occasional legislation enacted at the federal level.
The predominant interpretations of German liberalism in the Kul
turkampf during roughly the first decade of the new empire have
argued that liberals compromised their own principles in their attack
against the Catholic Church. On this reading, by sponsoring illiberal
legislation and by allying themselves with the Bismarckian authoritar
ian state in the antichurch campaign, German liberals betrayed their
fundamental belief in individual rights, freedom, and toleration.
Indeed, the view that the Kulturkampf represented the liberals' aban8. National Zeitung, 25 Feb . r872.
9 . Quoted in Sperber, Kaiser's Voters. r67.
10. Herbert Lepper, "Widerstand gegen die Staatsgewalt: Die Auseinandersetzung der
Generaloberin der Franziskanerinnen Elisabeth Koch zu Eupen mit den Staatsbehorden urn
die Ausfiihrung des 'Klostergesetzes' vom 3 1 . Mai 1875.'' in Lebensraum Bistum Aachen: Tra
dition-Aktualitiit-Zukunft, ed. Philipp Boonen (Aachen: Einhard Verlag, r982), 98-1 39,
esp. 124. Excellent recent works on the Kulturkampf include Blackbourn, Marpingen; Ross,
Failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf; and Smith, "The Kulturkampf and German National
Identity." chap. 1 in German Nationalism.
2 44
donment of liberalism has sustained a large body of research that has

become the authoritative narrative.n In one especially pointed formula
tion, the liberals "prostituted their principles" by waging the Kul
turkampf. By the end of the Kulturkampf, before the party finally split
in r 878, the National Liberal Party, according to this argument, had
betrayed nearly every principle that liberalism once stood for. Indeed,
in this estimation it was the Center Party, not the National Liberal or
Progressive Party, that served as the equivalent of a liberal political
party in imperial Germany. Center delegates behaved as liberals, sup
porting the interests of ethnic and religious minorities. 12 One account
has carried this transposition of political and ideological identities a
step further, arguing that while Catholicism pursued liberal goals, liber
alism became a conservative force during the Kulturkampf.I 3 The Kul
turkampf has been understood, therefore, as an episode of misdirected
passion, a moment of apparent absentmindedness during which liberals
forgot who they were and what they were supposed to stand for.
Other work on the Kulturkampf has, however, questioned this
almost axiomatic account. Recent attempts to evaluate the church
state conflict suggest that the Kulturkampf in Germany, like the attack
on the Roman Catholic Church elsewhere in continental Europe, was
I I. Heinrich Bornkamm has argued, "During the Kulturkampf all of liberalism had to put
up with the fact that its practical politics contradicted the basic foundations of its teaching.
Viewed from the fundamental idea of freedom, it was twice on the wrong front: during the
development of the campaign it voted for blatantly coercive legislation; during the disman
tling [of the legislation] it voted against peace and the granting of new freedoms. "
Bornkamm, Staatsidee im Kulturkampf, 1 8 . Gordon Craig with reference t o Bismarck's anti
Catholic policy argues that liberals were not coerced by the state into the antichurch cam
paign but, "in a kind of doctrinaire besottedness, went their own way eagerly, and with scant
regard for their principles." Liberals, he has argued, "placed their party, which pretended to
maintain the cause of the individual against arbitrary authority, squarely behind a state that
recognized no limits to its power. Even if Bismarck had not abandoned and broken them in
1879, it is doubtful whether they could have survived this betrayal of their own philosophy. "
Craig. Germany, 77-7'1.\. Similarly. Haj o Holborn has argued that the measures exerted
against the Catholic Church "constituted shocking violations of liberal principles. German
liberalism showed no loyalty to the ideas of lawful procedure or of political and cultural free
dom which had formerly been its lifeblood." Holborn, Modern Germany, 2:264. Other works
also indicate how well the view that liberals betrayed themselves during the Kulturkampf has
been embedded in the historiography: Lill, " Kulturkampf in Preul3en, " 38; Pftanze, Bismarck
.,
and the Developmen t of Germany, 2 : 1 78; Schmidt, "Die Nationalliberalen . 214. David Black
bourn argues that left liberals ultimately "swallowed their doubts when it came to the Kul
turkampf. " Marpingen, 266.
12. Anderson. Windthorst, 290, 192. 402.
I 3 . Tal. Christians and Jews in Germany, I I 9 .
2 45
"a strategic rather than accidental commitmenL "14 Accordingly the

Kulturkampf was the logical next stage of unification, a struggle to free
German society from the superstitions and archaic institutions of the
church. Reexamination has also suggested that the attack on the
Catholic Church was not a contradiction of but consonant with liberal
beliefs. Contemporary German liberals, whether they stood on the
right as Protestant nationalists like Heinrich von Treitschke or on the
left as secular progressives like Rudolf Virchow, did not believe that
they were contradicting the precepts of liberalism as they called upon
the power of the state in the campaign against Catholicism. r s
Surprisingly, the motives behind the antichurch legislation passed by
liberal nationalist and progressive deputies in the Reichstag and in the
Prussian parliament have not been rigorously evaluated by historians.
Two seminal debates in the course of the Kulturkampf, those involving
the Kirchenfrage, the question of church-state relations, and the Jesuit
law, convey the liberals' own understanding of their role and what they
hoped to accomplish in the attack on the Catholic Church. Though it
has hardly attracted the attention of historians, the Kirchenfrage
under closer examination indicates that German liberals did not
believe that the invocation of state force was inconsistent with their
attitude toward the issue of the separation of Roman Church and
nation-state. During the debate on the Kirchenfrage, leading liberal
Kulturkampfer either rejected the principle of separation or believed
that the principle did not prohibit a role for the modern state in church
affairs. The overwhelming majority of liberals on both the left and the
right argued that liberal ideals of freedom and progress demanded sub
ordination of the church to the authority of the state, a subordination
that required under the circumstances the application of force. In
doing so, they established the ideological rationale behind the liberal
and state-sponsored legislation abrogating the autonomy that the
Catholic Church in Prussia had enj oyed since the constitution of r 8 so.
14 Eley, "Bismarckian Germany," 21; and similar comments in idem, "State Formation. "
See also Eley's review o f Windthorst: A Political Biography. b y Margaret Lavinia Anderson,
New German Critique 32 (1984) : 189-96. Adolf M. Birke with recourse to the notion of Ger
man "'exceptionalism" has argued that only those who have become accustomed to under
standing German liberalism as sharing the same precepts as its "Western counterpart" will
find in the Kulturkampf liberal self-betrayal. Birke, "Zur Entwicklung und politischen Funk
tion des bi.irgerlichen Kulturkampfverstandnisses," 275. See also the account of the Kul
turkampf and of liberal attitudes toward Catholicism in Langewiesche, Liberalismus in
Deutschland, 68-69, 1 80-86.
15. Smith, German Nationalism, 37-41.
2 46
During the hysterical debate between liberals and Catholics on the

Jesuit law that closed the Society of Jesus and suspended the right of
residence of German citizens, liberals insisted that they were upholding
the principles of freedom and progress. Democrats may have defended
the rights of citizenship, opposing the Jesuit law; liberals, however,
believed that freedom and progress as well as their commitment to sci
ence, Bildung, the modern state, and German unity required them to
wage a war against the Catholic Church. The Kulturkampf in liberal
political discourse was the continuation within the empire interior of
the war that had been waged against France. In this sense, the Kul
turkampf was meant to be literally another and final war of German
unification, waged if not with artillery and sabers then with the
weapons of legislation and the authority of the state.
The Kirchenfrage, State Power, and Freedom
Constantin RoBler at the beginning of perhaps the best known piece

of Kulturkampf literature, Das deutsche Reich und die kirchliche
Frage, argued in r 8 76 that the struggle between the church and the
state was the greatest contest that the nation and indeed the world
had yet faced. "The struggle in which the German Empire is engaged
with the Roman pope is indisputably the greatest affair of the politi
cal world of our day. More than the military success of the last war,
more than the work of legislation in the realm of state institutions and
social movements, this contest draws the attention of foreign nations
and especially thoughtful foreign politicians to Germany. " '6 Hyper
bole, perhaps, but these were sentiments taken seriously and shared
by leading liberal social and legal theorists, who, following the pro
mulgation of papal infallibility in r 8 7o, passionately devoted them
selves to the question of the relationship between the Catholic Church
and the Prussian state. One of the foremost liberal thinkers on the
issue, equal in stature to RoBler, was the historian of philosophy
Eduard Zeller of the University of Berlin . In his exhaustive and highly
influential examination of the Kirchenfrage, Staat und Kirche, pub
lished in r 8 73, Zeller argued, "Of the many and important questions
that currently occupy the attention of our people and our statesmen,
there is none whose solution is more imperative and of more sweeping
significance for our entire state and cultural life than this. " 17 Such
1 6 . Constantin RoBler, Das deutsche Reich und die kirchliche Frage (Leipzig: Fr. Wilh.
Grunow, 1 8 76), r .
1 7 . Zeller, Staat und Kirche, 1 .
2 47
words help us retrieve the urgency and passion with which the
Kirchenfrage, in retrospect perhaps seemingly dry and uninspiring,
was regarded by contemporary politicians, theologians, and social
theorists . For them, nothing less than the life of the new empire,
founded in the crucible of war with France, and the final fulfillment
of the dream for unification, was at stake .
Staat und Kirche offered in comprehensive detail a new foundation
for the relationship between church and state and a systematic refu
tation of the independence of the church. Here and in other essays
such as "PreuBen und die Bischofe" published in r 8 7 r , Zeller outlined
both the nature of the threat posed by the Catholic "state within the
state" and the legislative force liberals needed and demanded in order
to ensure and to promote the principles of freedom and progress. r s
He called upon the state "to secure itself from its irreconcilable
enemy and thereby perform an immortal service for our entire
national and cultural life . " 19 In accordance with the modern age and
in contrast to the medieval period, the state must provide for its own
secular independence.
We should take from the hand of the clergy what it has garnered
for itself in government functions and in control over civil life, the
family, and the schools. Without damaging any of its rights, we
should remove from it the privileges that it has always used to the
detriment of the freedom of the people, the independence of gov
ernment life, confessional peace, and the progress of all human
cultivation. 2 0
Zeller, therefore, allowed that there might be some rights appropriate
to the church, as long as they were understood as strictly religious
rights. He did not, however, subscribe to the concurrent liberal Amer
ican model of the separation of church and state; on the contrary,
Zeller argued that under current conditions direct intervention in the
r 8 . Zeller, "PreuBen und die Bischofe, '' in Eduard Zellers Kleine Schriften, ed. Otto Leuze
(Berlin: Georg Reimer, rgrr), 3 : 402-7 . The article originally appeared in PreujJischer
Jahrbucher 28 (1871): 205-9 . For Zeller's liberal credentials and for his influence on leading
liberals and anti-Catholic scientists such as Emil Du Bois-Reymond, Hermann Helmholtz,
and Rudolf Virchow, see also Anderton, "The Limits of Science," 308-12.
1 9 . Zeller, "PreuBen und die Bischofe," 407.
20. Ibid. , 405 .
2 48
affairs of the church was required to preserve freedom and indepen

dence . Separation of church and state would be possible only if and
when the church did not represent a threat to the state and to the indi
vidual. In Germany, Zeller argued, the "power of the Catholic Church
becomes all the greater the more the people in the state are allowed to
participate in legislation and state administration. The Roman Church
by controlling the people will attain a far-reaching, perhaps even irre
sistible, influence on the state . " 21 Zeller believed that the doctrine of
papal infallibility clearly indicated that Catholics were subjects of Pope
Pius IX and, as such, owed their first allegiance to a foreign monarch.
Catholics were, therefore, a foreign power within the state. According
to Zeller, the church threatened the most basic freedom of conscience
and independence of the individual-an individual who as a citizen
had the right to vote and to serve on juries. It was the purpose of the
state to protect the freedom of its citizens, a freedom that as "a general
and inalienable human right" one held as "an unconditional moral
obligation. "22 These were rights and duties, inalienable, that even the
individual himself had neither the power nor the freedom to abrogate.
Zeller did not hesitate to invoke the use of state force to preserve the
right of citizens to make their own political decisions and to declare
their loyalty to the state. Since the pope was undermining the German
state through antiliberal teaching and since Catholic dogma not only
prevented independent thought but also required obedience to a dan
gerous foreign authority, the state had the right "to make the promul
gation of these teachings punishable, or, given a church that did not
respect the sovereignty [of the state] and organized itself as a conquer
ing enemy power, to abrogate the recognition and rights it had condi
tionally granted. "23 Zeller's catalog of the abuses of the Roman
Church was exhaustive: the church inculcated in the population the
belief in miracles in order to swindle money out of the gullible; pil
grimages and processions were only invitations to mischief, public dis
turbance, and violence; pulpits and confessionals were platforms for
political indoctrination. Monks exerted influence not only on religious
but also on political, economic, and cultural life, in ways that endan
gered public peace, education, and the integrity of the state. In the
Jesuit order and the monastic religious orders that demanded the vows
2r. Zeller, Staat und Kirche, 63.
22. Ibid. , 92.
23. Ibid . , 97
2 49
of poverty, chastity, and obedience, members surrendered the very

rights that the state by definition was bound to preserve: property,
family, and independence . Religious orders that required the
unqualified obedience of their members were, according to Zeller, no
better than institutions of slavery; the vow of obedience served only to
create a terrified and obedient army. In the hands of the church,
schools turned large sections of the population into Werkzeugen
(tools) ; religious welfare organizations existed in order to convert to
Catholicism the sick and destitute in their vulnerable moments of
despair. For this reason, the state was bound by duty to prohibit reli
gious orders from teaching in schools and to abolish religious welfare
organizations. Since the state existed to protect the rights of its citizens
and the welfare of the nation, the state should, according to Zeller, "do
everything in its power" within the bounds of legality to defeat the
Catholic Church.24
Zeller's Staat und Kirche appeared at the same time as Adolf Zeis
ing's Religion und Wissenschaft, Staat und Kirche. Zeising, a liberal
philosopher and respected authority on the matter of church and state
at the University of Munich, propounded an even more categorical
affirmation of state power and refutation of the principle of the sepa
ration of church and state.25 According to Zeising, granting the
Roman Church the autonomy it desired by protecting the church from
the interference of the state would be precisely the wrong conclusion to
draw from the principles of liberalism. Indeed, separation of the
church from the state would only lead to the ruin of the very virtues for
which liberalism stood: freedom, progress, Bildung, and science. Such
a policy would be, Zeising insisted, "the most dangerous and destruc
tive nonsense that one could conclude from the liberal standpoint. " 26 It
was, he averred, as much a mistake to believe that separation of church
and state followed from liberal principles as it was to believe that liber
alism demanded the same tolerance of idiocy and lies as it did of free
dom and truth. Like Zeller, Zeising argued that the state had both the
24. Ibid. , 107.
2 5 . Adolf Zeising, Religion und Wissenschaft. Staat und Kirche: Eine Gott- und Weltan
schauung auf etfahrungs- und zeitmiifJiger Grundlage (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumuller, r873). For
further on Zeising's book as a liberal attack on the church, see Kissling, Geschichte des Kul
turkampfes. 2: 275-76 .
26. Zeising. Religion und Wissenschaft, 45 1-52. Here is spirited refutation of Hajo Hoi born's
argument that in the Kulturkampf "only those laws that separated state and church could be
defended from a liberal point of view." Holborn, History of Modern Germany, 2:264.
2 50
right and the duty to regulate the affairs of the church. Indeed, since
only the state was capable of realizing the highest moral, artistic, and
scientific ideals and attaining the greatest endeavors of humanity, it
had to be "within its borders totally autonomous and omnipotent. "27
Accordingly, no person or institutional body within the territory of the
nation had the right to conduct its affairs independent of the state, and
the state granted legally only those freedoms that it deemed appropri
ate. In religious matters, he insisted, the conduct of the minority had to
submit to the demands of the majority. Zeising counseled that those in
the Catholic minority find some consolation in the fact that in matters
of inner conviction they were free to contemplate whatever they
wished.
On the issue of authority, according to Zeising, in the struggle
between the state and the church no compromise was possible. The
conflict between the two could end only in the complete subordination
of the one to the other. For the state to meet the challenge of the
Roman Church with less than absolute resolution, therefore, would be
to affix its "signature to its own death warrant. " 28 Tolerating the
church would lead not only to the destruction of the power of the state
but also to the violent suppression of all freedom, Bildung, culture, and
civilization. In fact, with the declaration of the Syllabus of Errors in
1 864 condemning progress, liberalism, and modern civilization; the
proclamation of papal infallibility; and the campaign of the ultramon
tane press against liberalism, Zeising argued, the modern state was
already in the middle of a war with the church. Bishops and priests,
"slaves of the Roman curia, " and the Catholic population, "in contra
diction to its political and national duty," were the instruments of the
enemy power. 29 In order to ensure that the Catholic population could
not destroy the state, Zeising recommended that the following para
graph be inserted directly into the constitution of the empire:
Only those who swear full, unconditional obedience to the laws
and the constitutional authority of the state and who recognize no
other authority over their actions have a claim to the full enjoy
ment of the rights of state citizenship . These include the ability to
27. Zeising, Religion und Wissenschaft. 4 5 1 , quotation a t 448 .

28. Ibid .. 429.
29. Ibid., 43r .
251
hold public office and titles, as well as to vote in public affairs, to

elect or be elected, or to exercise other political rights. Whoever,
by invoking another authority, be it secular or spiritual, refuses
this declaration or acts contrary to it forfeits the claim to these
rights.3
Rejection of the separation of the church and state and the invoca
tion of state power in the name of freedom, progress, and the auton
omy of the modern state were views widely shared among the leading
National Liberal Kulturkiimpfer. According to Heinrich von Sybel,
for whom the sad state of affairs in foreign countries so often served as
the counterexample for Germany, the situation in Ireland and North
America was a daily reminder that the policy of the separation of
church and state would lead to the "gradual growth of clerical power
and the inevitable subjugation of the state in the future. " 31 For the
Catholic clergy, according to Sybel, the policy of separation was mean
ingless, amounting to no more than the indifference of the state. Mean
while, like a "militarily organized corporation," the church in Ger
many had enrolled over thirty thousand agents sworn to strict
obedience. With unqualified omnipotence, he argued, the clergy taught
young people blindly to revere the church and to turn their backs on
the fatherland. According to Sybel, only the positive intervention of
the state could match the threats posed by the church. Where the "cler
ical system" had established its despotic rule, the state had to establish
independence and enforce legal protection. For Sybel the campaign
against the church could only have been as frustrating as it was urgent.
He chastised "naive liberals" who believed that "lasting clerical rule is
impossible in our enlightened nineteenth century. " "Our exciting cen
tury has certainly had many great pages," he explained, "but in reli
gious matters it ranks, as all the facts have indicated, not among the
enlightened, but among the reactionary ages. " 32
In r874, entering the height of the Kulturkampf, Sybel had no
patience left for those who disagreed with the policy directed against
the church. For them he had a ready answer: "For those who are
uncomfortable with the idea that a nation forms its legal affairs
according to its own discretion and demands the obedience of every
30. Ibid., 457
3 r . Sybel, Klerikale Politik, IJ4.
32. Ibid. , quotations at n 6 .
2 52
inhabitant of the country, one can only suggest that they leave the ter
ritory they find so unsatisfying."33 Zeising had already concluded that
it must ultimately come to this, arguing that every German Catholic
now had to make a final choice: "Either he must, in order to live up to
his duties to the state, reject his religious conviction, or he must, in
order to abide by this, break his sworn oath to the state . " 34 The exclu
sion and coercion registered deeply within the Catholic community.
Even conservative Catholic monarchists recognized that their loyalty
to the crown and dedication to the state would remain forever in doubt
and that their status as citizens was tenuous. The Catholic dilemma
was clearly expressed by Joseph von Radowitz, a general of the Prus
sian army and a Catholic, who wrote in his memoirs:
Those who are at once members of the Catholic Church and citi
zens of Prussia, both with deep conviction and total sincerity, will
not find it easy to face the world. If it is the lot of such a man . . .
to be called upon in moments of consequence, he will be exposed
at every corner to suspicion, misinterpretation, and vilification.
Not even the strictest of consciences or the most careful exercise of
caution will protect him: rather it will increase the distrust with
which he is regarded and propagate it more widely. The Catholic
"party" will accuse every Prussian Catholic of sacrificing the inter
ests of the church to the glory and grandeur of Prussia . . . . The
Prussian "party" will suspect that same Prussian Catholic of
neglecting the advantage of his state in favor of the glorification of
his church.35
In r873, following the first round of the so-called May Laws, which
among other measures provided for the state examination of clerics
and state approval of all clerical appointments, Heinrich von Tre
itschke enthusiastically advocated the use of state force. He worried
not about its justification but only about the state's resolve. 36 He
argued that in the war against the ultramontanes, the executive power
had nothing to fear but its own lack of conviction (not the lack of lib
eral endorsement) . A single step back and the war would be lost, he
33
34.
35.
36.
Ibid . n s .
Zeising, Religion und Wissenschaft, 43 1 .
Quoted in Hyde, "Roman Catholicism and the Prussian State," 1 2 1 .
See, for example, Treitschke, "Die Maigesetze und ihre Folgen . "
.
253
warned, and he urged the state to stay the course and press on to the
end. As concerns education, for example, the state realized that the
younger generation belonged to the Volk as a whole and that a certain
measure of humanistic Bildung was required of each of its members . It
was the purpose of the state to ensure, therefore, that the religious
fanaticism of adults did not lead to popular stupidity. "The German
state forces parents to educate their children, " he argued; "it does not
give them the right to their Catholic idiocy."37 The separation of
church and state as practiced in the American system, Treitscke
explained, had no place in Germany. Here the state was not as in
America a force "that must be constrained, so that the pleasure of the
individual remains undisturbed, but a cultural power [ Culturmacht]
from which we require a positive influence on all realms of national
life. "38 The refutation of the separation of church and state and the call
for the exertion of state force were shared by principal liberal architects
of anti-Catholic legislation like Paul Hinschius and Emil Friedberg,
both members of the Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat. Friedberg did not
flinch when it came to the use of state power against the Catholic
Church; on the contrary he was an enthusiastic advocate. As con
cerned the Catholic Church after the Vatican Council, it was Friedberg
who insisted that it was the duty of the state "to suppress it, to destroy
it, to crush it with violence, " an attitude that he was no doubt happy to
bring to his work as a member of the government's committee drafting
the May Laws.39
Progressives might have taken different positions on the issue of sep
aration more often than liberal nationalists, but they too believed that
freedom was coupled with the exertion of state power. Indeed, it was a
left liberal, Rudolf Virchow, who in a speech to the Prussian parlia
ment in r873 introduced the concept of a literal Kulturkampf, a battle
37 Ibid . . 437
3 8 . Ibid. , 439-40.
39. Friedberg, Deutsche Reich und die katholische Kirche. 27. For Friedberg's exhausting
legalistic and historical delineation of the relationship between state and church, see idem,
Die Griinzen zwischen Staat und Kirche und die Garantieen gegen deren Verletzung (Tubingen :
H. Laupp'sche Buchhandlung, r 872) . Other influential works by Friedberg include idem. Die
Genesis des Kirchenpolitischen Conflicts (Leipzig, r875); idem, Der Staat und die Bischofs
wahlen in Deutschland: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der katholischen Kirche und ihres Verhiilt
nisses zum Staat (Leipzig, 1 8 74); idem, Der Staat und die katholische Kirche im Grossher
zogthum Baden seit dem Jahre I86o (Leipzig. 1 874) . For Hinschius's attack on the Catholic
Church and papal infallibility see n. 7 in this chapter.
2 54
cry that was then immediately echoed in every corner of the empire.4
In a subsequent speech he outlined the twofold aim of the Kul
turkampf: first, to free religion from the domination of the church and
to free secular life from the domination of religion and, second, to
compel the state to recognize its duty to achieve this emancipation and
to impose it upon the nation as a whole. Here Virchow claimed the
Kulturkampf as a liberal and secular-neither state nor Protestant
crusade. It was not Chancellor Bismarck who had to coax liberals into
the campaign against the church, as has so often been the impression
given by historians; on the contrary, leading liberals believed they had
to remind the Bismarckian state of its responsibility to use its power for
the sake of the state and society. In fact, it was Virchow who went so
far as to claim that the success of the Kulturkampf and the assurance
of freedom might require "a dictatorship of ministers. "4 1 His fellow
Progressive Eugen Richter, even as he stood with the Center leader
Ludwig Windthorst defending free speech by opposing legislation reg
ulating what clerics could say in the pulpit, believed that freedom for
the individual as well as independence for the state ultimately required
the employment of state power. "It was not possible," he argued, "for
the state to liberate itself from clerical domination without interfering
in the course of events. "42
Nationalist and progressive liberals agreed, therefore, that individ
ual freedom was not achieved despite but because of state force. For
Johann Caspar Bluntschli, the Protestant nationalist, the conflict with
the church reduced itself to a "conflict between Roman clerical rule
and German freedom." With a vivid and arresting image characteristic
of his anti-Catholic fanaticism, Bluntschli argued that the Jesuits "rip
out the love of freedom from the hearts of the young. " Not the partic
ular states, but only the empire, he argued, "is spiritually and on
account of its power equal to the huge task of saving humanity from
the false authority of the church without destroying the church and of
defending freedom without destroying religion. "43 The employment of
the power of the state in the service of freedom was a theme repeated at
40. Rudolf Virchow, in SBHA (Berlin : W. Moeser, r873), session 28, 17 Jan. r873, 631. For
examples of Virchow's condemnation of Catholicism based on empirical, hard science see
Rudolf Virchow, Uber die nationale Entwickelung und Bedeutung der Naturwissenschaften
(Berlin, r865); and idem, Uber Wunder.
41 . Tal, Christians and Jews, 82.
42. Quoted in ibid. , 83.
43 Johann Caspar Bluntschli, "Die Debatte i.iber die Jesuiten im deutschen Reichstage,"
Gegenwart r (1872): quotations at 305 and 305-6.
2 55
the same time by the National Liberal Rudolf GneisL In his theory of
the Rechtsstaat, a state based on the rule of law as opposed to arbitrary
authority, he included the argument that "society can find the personal
freedom, the moral and spiritual development of the individual only in
permanent subordination to a higher, constant authority."44 The
Klosterstiirmer of the summer of r869 knew full well that the war on
behalf of freedom against the Catholic Church would take more than
the "weapons of spirit and truth" ; it required the strong arm of the
state.45 For Gneist, as it was for other Kulturkampfer from the liberal
right to left, the Kulturkampf was the final phase in the Hegelian tele
ology of the state, "a momentous turning point in which the German
state . . . attained self-knowledge, that is, its full freedom. "46 When lib
erals attacked the Catholic Church, they did so with the solemn assur
ance that it was a matter of duty in the cause of freedom.
Historians disagree about precisely when liberals and the state
embarked on the Kulturkampf. Some date it starting already in July
r87r, when Bismarck dissolved the Catholic section of the Ministry of
Educational and Ecclesiastical Affairs in Prussia. The first piece of
antichurch legislation brought before the Reichstag and overwhelm
ingly supported by liberals was, however, the "pulpit paragraph. "47
Issued in December r87r, the law made public discussion of matters of
state by clerics "in a manner endangering public peace" a criminal
offense (and this remained so, in the statute books at least, until 1953) .
I n r 872 two seminal pieces of legislation critical for liberal plans for the
modern, independent, and secular state went into effect, First, in
March, in the Prussian parliament, supervision of the schools by the
churches was abolished. Clerics who served as school inspectors no
longer did so by virtue of their religious office but at the discretion of
the state. In principle the legislation allowed the removal of both
Catholic priests and Protestant ministers. In practice the law was, at
least in the Rhineland, aimed exclusively at Catholic clerical inspec
tors . Catholic clerical supervisors at the district level were replaced by
44 Rudolf Gneist, Der Rechtsstaat (Berlin: J. Springer, r872), r 2 . For an example of the
reception of Gneist's Der Rechtsstaat. see the review, not in every respect favorable. in the lib
eral PreujJische Jahrbiicher 3I (r873): 2r7-20.
45 See Gneisfs speech in the Reichstag demanding the Jesuit law in Fiir und Wider die
Jesuiten, part 3, Stenographische Berichte der Reichstagsverhandlungen iiber das Gesetz be
treffend der Orden der Gesellschaft Jesu, session 48, 19 June r872 (Berlin: Verlags der
Reichs-Gesetze, 1 8 72), 1 26-32.
46. Quoted in Tal, Christians and Jews, 84.
47 Among the Progressives only Eugen Richter and among the National Liberals only
Eduard Lasker voted against the "pulpit paragraph'' and supported freedom of speech.
256
lay supervisors, many of whom were liberal Old Catholics.48 While

local clerical school inspectors were supposed to be replaced by lay
professional inspectors, due to the scarcity of qualified lay replace
ments Biirgermeister more often than not either used the opportunity
or were given the opportunity by default to assume control of the local
school inspectorships. In doing so, the Biirgermeister consolidated his
local authority, freeing himself of a priest who, as the school inspector,
could be a real or potential challenge to his voice in the community. In
fact, the Biirgermeister often himself denounced the clerical inspector
as incompetent, staatsfeindlich, or alcoholic to the state authorities. In
the same breath, he often recommended his own services to the state as
the replacement. A second law passed in July, soon after the school
supervision law, banned the Society of Jesus as well as the Redemp
torist order and Lazarist order on German soil. The law provided for
the expulsion of foreign Jesuits and the relocation of German Jesuits
within the empire.
In May 1873 the first of the so-called May Laws in Prussia revised
Articles 15 and 18 of the constitution that since 1 8 50 had granted to the
churches the right to manage their own affairs independently. Hence
forth all aspiring clergymen were required to attend German universi
ties and to pass state examinations in German philosophy, history, and
literature as prerequisites to their appointments to parishes as priests.
At the same time, Protestant Church authorities were assured sotto
voce that the law did not apply to them. A Court of Ecclesiastical
48. This conclusion and the following are based on materials in H STAD, Best. RK. Nr.
2724. "'Die Enthebung der katholischen Geistlichen von den lokalen Schulaufsicht und deren
Nachfolger, 1875"; HSTAD, Best. Kr. Bonn, "Verzeichniss de1jenigen Pfarrer beider Con
fessionen, welche zur Zeit als Lokal Schulinspektoren fungiren (26 July 1875)"; HSTAD,
Best. RD, PB. Nr. 1308, "'Schulangelegenheiten betr. alle Schulreform, Bd. 5. 1 8 70-75";
H STAD, Best. RD, Nr. 2619, '' Die Anordnung der Schulpfleger bzw. Kreisschulinspektoren
(kath.) und Forderung der Schulwesens durch die Geistlichen ," Bd. 1 , 18 72-73, and Bd. 2,
1874; HSTAD, Best. RD, Nr. 2722, "Die Enthebung der katholischen Geistlichen von der
lokalen Schulaufsicht und deren Nachfolger. 18 72-1 874"; HSTAD, Best. RD, Nr. 2723. "Die
Enthebung der katholischen Geistlichen von der lokalen Schulaufsicht und deren Nachfol
ger. r874-1875''; HSTAD, Best. RD. Nr. 2725. ''Die Enthebung der katholischen Geistlichen
von den lokalen Schulaufsicht und deren Nachfolger, 1875"; HSTAD, Best. RA, Nr. 17587,
" Kreisschui-Tnspektoren, 18 76-1878"; LHAK, Best. OPR, Nr. 10412, "Die Kreisschulinspec
toren Bezirke und die Kreisschulinspectoren"; LHAK, Best. OPR, Nr. 15 196, "Die Kreiss
chuinspectoren in Regierungsbezirk Dusseldorf'; LHAK. Best. OPR, Nr. 1041 2, "Die
Kreisschulinspections Bezirke und die Kreisschulinspectoren." For further on the implemen
tation of the school supervision law, see Lamberti, "State, Church, and the Politics of School
Reform"; and idem, State, Society, and the Elementary School in Imperial Germany (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, rg8g).
2 57
Affairs was established that abolished the authority of the pope over
the Catholic Church in Prussia and claimed final jurisdiction on all
matters of internal church discipline . The laws also facilitated with
drawal of members from the church. In 1 8 74 another round of May
Laws more punitive in nature was enacted. In the Expatriation Act, the
government had the power to confine or banish recalcitrant priests
who continued to carry out their clerical functions in defiance of state
injunctions. Another provision provided for the state administration
of dioceses left vacant by the church. A final law further defined and
extended the terms for the education of clergy.
In April 1 875, at the height of the Kulturkampf, the Prussian state
responded to a papal encyclical declaring invalid all ecclesiastical legis
lation in Prussia with the so-called Breadbasket Law (Brotkorbgesetz) .
The statute suspended most of the state's annual subsidy to Catholic
dioceses and clerics until their bishops pledged in writing to abide by
Kulturkampf legislation. Soon afterward the state abolished Article 16
of the constitution, which granted to the Catholic Church the right to
communicate with the Vatican. Then in May the capstone of all Kul
turkampf legislation, the Congregations Law, banned all remaining
religious orders except those devoted to hospital work and teaching.
The law affected several thousand clerics and nuns and according to
one estimate closed 189 monasteries and cloisters within the next two
years .49 The property was appropriated by the state . Within the first
four months of 1875, the Hohenzollern state in the course of its attack
on the Catholic Church had fined or arrested 241 priests, 136 newspa
per and j ournal editors, and 210 other Catholics; in addition, 20 news
papers were confiscated, 74 houses searched, 103 individuals expelled
or incarcerated, and 55 public meetings closed down.s o Over goo
parishes were without priests. Of the 12 Prussian dioceses, 5 were with
out bishops due to judicial removal, and 4 others were vacant where
49 Like the Breadbasket Law, the Congregations Law proved to be less effective than
anticipated by state authorities. Two-thirds of the more than goo religious orders and con
gregations in Prussia provided charitable and educational services that the state could not
itself afTord to replace . By the end of the Kulturkampf only 340 monasteries and cloisters had
been shut down. Ronald J. Ross, "Enforcing the Kulturkampf in the Bismarckian State and
the Limits of the Coercion in Imperial Germany." Journal of Modern History 56 (r984):
456-82. For a study of the fate of monastic orders and congregations after their expulsion
from Prussia, see Rita Miillejans-Dickmann, Kloster im Kulturkampf Die Ansiedlung
katholischer Orden und Kongregationen aus dem Rheinland und ihre Klosterneubauten in bel
gisch-niederlandischen Grenzraum infolge des preujJischen Kulturkampfes (Aachen: Einhard,
1992).
so. Anderson, Windthorst, 178.
258
the bishops had died and not been replacedY A year later, across Prus
sia 1,400 parishes, a third of those that existed, did not have incumbent
priestsY
Liberals, Jews, Democrats, and the Jesuit Law
When in r872 liberal deputies introduced a bill in the first session of the
new Reichstag calling for the closing of the Society of Jesus and other
religious orders they did so according to Article 23 of the constitution,
which allowed the Reichstag to suggest legislation and forward petitions
to the Bundesrat (Federal Council) and chancellor. The bill called for
the abolition of the order, the expulsion of foreign Jesuits from German
soil, and the relocation of individual German Jesuits. It also set off an
explosion of public debate that included all levels of German society and
politics. There may have been only about two hundred Jesuits within the
empire, but the intense hatred among liberals and Protestants and the
equally intense loyalty among Catholics toward the Jesuits were in no
proportion to their modest number. During the first half of r872, peti
tion campaigns against or in support of the Jesuits swept the entire
length and breadth of the empire.S3 The controversy ripped the nation
along the political-confessional divide as liberal and Protestant associa
tions held protest meetings while the Center Party and Catholic associa
tions held even more numerous rallies in support of the Jesuits.
The most prominent National Liberal deputies led the attack against
the Jesuits in the Reichstag, foremost among them Rudolf Gneist, who
along with his liberal colleagues had garnered the lessons of the
Moabiterklostersturm. But it was Eduard Windthorst, an Old Catholic
Progressive deputy from Berlin, who laid out the liberal position in a
lengthy speech on the floor. Eduard Windthorst argued that "the burn
ing hate with which the German Empire persecutes Jesuitism" was
entirely justified: "Germany is the land of the Reformation, the land of
free science, the land of tolerance and enlightenment. "54 Voting for the
5 1 . Evans, German Center Party, 76.
52. Craig, Germany, 75
5 3 Petitions that were sent to the Reichstag can be found in Fiir und Wider die Jesuiten,
part 2, VI und XIV Bericht der Kommission fiir Petitionen, betreffend die Petitionen fiir und
wider ein allgemeines Verbot des Jesuiten-Ordens in Deutschland. See also the collection of
materials in Moufang, Aktenstiicke.
54 Fiir und Wider die Jesuiten, part r, Stenographische Berichte der Reichstagsverhand
lungen iiber Besetzung des Botschafter-Postens in Rom und die Petitionen fiir und wider die
Jesuiten, session 21, 14 May 1872, 79
2 59
abolition of the Jesuit order, he believed, was a duty that outweighed

any obligations he had to Catholicism, political or religious.ss Indeed,
he took it upon himself as a liberal to instruct Center deputies on the
liberal principle of freedom and rights of association. The pleas of
deputies of the Center "to us, the liberals" to abide by the principle of
freedom, he argued, were premised on a false concept of freedom.
Catholic deputies, he explained, understood freedom to mean the free
dom to suppress the freedom of the people. He argued that liberals vin
dicated the right of every person and every citizen to enjoy his civil
rights but in contrast to Catholics, and here was the heart of the mat
ter, "only after withdrawal of those [civil rights] that must be sacrificed
for the good of the totality and of the state. " For Eduard Windthorst
it made no sense on principle to tolerate that which negates the princi
ple in the first place. "Freedom, " he explained, "protects everything
except unfreedom, and tolerance endures everything except intoler
ance . " S6 Eduard Windthorst outlined the paradigmatically liberal
definition of freedom, a definition, he believed, that was wholly conso
nant with a law that abolished the Society of Jesus, expelled foreign
Jesuits, and suspended the residence rights of German citizens. As a
liberal and an Old Catholic-a Progressive and the nephew of the
leader of the Center no less-Eduard Windthorst could only have
based his motives on the liberal principle of freedom. When it came to
the Jesuits, therefore, he like other German liberals believed himself
fully justified in invoking the immortal words of Voltaire, that quintes
sential figure of the Enlightenment: "Ecrasez l'infame! " 57 The Old
Catholic Eduard Windthorst was joined by Catholic liberal deputies in
the Liberale Reichspartei, by the Catholic National Liberals Friedrich
von Schauss of Oberfranken and Paul Tritscheller of Baden, and by the
Catholic Progressive Anton Allnoch of Breslau, all of whom voted in
favor of the anti-Jesuit bill.
Historians of German liberalism and politics have traditionally cited
the National Liberal deputies Eduard Lasker and Ludwig Bamberger
as examples of liberals who, standing alone in the Reichstag against the
pressure of their colleagues, refused to participate in the betrayal of lib
eralism. 58 Historians have argued that the Jesuit law was a notoriously
5 5 Eduard Windthorst is listed as altkatholisch in Mann. Biographisches Handbuchfiir das
preujJische Abgeordnetenhaus, 419. He voted for the anti-Jesuit bill on the second vote and
was on vacation during the final vote .
56. Fur und Wider die Jesuiten, part r, session 21, 14 May 1 8 72, quotations at 93
57 Ibid. , 94
58. As an example, see Craig, Germany, 77
260
illiberal piece of legislation but was recognized as such only by a hand

ful of liberal and progressive deputies. Following this logic, it was not
Lasker and Bamberger but rather the other 122 National Liberal
deputies not voting against the bill who turned their backs on their lib
eral convictions. 59 Despite or perhaps given the wide acceptance of this
interpretation, the anti-Jesuit bill, its debate, and the votes cast by the
deputies have remained surprisingly unexamined. But a careful
appraisal of positions on the anti-Jesuit bill offers the opportunity to
better understand not only the Kulturkampf but also liberalism, polit
ical Catholicism, and Jewish political attitudes toward the church-state
conflict in the second half of the nineteenth century. More thorough
analysis reveals that opposition to the bill was shaped not just by polit
ical ideology but also by religious identity. Taking into account the
confessional composition of the deputies' respective constituencies
suggests that opposition to the bill was shaped in the new age of the
democratic franchise. Specifically, Lasker and Bamberger discovered
that the anti-Catholic exceptional legislation was in conflict with their
religious identity. At the same time, Catholic liberal deputies more true
to liberalism than they were to the church at least politically paid the
price: they were voted out by their political constituencies in the subse
quent election.
Lasker, a deputy from Saxony, shared the anti-Catholicism of liber
als . Like other liberals he believed that the Catholic Church was
incompatible with economic growth, scientific progress, educational
reform, and German unification. He did stand against the "pulpit
paragraph" legislation as a violation of civic rights, but in subsequent
anti-Catholic May Laws in Prussia, Lasker supported the measures
along with his colleagues.60 Bamberger, deputy from Hesse, also voted
59. There is considerable confusion among historians about the liberal voting record on
the anti-Jesuit bill in the Reichstag: Blackbourn inadvertently states that Rudolf von Ben
nigsen was one of only two National Liberals to vote against the expulsion of the Jesuits.
Blackbourn, Marpingen. 449 n. 88. Bennigsen voted for the bill, and Otto Biihr, also a
N ational Liberal, voted along with Lasker and Bamberger against the bill. For further on
Biihr see n. 8o in this chapter. Rudolf Lill states that the N ational Liberal Johannes von
Miquel also voted with Lasker and Bamberger. Lill, "Der Kulturkampf in PreuBen," 3 8 .
Miquel, i n fact, failed t o vote on both readings o f the bill. The total number o f National Lib
eral deputies is recorded as 125 in Statistisches Jahrbuch fiir das deutsche Reich (Berlin:
Puttkammer und Mi.ihlbrecht, r88o). I:140-4I . This count includes II9 deputies of the National
Liberal Party and 6 '"outside the National Liberals and the Progressives" aligned politically
with the National Liberals. For the voting record on the anti-Jesuit bill see Fiir und Wider die
Jesuiten, part 3, session 45, 17 June r872, 96-97, and session 48, 19 June r872, r40-4r.
6o. See James F. Harris, A Study in the Theory and Practice of German Liberalism: Eduard
Lasker. 1829-1884 (Lanham, Md. : University Press of America, 1984), 49.
26r
for other anti-Catholic legislation. He, in fact, was always an enthusi

astic Kulturkampfer, Already in November 1871 he referred to the fight
against the Catholic Church as the "signature of the empire. " "I myself
am busy with the affair in the most intimate circles," he wrote. "It will
not end for a long time. "61 As the Kulturkampf in Prussia intensified,
Bamberger's enthusiasm only grew. Indeed, according to his own
account, he was beside himself with delight about its success: "I am
truly intoxicated to observe how this development so correctly takes
the course which my best expectations had demanded of it. "62 On leg
islation connected to the Kulturkampf, only on the prohibition of the
Jesuit order did Bamberger break from his National Liberal col
leagues.
Given the small minority within which Lasker and Bamberger found
themselves in the Reichstag and given that in every other respect they
shared the hostility of their liberal colleagues toward the Catholic
Church, both felt compelled to clarify the reasons for their votes in
opposition to the anti-Jesuit bill on the second reading on 17 June and
again on the final reading on 19 June. Speaking before the Reichstag,
Lasker addressed his comments foremost to his party colleagues. He
assured them that he represented a very small group that preferred to
be hand in hand with "Kampf-Genossen" (comrades-in-arms) . Lasker
agreed with his colleagues that the conflict with the church should be
resolved with all the assistance that law and the authority of the state
could provide. On the anti-Jesuit bill, however, he was bound to place
himself in opposition. He justified his position by emphasizing that the
purpose of the struggle with the Catholic Church should be, as he said,
"to reconcile feelings," not to force the suppression of opposing views.
He attacked the abrogation of the residence rights of German citizens
by means of the suspension of normal juridical procedure.63 Defending
such rights was a matter of moral duty and liberal principle, he
insisted. From a pragmatic point of view, there was the added problem
that it would be simply too difficult for authorities to determine who
was a member of the Society of Jesus.
Lasker was clearly unhappy with his own position relative to his lib
eral colleagues and must have recognized that his points of view
expressed here may not have seemed consistent with his earlier position
6 1 . Quoted in Stanley Zucker, Ludwig Bamberger: German Liberal Politician and Social
Critic, I823-1899 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975), 95.
62. Quoted in ibid.
6 3 . For Lasker's speech see Fiir und Wider die Jesuiten, part 3, session 45, 17 June 1872,
IOI-6 .
262
regarding matters of church and state. Always on other occasions a

fiery and effective speaker, he came across at the end of his speech
unmistakably embarrassed. It was, he admitted, a matter of "great
pain" not to be able to be on the side of his esteemed friends. Lasker
asked for a reconciliation and hoped that the future would bring liber
als together again. Though Lasker was in the decided minority, entirely
isolated, his comments were nonetheless at once a significant with
drawal of support and an indication of his unrepentant conduct within
his own party and toward the state government. His outspoken inde
pendence on this occasion once again fueled the anger directed against
him by both liberals and Bismarck. Here was another case of what the
liberal nationalist circle grouped around Heinrich von Treitschke and
Wilhelm Wehrenpfennig called "Laskerei. " Lasker represented treach
ery on the left side of the National Liberals that threatened to split the
party as it had threatened repeatedly since r 866 and would so again
during the heated intraparty conflict during the crisis over the military
Septennat budget of r 8 74. At the same time, it was only confirmation
that Lasker had reached the height of his prestige and power in the
Reichstag that Bismarck openly admitted he now hated Lasker as
much as he did Ludwig Windthorst.
Meanwhile Bamberger simply sat silently in his seat throughout the
entire debate in the Reichstag. Three days after the final vote on the
anti-Jesuit bill, with the matter an accomplished fact, he finally offered
an account for his opposition on the pages of the Gegenwart. Bam
berger claimed that the bill had been too hastily submitted and not
based on a rational response to the Jesuit problem. He argued that the
deputies and the government had been too eager to agree on the bill;
they were, as he put it, "not there to exchange compliments . " (The bill
had been initially introduced in the Reichstag by the imperial govern
ment, withdrawn, and then reintroduced by the liberal leadership. ) The
proposed Jesuit law, Bamberger further argued, was also insufficient
since by focusing only on the Jesuits, it did not address the larger prob
lem of the entire Catholic Church. In addition, Bamberger rejected the
argument that deputies were compelled to support the bill since, if they
had done otherwise, they would have discouraged the "similar efforts"
of the government. The government, he insisted, had already been
assured on previous occasions of the Reichstag's cooperation on such
matters. Only at the very end did Bamberger indicate that the law was
not only ineffectual but, perhaps, also an unsavory display of state
coercion. "Nothing," he argued, "had proven itself more useless in the
263
last half century as the attempt to fight against the currents of public
spirit whether good or bad with police repression," a comment that
colleagues would have recognized as a reference not only to the enthu
siastic support of the Jesuits by the Catholic population but, in fact,
also to previous state attacks on their own liberal activism.64 In several
respects Bamberger's remarks were a striking contrast to Lasker's
argument and, indeed, next to Lasker's logical and personalized testi
mony, curiously circuitous and halfhearted. The two were clearly not
in step and had done little, if anything, to coordinate their opposition.
Indeed, Bamberger had done nothing constructive to resist the anti
Jesuit bill, merely offering a defense to his colleagues for his vote after
the fact.
The tenor and substance of Lasker's and Bamberger's respective
statements hint that the reasons articulated for their opposition were
only a partial account. In order to appreciate the significance of
Lasker's and Bamberger's exceptions to the anti-Jesuit bill, it is neces
sary to identify what remained in the background, present but passed
over in silence. In addition to their opposition, what distinguished
Lasker and Bamberger from other liberal deputies voting in support of
the bill was an identity they shared. Lasker and Bamberger were
Jews. 65 They stood almost entirely alone among liberals against the
Jesuit law because they recognized that as Jews they were an even
smaller, more vulnerable, minority within the empire than Catholics. 66
At the time of the founding of the empire, Jews comprised under 1 per
cent of the total German population. Heinrich Berhard Oppenheim,
himself Jewish and liberal, readily recognized how difficult, even
embarrassing, it must have been for his coreligionists to compromise
one identity for the sake of the other. But as a friend he suggested in a
64. Ludwig Bamberger, "Die Motive der liberalen Opposition gegen das Jesuitengesetz,"
Gegenwart r (1872): 337-3 8 . See also Marie-Lise Weber, Ludwig Bamberger: Ideologie statt
Realpolitik (Stuttgart: F . Steiner Verlag, 1987), 168; Zucker, Bamberger, 96.
65. B oth Lasker and Bamberger were secular Jews who remained bound to their Jewish
identities even as they distanced themselves from the religious practice of Judaism. For
Lasker's and Bamberger's relationships to Judaism, their relationship to the German Jewish
community, and their positions on Jewish issues, see James F . Harris, "Edward Lasker: The
Jew as National German Politician," Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 20 (1975): 1 5 1-77; and
Stanley Zucker, " Ludwig Bamberger and the Rise of Anti-Semitism in Germany,
1848-1893." Central European History 3 (1970): 332-52.
66. Lasker and Bamberger were joined on the final vote by one other National Liberal and
by twelve Progressives.
26 4
letter to Lasker that his speech had been "almost too temperate,
although not as timid as Bamberger's article. "67
Lasker's and Bamberger's conflicted opposition to the Jesuit law,
however, represented the dilemma shared by the leadership of the Ger
man Jewish population in general in its relationship to the Kul
turkampf. As the historian of German Jewish-Christian relations in
the nineteenth century Uriel Tal, has shown, Jewish communities fol
lowed the early years of the Kulturkampf with great interest. 68 The
Kulturkampf was a serious matter in public debates and private dis
cussion in the Jewish community. It was a familiar topic of humor and
satire in Jewish regional and local newspapers and a subject critically
examined by the Jewish community councils. The views of most Jewish
leaders, educated Jews, and the Jewish population, insofar as they were
publicly expressed by rabbis in their sermons, teachers in the class
room, and editorialists in the press, welcomed the early phase of the
Kulturkampf. For the most part, the Jewish public supported the "pul
pit paragraph" adopted by the Reichstag in March r87r, prohibiting
the use of religious sermons for political purposes, since the law seemed
to ensure the separation of church and state. By and large educated
Jews saw the anti-Catholic campaign in general as a defense of liberal
ism, nationalism, and scientific progress, and Jewish economists in par
ticular asserted that the "ultramontanists" advocated an economic
policy contrary to free trade and free competition, favored protection
ism, and sought to preserve preindustrial society. More important,
Jews believed their own emancipation within German society was
dependent on the realization of liberal, humanistic, and rational values
and, therefore, they looked forward to the victory of the liberals. Other
recent research concludes that liberals regarded Jewish emancipation
as an integral part of their political program, and Jews relied on liber
als as the staunchest, indeed the only, allies of Jews in their struggle for
emancipation and equal rights. 69
67. Letter of Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim to Eduard Lasker, 4 July r 872, in Heydorff
and Wentzcke, Deutscher Liberalismus im Zeitalter Bismarcks, 2 : 5 5-56. Oppenheim contin
ued, "The Progressive Party took a good position in such conflicts, and if our close friends
had done the same, the National Liberal would be morally stronger and more influential. "
Oppenheim, again, was Jewish.
68. This and the following are based on Tal, Christians and Jews, 8r-r2o.
69. Werner E . Mosse, "Introduction: German Jewry and Liberalism," in Das deutsche
Judentum und der Liberalismus, ed. Friedrich-Nauman-Stiftung (Sankt Augustin : Comdok
Verlagsabteilung, r986), r 5-27. Earlier work had noted instances of liberal ambivalence or
prej udice toward Jews . See Reihard Rlirup, "German Liberalism and the Emancipation of
265
Conspicuously absent from the examination of the Jewish relation

ship to liberalism and the anti-Catholic campaign in particular, how
ever, is the significance of the Jesuit law. Yet an examination of the
larger debate concerning the Jesuit law indicates not only a sea change
in the Jewish attitude toward the Kulturkampf but also the develop
ment of deep suspicions among Jews about liberals and liberalism.
With the introduction of the law, leading Jews became profoundly
ambivalent about their relationship toward the progress of the Kul
turkampf. German Jews had good reason to be concerned that the
Jesuit law as an Ausnahmegesetz (exceptional law not part of the nor
mal juridical process) would establish a legal precedent that could be
turned against any other religious or social group labeled "staats
feindlich. " It was therefore with the passage of the Jesuit law that lead
ers of the Deutsch-Israelitischer Gemeindebund (Union of German
Jewish Communities), Jewish students, rabbis, teachers, and readers of
the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, the principal organ of German
Reform Judaism, began a more critical evaluation of the antichurch
campaign. Increasingly the Kulturkampf evoked Jewish concerns
about excessive state coercion in the spheres of society and religion,
and it ultimately shook Jewish confidence in liberal policy itself. The
Allgemeine Zeitung, for example, now expressed doubts about liberal
ism's willingness to tolerate Judaism as a cultural and religious iden
tity. If German liberalism was unable to tolerate Jewish "individual
ity," the paper threatened, "there is nothing we can do except express
our disapproval, deplore its shortsightedness, and refrain from follow
ing in its footsteps. "7 In the same year, the Allgemeine Zeitung
extended its criticism to Rudolf Virchow's "scientific liberalism" and
to Ernst Haeckel's and Louis Buchner's "scientific materialism." If not
resisted, the newspaper argued, liberal science would undermine the
spiritual life of the nation and lead to intellectual regimentation. By the
mid-187os, Jewish leaders were complaining that the policy pursued by
liberal-nationalistic Kulturkiimpfer would lead not to the emancipa
tion of the state but instead to the spiritual and cultural conformity of
religious and social minorities in the empire .71
the Jews," Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 20 (1975): 59-68; and Eleonore Sterling, JudenhajJ:
Die Anfange des politischen Antisernitismus in Deutschland, I8I5-1850 (Frankfurt am Main :
Europiiische Verlagsanstalt, 1969). See also Herzog, Intimacy and Exclusion, 53-84.
70. Tal, Christians and Jews, 109.
7r. Ibid. ; and Tal, The Kulturkarnpf and the Jews of Germany (Jerusalem: International
Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization, r98o), r9-23.
266
Though the meaning of Lasker's and Bamberger's votes against the

anti-Jesuit bill has been largely missed by subsequent historians, it was
not lost on contemporariesY Moritz Schulz, Bismarck's confidant, for
example, believed he understood the significance of Lasker's and Bam
berger's opposition. He scornfully noted that outside the Center only
Jewish deputies voted against the bill because they feared that at some
point in the future the population would be aroused enough against
Jews to demand an exceptional law.73 When it came to a vote to abolish
the Jesuit order with an exceptional law, just as Catholic liberal deputies
in the Liberale Reichspartei, Catholic National Liberals like Schauss
and Tritscheller, and the Catholic Progressive Allnoch had to choose
between loyalty to the Catholic Church or the Kulturkampf, so did
Lasker and Bamberger have to choose between their identity as Jews
and their identity as liberals. Interestingly enough, among the National
Liberals it was not Catholics but Jews who broke the ranks of the party
when faced with the choice. In fact, the issue was important enough for
Bamberger to risk the liberal support he needed in his electoral district
to retain his seat in the Reichstag. 74 (He was, ironically, replaced in that
seat by a Center deputy in the election of 1874.) This argument is also
made compelling by the case of the only deputy, Isaac Wolffson of
Hamburg, who abstained on the second reading of the bill. A National
Liberal, he too was Jewish. Unwilling to choose one identity at the
expense of the other, he abstained again on the final reading of the anti
Jesuit bill. 75
The case of the aging Saxon "Forty-Eighter" historian and National
Liberal Karl Biedermann is also instructive. In private correspondence
he confided to Lasker that he intended to vote against the anti-Jesuit
bill. He objected to the law not for reasons of legal compunction or lib
eral idealism but because of the heavy-handed manner in which it was
72. One exception is Helmut Walser Smith, who mentions that Eduard Lasker "resisted
anti-Catholic legislation" and suggests "it seems more likely that a figure like Lasker assumed
a reserved attitude towards the Kulturkamp( not because he was a liberaL but because he
was Jewish." Helmut Walser Smith, "'Nationalism and Religious Conflict in Germany,
r887-T9r4,'' (Ph.D. diss. , Yale University, rggr), 47-48 n. 5 3 . But the issue for Lasker at least
was not the Kulturkampf itself and its attack on the Catholic Church but rather exceptional
legislation and its implications. As noted, only on the "pulpit paragraph'" and the Jesuit law
did Lasker take exception to Kulturkampf legislation.
73 Cited in Zucker, Bamberger, g6.
74 Ibid. , g6.
75 The only other deputy besides WolfTson to abstain on the final vote was also a
National Liberal.
267
negotiated between the Reichstag and the imperial executive. He

would do so even though among his voters, when it came to the Jesuits,
"the most angry is not angry enough."76 When it came to the actual
vote, he apparently succumbed to the intense pressures he alluded to in
his letter to Lasker, since on both the second and final readings of the
bill, he failed to vote. Finally, concerning National Liberals, historians
have repeatedly stated that only Lasker and Bamberger voted against
the Jesuit bill. 77 As a matter of record, however, a review of the votes
indicates that one other, Otto Bahr, the National Liberal deputy from
Kassel and a Protestant, voted against the bill. Unfortunately, his
motives remain unknown since he did not speak publicly to the bill
either in the Reichstag or subsequent to the debate.7 8
Those historians who have trained their attention on the anti-Jesuit
bill have not only missed the meaning but have also been confused
about the vote count itself, recording conflicting counts of Progressive
votes for and against the bill.79 Clarity therefore about the facts is, first
of all, necessary: as tables 6 and 7 indicate, sixteen Progressives voted
for and sixteen voted against the bill on the second reading and/or on
the final reading. All Progressive votes in support of the bill were cast
by deputies from predominantly Protestant constituencies. Among
those Progressive deputies voting against the bill, three-Joseph
Gerstner, Carl Herz, and Franz Wigard-represented districts with
76. Letter of Karl Biedermann to Eduard Lasker, 12 June r872, in Heydorfi and
Wentzcke, Deutscher Liberalismus in Zeitalter Bismarcks, 2 : 5 3-54; see also Harris, Study in
the Theory and Practice of German Liberalism, 49.
77 As an example, see Zucker, Ludwig Bamberger, 96.
78. I have assumed that the "Dr. Bahr'' listed in the voting record as reproduced in Fiir und
Wider is Dr. Otto Baehr, National Liberal, representing Wahlkreis 2, Kassel, member of the
Reichstag from r867 to r88o. All information concerning the party affiliations, religions, and
electoral districts of the deputies, unless otherwise indicated, is based on Schwarz, MdR
Biographisches Handbuch, a source admittedly not without some discrepancies. Where I have
found inaccuracies I have tried to correct them. No discrepancy that I have found alters this
analysis.
79 Here are indications of the extent of the confusion: Anderson states that eight Pro
gressives voted against the bill and that the Progressives Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch and
Eugen Richter led those Progressives who refused their support. Anderson, Windthorst, 166.
Schulze-Delitzsch, in fact, voted for the bill on both readings, and Richter failed to vote.
Bornkamm states that twelve Progressives voted against the bill. Bornkamm, Staatsidee, 19
n . r . Evans states that nine Progressives voted for and eleven voted against the bill and fifteen
abstained. Evans, German Center Party, 6r. Lill states that the maj ority of the Progressives
voted against the bill. Lill, "Der Kulturkampf in Preu13en," 38. For the voting record on the
anti-Jesuit bill see the verbatim reproduction of the stenographic report of the Reichstag
debates and votes in Fiir und Wider die Jesuiten, part 3, session 45, 17 June r872, 96-97; ses
sion 48, 19 June r872, 140-41.
TABLE 6.
Progressive Reichstag Deputies Voting in Favor of the Anti-Jesuit
Bill, 17 and 19 June 1 872
Name
Religion
Electoral District
Predominant
Religion
Allnoch. Anton
Becker, Hermann
Bohme. Emil
Emden, Louis
Franke, Wilhelm
Harkort, Friedrich
Knapp, Johann
Lorentzen, Wilhelm
Lowe. Wilhelm
Oehmichen, Wilhelm
Rohland, Otto
Runge, Heinrich
Schmidt, Theodor Carl
Schulze-Delitzsch,
Hermann
Seelig, Wilhelm
Windthorst. Eduard
Catholic
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Wahlkreis 4 , Breslau
Wahlkreis 6, Arnsberg
Wahlkreis 2 1 , Saxony
Wahlkreis 7 , Potsdam
Wahlkreis 2, Gumbinnen
Wahlkreis 4 , Arnsberg
Wahlkreis 4 , Wiesbaden
Wahlkreis 5 , Schleswig-H olstein
Wahlkreis 5 , Arnsberg
Wahlkreis 8, Merseburg
W ahlkreis 4 , Berlin
Wahlkreis 4 , Stettin
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Old Catholic
Wahlkreis 6, Berlin
Wahlkreis 9, Schleswig-H olstein
Wahlkreis 3 , Berlin
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Source: Schwarz, MdR BioJiraplzisches Handbuclz; Fiir und Wider die Jesuiten, part 3, session 45, 1 7 June
1 872, 9 6-9 7; session 48, 19 June 1 8 72, 1 40-4 1 ; Ritter and Niehuss, Walzlfiesclziclzt/ichtliclzes A rbeitsbuclz;
49-5 3 . 60-6 1 .
TABLE ?.
Progressive Reichstag Deputies Voting in Opposition to the Anti-
Jesuit Bill, 17 and 19 June 1 872
N ame
Religion
Electoral District
Banks. Ed ward
Dickert, Julius
Duncker, Franz
Erhard. Otto
Gerstner, Joseph
Hagen, Adolf
Hausmann, August
Herz, Carl
Hoverbeck, Leopold von
Kirchmann, Julius
Klotz. Moritz
Miiller. Louis
Schaffrath, Wilhelm
Wigard, Franz
Wiggers, Moritz
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Catholic
Protestant
Protestant
Catholic
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Ziegler, Frantz
Protestant
Wahlkreis 2, Hamburg
Wahlkreis 3 , Konigsberg
Wahlkreis 5 , Berlin
Wahlkreis 5 , Mittelfranken
Wahlkreis 6, Unterfranken
Wahlkreis I , Berlin
Wahlkreis 8, Potsdam
Wahlkreis 4, Mittelfranken
Wahlkreis 7 , Gumbinnen
Wahlkreis 6, Breslau
Wahlkreis 2, Berlin
Wahlkreis 9 , Liegnitz
Wahlkreis 9, Saxony
Wahlkreis 5 , B aden
Wahlkreis 3 ,
Mecklenburg-Schwerin
Wahlkreis 7 . Breslau
Protestant
Predominant
Religion
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Catholic
Protestant
Protestant
Catholic
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Catholic
Protestant
Protestant
Sources: Schwarz, MdR Bior;raplzisches Ilandhuclz; Fiir und Wider die Jesuilen, part 3 , session 45, 1 7
June 1 872, 96-97; and session 48, 19 June 1 872, 1 40-4 1 ; Ritter and N iehuss, Wahlgeschiclzllichtliches
Arheitshuch, 49-53 , 60-6 1 .
269
Catholic constituencies. At least the first two of these deputies were

Catholic. (The religion of the third is not known.) According to one
historical account, fifteen Progressives, that is, the plurality, abstained,
but the vote record indicates, in fact, that no Progressives abstained. 80
As table 8 indicates, twelve Progressives were listed as either "on vaca
tion" or "failing to vote" on both ballots, categories distinct from the
category for abstention and with different implications. The number
"on vacation" or "failing to vote" was not more than the number of
Progressives voting on the bill.
Because of the Progressive deputies' split on the anti-Jesuit bill, it is
more difficult to evaluate the meaning of their votes. Some were per
haps torn between liberal anticlerical convictions and reservations
about enacting an exceptional law. In any case, not all Progressives
who opposed the bill did so necessarily because they objected in princi
ple to the suspension of the civil right of residence of German citizens.
On the contrary, many Progressives apparently believed the bill as it
was proposed did not carry the attack on the Catholic Church far
enough. Though Progressives who voted against the bill may have
found themselves temporarily standing with the Center, Hermann
TABLE 8.
Progressive Reichstag Deputies Not Voting on the Anti-Jesuit BiH, 1 7
and 19 June 1872
Predominant
Religion
Name
Religion
Electoral District
On Vacation
Klotz. Jakob
Kochly, Hermann
Protestant
Protestant
Wk.
Wk.
Protestant
Protestant
Wahlkreis I , Mittelfranken
Wahlkreis 8, Saxony
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Wahlkreis 4, Schleswig-Holstein
Wahlkreis 7 , Schleswig-Holstein
Wahlkreis Lippe-Detmold
Wahlkreis 2, Oberfranken
Wahlkreis 3 , Gumbinnen
Wahlkreis Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Protestant
Failed to Vote
Cramer. Karl
Eysold, Arthur
Forchhammer.
Wilhelm
Hanel, Albert
Hausmann, Franz
Kraussold. Max
Ludwig, Richard
Minckwitz. Heinrich
Muellauer, Robert
Richter, Eugen
1.
Wiesbaden
Saxony
14,
Catholic
Protestant
Source: Schwarz, MdR Bior;raplzisches Ilandhuclz: Fiir und Wider die Jesuiten, Part 3, Session 45, 1 7 June
1 872, 96-97; and session 48, 19 June 1 8 72, 1 40-4 1 ; Ritter and Niehuss, Wahlr;eschichtlichtliclzes Arheils
huch, 49-5 3 , 60-6 1 .
8 o . Evans states that fifteen Progressives abstained . Evans, German Center Party, 6 1 .
2 70
Schulze-Delitzsch, the Progressive deputy from Berlin, was quick to

point out that there was a critical distinction between Center deputies
and Progressives who objected to the anti-Jesuit bill.
Gentlemen! There is a very important difference, indeed a diamet
rical opposition, between the opponents of this proposed law. The
esteemed speaker whom you first heard speak against the bill [the
Center Party deputy Hermann von Mallinckrodt] opposes it
because he wants no measures taken against the Jesuits at all. He
wants nothing to be done to them. I myself and a large number of
my political friends are against the proposed law because we think
it is too weak in every respect. We think it is inadequate to attain
the goal for which it is clearly intended. (Emphasis added.)81
The anti-Jesuit bill as it was proposed, he argued, was merely a limp
gesture in the struggle against the Roman Church. Schulze-Delitzsch
and others had become impatient with mere words about the govern
ment's power and the significance of the Kulturkampf: "Where are the
actions, gentlemen? Words should find their expression in real, practi
cal measures. Otherwise they are merely empty phrases about the
alleged strength of the government, since up to now we have not seen
any really decisive intervention . " 82 While others wasted time exchang
ing phrases and slogans about the Jesuit problem, Schulze-Delitzsch
believed at issue was no less than an "Existenzfrage" (a question of sur
vival) : "the existence of our young German state on the one side and
the existence of the Jesuit order on the other . " He announced that con
sequently he and his colleagues would vote not for but against the bill.
They wanted another, more punitive, anti-Jesuit bill with a "really
decisive measure" against the church. 83
Many Progressives, therefore, disapproved of the anti-Jesuit bill,
and some possibly even voted against it because they preferred to see a
more draconian bill introduced later in the individual state parlia
ments. Schulze-Delitzsche's pugnacious challenge came as a surprise to
no one, least of all fellow Progressives. He accepted and let it be known
without compunction the belief that the campaign against ultramon
tanism entailed a "ruthless struggle," and he and Progressives like him
were ready for the sake of progress to take up Bismarck's call to wage
8 r . Fiir und Wider die Jesuiten, part 3, session 43, 14 June r872, 1 7 .
82. Ibid.
83. Ibid., r 8 .
271
"proxy wars. " 84 But, in the end, Schulze-Delitzsch himself decided to

vote for the anti-Jesuit bill in the Reichstag, apparently believing there
might not be the opportunity later to introduce a more forceful bill in
either the Reichstag or in state parliaments. The willingness among
Progressives to suspend civil liberties is not surprising if we recall that
it was precisely a Progressive, Eduard Windthorst, who had on the
basis of avowedly liberal precepts demanded the restriction of citizens'
rights. Finally, it is worth noting that even the champion of individual
civic rights, the Progressive Eugen Richter, erroneously cited by some
historians as one of the few liberals unequivocally opposed to the Kul
turkampf, did not stand in the way of the anti-Jesuit bill_ 85 He did not
oppose the bill with his vote. He did not abstain. He as not on vaca
tion. Voting at neither the second nor final reading of the bill, Richter
simply did nothing.
Of the Progressive deputies who voted against the bill at either the
second and/or final reading, only a Catholic, Joseph Gerstner, voiced
reasons for doing so. Gerstner explained he was as a liberal an advo
cate of German Bildung, morals, and freedom and an enemy of the
Jesuits. But he objected to the exceptional law because it was reac
tionary. Gerstner pointed out that this bill introduced and supported
by nationalist liberals ironically evoked memories of the Karlsbad
Decrees enacted in r 8 r g against liberal nationalists during the Restora
tion earlier in the century. The Jesuits, he insisted, must be defeated not
with the police-state tactics of reaction but with "the force of ideas and
conviction and the power of Bildung and freedom. "86 These were
words no doubt calculated to strike deep into liberal consciousness.
Just as important, however, Gerstner also recognized that the legisla
tion would be construed by the Catholic population not simply as an
attack on the Jesuits but also as an attack on the entire Catholic
Church. Even those few Catholics not favorably disposed to the
Jesuits, he argued, would resent the law and come to the defense of the
order. 87 There are two points to make here. First, this admonition may
have revealed Gerstner's own sentiments. As a Catholic he resented the
damage the law would do to the Catholic Church. Second, he was no
doubt aware that according to the political reality of the new age of
democracy, deputies were answerable to their electorate. If the Jesuit
X4. Blackboum, "'Progress and Piety,'' 1 5 7 .
f\ 5 . See ibid . , r6o; Blackboum, Marpingen, 266; and Anderson, Windthorst, r66.
f\6. For Gerstner's speech, see Fiir und Wider die Jesuiten, part 3, session 45, 17 June rf\72,
s6-63, quotation at 6I.
X7. Ibid. , 59 Gerstner repeated this point at 94
2 72
law was going to be unpopular with Catholics, then this was a bill that
Gerstner, representing the overwhelmingly Catholic constituency of
Unterfranken in Bavaria, would do well not to support. He was in the
end talking about his own political career.
If Progressives did not offer a united front against the bill,
unqualified opposition came further to the political left, from the
democrats Karl Gravenhorst and Leopold Sonnemann. As democrats
they demarcate the fault line of German liberalism in the Kul
turkampf. 88 Gravenhorst, an independent not formally affiliated with
a party in the Reichstag, represented a Protestant district in Hanover.
Though certainly no friend of the Jesuits, Gravenhorst rejected the
Jesuit bill because it, like the "pulpit paragraph, " was an exceptional
law. 89 Gravenhorst proudly asserted that from his "democratic stand
point" he could not do otherwise. He claimed it as a democratic
responsibility to reject the bill because it "entailed harm to personal
freedom and an infringement on the most important political rights . "9
He drove home the distance between liberals and democrats when he
further warned liberals that the time might come when the Prussian
state would sue for peace with the Catholic Church and the Center
Party. Gravenhorst saw what liberals would not: the Jesuit law would
provide Bismarck with an opportunity he could put to use against
them. The state, he pointed out, would exploit precisely the liberals'
insistence on the exceptional law in order to broker an alliance with the
Center against the liberal party-an appraisal as prescient as it was
astute.
Leopold Sonnemann was Frankfurt's most prominent democrat. He
was a founding member of the German People's Party in 1867 and the
only member of that party in the Reichstag from 1871 through 1874.
(By 1875 he had become the unofficial leader of the small group of
democratic deputies in the Reichstag.) Like Lasker, Bamberger, and
Wolffson, Sonnemann was also Jewish. With Sonnemann the pattern
is complete : all Jewish deputies in the Reichstag refused to vote for the
bill, either voting against it or abstaining. The fact that Sonnemann
8 8 . For Sonnemann's democratic credentials see Klaus Gerteis, Leopold Sonnemann: Ein
Beitrag zur Geschichte des demokratischen Nationalstaatsgedenkens in Deutschland (Frank
furt am Main: Kramer, 1970) . Gravenhorst proudly proclaimed himself a democrat distinct
from the liberals in his speech on the anti-Jesuit bill. Fiir und Wider die Jesuiten. part r, ses
sion 23, I S May r872, I I 2 . At the time of the vote, neither Sonnemann nor Gravenhorst was
formally a member of a party in the Reichstag.
89. For Gravenhorst's speech, see ibid .. r r 2-r 8 .
9 0 . Ibid., T T 2 .
2 73
was a democrat and secular Jew explains why the Frankfurter Zeitung,
the newspaper he owned and edited, opposed from the beginning the
exceptional law and the repressive measures of the Kulturkampf. The
Frankfurter Zeitung, the largest and most important democratic news
paper south of the Main, denounced the repressive legislation not as
illiberal but as undemocratic. The Jesuit law, the paper argued, was a
violation of the principle of the separation of church and state. Such
anti-Jesuit repression, furthermore, would be useless in the campaign
against the church. The day before the final vote on the anti-Jesuit bill,
the paper stated, "Ultramontanism will not be affected. The prohibi
tion is not going to curtail its opposition to freedom but will merely
bestow the mantle of martyrdom upon it. "9' Prussian state authorities
may have been annoyed by the position of the newspaper, but they
were hardly surprised. Frankfurt was itself a remarkable hotbed of
Jewish democratic activism, so much so that as far as state officials
were concerned Frankfurt Jews and Democrats were synonymousY
Specifying the position of the Frankfurter Zeitung is important since
even some of the best historians of nineteenth-century society and lib
eralism have assumed that the newspaper was liberal and have repeat
edly cited the paper as an example of liberal opposition to anti
Catholic legislation.93 By doing so, they have obscured the boundaries
and the character of the antichurch campaign. The Frankfurter
Zeitung, in fact, stood up like a flag demarcating the religious and
political-ideological contours of the Kulturkampf. Since Sonnemann
openly despised the Jesuits and ultramontanism, it was only on demo
cratic principle that during the following years he and his newspaper
opposed the antichurch campaign. Unlike Lasker and Bamberger,
who, as noted, after the anti-Jesuit bill voted for other antichurch leg9 1 . For the democratic credentials of the Frankfurter Zeitung, its opposition to the Kul
turkampf, and the quotation, see Geschichte der Frankfurter Zeitung, 1856 bis 1906 (Frank
furt am Main: Verlag der Frankfurter Zeitung, r906), 227.
92. Palmowski, Urban Liberalism, 107.
93 Jan Palmowski: "The Frankfurter Zeitung was, perhaps, the most important liberal
newspaper which spoke out for Roman Catholics during that period.'' Palmowski, Urban
Liberalism, ro7. In an otherwise careful study, Palmowski too easily elides democrats, left lib
erals, and national liberals, and democratic and liberal ideology. David Blackbourn : "The
liberal Frankfurter Zeitung, which anxiously monitored the record of custodial sentences
meted out to Catholics, remarked on one occasion that Germany resembled 'one great
prison."' Blackbourn, "Progress and Piety,'' 1 56-57. See other examples at 251, 258, 266.
Kissling identified the Frankfurter Zeitung as democratic and argues that the Frankfurter
Zeitung protested the Jesuit law "surely not for love of religion but because it considered the
law undemocratic.'' Kissling. Geschichte des Kulturkarnpfes, 2:292.
2 74
islation with their liberal colleagues, Sonnemann aggressively attacked

these measures as well. In addition, starting in 1875 the Frankfurter
Zeitung ran a fortnightly Kulturkampf Calendar documenting the
state's repressive measures against Catholics and the church. These
included the banning of Catholic organizations and the searching of
Catholic homes by state authorities. Far from being liberal, the paper
was attacked by liberals for standing in opposition to the state's prose
cution of the Kulturkampf. The liberal Grenzboten disparagingly
branded the editors of the paper "radical democratic. "94 It was clear
for all Roman Catholics who cared to notice that the undivided refusal
of Jewish deputies and the Frankfurter Zeitung, not to mention the All
gemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, to give their support to the Jesuit bill
exposed as a lie the popular Catholic canard that "Jews" were respon
sible for the Kulturkampf.
During the debate on the anti-Jesuit bill, Sonnenmann and Graven
horst introduced a bill calling for the separation of church and state
that was defeated. Since the individual votes on the bill were not
recorded, it unfortunately is not possible to correlate votes on the anti
Jesuit bill with positions on the issue of separation. As noted earlier in
this chapter, however, the principle of separation was not characteris
tic of German liberalism. The demand for separation was, rather, char
acteristic of democrats. Protestant liberals on the right rejected separa
tion of church and state because they feared that separation would
weaken the Protestant Church. This included Paul Hinschius, member
of the Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat, who opposed separation and
voted in favor of the anti-Jesuit bill. At the same time, liberals from left
to right, including the Old Catholic Progressive Eduard Windthorst,
the Protestant National Liberal Friedrich Kiefer, and the Catholic
Liberale Reichspartei deputy Ludwig Fischer, believed there was no
contradiction between separation and the Jesuit law. For Eduard
Windthorst as for Kiefer and Fischer, the principle meant simply the
full secularization of state affairs, above all the schools, not that the
state had no right to regulate the affairs of the church in order to
ensure its independence.95 Meanwhile, the Progressive Joseph Gerstner
explicitly dismissed "the slogan separation of church and state" when
he spoke and voted against the Jesuit bill.96 Neither National Liberals
94. "Die Frankfurter Zeitung und der 'Culturkampf."' Grenzboten 3 (1875): 356-59.
9 5 . For Kiefer's position on separation of church and state, see Fiir und Wider die Jesuiten,
part I, session 23, I6 May I 8 72, I05-7; for Eduard Windthorst's position, ibid., session 22, I S
May 1 8 72, 93; for Fischer's position, ibid., session 23, 16 May 1872, 148-57 .
9 6 . Fiir und Wider die Jesuiten, part 3, session 4 5 , 1 7 June 1872. 56.
2 75
nor Progressives considered separation of church and state a principle

that should determine their votes on the anti-Jesuit bilL
The debate and the vote count on the Jesuit law of 1 872 indicate,
therefore, that among liberals the reasons for voting in opposition to
the bill were varying and complex. Liberal deputies voted against the
bill because they were Jewish, because the bill was ineffectual or too
weak, or because the bill was repressive. Other liberal deputies voting
against the bill objected to the manner in which the bill had been nego
tiated between the state government and the Reichstag or among the
Reichstag deputies themselves. Still other deputies feared (with good
reason) that the bill would be interpreted by the Catholic population as
a wider attack on their church and religion. Some were themselves
Catholic, sympathetic perhaps to the church and/or worried they might
alienate their Catholic constituencies if they supported the bill. Mean
while, democratic deputies unequivocally claimed that it was a demo
cratic responsibility to oppose the legislation and defend the civil rights
of German citizens, even those of the Jesuits whom they despised.
The Jesuit law was the most heated issue on which the Reichstag
voted during its first session from 1 8 71 to the next election in 1 8 74. The
issue mobilized the population into petition campaigns that swept the
entire length and breadth of the empire against or in support of the
Jesuits.97 Liberals and Protestants held protest rallies, and Catholic
associations held even more numerous counterrallies. Both because
elections to the Reichstag were direct and equal and because the Jesuit
law was by far the most important and popularly debated issue decided
by Reichstag deputies, the election returns of 1874 allow us to register
an impression of the popular reaction to that seminal piece of legisla
tion abolishing the Jesuit order. Voting on the Jesuit bill brought with
it hard lessons about the nature of the new democratic franchise .98
Though Gerstner voted against the bill, he found that this was not
enough to save his seat in Catholic Unterfranken. In the next Reich
stag elections of 1 874 he was replaced by a Center deputy. Catholic
members of the Liberale Reichspartei who had voted in favor of the
Jesuit law while representing electoral districts with predominantly
Catholic constituencies lost their seats: a deputy from Aachen, two
deputies from Schwaben, two from Oberbayern, a deputy from
97. Petitions that were sent to the Reichstag can be found in Fiir und Wider die Jesuiten,
part 2, 3-52. See also the collection of materials in Moufang, Aktenstiicke betreffend die
Jesuiten.
98. For the significance and the meaning of the franchise for the political culture of the
empire, see Anderson, Practicing Democracy; and idem, "Voter. Junker, Landrat, Priest.''
2 76
Niederbayern, and one from Unterfranken were all replaced by

Catholic Center deputies.99 Their careers in the Reichstag were over. 100
Of the four remaining Catholics of the Liberale Reichspartei who
voted for the bill, one from a predominantly Catholic yet traditionally
liberal district in Baden and one from a predominantly Protestant elec
toral district in Mittelfranken were replaced by National Liberals. 10'
Another moved to the ranks of the National Liberals and was reelected
in the heavily Catholic district Schwaben-Immenstadt.1 0 2 Prince
Hohenlohe-Schillingsfii r st became for a brief stint an independent
before moving to the conservative German Reich Party in a predomi
nantly Protestant voting district in Oberbayern. The Liberale
Reichspartei, therefore, disappeared as a party that politically recon
ciled liberalism and Catholicism.
Among Progressives, Eduard Windthorst lost his voting district. He
must have found it ironic that his overwhelmingly Protestant district in
Berlin chose none other than Carl Herz, the Catholic Progressive who
had voted against the Jesuit law.' 0 3 Herz was fortunate since he no
longer had a future in his original, predominantly Catholic voting dis
trict in Mittelfranken, which now elected a Center candidate. The
Catholic Progressive Anton Allnoch of the predominantly Protestant
voting district in Breslau and the only two Catholic National Liberals,
Schauss of a Protestant district in Oberfranken and Tritscheller of the
predominantly Catholic but urban and traditionally liberal district of
99 The deputies were. respectively, Richard Hasenclever; Ludwig Fischer and Wilhelm
Behringer; Wilhelm von Kastner and Emeran Kottmi:iller; Ludwig von Lottner; and Win
fried Harmann. Politically the Liberale Reichspartei lay with the National Liberal Party on
the liberal right. The only Catholic independent ("bei keiner Fraktion''), Ignatz Burgers of
Cologne, was also replaced by a Center Party deputy . The religious compositions of each
imperial voting district (Reichswahlkreis) are given in Gerhard A. Ritter and Merith Niehuss,
Wahlgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch: Materia/en zur Statistik des Kaiserreichs 1871-1918
(Munich: Beck, 1980), 6o-6r. The religious compositions of the electoral districts are based
on this source unless otherwise indicated.
roo. None was ever reelected to the Reichstag, at least not until the Kulturkampf was over.
Fischer was elected again in 1884.
ror . The deputies were Franz Roggen bach and Marquard Barth. respectively. The district
in Baden. Wahlkreis 4. Baden-Li:irrach, voted for either National Liberals or left liberals up
to 1918 with the one exception of 1890, when it voted Center.
ro2. The deputy was Joseph Vi:ilk. The electoral district continued to hold on to Vi:ilk until
it went to the Center in r 8 8 r .
1 0 3 . The district was Wahlkreis 3, Berlin. which had a Protestant constituency of over 8o
percent and voted consistently for Progressive deputies. Eduard Windthorst, although never
again a member of the Reichstag, did hold a seat subsequent to the vote on the anti-Jesuit bill
in the Prussian parliament from 1873 to 1879 as a member of the left-liberal Deutsche freisin
nige Partei from a Protestant voting district in Minden .
2 77
Baden-Freiburg, all voted for the Jesuit law with impunity.1 04 Of the
sixteen Protestant Progressive deputies who voted in favor of the anti
Jesuit bill, nine from the predominantly Protestant districts Gumbin
nen, Wiesbaden, Arnsberg, Schleswig-Holstein, Saxony, Stettin, and
Merseburg retained their seats in r 8 74, and four passed their seats to
Progressive candidates. Of those thirteen Protestant deputies from
Protestant districts who voted against the anti-Jesuit bill, ten repre
senting Protestant districts in Berlin, Potsdam, Konigsberg, Breslau,
Liegnitz, Mittelfranken, and Mecklenburg-Schwerin retained their
seats . Of the twelve who did not register a vote, six from Protestant
electoral districts in Schleswig-Holstein, Saxony, Lippe-Detmold, Mit
telfranken, Schwarzburg, and Gumbinnen also either retained their
seats or passed them to another Progressive. Three seats were replaced
in a predominantly Catholic district in Wiesbaden and in predomi
nantly Protestant districts in Oberfranken and Schleswig-Holstein by
National Liberals. Two seats in Saxony now moved to the Social
Democrats. The conclusion is that, unlike liberal deputies in the Lib
erale Reichspartei from Catholic constituencies, Protestant Progres
sive deputies could vote in support of or in opposition to the bill with
out losing their Protestant constituencies or at least their constituencies
to another party. The fate of the Jesuits was less important to the
majority of Protestant Progressive voters .
Catholic electoral districts that had voted for Catholic liberals were
now voting for Catholic Center deputies. For most Catholics, espe
cially for rural peasant or artisan Catholics, there were now to be no
ambiguities. The line was drawn. In the wake of the passage of the
Jesuit law and under the force of the Kulturkampf, most of the
Catholic voting population decided that it was impossible now to be
both Catholic and liberal.r o s The attack on the Jesuit order had conse
quences that went beyond the elimination of liberal Catholic political
representation at the national level. The dumping of liberal Catholic
deputies in favor of Center candidates by unforgiving Catholic elec
toral districts was accompanied by the replacement of Catholic conser
vative deputies from the nobility by Center deputies. In the rural and
eastern state of Oppeln alone, three prominent Junker who had been
absent during the vote were ousted by Center deputies. Though they
themselves were also lords of large estates, a taste of things to come
ro4. Baden- Freiburg also eventually went to the Center in r 8 7 8 . Catholic deputies of the
conservative Deutsche Reichspartei who voted for the Jesuit law and retained their seats
included Robert (Ferdinand) Lucius of Erfurt and Carl Schmid of Wi.irttemberg.
ros. For the elections during the Kulturkampf see also Sperber, Kaiser's Voters, r 60-79.
2 78
was offered by the case of Baron Schenk von Stauffenberg, who as a

Catholic National Liberal from Munich's first voting district did not
cast a ballot at either vote on the anti-Jesuit bill. In 1874 he retained his
seat while he watched Munich's second voting district align itself with
the Center, replacing a Catholic Liberale Reichspartei deputy who had
voted for the bill. In the subsequent election the baron was himself
replaced by a Center candidate and a commoner. He found a future in
the Reichstag only as a deputy from a predominantly Protestant dis
trict in Braunschweig.
One of the most significant consequences of the Jesuit law and the
attack on the Catholic Church was the activation and reorientation of
the Catholic electorate. Exercising the vote under the pressures of the
Kulturkampf, Catholics signaled the shift from the old "politics of
notables"-deference to those qualified for office by virtue of social
status-to a new "politics of identity"-support for those representing
identical social and cultural experience. r o6 But the new political align
ments involved not just votes for specific persons: they also included a
more abstract identification with confessional (or class or ethnic
minority) interests. This entailed a transition from an experience of
local politics rooted in parishes, villages, and small towns to imagining
a level of national politics and competition. Thinking in terms of a
national "imagined community" did not mean that voters would exer
cise their civic rights with a greater measure of individual freedom. ro7
At the polls, large-estate landlords who ordered their tenants to vote
ro6. Anderson, Practicing Democracy; idem, "The Kulturkampf and the Course of Ger
man History" ; and idem, '"Voter, Junker, Landrat, Priest." In the elections of 1 8 74 the Cen
ter Party j umped from 63 to 9I seats. Meanwhile, the National Liberals also moved from r 2 5
t o 1 5 5 seats, and the Progressive Party increased slightly from 4 6 to 4 9 seats. It was the two
conservative parties, reduced from a combined 94 to 55 seats, and the Liberale Reichspartei,
reduced from 30 to 3 seats, that suffered as the result of the electorate's move toward the
National Liberal and Center Parties. The combined total seats of the remaining parties-the
SPD, Polish, Danish, Alsatian, Guelph (Hanoverian particularist), Volkspartei, and Protest
Party-remained relatively stable, moving from 24 to 34 with gains of 7 and 5 seats for the
SPD and Protest Party, respectively. Statistisches Jahrbuch, 1 40-4 1 . The fact that, while voter
participation in the Reichstag election in r87r had been 5 r . o percent, by r874 it had made an
impressive jump to 6 r . 2 percent, and specifically the fact that those voting for the Center had
jumped from 1 8 . 6 percent in 1871 to 27.9 percent in 1 874. were also indications of the political
mobilization unleashed by the first years of the Kulturkampf. See Langewiesche, Liberalis
mus in Deutschland, 308-9. Meanwhile, support among eligible Catholic voters for the Cen
ter in constituencies with Center candidates leaped from 34.0 percent in r87r to 59.0 percent
in 1 8 74. Of Catholics voting during the Kulturkampf, four-fifths voted for the Center Party.
Blackboum, ''Catholics and Politics in Imperial Germany," r89, 206 .
107. The phrase is from Benedict Anderson's path-opening Imagined Communities:
Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, r983).
2 79
Conservative or face beatings and eviction, industrialists who

demanded that their workers vote National Liberal or face dismissal
and blacklisting, parish priests who instructed their congregations to
vote Center or face the wrath of God, all these were indications that
Germany was entering an age of modern, democratic politics. ro8
Kulturkampf legislation strictly speaking was not a direct attack
against Catholic belief or worship. Instead, legislation attacked the
leadership and placed controls on the administration of the church.
Before the Kulturkampf was over, Prussia's twelve bishops had been
imprisoned or forced to flee in order to avoid arrest or imprisonment.
Religious orders, monasteries, and convents were closed in accordance
with the Congregations Law of 1875. Lower clergy were fined or jailed
in thousands of cases for their defiance of Kulturkampf laws. But as the
electoral response in the Reichstag elections of 187 4 indicated, Catholics
rejected any notion that there was or could be a distinction between the
attack on the church leadership and an attack on Catholic life. Claims
by liberals and by state authorities that they were opposed to the power
of the priests, the Jesuits, ultramontanism, and Rome but not opposed
to the Catholic religion struck Catholics as disingenuous. Catholics had
listened for years to the barrage of liberal and state prejudice against
"backward" Catholicism and "stupid" and "un-German" Catholics.
Catholics were also deeply loyal and personally attached to their
religious leadership. Many priests were raised in the very communities
they later served, tied to their congregations through personal and
familial relationships. For those of the parish laity the priest therefore
was not simply the official representive of the church; he was often one
of their very own. We need not subscribe to a simple top-down, inten
tionalist model of local secular priests as "milieu managers" to recog
nize that the priest was in Catholic communities both the "father of the
community" and the "spiritual father. "r o9 The priest organized the
numerous religious associations for men, women, girls, and boys; he
administered the artisan and peasant credit banks, journeymen organi
zations, and miners' sodalities.rr o Priests provided leadership for the
coordination of social and civic events, and as local and regional
school inspectors, priests oversaw the administration of education.
ro8.
ro9.
Anderson, Practicing Democracy.

Olaf Blaschke, "Die Kolonisierung der Laienwelt: Priester als Milieumanager und die
Kaniile klerikaler Kuratel," in Religion im Kaiserreich. ed. Olaf Blaschke and Frank-Michael
Kuhlemann (Gutersloh: Chr. Kaiser. 1996). 93-1 3 5 . See the critical comments by Smith and
Clark. "'The Fate of Nathan.'' ro.
n o . Blackbourn, "Progress and Piety,'' I 5 3
280
During elections it was the priest who organized local support for Cen
ter deputies. When not attending to such organizational tasks, priests
gave lectures to their communities on hygiene, health, practical living,
husbandry and economic improvement, appropriate reading habits,
and the correct way to honor feast days. More important, Catholic
communities depended on their priests for religious instruction, pas
toral care, and administering the sacraments of baptism, confirmation,
the Eucharist, matrimony, penance, and extreme unction, the life cycle
of spiritual milestones that imparted meaning to individuals, families,
and communities. m Ultimately it was the presence and ministrations
of the priest as the intermediary to God in the community that made
possible the salvation of souls. The priest stood at the very center of the
social, political, and spiritual life of Catholic communities. Catholics
recognized immediately therefore that the Kulturkampf as an attack
on their leadership was a war against their entire way of life.
The Jesuit law specified that within six months of the enactment of the
legislation the Society of Jesus was to be closed in the empire and all
foreign Jesuits deported. Resolutions appended to the anti-Jesuit bill
by the Bundesrat also prohibited Jesuits from hearing confessions, giv
ing sermons, holding mass, and teaching in schools .m Jesuits were
expelled from their districts, their residences and churches were locked,
and the keys were handed over to government district authorities.n3
The Catholic Church and individual Jesuits railed against the oppres
sion of the state and argued in the Catholic press that members of the
Society of Jesus stood under the exclusive authority of their leadership
in Rome. n4 Far from striking a blow whose impact was confined to the
I I I . Michael Klocker's Katholisch-von der Weige bis zur Bahre provides an anthropolog
ical, alltiiglich history of each of the sacraments as a means of understanding the events that
define Catholic culture generally.
I I 2 . A copy of the order from the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Educational
and Ecclesiastical Af1airs, Berlin, to the provincial governor of the Rhineland and materials
documenting the implementation of the law can be found in LHAK, Best. 403, OPR, Nr.
7512, "Der Orden der Gesellschaft Jesu und die mit ihm verwandten Orden und Congrega
tionen : Ausfi.ihrung des Reichs-Gesetz vom 4 . 7 . 72. I X72-1 X 7 5 . ''
I I 3 . A detailed account o f the closing of the missions in the dioceses is given in August
Strater, Die Vertreibung der Jesuiten aus Deutschland im Jahre I872 (Freiburg im Breisgau:
Herder, 1914) .
II4. HSTAD, RD, Nr. 20ll l , Bd. r, 18 70-72, newspaper clipping from Essener Zeitung, a
reprint of an article appearing in the Kolnische Zeitung, IX Aug. 1X72.
28r
Jesuit order, the law led the Catholic laity to identify even more closely
with their church under attack. The liberal Kolnische Zeitung happily
told its readers that the law ripped through the Catholic population
like "a bolt of lightning" but failed to appreciate that in doing so the
law had also electrified the Catholic population. u s
When in the summer of r872, for example, police authorities in Essen
emptied and locked up the local Jesuit residence, the Catholic popula
tion went to the streets and erupted in rebellion. Gendarmes and
Catholics met in pitched battles. Catholic rioters tried to reopen the
Jesuit chapel by force. II6 They demolished the home of a local Freema
son, the natural target of Catholics who believed that Freemasonry,
liberalism, and hatred of Jesuits were synonymous . The Oberbiirger
meister and the editors of the Essener Blatter powerlessly pleaded with
Catholic workers to desist and return to work. Two full battalions of
fusiliers from the Seventh Army Corps, Fourteenth Division, were
finally required to quash the rebellion. 1 I 7 The Catholic Duisberger
Zeitung told its readers that the riots proved that "you can't always
answer deeds with mere words" ; the liberal Spenersche Zeitung recog
nized that the "Essen rebellion" was only a taste of things to come. 1 1 8
The Essen riots forced state authorities momentarily to retreat. Fearful
of inciting more Catholic rebellions, they slowed the pace of the closing
of the Jesuit missions and houses. 119 At the same time, the Jesuit law
and the explosion of the Catholic population now moved the Kul
turkampf into more dangerous and contested terrain, one in which the
new German Empire looked increasingly like a theater of war.
So it was a pleasure for the prominent leader of the National Liber
als Rudolf von Bennigsen to write in a letter to his wife in r875 that a
recent piece of Kulturkampf legislation would "go off like a bomb
I I 5 . H STAD, RD, Nr. 20I I I , Bd. I, newspaper clipping, 6 Aug. I872. See also in this file
the newspaper clipping from Neue PreujJische Zeitung. 6 Aug. rl\72.
r r 6 . HSTA D , R D , N r . 2orr r , Bd. r, report of B M Gustav Adolf Waldthausen, Essen, r4
Aug. r872; report of Abtheilung des Innern, r9 Aug . r 872; report of the police inspector,
Essen, 24 Aug. 1872; newspaper clipping from Essener Zeitung, 25 Aug. 1872.
II7. Vossische Zeitung, 7 Sept. I872; H STAD. RD, Bd. I , Nr. 20I I I , newspaper clipping
from Essener Blatter, 25 Aug. r 8 72; Commander, Seventh Army Corps, Fourteenth Division,
to RP von Ende, Dusseldorf, 26 Aug, 1872.
rr8. HSTAD, RD, Nr. 2orr r , Bd. r , newspaper clipping from Berliner Borsen Zeitung, n.d.;
HSTAD, RD, Nr. 20r r2, Bd. 2, newspaper clipping from Spenersche Zeitung, 6 Sept. rl\72.
II9. See H STAD, RA, Nr. I0699, "Orden der Gesellschaft Jesu bzw. die Ausflihrung des
Gesetzes vom 4 July r872," PP and LR to Regierung, Abtheilung des Innern, Aachen, 4 Dec.
T872, Bl. 88-89.
282
under the clericals. " r2o Metaphors for anti-Catholic legislation as

explosives or swords or lances-legal weapons of discipline or coer
cion-came naturally to Kulturkampfer. As social and political elites
they thought of themselves as officers leading the charge against Vati
can armies or knights laying low the church. The Kladderadatsch envi
sioned Kulturkampfer as a Ritterschaft (league of knights) protecting
Germany under the banner "Gegen Rom und Pfaffentrutz!" (Against
Rome and clerical defiance!).121 Liberals and liberal journals repeatedly
stated they were at war or in a "Kriegszustand, " a state of war with the
Roman enemy. The Kladderadatsch was typical in this respect. Already
in November 1 8 70, following the victory over France, the j ournal
issued a call "for the local militia against the black invasion. " 122 The
year 1871 was no time for peace: "Where there was darkness, there
must be light. This year we still have to finish off the black army. "
"Reichstag-Uhlans" were implored to take up their lances against the
reactionary ultramontanes. 123 In the ballads "Im jungen Reich" (In the
young empire) and "Zum letzten Kamp1 " (To the final battle!) Ger
mans protect freedom against black myrmidons with mighty slashes of
the sword. 124 In June 1872, immediately following the debate on the
Jesuit law, the j ournal j oyfully proclaimed that the "War, War with
Rome ! " had finally come, a war that would unite all Germans despite
regional differences against the common enemy.
You Saxons, Franconians, Bavarians, Alemanians,
All Germans, forward into war!
Lorrainers, Alsacians, send your men too,
That part that's up for the fight!
War, war with Rome! Do you hear Delbruck calling?
Do you see the banners flapping in the wind?
This is no fight with words and slogansThe terrible battle has begun!
Already I see the armies engaging
Forward now, loyal guard on the Rhine!
Infantry, attack! Bold uhlans,
Take up your lances!
r2o.
121.
122.
r23.
r24.
Quoted in Blackbourn, Marpingen, 264.

Kladderadatsch, 3 Aug. 1 8 7 3 .
Kladderadatsch, 27 Nov. r87o.
Kladderadatsch, rz March r87r.
Kladderadatsch, I9 Nov. r 8 7 r .
283
On to Rome! I can see it already,

The Vatican captured by our army.
Shudder Pius! Here come the Teutons!
Give up your ridiculous delusionsP25
This was, however, no ordinary war waged on traditional fields of battle,
across borders and with clear fronts. Jesuits like partisans roamed
through the country. They were invisible, toxic gases, known only by
their stench. The Kladderadatsch provided the "Kampfgesang der
Jesuiten" (Battle song of the Jesuits), which included the following verse:
We are elusive like the air,
Quietly floating through the night,
Like vapors rising from a bog
Or shrub or poisoned goblet.
When you think you've grabbed us,
We have already disappeared,
Slipping away into a hidden lair;
You can sooner fumigate pests,
Than us, the JesuitsP2 6
Such images help explain the frustration liberals felt in their combat
with the Jesuits and why even the exceptional law could never be
enough to rid them of their enemy: Kulturkiimpfer wanted like a ser
ried phalanx of hussars to meet their opponent squarely as men on the
field of battle. Jesuits, however, seemed to be ghosts, slipping through
their ranks.
Kulturkiimpfer continuously tried to imagine a conventional mili
tary campaign like the recent war against France when defeats and vic
tories had been measured by the amount of terrain won or lost. The lib
eral Berliner Wespen ran a series entitled Despatches from the Clerical
Theater of War. While, according to the newspaper, this war had not
begun as auspiciously as that against France, the nation was following
its movements and results with no less attention. The population, the
paper claimed, awaited with feverish anticipation reports returning
from the "front"-Koblenz, Cologne, Breslau, and Wupperthal
("Enemy almost entirely pressed back in this position") . From "Head
quarters Berlin" announcements were regularly issued concerning the
progress of the campaign and levels of clerical resistance. r27 The paper
125. Kladderadatsch. 23 June rX72; see also 20 Oct. rX72. Rudolf von Delbruck was presi
dent of the Imperial Chancellor's Office during the Kulturkampf until his resignation in r876.
126. Kladderadatsch. r Oct. 1871.
127. Berliner Wespen. 14 June 1872.
2 84
pictured Ludwig Windthorst on horseback, saber drawn high, leading

a charge of armed Jesuits into battle .128 In a local liberal election man
ifesto in the Crefelder Zeitung in r 873, veterans of the war of r 8 7o were
reminded that a more dangerous enemy than France now threatened
the nation. "To your weapons, Kriegskameraden (comrades-in-arms),
against clerical rule, against Roman rule ! " '29 According to the National
Zeitung, the letter of Pope Pius IX to Kaiser Wilhelm I in r873 claim
ing all baptized Christians as his own proved "that the curia intends to
continue the war, which is already under way, until the German
Empire is destroyed. " 13
In the crusade against the black ranks, Bismarck was the knight in
shining armor. "Now, chancellor, show us that you are a knight, with
out fear or reproach. " "Now, chancellor," called the Berliner Wespen,
"swing your mighty sword . " Bismarck is a mighty champion, driving
his spear through the dragon (fig . 19). At his feet is the monster with
three heads labeled "Reichensperger, " "Windthorst, " and "Mallinck
rodt, " the leadership of the Center, "part worm, part newt, and part
dragon, procreating in a pool of slime . " '3' Liberals promised to sup
port the state, unification, and the empire if Bismarck in exchange
would only kill the political power of Catholicism, an arrangement
they eagerly proffered since it entailed no challenge to their convic
tions in the first place. On the contrary, it was all too agreeable in
every respect. "Strike, strike! Plunge your blade with gallant
courage! "132 Here is the voice of liberals that belies the suggestion that
it was they that had to be lured by Bismarck into the attack on the
Catholic Church. Liberals pleaded with Bismarck, the very
personification of state power, to lead the war against the church. By
r875, at the height of the Kulturkampf, with the abolition of the
monasteries and closing of religious orders, Bismarck and Minister of
Educational and Ecclesiastical Affairs Adalbert Falk of Prussia
appear as victorious Teutonic knights. Behind them, a monastery has
been sacked and lies in ruins. Bismarck before his soldiers raises high
his sword in triumph. The caption announces that they will not rest
until this den of thieves is laid waste and only the black flag is left
flapping above a pile of rubble. '33
rzX.
129.
130.
131.
132.
133.
Berliner Wespen, 21\ June rl\72.

H STAD, RD, Nr. 26rg, newspaper clipping from Crefelder Zeitung, 23 Oct. r 8 7 3 .
Quotation i n Wacker, Friede zwischen Berlin und Rom? II-1 2 .
"Der Kampf mit dem Drachen," Berliner Wespen, r6 Feb . rl\72.
Ibid.
Berliner Wespen, 30 April rl\75
285
Fig. 19. "Der Kampf mit dem Drachen," Berliner Wespen, 16 February 1872. In
1872, as the Kulturkampf gathered momentum, Bismarck appeared as the liberals'
champion in the contest with the dragon whose three heads were Reichensperger,
Windthorst, and Mallinckrodt, the leadership of the Catholic Center Party.
These were not merely examples of journalistic sensationalism. Such

visions were an accurate reflection of the war fever of Kulturkampf leg
islators. During the debate on the Jesuit law, here again is Eduard
Windthorst: "We cannot advance further until we have leveled the bat
tlefield, until we have cleared away the greatest obstacles in our path.
The greatest impediment now is the polluting and suffocating spirit of
Jesuitism that unfortunately has already completely penetrated into
large districts of our fatherland. " I 34 Eduard Lasker and Ludwig Bam
berger were no exceptions. As the Catholic Fraktion organized itself in
I34 Fiir und Wider die Jesuiten, part r. session 22, I S May rX72. 94
286
the first Reichstag into the Center Party, Lasker believed that liberals
no longer had any doubts that an ultramontane "war party" was
emerging opposed to the German nation and the modern state and in
support of the "worldwide rule of the pope . "135 Bamberger believed
that the Kulturkampf was nothing short of a "guerre a outrance . "
With his characteristic fanaticism, he argued that if n o free exchange of
arguments was possible, one was obliged "to equip oneself with the
greatest possible cold-bloodedness . "136 Catholic leaders also quickly
adopted for rhetorical advantage the image of the church at war, a war
the church, they believed, had done nothing to instigate. Center
deputies like August Reichensperger argued that the closing of the
Jesuit order and the campaign against the church were no less than a
"war against Catholicism. " 137 Ludwig Windthorst exclaimed to liber
als in defiance, "You wanted a war, you shall have it. "138 The Catholic
Sonntagsblatt Eucharius for the Diocese of Trier announced in 1 8 74
that the "Kampf against the Holy Church" was even a "world war." 139
At the time of the debate on the Jesuit law, Johann Bluntschli in an
article appearing in Gegenwart argued that the Jesuits constituted the
general staff of a new military campaign that the Vatican had directed
against the modern state and modern civilization. "It draws up the
plans, it instructs the leaders, it arms the masses, it selects the goals and
directs the operations . " 1 4 Just as the liberal literary j ournal Grenzboten
argued that the Jesuit order was a company of soldiers that had
become an army, divided into battalions and regiments, National Lib
eral deputies like Heinrich von Sybel believed the Jesuits were a "regi
ment of infantry, only stronger. " 141 Friedrich Kiefer absurdly argued
on the floor of the Reichstag that the Jesuits in Austria and Germany
numbered at least sixty thousand. "Isn't that an army?" he asked.
Jesuits, he believed, were busy starting small and large wars in society
and a "war against the foundations and most important interests of
morality"; the Catholic Church was pursuing "war against the present
and future of the German Empire. " 1 42 Richard Dove believed the
1 3 5 . Quoted i n Langewiesche, Liberalismus in Deutschland, 182.
136. Quoted in Weber. Ludwig Bamberger, I 7 I .
1 3 7 . Fiir und Wider die Jesuiten, part 3, session 4 8 , 19 June 1872, 1 1 5 .
1 3 8 . Berliner Wespen, 28 June 1872.
139. Olaf Blaschke, "Das 1 9 . Jahrhundert: Ein Zweites Konfessionelles Zeitalter?"
Geschichte und Gesellschaft 26 (2ooo) : 3X-75, quotation at s r .
140. Bluntschli, "Debatte uber die Jesuiten. "
I 4 I . Grenzboten 2 (1872): 468; Sybel, Klerikale Politik, I I 3-I4
142. See Kiefer's speech in Fiir und Wider die Jesuiten. part r, session 23, r6 May r872,
97-1 u , quotations at 108, 106, and 100, respectively.
287
Jesuits were engaged in "a war with the German Empire, " a war he
considered more difficult than that with France. Nonetheless, he pre
dicted the war against Rome would bring a victory like the triumph
over Paris. 143 Meanwhile academic Kulturbimpfer like Eduard Zeller
argued that the religious orders bound by the vow of obedience were a
"terrible, fully disciplined army."'44 Adolf Zeising believed that the
worldwide clergy were an "extraordinarily well organized and disci
plined army" and that since the promulgation of the doctrine of papal
infallibility the nation was in a " state of war." 1 45 As proof, Kul
turkiimpfer pointed to Catholic missionaries and priests who told their
congregations to think of themselves as soldiers in an army com
manded by officers and generals of the church.
Leaflets distributed by the executive committee of the liberal Protes
tant Deutscher Verein and addressed to all "Rhinelanders" leave no
doubt that the attack on the Catholic Church was for Kulturkiimpfer
a continuation of the wars for unification. On the occasion of the
fourth anniversary of the victory over France at the battle of Sedan,
the committee announced that "at that time German unity was exter
nally founded by warfare, after which it was established internally by
the excitement of the entire people . " "But," the leaflet asked, "do we
still have complete German unity in the interior?" While the exterior
enemy France had been defeated, the inner enemy, "which was allied
with Napoleon at that time," had only become more powerful. The
Jesuit and ultramontane party was "now burrowing into the heart of
Germany against German unification . " "A nation that had strongly
defended its freedom against the outside will not tolerate in the interior
the tyranny of an exploitive hierarchy. " The committee insisted that
the attack on the church was "a matter of completing what was begun
at Sedan with ongoing work, with continuous unity, with uninter
rupted struggle against the enemies of the fatherland." 146 For liberals
the war against the Catholic Church was the final phase of the cam
paign for German unification begun with the war against France.
In this domestic war, Kulturkiimpfer envisioned themselves locked
in combat not only with Catholicism but with socialism and women
and French revanchism, enemies that liberals conflated with one
143. Fiir und Wider die Jesuiten, part 3. ro6-r 2 .

144. Zeller, Staat und Kirchen, 1 5 3 .
145. Zeising, Religion und Wissenschaft, quotations at r s , 440, respectively.
q6. HSTAD, RK, Nr. 2723, "Die Enthebung der katholischen Geistlichen von der
lokalen Schulaufsicht und deren Nachfolger, r8 74-1 87s. 81. 8 .
288
another.r47 The Kulturkampf therefore became a war directed against

several enemies at once on a broad front. In 1874 the conflict with the
Catholic Church was only the first score to be settled in the "chivalrous"
crusade of the Kulturkampf. In the Kladderadatsch a herald bears the
banner "May Laws" in the illustration "Das schwarz-rothe Turnier des
neunzehnten Jahrhunderts" (The black-red tournament of the nine
teenth century) . A mounted knight with lance charges a bishop . A
social democrat waiting in the wing recognizes his days are numbered:
"When this match is over, I'm next! " 148 Four years later, the promulga
tion of a second exceptional law dissolved all social democratic, social
ist, and communist associations; closed social democratic meetings and
publications; and banned socialist agitators from specified towns and
districts. For liberal Kulturkampfer the victory over France had out
lined and fixed the boundaries of the empire. This was a momentous
achievement, but only one, and not the last war needed to unify the
nation. Another campaign, this time waged inside the empire against
the Catholic Church and its doppelganger, was required to complete the
moral, social, and cultural unification of Germany, to secure the empire
and the blessings of the Enlightenment. It required an effort, liberals
imagined, not short of war, and while it may have been bloodless it was
no less momentous not only for Germany, but for the world.
Liberals were ultimately disappointed. Despite their unflagging
commitment to the successive rounds of Kulturkampf legislation, the
war against Catholicism went poorly. By the middle of the 1 8 7os, liber
als and the state found they were not able to successfully prosecute the
campaign against a well-led, well-organized, recalcitrant, and politi
cized Catholic population. r49 At the end of the decade, with the state
bogged down in an apparently interminable fight, Bismarck decided to
pursue other political options. Liberals had been warned that Bis
marck might ultimately use the anti-Jesuit legislation to broker a deal
with the Center against the liberal parties. As Bismarck hoped, the
National Liberal Party split with the introduction of protectionist tar
iff reform, and he meanwhile negotiated with Center leaders for a par
liamentary maj ority, settled with the new pope, Leo XIII, and aban147. The conflation of Catholics. women. socialism. and French revanchism is discussed in
chapter 4
148. Kladderadatsch, 29 March 1874.
I49 Ross, Failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf; idem, "Enforcing the Kulturkampf'; idem,
"The Kulturkampf and the Limitations of Power in Bismarck's Germany." Journal of Eccle
siastical History 46 (1995): 669-88; idem, "The Kulturkampf: Restrictions on Controls on the
Practice of Religion in Bismarck's Germany, " i n Freedom and Religion in the Nineteenth Cen
tury, ed. Richard Helmstadter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), I73-9 5
289
doned state support of the Kulturkampf After a tumultuous series of

events including assassination attempts on the life of the chancellor,
the dissolution of the Reichstag, and new elections, the state now
directed its energies against the socialist movement with another round
of exceptional laws approved by the Reichstag in October r878. It
seemed only recently that Bismarck had exclaimed in the Reichstag in
May r 8 72, "Nach Canossa gehen wir nicht! " (We shall not go to
Canossa!), indicating that the new German empire would never yield
to the Vatican as Kaiser Heinrich IV had done during the Investiture
Contest of the eleventh century. Anti-Catholics intended to hold Bis
marck to his promise, so much so that they believed it should be liter
ally carved in stone . On a monument erected at Bad Harzburg, for
merly the seat of Heinrich IV, they inscribed the chancellor's words as
a reminder for all time. rs o Now everywhere in Germany, liberal
deputies, newspapers, and journals either sarcastically or mournfully
repeated the pledge as proof of his betrayal.
Historians variously date the end of the Kulturkampf, some as late
as r 8 8 7 . The end, however, was clearly apparent to contemporary lib
erals, at least, who bitterly recognized the betrayal and acknowledged
their own defeat by r 879. Leading liberal periodicals like the Berliner
Wespen and the Kladderadatsch, which once depicted Bismarck as a
knight leading the charge against the Roman enemy, throughout r 8 79
now showed Bismarck embracing the Jesuits and the leaders of the
Center Party.rsr In the Berliner Wespen the Catholic political leader
ship had emasculated Bismarck: Ludwig Windthorst is depicted as
Delilah shearing off Bismarck's hair. '52 Liberals, who had found their
identity and their purpose in anti-Catholicism, had been abandoned by
the state . With the Kulturkampf collapsing, they could only doubt the
future for liberalism and modern culture and society in Germany. The
liberal j ournal Ulk announced the return to the age of reaction and
showed a feudal knight and a monk ripping through the "Liberal Con
stitution. " '53 The Berliner Wespen showed a black winged dragon hold
ing the banner "Reaction" in one hand and a whip in the other. The
mighty warrior, once himself the dragon slayer, is now slain and deliv
ered on top of his shield labeled "Liberalism."'54 By r 8 8o, in an illus150. Ross, Failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf, 24-25; Erich Eyck, Bismarck: Leben und
Werk (Erlenbach and Zurich : Eugen Rentsch, r 944), 3 :ro2.
151. Examples include Berliner Wespen, 23 May 1879, 6 June 1879, 27 June 1879, II July
1879; Kladderadatsch, 12 Sept. 188o.
1 5 2 . Berliner Wespen, 5 Sept. 1879.
1 5 3 . Ulk, 29 May 1 8 79, 31 July 1879.
154. Berliner Wespen, 1 7 Oct. 1879.
2 90
tration titled "Des Culturkampfes Ende" (The end of the Kul

turkampf), the Berliner Wespen indicated that the war against Catholi
cism was lost and the betrayal complete. The pope and his bishops are
storming through a breach in the fortress wall labeled "May Laws. "
Bismarck behind a cannon has blown a hole in the wall from within:
"The commander blasts a breach from inside the fortress wall in order
to ease the storming and invasion for the enemy, " reads the caption. I 55
In the illustration "Vom Kulturkampfschauplatz" (The Kulturkampf
theater of war), Bismarck sits on rubble marked "May Laws" and
"Breadbasket Law." In the background the pope is beaming with
delight. 156 By the mid-r 8 8os most of the legislation of the Kulturkampf
had been dismantled or had lapsed into disuse.
Given the liberals' identification of self and duty with the Kul
turkampf, fanatical determination, and force of conviction in the
187os, it was no less than astounding even to contemporaries how
quickly they shed that mantle. In January 1882 one bewildered Pro
gressive deputy, Albert Hanel, himself a die-hard Kulturkampfer and
still faithful to the anti-Catholic war, stood up among his colleagues in
the Reichstag. He wondered out loud what had become of the Kul
turkampf.
At that time [in the r 87os] . . . it was considered necessary, correct
and patriotic, yes, even a condition of being acceptable in higher
society, that a person "kulturkampfed" (laughter); . . . Gentlemen,
what is it like now? Now . . . I am continually asking myself, for
heaven's sake, just who really were the Kulturkampfer at that
time? Now all of a sudden no one wants to have been one (laugh
ter) . And if you ask somebody, "Didn't you make Kulturkampf
speeches at that time?'' he says, "that's true, but privately I always
said nothing can come of the Kulturkampf' (much laughter) . l57
By this time most liberals had abandoned the war against the Catholic
Church, and it seemed in retrospect, as Hanel indicated, to have been
in the end a useless gesture or perhaps, after all, an illusion. The Kul
turkampf had become, even to its most ardent liberal and progressive
prosecutors, no more than a vague, even comic, episode . Ludwig Bam
berger, who once celebrated the Kulturkampf as the most important
1 5 5 . Berliner Wespen, 23 April r88o. See also "Des Culturkampfes Ende," Berliner
Wespen, 9 April r88o.
156. Berliner Wespen, 2 July r88o.
157. Quoted in Evans, German Center Party, 84.
291
work of the new empire, work that he had been proud to organize and
lead, later described it as a mistake. With an abrupt about-face, he dis
avowed liberal responsibility for the campaign and now accused Bis
marck of having initiated it as a "necessary evil to preserve the
state . " 1 58 It would be difficult to judge whether this transparent
attempt to evade and transfer responsibility was due to a greater mea
sure of political opportunism or self-delusion. In any case, Bamberger
and other liberals had already lost their once commanding position in
the Reichstag and Prussian parliament and now faced unprecedented
political challenges on the right and the left. Nonetheless, they contin
ued to hold on to prominent positions of authority at the regional, city,
and local levels, where they continued to shape German society, cul
ture, and politics as they continued to reshape German liberalism. Lib
erals moved to and grappled with other priorities: tariff protectionism,
antisocialism, social welfare, a new phase of even more vibrant indus
trial expansion, and imperialism overseas. Anti-Catholicism certainly
continued through to the end of the century and beyond, but liberals
never again gave the campaign against the Catholic Church and
Catholicism the paramount attention they had given it in the decade
following the founding of the empire. rs9
158. Quoted in Langewiesche, Liberalismus in Deutschland, 184.

I 59 For the continuation of anti-Catholicism well after the Kulturkampf, see Ross, Belea
guered Tower, esp. r8-32; and Smith, German Nationalism.
Conclusion
From the Revolution of 1848 through the Kulturkampf to the "second

founding" of the empire in 1878-79, two antithetical movements, liber
alism and Catholicism, together profoundly reshaped Germany, cul
turally, socially, economically, and politically. With the Revolution of
1 848 and then afterward, the Roman Catholic Church organized and
unleashed a campaign to roll back both the indifference that had
undermined religious authority and the liberal and democratic ideolo
gies that had threatened to topple the monarchical order. With fervent
ultramontanism, a dramatic missionary crusade, new lay associations
and expressions of piety, popular mass pilgrimages to religious sites,
and the proliferation of monastic orders and female religious congre
gations, the Catholic Church underwent a remarkable revival. For
twenty-four years Catholic religious orders, the Jesuits, Redemp
torists, Franciscans, and Dominicans, feverishly worked across Ger
many holding missions to reawaken Catholic piety and religious prac
tice. All over Germany hundreds and thousands of Catholics streamed
to the missions and pledged themselves there to a new life of religious
faith and loyalty to the Roman Church. In the wake of the missions,
the establishment of new Catholic societies and fraternities became the
foundation for the kind of associational life that sustained in the fol
lowing decades the popular Catholicism without which the ultramon
tanist reorientation of the church was scarcely imaginable .
A fresh appraisal of the missions based on a wide range of source
material particularly in the Rhineland reveals aspects of the revival
overlooked in other accounts. While church authorities, bishops, and
priests, eager to put the best face on the missions, reported that the
missionary campaign was a harmonious affair, other sources indicate
that the heavy-handed conduct and new ultramontanism of the mis
sionaries in the face of the relative inertia of the secular parish clergy
2 92
Conclusion
293
led to frictions within the church. It makes sense to consider the repi
etization of the Catholic population, however successful in the long
run, as not necessarily a smooth and relentless process everywhere . It
encountered pockets of recalcitrance within the Catholic laity and, per
haps surprisingly, both met and contributed to resentments among the
secular parish clergy. Often the older secular clergy resented the
diminution of their authority in their own congregations, and they
resented the younger, zealous, ultramontane regular (monastic) clergy
who reoriented the laity to the authority of Rome. A reexamination of
the missions also indicates that the missionaries relentlessly threatened
their audiences with graphic depictions of hell and the promise of eter
nal torture by fire for those who remained unreconciled to the church.
Congregations wailing, sobbing, and fainting; the long lines before the
confessional; and the number of those who took the Eucharist for the
first time in decades were the measures of success of the hellfire ser
mons. The popular revival of Catholic faith depended to a consider
able extent, therefore, on the psychological terror used so effectively by
the church in the Middle Ages and during the Counter-Reformation.
At the same time, the success of the missionaries' efforts to reform
popular morality was more qualified than was indicated by their own
reports and the reports of parish priests and diocesan bishops. Despite
the church's best efforts to inculcate moral sobriety, a wider reading of
sources indicates in contrast to other accounts of the missions that, at
least in the Rhineland, many of the principal features of popular cul
ture, especially those of recreational culture, including sexual behavior,
remained remarkably resilient. Peasants found that they could easily
bring new religious faith into their lives without significant
modification of alWiglich patterns of conduct and moral behavior, and
this, in fact, was one of the reasons for the remarkable success of the
Catholic revival.
At the same time, we are blind in one eye to the importance of the
Catholic missions if we focus only on their more obvious role within
the Catholic Church and their impact on the Catholic population.
Equally significant, the missions wherever they went also drew, how
ever unintentionally and surprisingly, large audiences from other con
fessions. Protestants too attended the missions. They had no desire to
leave their own faith and convert to Catholicism but rather used the
experience of the missionary sermons, with their fervent but general
Christian messages of repentance, faith, and devotion, to undergo a
confessional revival of their own. Passed over by historians of religion
and society who have assumed that if secularization was not continu-
2 94
ous during the century among the Catholic population then it was at
least constant among Protestants, the Protestant revival after midcen
tury is largely terra incognita. Questions remain about the nature of
the popular Protestant revival, its relative impact regionally, and its
meaning in terms of class and gender, before it gave way to the
processes of secularization toward the end of the century, but the indi
cations of a dramatic and widespread Protestant reawakening in Ger
many after midcentury are clear.
Just as important, the Catholic missions created a hitherto unparal
leled public space that mixed Catholics, Protestants, and Jews; men,
women, and children; and aristocrats, middle-class professionals, arti
sans, workers, and peasants. Never before had so many different peo
ple in such large numbers crossed the boundaries between ethnic
groups (Jews and Christians, Poles and Germans), genders, and
classes, and the result was a dramatic recomposition of the public,
aroused, volatile, and created by the Catholic Church. This is what
provoked the concern of liberals and the state together, a common
problem of social order that would foster their antimissionary, anti
Jesuit, and anticlerical alliance. Alarmed by the appeal of the missions
to Protestants, the Protestant religious leadership worked feverishly to
inculcate and preserve Protestant identity. They did so from the pulpit
and with a deluge of anti-Catholic lectures, articles, pamphlets, and
books. In their backlash against the Catholic revival, Protestant pas
tors and theologians drew a sharp line between Protestant and
Catholic morality and culture and defined the two religions as irrecon
cilable, now locked in a titanic struggle for the future of Germany.
The religious revivals, both Catholic and Protestant, are especially
important to identify because they provided, as I have argued, the con
text without which the reorientation of liberalism after midcentury; the
resurgence of popular anti-Catholic sentiment; and ultimately the Kul
turkampf itself, the elite liberal anti-Catholic campaign of the 187os,
cannot be adequately understood. Historians of Germany have made
various cases for the transformation of liberalism at different periods
and events during the course of the second half of the nineteenth cen
tury. I have argued that viewed from the perspective of religious revival
and the concomitant anti-Catholic hysteria, liberalism underwent a sea
change during the 1 8 50s and 1 86os. Following the defeat of liberals in
the 1 848 Revolution and the initial period of exhaustion and disarray
during the conservative reaction, liberals found anticlericalism and
anti-Catholicism powerful means to rehabilitate and reorient their
vision for German society. Jesuits, monks, nuns, priests, and Catholics
Conclusion
295
were according to liberals the agents of dogma, superstition, stupidity,

subservience, intolerance, and irrationalism. In an age that should
have been, liberals believed, modern and progressive, Catholicism was
a medieval aberration, all that had to be left behind as the German
nation moved forward into the future. By means of a specific anti
Catholic cognitive style of contrast, liberals asserted a bourgeois ideol
ogy for hegemony in German society that included industrialization,
capitalist free-market economics, individualism, the autonomous state,
Honoratiorenpolitik, gendered public and private spheres, rational
ism, and freedom. In their effort to revive liberalism and to give it new
meaning in the postrevolutionary period, leading liberals readily relied
on the Protestant revival and broad Protestant anti-Catholicism to
bolster and legitimize rhetorically the liberal social, cultural, and polit
ical program for reform. As liberals therefore placed anti-Catholicism
at the core of their identity and at the center of their prescription for
the modern nation, they were both repelled by and intertwined with the
revival of Catholicism. It was the paradox of the postrevolutionary
period, with Catholicism and the Catholic Church and all that they
allegedly stood for as the points of reference, that liberals depended for
their social, cultural, and political identity upon that which they dedi
cated themselves to living without.
The anti-Catholicism of liberals was so prominent in the nineteenth
century that historians of modern Germany for the most part have
taken it for granted, and the motives behind the liberal animus toward
the Catholic Church have seemed largely self-evident. This includes the
Kulturkampf, the culmination of anti-Jesuit hysteria, antimonasti
cism, anticlericalism, and anti-Catholicism in Germany in the nine
teenth century. Historians who have focused specifically on the years
of the Kulturkampf itself have argued that the liberal and state-spon
sored attack on the church was an attempt to establish the autonomy
of the modern nation-state or to thwart the power of mass political
Catholicism. One historian has argued that the term Kulturkampf
should be taken at "face value" as a " struggle for civilizations," a clash
between the self-avowed modern outlook of liberal nationalism and
the imputed backwardness of German Catholics. 1 The Kulturkampf
was in some measure all of these, as I have argued, but we miss impor
tant dimensions of the Kulturkampf if we simply accept it as a straight
forward response to the political, confessional, and religious power of
the Roman Catholic Church. This study has therefore tried to look
r . Blackbourn, "'Progress and Piety," r4X. See also idem, Marpingen, 250.
2 96
beyond the surface of anti-Catholicism in order to examine more

closely liberal identity and the liberal imperatives, social, cultural, and
moral, that culminated in the Kulturkampf.
What has emerged is a more complex evaluation of liberalism and
anti-Catholicism and of the origins and meaning of the Kulturkampf
than has been recognized before. On the one hand, Roman Catholicism
and Roman Catholics represented for liberals material that they could
use to think creatively and constructively about who they were and
what they stood for. For example, in literature, newspapers, and jour
nals, liberals established against the image of the rotund, simpering, and
effeminate monk an array of new heroic and secular personalities
devoted to nation building and national prowess: the industrialist, the
entrepreneur, the banker, the scientist, and the civil servant. In contrast
to the monastery, a useless artifact from the Middle Ages, they fash
ioned visions of the robust and modern German nation dedicated to
industrial expansion, capitalist economics, and bourgeois propriety
even as the romanticized image of the monastery also provided a
momentary escape from the new age of bureaucratic sobriety and
enlightened rationalism. Liberals were unwilling or unable to recognize
the modern character of the Catholic revival with its mass transporta
tion, communication, organization, and politics; they could image
Catholicism only as a "medieval" aberration in the modern age. The
power of the Catholic revival and the loyalty of the Catholic population
to the church and its dedication to a Roman Catholic way of life there
fore gave liberals reason to doubt that relentless progress according to
the laws of historical evolution was inevitable, that the religious fanati
cism of the Middle Ages had been left behind for a new age of science,
rationalism, capitalism, and freedom.
On the other hand, and this is no less significant, the liberal anti
Catholic cognitive style often entailed unintended and surprising con
sequences for liberalism and liberal identity. Derisive and comic tales
of sexual intrigue in the monasteries and convents were part of the long
legacy of Enlightenment anticlericalism, and they continued to serve as
prurient and sensationalist entertainment throughout the nineteenth
century. After r 848, however, liberals hated and attacked female reli
gious orders not least because they were incessant reminders of their
own failure. Indeed, in convent atrocity narratives, liberals followed
the creative capacity of their anti-Catholicism to a startling conclusion.
Their hopes for reform and freedom defeated in the revolution and
continually frustrated in their subsequent efforts by the authoritarian
state, liberals identified with the grisly story of young nuns hidden
Conclusion
297
away in dark dungeons and raped. Beneath the liberals' outward

bravura, the convent atrocity story revealed a deeply traumatized self
image . At the same time, liberals claimed a masculine identity. If liber
alism was a public persona of rationalism, independence, and civic
sense, then Catholicism once again by contrast exhibited all the attrib
utes, Kulturkampfer believed, of the feminine sex: irrationalism,
fanaticism, subservience, and the ability to manipulate men emotion
ally. If in liberal discourse Catholicism was a woman, then it followed
logically enough that anti-Catholicism was misogyny. Liberals
thought about the relationship between liberalism and Catholicism as
fundamentally a relationship between men and women, perhaps
unavoidable, at best distrustful, at worst hostile . For some liberal men
the consequence could be traumatic paranoia: priests and Jesuits
became women castrating men and emasculating the population in
their effort to exert the rule of Rome over Germany. Beneath the more
apparent struggle to rid Germany of the deadweight of Catholicism in
the modern age, therefore, were complex anxieties concerning sexual
humiliation and fears of insufficient masculinity in the confrontation
with the Catholic revival that shaped the Kulturkampf of the r 8 7os.
At another level too the Kulturkampf represented a campaign
beyond the attempt to preserve the autonomy of the state or to break
the cultural, political, and religious influence of Catholicism. Precisely
during the reemergence of the Frauenfrage or women's question in the
r 86os, the hotly debated question concerning the role of women in soci
ety and their access to education, professional opportunities, and ulti
mately politics, anti-Catholicism became inextricably intertwined in
the liberal imagination with the threat that women posed to the tradi
tional public. From the perspective that includes the reemergence of
the women's movement, the Kulturkampf represented a campaign to
preserve the distinction between gendered public and private, the very
foundation of bourgeois social, political, sexual, and moral order. The
practice of Catholicism, by definition feminine, at the missions, on pil
grimages, and at religious associations seemed in itself, according to
liberals, to undermine the integrity of the public sphere. At the same
time, the popular practice of Catholicism seemed increasingly domi
nated by women. Women constituted the most devout and loyal laity,
and women joined the new religious congregations in dramatic num
bers . Catholic women also brought the practice of their faith out of the
home and church as they pursued professional opportunities as mem
bers of religious congregations committed to philanthropic work in
public as educators, administrators, and nurses.
2 98
During the Kulturkampf Catholic women employed the organiza

tional skills they had acquired as members of the new religious associ
ations established with the missionary campaign. They organized and
participated in the antistate demonstrations, accepting state censure,
arrest, and fines, so much so that the counter-Kulturkampf campaign
in public according to state officials and liberals looked feminine. The
Catholic ecclesiastical and political leadership itself inculcated in the
Catholic lay population the image of resistance to the Kulturkampf as
a strong-willed, defiant woman. The Catholic revival seemed to liberals
to augur a new age simultaneously of feminist recalcitrance and mass
political democratization, an age indifferent or hostile to Bildung,
independence, civic character, and Honoratiorenpolitik. The struggle
against the power of Catholicism in an age that should have been, lib
erals believed, rational, scientific, and enlightened required above all
greater exertions of masculinity. As Kulturkampfer, they invoked and
applauded again and again their own masculine virtues in the effort to
cultivate a common anticlerical elan. Liberal men rallied together in
the campaign against the church as a "manly" fight to defend the
integrity of the public. Ultimately, therefore, the Catholic revival
looked like one dimension of the larger women's movement for access
to the public, and the Kulturkampf between liberalism and Catholi
cism itself took on the aspect of a Geschlechterkampf, a contest
between men and women. Enmeshed in the women's question and in
the midst of dramatic pressures for change, the Kulturkampf was an
attempt to preserve the gender status quo of nineteenth-century Ger
man society.
Not just literally a "cultural struggle" or "struggle of civilizations, "
the Kulturkampf was, as liberals tirelessly reminded everyone, a war.
Taking liberals at their word helps us understand why they devoted
themselves with such fervor and devotion to the pursuit of victory.
Inspired by the triumph over France, Kulturkiimpfer led the domestic
attack against Catholicism for the sake of state autonomy, the integrity
of the public sphere, industry, progress, freedom, and unity. For liber
als the war was bloodless to be sure but also vivid and elaborate. Kul
turkiimpfer saw themselves as armored knights or a column of uhlans,
and they saw Germany as a theater of war with liberal and clerical
armies advancing and retreating with victories and defeats. In the lib
eral imagination this was a war waged on several fronts against mass
democratization, French revanchism, nascent socialism, and women in
public and, as I have argued, always all at once against Catholicism.
Liberals believed they were engaged in a war against the church as
urgent and fateful as that against France, and they therefore believed
Conclusion
2 99
the use of force against the domestic enemies was no less justified than
the force that had been used against the external enemy. Bismarck
hardly needed to coax or manipulate the liberal parties into an alliance
against the Roman Church. If the victories against Denmark, Austria,
and France had been Bismarck's work, liberals claimed the Kul
turkampf as their contribution to the wars for German unity. It was
precisely with the "cultural struggle" as the last war for unification that
liberals sought to define in their own image the nation socially, cultur
ally, and morally.
Closer evaluation of the roots of the Kulturkampf indicates, then,
that anti-Jesuitism, antimonasticism, and anti-Catholicism were not
mere derivative expressions of liberalism. After r848 anticlericalism
and anti-Catholicism were integral to liberal identity and to the forma
tion of liberal social, cultural, and economic ideology. Liberals there
fore believed intolerance of Roman Catholicism and of the Roman
Catholic Church was a duty, and they believed they were bound by
duty to invoke the force of the state to preserve the independence of the
state. For liberals, who believed the very raison d'etre of the modern
nation-state was to guarantee freedom and progress, the threat of
"Jesuitism," monasticism, clericalism, and the authority of the church
and pope required a war sponsored by the state against the domestic
enemy. The weapons of war were coercive anti-Catholic laws, includ
ing anti-Jesuit legislation, an exceptional law abrogating the rights of
German citizenship . Indeed, the abrogation of the citizen rights of the
Catholic population of the nation was, during debate on the Kirchen
frage and as leading liberal theorists of church and state argued, not
out of the question.
Though historians of liberalism and the Kulturkampf have tradi
tionally argued that the liberals' support of anti-Catholic legislation
was a betrayal of fundamental liberal principles, the argument of this
book in its entirety has been, therefore, that the Kulturkampf was
hardly a liberal "mistake," a moment during which liberals abandoned
what they were supposed to stand for.2 German liberals based in
decades of anti-Catholic identity were high-minded, principled, and
idealistic. Only Jewish liberal nationalist deputies otherwise committed
to the Kulturkampf believed that the Jesuit law, an exceptional law
that might serve as a precedent for further discriminatory legislation
against other minorities, including Jews, went too far. It was with the
2. Even Dagmar Herzog's reevaluation of German liberalism concludes that liberals got
"caught in the near-fatal alliance with the Prussian authoritarian state," leaving the impres
sion that the liberals' involvement in the Kulturkampf was not based on an accurate appre
ciation of their own interests or intentions. Herzog, Intimacy and Exclusion, r68.
3 00
exceptional law of the Kulturkampf that a rift developed in the long

standing alliance between Jews and liberalism. Rejection of the Kul
turkampf on the basis of principle was the position claimed by democ
rats, themselves no friends of clerical power and the conservative and
reactionary authority of Catholicism. Nor was the Kulturkampf an
isolated glitch, an epiphenomenon that historians have passed over as
they trace the course of modern German liberalism) To the contrary,
the Kulturkampf was the culmination of a social and cultural program
that was deeply rooted in the rehabilitation of liberalism in the face of
the Catholic revival following the 1 848 Revolution.
For the history of liberalism in Germany, the Kulturkampf is
significant not because it represented how far liberals had strayed from
liberalism but, on the contrary, because it was founded on the intoler
ance inherent to liberalism itself. The Kulturkampf demonstrates that
liberals were not among those who advocated in theory a civil society
based on unqualified tolerance and universal rights, the kind of society
that historians often argued was fostered and protected by German lib
erals if not always as a matter of practice then at least on principle. Can
we avoid, then, the conclusion that in Germany liberalism, for all its
virtues yet intolerant and committed when deemed necessary to the use
of state force against internal enemies, made its own contribution to a
social and political tradition of intolerance and state-sponsored
domestic wars against Staatsfeinde, a tradition that later when j oined
with and reshaped by genocidal racism could have devastating conse
quences?
If not, the question becomes whether liberal anti-Catholicism and
the Kulturkampf indicate an insufficient inculcation of Enlightenment
ideals and therefore ultimately a German Sonderweg, a special path
that veered from the development of equal rights and respect for dif
ference often assumed to be the hallmarks of Germany's Western
counterparts. It might perhaps be gratifying to answer that intolerance
belonged to a peculiar liberalism in Germany, thereby preserving the
notion that the principle of tolerance was characteristic of European
liberalism more generally. I would argue, however, that in the light of
recent scholarship the liberal style of thinking about modern identity
and modern society by means of apparent oppositions and the intoler
ance that style necessarily entailed were common to the liberal mod
ernism of west European countries. In his sociological study of moder
nity, Zygmunt Bauman has argued that the construction and
3 For example, Sheehan's German Liberalism devotes about one and a half pages to the
Kulturkampf. See 1 3 5-37. A more recent and even discussion is given in Langewiesche, Lib
eralismus in Deutschland, 1 80-86.
Conclusion
3 01
arrangement of dichotomies are crucial for the practice and vision of

social order. "The second member is but the other of the first, the oppo
site (degraded, suppressed, exiled) side of the first and its creation,"
according to Bauman. "Both sides depend on each other, but the
dependence is not symmetrical. The second side depends on the first for
its contrived and enforced isolation. The first depends on the second
for its self-assertion."4 Anti-Catholicism in Germany was a specific
example of the intolerance that is, as Bauman argues, the inherent
inclination of liberal modernism.
While the Kulturkampf pitted liberals against Catholics, it also cre
ated other deep fissures within the new German empire. The anti
Catholic policy sponsored by liberals and executed by the state divided
Protestants, however much as a whole they might have shared anti
Catholic sentiments. Conservative Protestants who had joined with
Bismarck in an alliance of throne and altar now when hard pressed
found they feared secularization more than they hated Roman
Catholicism. They saw the Kulturkampf as an attack on religion and
the autonomous affairs of religious institutions, and they therefore
quickly turned against liberal Protestants and the state government.
With the exceptional legislation of the Jesuit law Jews once wedded to
liberalism doubted, with good reason, liberalism's commitment to the
inviolability of minority civil and citizenship rights. Jews, a far smaller
and more vulnerable population than Catholics within Germany, wor
ried now that such legislation might extend eventually to other unde
sired ethnic and religious groups, including their own. Viewed over
whelmingly by Catholic workers and peasants as an arrogant
middle-class campaign and understood by liberal elitists themselves as
an effort to rid the nation of the irrationalism and ignorance associated
with the masses, the Kulturkampf contributed to class antagonisms.
The Kulturkampf with its emphasis on progress and rationalism and
all that these implied (science, education, and development) seemed
also to represent to many a fundamental conflict between two kinds of
habitation, urban and rural ways of life. Increasingly it looked like a
contest between urbane metropolitans and common country folk. At
the same time, the Kulturkampf, deeply embedded as it was in the
women's question, pitted men against women in a contest for access to
the public. The Kulturkampf rallied Roman Catholics in defense of
their church and forced most Catholics into a pariah community
opposed to liberalism and to the state . The Kulturkampf contributed
to the mass mobilization of the Catholic electorate in support of the
4 Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, 14 (emphasis in original) .
3 02
Center Party, and it exacerbated the conflict between Catholics and

Protestants as old as the Reformation. In the end, the Kulturkampf
divided middle-class Catholic men and women and ripped through
middle-class Catholic friendships and families, as friends and relatives
turned against one another either to j oin the liberal campaign or to
defend the church. Though a campaign meant to be the final war
waged domestically for the sake of unification, the Kulturkampf, iron
ically, divided Germans along the lines of culture, class, gender, con
fession, and politics, and merely made German unity more elusive.
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Zielinski, Zygmunt. "Der Kulturkampf in der Provinz Posen . " Historisches
Jahrbuch 1 0 1 ( 1 9 8 1): 447-61 .
Zucker, Stanley. "Ludwig Bamberger and the Rise of Anti-Semitism in Germany,
r 848-r893 . " Central European History 3 (r 97o) : 332-52.
. Ludwig Bamberger: German Liberal Politician and Social Critic,
!823-1899 Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, I975
---
Index
Note : Page numbers in italics indicate figures.

Aachen, 40, 45, 49, 51, 55-57, 64, 67-70, 139,
203, 206, 276
Alcoholism, 42, 54, 61, 192
Allgemeine Deutscher Frauenverein (ADF).
T90, T9T
Allgemeine Kirchen-Zeitung, 169, qo
Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums. 265,
274
Allenstein, 77
Allnoch, Anton, T27, 259, 266, 276
Alsace-Lorraine, 38, 238. 241, 242
Anderson, Benedict, 278
Anderson, Margaret Lavinia, 4, ro, 124
Anti-Catholicism, T-3, 98, 99, TOT, ro4, T09;
and liberal identity, 22-28, 76; and
misogyny, 168, 206, 207, 297
Antimonasticism, 137, 138, 140, 1 71-81. See
also Liberals, and religious orders; May
Laws
Arnsberg, 77. 277
Association and Assembly (1850), Law of,
71, 72, 1 3 5 , 189, 205
Association for the Advancement of the
Employment Skills of the Female Sex.
See Lette Association
Associations and organizations, 258, 265;
anti-Catholic, TO?, ro8, 232, 236, 287;
Catholic, 34, 55, 56, 292; for women, 190,
191, 194- 218, 219
Ausnahmegesetz, 2, 260, 265, 269, 272, 273,
299. 300
Bachem. Josef. 121
Baden, 8, 20, 21, 30, 38, 96, 122, r 8 8 , 1 89,

236, 243, 276
Baden-Freiburg, 276, 277, 277n. 104
Badische Beobachter, 243
Bahr, Otto, 26on . 59, 267, 267n. 78
Bamberger, Ludwig, 96, 127, 259-64, 266,
267, 273, 274, 285, 286, 290, 29T
Banks and banking, rr4, 142, T43
Bauman, Zygmunt, 99n, 300, 301
Baumgarten, Michael, I07
Bavaria, 4. 30, 36, 52, 60-62, 122, 1 3 1-34,
rX9. 272
Becker, Josef. 7
Benedictines, T28, T 3 T , T32, T77
Bennigsen, Rudolf von, 107, 26on. 59, 281, 282
Bergmann, H. A., 93-95
Berlin, 26, 37, 47, ro6, 145, 173n. 103, 179,
r8o, r 8 3 , 190, 276, 277, 283
Berliner Wespen. T36, T57, T66, T67, T73, 176,
178. 237, 238, 283. 284, 289, 290
Beyschlag, Willibald, 107
Biedermann, Karl, 266, 267
Bildung, 23, 85, 93-95, 100, 104, 106, 108,
109. 137, 138, 201, 202, 204-7. 233. 243,
246. 249, 253. 271. 298
Bildungsburgertum, 14
Bildungsdefizit, 6, 226
Birke, Adolf M . , 108
Bishops, 30, 3 1 . 3 2 , 3 3 . 49. so, 8 1 , 279
Bismarck, Otto von, 126, 230, 262, 272, 284,
285, 289, 299; and Kulturkampf, 7, 8, 21,
255; satirized, 289, 290; severs ties to
National Liberal Party, r X , 19, 288, 289
347
348
Index
Blackbourn, David, 4, 6, 10, 1 5 , 16, 124,

273n. 93
Bluntschli, Johann Caspar, 107, 197,
199-202, 204, 206, 207, 222, 226, 231, 233.
234 254, 286
Bochum Association, 147, I49
Bonn, 30, 59, 69, 70, 75, 139
Born, Stephan, 96
Bornkamm, Heinrich, 7, 8
Borsig, Albert, 145, 146
Bottrop, 39, 40
Brandenburg, 96
Braun, Lily, 192
Braunschweig, 278
Breadbasket Law. See Brotkorbgesetz
Bremen, 37, 75, 190
Bremer Bilrgetfreund, 8o
Breslau, 36, 65, 81-83, 130, 1 3 1 , 188, 190, 276,
277, 283
Breslauer Zeitung, 136
Brotkorbgesetz ( 1 8 7 5). 257
Brugger, 67
Brun. 160
Brunswick, 190
Buckner, Louis, 265
Bundesrat, 258, 280
Bunsen, Christian Carl Josias, 100, 101,
rog
Burckhardt. Jacob, 162
Burgertum, 3, 57, II2, I I 3 , rrg, 230
Busch, Julius, 223
Busch, Peter, 236, 237
BuB, Franz Joseph, 38
Capuchins, 34, 36, 89, 177
Carmelites, 128, 1 3 1 , 1 5 8 , 1 59, 177
Catholic Church, 168n, 179, 234, 235;
anti-Jesuit sentiment within, 57. 58; asso
ciations, 34. 55. s6, 292; and dancing,
59-61; and elections, 230, 231, 278, 279;
and emasculation, 206, 207, 209, 297; and
French influences, 214, 235, 236; and Ger
man unification, 286, 287; and govern
ment regulation, 84, 255-57; as feminine,
20T, 202, 205, 206, 217, 222, 224, 225, 297,
298; and Kulturkampf, 222-25 . 229. 230,
252, 258, 271, 275, 277, 279-81 , 288; and
men, 221, 222; and middle class, 76, ug,
120, 125, 230; and missions, 48, 58; reacts
to liberal attack, 76, rr6-2o, 168-70; and
women, rr8, 168, 169, 203, 2ogn. 63, 210,
210n. 64, 212, 217-19, 297. See also Con

gregations; Marian devotion; Religious
orders
Catholic Fraktion, 64, 86, 120, 285, 286
Catholicism (in Germany) : historiography
of, 3-6; and Protestantism, contrasted,
102-6, 108
Catholic press, 58, 84, rr6, II7, 168, 224, 280.
See also individual Catholic newspapers
and periodicals
Catholics: liberal, 58, I J 7-2I , !25, 277; and
Reichstag election (18 74), 275-78, 278n.
106; support liberal candidates, 120.
122-24
Cat music (Katzenmusik), 171, 172
Center Party, 16, 64, 87, 121-24, 183, 230-32,
244, 270, 286, 302; and Ausnahmegesetz,
259, 270, 272, 286; and Reichstag election
(r874) , 275-78, 278n . ro6
Chemnitz, 146, I48
Civilita Cattolica, 1 1 7
Clergy, parish, 241, 251, 279, 28o; and Kul
turkampf, 252, 255-57, 279; and missions,
32. 48-54. s6, 6o, 61, 77. 82, 83, 217, 293;
and Protestant clergy, 227-29; regular,
50-52
Cochem, 53, 54
Cologne, 30, 34, 36, 41, 49, 53, 54, 57, 69,
130, 1 3 1 , 133. 139. 223, 229, 283
Conference of Catholic Bishops (Cologne),
84
Confession, 207, 208, 208, 209; as response
to mission, 45, 46, 54
Congregations, 130, 173n. 103; female, 128,
T29, 131-33, 135, 2IO, 2TT table 5, 212-1 5;
male, 129, 212. See also individual congre
gations
Congregations Law (1 875). 129, 136. 257.
279
Congress for German Political Economy.
See Kongress deutscher Volkswirte
Constance. 8, 9. 59. 140
Constitution. Prussian (1850), 64, 135, 182,
245. 256
Convents and conventual life, and atrocity
stories, 160-63. 212-14. See also Religious
orders, female; Ubryk afTair
Court of Ecclesiastical AfTairs, 256, 257
Cracow, 158, 159
Crefelder Zeitung, 136, 205, 284
Croev, 53
Index
Dahl, 2r7
Damsdorf, 82
Dance and dancing, 42, 59-62
Danzig, 35, X2, X3
Darfeld, 56, 6o
Darmstadt, J46, r90
Democrats, 24, 94, 96, 97, 273, 274, 300; and
Jesuit law, 246, 272, 273, 275
Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, r36
Deutscher Protestantenverein, ro7, roR
Deutscher Verein, 232, 236, 287
Deutsch-Israelitischer Gemeindebund, 265
Deutsche Volksblatt, 34
Deutsche Volkshalle, 34, 97
Deutschkatholiken, 20, 21, 2m. 45, 1 R 7-R9
Diesterweg, Adolf, ro2-4, I09
Dohm, Hedwig, I92
Dominicans, 5I, 52, I2X, I32, I33, IX2;
alleged abuse by, r6o, r6r; missions, 292;
and Moabiterklostersturm, 171, 1 72, 177,
178
Dortmund, 76, X2
Dortu, Maximilian, 96
Dove, Richard, 286
Dresden, 179
Droysen, Johann Gustav, 97, roX, ro9, I I 5 ,
u 6 , 226
Duisberg, 64, 82
Duisberger Zeitung, 2R1
Duren, 66, 69
Dusseldorf, 8, 30, 42, 58, 66, r6r, qr, 2T8
Eichstatt, 54
Elbing, 179, rXo
Eley, Geoff, r s , 16
Emancipation, 2, 1R9, 191, 194, 195, 197, 264
Emden, 74
Emminghaus, Arwed, 1 9 5
Endrulat, Bernhardt, r64
Ermland, 131
Essen, 229, 2Xr
Essener Blatter, 28r
Evangelical Kirchentag (rX52), X4
Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, 8 5
Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat, 90, 95, 253,
274
Exceptional law. See Ausnahmegesetz
Expatriation Act (1R74), 257
Falk, Adalber, r34, rXr
Fischer, Ludwig, 274
349
Flotenstein, 65
Forckenbeck, Max von, r2r, r27, 206
Franciscans, 5I, 52, 89, I32, I33, I82; missions, 36, ] 8, 40, 74, 77, X2, 2r7, 292; and
Moabiterklostersturm, 1 7 1 , 177, 1 7 8
Fran<;:ois, Etienne, 78
Frankfurt am Main, 13, 19, 29, 30, 96, I07
Frankfurter Zeitung, 273-74
Frauenfrage, 26, 27, rX6, I92-95, r97-200,
297
Freemasons and Freemasonry, rq, rr8, r68,
229, 2Xr
Freiburg, 4, 223
Freiburger katholischer Zeitung, r6R, r69
Freiburger Katholisches Kirchenblatt, I I 7
Friedberg, Emil, 235, 2 3 6 , 2 5 3
Friedrich Wilhelm (prince o f Prussia), 7 5
Friedrich Wilhelm IV (king o f Prussia), ror
Friends of Light, T09
Gabsheim, 37, 38
Gall, Lothar, r2
Gartenlaube, r36, I37, r7r; and banking, r42,
143; and Catholic communism, 234; and
Catholic family life, r47-50, 150, 151; and
industry, I45-47, 147, 148, 149; and
Jesuits, 139, 140; and middle-class life,
r44, r45; and mixed marriage, r38; and
monastic "ape men," 1 54, 1 5 5 , 156, 157;
and monastic life, qo, qr, 141, 142, 143;
and monastic ruins, r so-52, 152, r 5 3 , 153;
and page layouts, 137, 1 3 R , 1 5 5 ; and pil
grimages, 137, 138; and science, 154; and
ultramontanism, r3 X-4o; and women,
207, 208
Gatschenberger, Stephan, 162
Geertz, Clifford, 99, roo, I44n. 32
Gegenwart, 136. 199, 200. 262, 286
Geilenkirchen, 67
Gender: and church and state, 200-202,
302; and middle-class identity, r96n. I9
General German Women's Association. See
Allgemeine Deutscher Frauenverein
German Catholics. See Deutschkatholiken
German Protestant Association . See
Deutscher Protestantenverein
Gerstner, Joseph, 267, 26X table 7, 27r, 272,
274, 275
Geschlechterkampf, 27, 1R6, 209, 225, 29R
Gmund, 54
Gneist, Rudolf von, 2X, rXr, 2r2, 255, 25X
350
Index
Goeddertz, Aloys, r 8 r
Gravenhorst, Karl, 272, 274
Gray Sisters, q8, 213
Grenzboten, 136, 203, 214, 215, 24L 274, 286
Groote, Eberhard von, 57
Gugel, Michael, 1 3
Gumbinnen, 277
Haeckel, Ernst, 265
Hamburg, 37, 47, 79, r89, 190
Hanel, Albert, 290
Hansa cities, r89
Hartmann, Richard, I45, I46
Heidelberg, 65
Heilbronner, Oded, 5
Hengstenberg, Ernst Wilhelm, 85, 86, 126
Herz, Carl, 267, 268 table 7, 2 76
Herzog, Dagmar, 20, 2m. 45, 195n. r 8 , 299n
Hesse, r3, r22, r89, 2r2, 243
Hesse-Darmstadt, 1 3 1
Hildesheim, 83
Hillebrand, Joseph, 41, 43, 46, 47, 6r
Hilleren, Wilhelmine von, 193
Hinschius, Paul, 134, 242, 253, 274
Hirsch, Jenny, 194
HoltzendortT, Franz von, 195
Honoratioren, q, so, 232
Honoratiorenpolitik, r6, 20, 24, 295. 298
Hiibinger, Gangolf, 78
Hiils. 66
Hiipstedt, 79
Im Neuen Reich, 2I6, 24I
Industry and industrialization, 76, 88, 1 34,
145-47, 14 148. 149 . r68-70, 279, 295,
298
Ireland, and separation of church and state,
25I
Italy, and Catholic Church, 93, 94
Jacoby, Johann, 96
Jarausch, Konrad H., r8, 19, 23
Jesuit law (r872), 26on. 59, 269 table 8;
opposition to, 259-64, 266, 267, 268 table
7, 269-75 ; and Reichstag election (r874),
275-77; support for, s8, I 2 I , 258. 259,
267, 268 table 6, 271, 274
Jesuits, 49, so, 52, 84, 133, 173n. 103, 177,
182, 200, 212, 234, 236, 237, 292; banned,
33, 256, 258, 28o; and disease, 47, 48, 93,
94; economic threat of, 69, 70, nr, r12;
influence ot: alleged, 67-73, 83, 85, 89-95.

TOO, TOT, T09-T2, 139, 140, 283, 285; mis
sions, 34. 37, 37. 40, 45. 53, s8, 67, 82, 83;
popular reaction to, 57, 58, 159, 258; and
sermons, 43, 48, 59, 6 I , 63-67, 72, 83; and
ultramontanism, 5 1 , 68, 69, 92, 107, 233;
and women, 90, III, u2, 203, 204, 216
Jews, n9, 263n. 65, 273; attend missions, 76,
77, 78, 294; and emancipation, 2, 264; and
Jesuit law, 263, 264, 266, 272, 299; and
Kulturkampf, 264, 265, 274, 300, 302
Joint stock companies, n3, I I 4
Jones, Larry Eugene, I 8 , I 9 , 23
Jiicken, 54
Kanngiesser, Carl Hermann, r2o
Kapp, Friedrich, 96
Karlsbad Decrees (r8r9), 271
Karlsruhe, 190
Kassel, 190
Keil, Ernst, I 3 7
Ketteler, Wilhelm Emmanuel von, ro8,
n8
Kiefer, Friedrich, 274, 286
Kinkel, Gottfried, 96
Kirchenjiage, 27, 245-55, 299
Kladderadatsch, 136, 164, 167, 1 74-77, 283,
288, 289
Kleist-Retzow, Hans von. 66
Kliefoth, Theodor, 90, 91, 95, 96
Koblenz, 41, 64, 68, 78, 139, 283
Kolnische Volkszeitung, 121
Kolnische Zeitung, I 36, 206. 28 I
Konigsberg, 277
K()nigsgratz, 36
Kongress deutscher V olkswirte, I I 3
Kruse, Heinrich, 206
Kiihlwetter, Friedrich, 64, 66, 69, 70
Kulm, 65, 82, r3o
Kulturkampf: and the Catholic vote,
122-25; fails, 289-91; historiography,
6-rr , 2r. 22; images ot: 284, 285, 288; leg
islation, 255-57, 264, 279, 28r, 282, 290,
299; origins, T26, 127, 240-43, 254, 255;
statistics on, 257, 258; as war of
unification. 246, 287. 288, 298, 299. See
also Frankfurter Zeitung; Jesuit law; May
Laws
Kulturkiimpfer, 22, 120, 122, 127, 157, r 8 r ,
r 8 6 , 1 9 6 , 1 9 7 , 200, 2 2 5 , 2 4 5 , 251, 255, 261,
282, 283, 287, 288, 290, 297, 298
Index
Laddey, Emma, I93
Landshut. 6o
Langenschwalbach, 82
Langewiesche, Dieter, I7, r8, 23, 205, 300
Lasker, Eduard, 127, 259-64, 266, 266n. 72,
267, 273. 274. 285, 286
Lazarists, 34, 36, 89, 133, 256
Le Bon, Gustave, 233, 234
Leipzig, I90
Leo XIII (pope), 288
Lette, Wilhelm Adolf, 190
Lette Association, r9o, r9r, I94
Leuchtkugeln, 163
Liberale Reichspartei, rzz; and Jesuit law,
58, 259, 266, 274; and Reichstag election
(r874) , 275-78, 278n . ro6
Liberalism, 23, 24, 32, 97; and anti-Catholi
cism, 98, 99, ror, ro4, ro9; and the con
vent atrocity story, r64, r65, 165 . r66-68,
296, 297; historiography, 1 1-22; identified
as masculine, 201-3, 205; and Jews, 264,
264n. 69; and Kulturkampf, 243-46; and
Protestantism, roo, ror, ro4. ro5, ro?-9;
redefined after 1848, 99, 100, 109, 294, 295.
See also Liberal values
Liberal press, 58, 65, I29, I 58, r6o, I62, I63,
1 7 1 , 194, 289, 296. See also individual lib
eral newspapers and periodicals
Liberals, 96, 231, 232; and antimonasticism,
r29, r36, r78, r79; and church-state rela
tions, 20r, 202, 245-55, 274, 275; and
class, 225-27; and economic reform, 113,
1 1 4, 124. 1 70; and Jesuit law. 246, 258-63,
266, 275; and the Jesuit threat, roo, ror,
107, 203, 204, 234, 237-39, 283, 285, 286;
and Kulturkampf, 254, 255, 276, 289-91;
lose Bismarck's support, 288, 289; and
religious orders, 1 34, 1 3 5 , 173, 1 74. 213,
2r4, 2r6, 248, 249; and "war" against
Catholic Church, 242, 243, 282-8 8, 290,
29r, 298, 299; and women, I95 I97-200,
203-5, 207, 208, 213-16, 224, 225, 230,
287, 297. See also Catholics, liberal;
National Liberal Party; Progressive Party
Liberal values: enlightenment, 42, 54,
93-95, 98, 104, 109-1 1 , 137, 162, 163, !78,
258; freedom, 58, 95, 98, ror, I07, IIO, I 3 8 ,
167, 202, 243. 246, 248, 249. 250, 253-55.
259, 271, 295, 296, 298; free-market eco
nomics, 76, 99, roz, ro4, n4, 264, 295;
progress, 24, 76, 88, ror, roz, ro4, ro7, ro8,
351
I I 6 , I20, I34, I37, I 5 6 , 20I, 204, 243, 246,

249, 298; rationalism, 32, 42, ro4, r2o, 134,
295, 296; reason, 93-95, 98, r67; science,
85, 88, 94, 99, IOI, I07, I08, I I 6, I37, I67,
207, 243, 246, 249, 258, 264, 296. See also
Bildung; Industry and industrialization
Liegnitz, 2 77
Limburg, 36, 46, 82
Lippe-Detmold, 277
Loyola, Ignatius, ror
Liidenscheidt, 74
Liittich, 36
Magdeburgische Zeitung, 229
11ainz, 34, 37, 190, 220
Mainzer Journal, 34
11ainzverein, 222
11ajunke, Paul, 237
Mallinckrodt, Hermann von, rr 5, r82, r83,
270, 284
Malmedy, 49, 69
Marian devotion, ro, 42, 5I, 2I7, 220, 226
Marpingen, ro, 229
11arriage (interconfessional), 81, 82, 105, 138
May Laws (1873, r874), 223, 252, 256, 257
Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 9I, 277
11enzel, Wolfgang, 163
Merge!, Thomas, 4, rzo
11ergentheim, 46
Merseburg, 277
Meudt, 46
11eyer, Jiirgen Bona, 199, 200
Milbringen, 53
Mill, John Stuart, I94, I95
Minden, 67
11iquel, Johannes, 107
Misogyny. See Anti-Catholicism, and
misogyny
Missions, 24, 25, 32, 33, 34n. r2, 35, 46, 47,
52, 292-94; banned, 33, 63, 64; fail to
alter popular morality, 60-62; foster
Protestant revival. 79. 8o, 85-88; govern
ment reports on, 48, 49, 62-67, 78, 82;
government support of, 53, 62, 63, 66;
and local impact 37-4r ; and middle-class
Catholics. 57, 58; mixed attendance of,
74-78; opposition to, 32, 49- 56-58, 63,
64; popular reaction to, 45, 46, 53-57, 62;
Protestant reaction to, 47, 48, 75, 76,
82-8 5; statistics, 36, 57; and women, 216,
2I7
352
Index
Mittelfranken, 276, 277

Mittelstand, 12, 16, rro, 124, 229
Moabit, 146, 147, 172
Moabiterklostersturm, 1 70-77, 1 84, 205
Mohl, Robert von, 199
Moller, Eduard von, 69-71
Mommsen, Wolfgang J . , 1 3 , 14
Monasteries, 1 50, 152, I52, 1 5 3 , I5J, 162; as
anachronistic and unproductive, 157, 173,
174, 179, 296; and monastic life, satirized,
140, T4T, I4I, 142, I4J, 1 54, 1 5 5 , T7T,
173-76 . See also Religious orders, male
Monzel, 67
Muller, Eduard, 179
Munich, 6o, 27'K
Munster, 8, 33. 36, 47. 56, 58, 61, 139. 223
Nassau, 13
National Association. See Nationalverein
National German Bishops' Conference, 34
National Liberal Party, 122, 244, 251, 253,
286, 288; and Jesuit law, 58, 258-60, 26on.
59, 261, 262, 266, 267, 274, 275; and
Reichstag election (18 74), 276, 277, 278,
278n. ro6
Nationalverein, ro7, 108
National Zeitung, 113, 136, 1 70-72, 177, 17'K,
205, 226, 233 236, 242, 243, 284
Neheim, 77, 'K2
Neue PreujJische Zeitung, 65
Neufalz. 8r
Neunburg vorm Wald, 53
Neustadt, 82
Niederau, 56
Niederbayern, 276
Niederembt, 53
Nipperdey, Thomas, 123
N ordhausen, So
N orth German Confederation, r r 5 , r82, 199,
230
Oberbayern, 275, 276
Oberfranken, 276, 277
Oberwesel, 76
OtTenstetten, 54
om, 56
Old Catholic Church, 121, 256
Olenhusen, Irmtraud Gotz von, 4, 22'K
Olliges-Wieczorek, Ute, 'K
Olmi.itz, 36
Oppeln, 277
Oppenheim, Heinrich Berhard, 263, 264

Osnabri.ick, 36, 74, r3r
Osterroth, Nikolaus, 221, 222
Otto, Louise, 189, 190, 193
Paderborn, 36, 43, 46, 54, 67, 74, 77, 79, So,
133. 139
Palmowski, Jan, 19, 273n. 93
Papal infallibility doctrine of, 5 1 , 120, 121,
'
242, 24'K, 250
Paris Commune (r87r), 235
Parliament, Prussian, 131, 1 79, 180, 182, 183
Patriotic Women 's Association. See Vaterlandischer Frauenverein
Pilgrimages, 13'K, 139, 1'K7, 229, 292
Pius IX (pope), 97, 109, II?, 202, 230, 233,
248, 284
Piusverein, 34, 93
Posen, 8, 130, r3r, r6o, r6r
Potsdam, 277
Prague, 160
PreufJische Jahrbiicher, 136, 241
Progressive Party, 17'K, 179, 244, 253; and
Jesuit law, 259, 266, 267, 267n. 79, 268
tables 6 and 7, 269, 269 table 8, 270, 271,
274, 275; and Reichstag election (1874),
276, 277, 27'Kn. 106
Protestant Church, 90-92, 109, 1 7 5 , 255,
256, 274- 275; and Jesuit threat, 'K9-95.
ro6, ro7, 258, 259; and missions, 75, 76,
83-8 5, 87-89
Protestantism, and Catholicism, 102-6, w'K
Protestants: attend missions, 74-80, 83, 293;
j oin Deutschkatholiken, 187, 188; and
Reichstag election (r8 74), 276, 277
Prussia, 'X , 69, 71, 123, 12'K, 129, 131, 133, 134,
171, 173n. I03, 177, 178, 183, 188, 2IO-I2,
214, 222, 223, 229, 243. 258; and missions,
63, 64, 84, 86; and religious orders, 5r,
130, 1 3 1 , 136; state government and
Jesuits, 68-73
Pulpit Paragraph (r87r), 255, 260, 264, 272
Radowitz, Joseph von, 252
Rango, Ludwig von, 96
Rastatt, 96
Ratibor, 82, 83
Raumer decrees (1'K 52), 63, 64, 'K4
Redempto rists, 4, 45, 46, 49, 5 1 , 52, 'K r , 'K9,
132; banned, 256; missions, 34, J9, 40, 56,
61, 62, 292
Index
Rees, 6r
Regensburg, 36, 45, 53, 54
Reichensperger, August, 87, n5, 286
Reichensperger, Peter, 87, r83, 284
Reichstag, 7, 289; and anti-Jesuit bill, 261,
262, 266, 267, 272, 275; and election
(1874) , 275-78, 278n . 106
Reissing, 45
Religious orders, I 3 I , I35, I73n. ro3; and
alleged depravity, r63, qr, r72, 1 74;
female, r28-34, r77, q8, 2ro, 2rr table 4,
2r2, 2r4, 257; and Kulturkampf, 256, 257,
279; male, 1 28-3 1 , 132 table 1, 1 3 3 , 133
tables 2 and 3, r34, r77, q8, 2r2, 257; and
state regulation, 71, 72, 182; and violence
against, 1 59, 170-72, q6, 177. See also
Congregations; Convents and conventual
life; Monasteries; and individual religious
orders
Revolution of 1848, 18, 24, 29, 29n, 30, 96
Rheinisches Kirchenblatt, 57
Rheinische Volkshalle, 34
Rheinische Zeitung, r61
Rhineland, 4, 25, 35, 36, 38, 56, 61-64,
69-7I , 73, 80, 83, 84, 120, I30, 13I, I38,
I39, 206, 226, 227, 232, 236, 255, 256, 287,
292, 293
Richter, Eugen, 254, 27r
Roh, Peter, 65
Rohe, Karl, 8, r25
Range, Johannes, r 8 7
Ross, Ronald J . , 10
RoJ31er, Constantin, 246
Rostock, r9o
Rothe, Richard, I07
Rothenburg, 74
Ruhr Valley, 8, 42
Saucken-Julienfelde, Constanz von, r 8 r
Saxony, 169, 188, 189, 277
Schauss, Friedrich von, 259, 266, 276
Schenkel, Daniel, ro4-9
Scherenberg, Ernst, 207, 208
Schieder, Wolfgang, 3
Schleswig-Holstein, 277
SchloBmacher, Norbert, 8
Schmidt, Gustav, 7
Schools, and secularization, 121, 227, 255,
256, 274
Schulte, Johann Friedrich von, r28, 129,
I3I-36, 212-I 5, 2I8
353
Schulz, Moritz, 266

Schulze-Delitzsch, Hermann, 28, 96, r27,
269-71
Schurz, CarL 96
Schwaben, 275
Schwaben-Tmmenstadt, 276
Schwiibische Chronik, 59
Schwarzburg, 277
Scott, Joan Wallach, 99n. 72, r95n. r8
Separation of church and state, 247. 25r,
253. 274, 275
Sermons: delivery of, 42, 43, 59, 66; hell and
hellfire in, 43, 44, 47, 54. 293; popular
reaction to, 44, 293; subjects of, 32, 4I, 42,
54, 64-67, 79, 8o
Sheehan, James J . , 14, 1 5 , 300
Silesia, 8r, 226
Sian, 4I, 77
Sister Barbara. See Ubryk affair
Sisters of Mercy, 160, 220
Smith, Helmut Walser, 10, 27, 164, 266n. 72
Social Democrats, 277
Sonderweg, r 5-I 7, 300
Sonnemann, Leopold, 272-74
Sonntagsblatt (Munster), 58
Sonntagsblatt Eucharius, 286
Spenersche Zeitung, 281
Sperber, Jonathan, 4, 25, 56n. 89, 6r
Staatsanzeiger, 233
Staatslexikon, I I 3
Staatsworterbuch, I I 3
Stachelstock, A. L . , 109-12, 163
Stauffenberg, Baron Schenk von, 278
Stettin, 2 77
Suffrage, r89, I9T, r94, r99, 230, 232
Suva!, Stanley, 124
Sybel, Heinrich von, 28, 197-99, 206, 213,
227, 2 3 1 , 232, 235-37. 240, 2 5 1 , 252, 286
Syllabus of Errors (r 864), I09, II7, n8, r2o,
202, 250
Tal, Uriel, 264
Taverns, 42, 6r, 22r
Treitschke, Heinrich von, I09, r95, 232, 235,
245- 252 253
Trier, 4, 35, 36, 53, 67, 76-78, 187, 286
Tritscheller, Paul, 259, 266, 276
Trutzschler, Wilhelm von, 96
Ubryk afiair, I58-62, r66, 167, 214
Ufk, I36, 289
3 54
Index
Ultramontanism, 92, 93, 1 3 5 , 138, 138n. 19,

139, 206, 207, 226, 230-32, 234, 235 , 242,
270, 273, 286
Union of Gennan Jewish Communities. See
Deutsch-Israelitischer Gemeindebund
Union of German Women's Educational
and Employment Associations. See Ver
band deutscher Frauenbildungs- und
Erwerbsvereine
United States: and religious revivals, 47;
and separation of church and state, 247,
251, 253
Unruh, Hans Viktor, 96
Unterfranken, 272, 275, 276
Unterkochen bei Ellwangen, 74
Upper Silesia, 8, 223
Ursulines, 128, 131, 132
Vaterlandischer Frauenverein, 219, 220
Verband deutscher Frauenbildungs- und
Erwerbsvereine, 190
Verein zur Forderung der Erwerbsfiihigkeit
des weiblichen Geschlechts. See Lette
Association
Virchow, Rudolf, 28, 120, 127, 197, 213, 226,
245, 253, 254. 265
Volksmissionen. See Missions
Vossische Zeitung, 65, 66, 136, r6o, r6r,
173-75, 1 77, 178, 194, 204, 218, 227, 228
Waldeck, Franz, 96
Warburg, mission in, 53
Weber, Christoph, 8
Weis, Nikolaus von, 31
Weiss, Otto, 4
Westphalen, Ferdinand von, 63, 69, 84
Westphalia, 4, 25, 33, 36, 42, 61, 120, 139

Wettengel, Michael, 13
Wichern, Heinrich Johann, 47
Wiesbaden, 277
Wigard, Franz, 267, 268 table 7
Wilhelm I (king of Prussia; Kaiser), 75, ror,
230, 233, 241 , 284
Windthorst, Eduard, 58, 121, 122, 127, 258,
259, 271, 274, 276, 285
Windthorst, Ludwig, 58, n8, 121, 124, 183,
225, 254, 262, 284, 286, 289
Wolffson, Isaac, 266
Women, 209n . 63, 193, 203, 217, 298; and
education, 189-92, 195, 215; and emanci
pation, 189, 191, 194, 195, 197; and Kul
turkampf opposition, 222-24; in public
life, 21 5-21; and suffrage, 189, 191, 194,
199. See also Associations and organiza
tions, for women; Congregations, female;
Frauenfrage; Jesuits, and women; Reli
gious orders, female
Women's movement, 1 8 7-92
Women's question. See Frauenfiage
Worbis, 54
Wupperthal, 283
Wurttemberg, 34, 122, 189
Wurzburg, 30, 32, 77
Young Lithuania, I I 4
Zang, Gert, 8
Zeising, Adolf, 249, 250, 252, 287
Zeller, Eduard, 216, 246-49, 287
Ziegler, Franz, 96
Zittau, r 5 r
Zollverein, 1 1 4

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Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany

Geoff Eley, Series Editor

Series Editorial Board

Kathleen Canning, University of Michigan

Crew, University of Texas, Austin

Atina Grossmann, The Cooper Union

The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in

Worldly Provincialism: German Anthropology in the Age of Empire,

Exclusionary Violence: Antisemitic Riots in Modern German History,

Languages of Labor and Gender: Female Factory Work in Germany, I850-I9I4,

Anna Seghers: The Mythic Dimension, Helen Fehervary

Little Tools of Knowledge: Historical Essays on Academic and Bureaucratic

Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany

Geoff Eley, Series Editor

Framed Visions: Popular Culture, Americanization, and the Contemporary German

A Greener Vision of Home: Cultural Politics and Environmental Reform in the

Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity

The Stigma of Names: Antisemitism in German Daily Life, r8T2-1933,

The War against Catholicism

The University of Michigan Press

Copyright by the University of Michigan 2004

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

Chapter 1 . Revolution, the Missionary Crusade, and

Chapter 2 . Protestantism, Anti-Catholicism, and the

Chapter 3 The Anti-Catholic Imagination: Visions of

Chapter 4 The Women's Question, Anti-Catholicism,

Chapter 5 Kulturkampf, Unification, and the War

It is a pleasure to acknowledge my gratitude to all those who over the

National Socialist regime sometimes restricted or confiscated by the

History, East Carolina University, freed time from teaching responsi

For obvious and irrefutable reasons, anti-Judaism in the nineteenth

The War against Catholicism

priests, the arrest of bishops, and the confiscation of church property

Catholic attack. By the 1 8 70s liberals in Germany conceived of the

The War against Catholicism

Trier pilgrimage of 1844 and then Jonathan Sperber's equally impor

been able to take stock of some of their predominant conclusions in

sity Press, 1981); Horst Grunder, "Nation und Katholizismus im Kaiserreich," in

The War against Catholicism

I shall show, continuously complained of the Catholic population's

Otto von Bismarck as first minister of Prussia and chancellor of the

The War against Catholicism

sonal work." 11 Studies that opened up the deeply nationalist character

larly its charitable organizations, which liberals believed drained eco

The War against Catholicism

unexamined social and cultural dimensions of anti-Catholicism and

both its piety and consciousness, so much so that Catholics in response

The War against Catholicism

decades, a considerable amount of work has been devoted to the study

The War against Catholicism

their dreams emptied by frustration, dissension, and defeat, the liberals

The War against Catholicism

ment rested on a normative, ahistorical, and misconceived comparison

German historiography.37 Even so, it continues to serve as a concep

The War against Catholicism

social, economic, and political life of the Federal Republic of Ger

42. Palmowski, Urban Liberalism.

The War against Catholicism

The perspective according to which modern liberal ideology masks a

The War against Catholicism

were endowed with an inadequate Enlightenment legacy. On the con

economic principles but more broadly, as Konrad Jarausch and Larry

The War against Catholicism