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The German term Kulturkampf (literally, "culture struggle") refers to German policies in relation to the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, enacted from 1871 to 1878 by the Chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck.

Until the mid-1800s, the Catholic Church was still also a political power. The Pope's Papal States were supported by France but ceased to exist as an indirect result of the Franco-Prussian War. The Catholic Church still had a strong influence on many parts of life, though, also in Bismarck's Protestant Prussia. In the newly founded German Empire, Bismarck sought to bolster the power of the secular state and reduce the political and societal influence of the Catholic Church by instituting political control over Church activities.

The 1871 Kanzelparagraf (see below) marked the beginning of a series of sanctions against Catholicism that Bismarck imposed until 1875. To characterize Bismarck's politics in view of the Catholic church, the pathologist and member of the parliament of the Deutschen Fortschrittspartei (Liberals) Rudolf Virchow used the term Kulturkampf the first time on January 17, 1873 in the Prussian house of representatives. As this conflict brought him an ever growing political defeat, he moderated his struggle with the Catholic Church and in the wake of Pius IX's death reconciled with the new Pope, Leo XIII, lifting most sanctions except for the Kanzelparagraf (which remained in power until 1953) and civil marriage.

It is generally accepted amongst historians that the Kulturkampf measures have targeted the Catholic Church under Pope Pius IX with discriminatory sanctions. Many historians also point out anti-Polish elements in the policies in other contexts .

Overview

Because the German Empire had descended from the 1866 North German Confederation, Bismarck saw the addition of the southern German states (especially Catholic Bavaria) as a possible threat to the Empire's stability. Tensions were also increased by the 1870 Vatican Council proclamation on papal infallibility. There were also significant Catholic populations in eastern parts of Germany (mainly Poles), the Rhineland and in Alsace-Lorraine. Moreover, Bismarck had deliberately formed the German Empire against interference from Austria, a more powerful Catholic country than those previously mentioned. Among the measures taken to reduce the influence of the Catholic Church was the addition in 1871 of § 130a to the German Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch), which threatened clergy who discussed politics from the pulpit with two years of prison; this article was dubbed the Kanzelparagraph (from the German Kanzel — "pulpit").

In March 1872 religious schools were forced to undergo official government inspection and in June religious teachers were banned from governements schools. In addition, under the May Laws administered by Adalbert Falk, the state began to closely monitor the education of clergy, created a secular court for cases involving the clergy, and required notification of all clergy employment. In 1872, the Jesuits were banned (and remained banned in Germany until 1917) and in December the German government broke off diplomatic relations with the Vatican. In 1875, marriage became a mandatory civil ceremony, removed from the control of the Church. He even blamed the poisoning of a popular lion from Berlin Zoological Gardens in 1874 on Catholic conspirators. On July 13 1874 in the town of Bad Kissingen Eduard Kullmann attempted to assassinate Bismarck with a pistol, but only hit his hand. Kullmann named the church laws as the reason why he had to shoot Bismarck.

Bismarck's attempts to restrict the power of the Catholic Church, represented in politics by the Catholic Centre Party, were not successful. In the 1874 elections, these forces doubled their representation in the parliament. Needing to counter the Social Democratic Party, Bismarck softened his stance, especially with the election of the new Pope Leo XIII in 1878, and tried to justify his actions to the now numerous Catholic representatives by stating that the presence of Poles (who are predominantly Catholic) within German borders required that such measures be taken.

All in all, the Kulturkampf was hardly a success of Bismarck's government, despite temporary gains within the government itself. . A lasting result of Kulturkampf was a heightened alienation of the craft and the state and the remaining population. Another cleft widened between the ultramontane-oriented Catholics and the evangelisch part of the people.

Kulturkampf in Duchy of Posen/Poznań

The Kulturkampf had a major impact on the Polish-inhabitated regions of Prussia. It should be remembered that at this time Poland did not exist as a state and had been partitioned between Austria, Prussia (which in turn became part of the German Empire) and Russia. The struggle against Catholicism and Catholic southern German states started almost simultaneously to an extensive campaign of Germanization in the lands formerly belonging to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Polish Kingdom. Because of that, in European historiography the anti-Catholic elements of the Kulturkampf are usually tied to Germanization efforts involving language and culture within the empire .

After the May Laws had been passed, the Prussian authorities started to close down most of schools teaching the Polish language. Instead, the German language schools were promoted. In November 1872 minister Folk ordered all classes of religion to be held in German by the spring of the following year. The wave of protests on the side of Polish Catholics and the clergy was pacified the following year, when the Catholic Seminaries of Posen and Gniezno were closed down, and the state took up the supervision of education, previously carried out mostly in church-sponsored schools. The estate of the Church was confiscated, monastic orders dissolved, and the paragraphs of the Prussian constitution assuring the freedom of the Catholics were removed. In Greater Poland the Kulturkampf took on a much more nationalistic character than in other parts of Germany .

Soon afterwards the Prussian authorities responded with repressions, with 185 priests imprisoned and several hundred others forced into exile. Among the imprisoned was the Primate of Poland Archbishop Mieczysław Ledóchowski. A large part of the remaining Catholic priests had to continue their service in hiding from the authorities. Although most of the imprisoned were finally set free by the end of the decade, the majority of them were forced into exile. Many observers believed these policies only further stoked the Polish independence movement. There is also a question regarding possible personal antipathy towards Poles behind Bismarck's motivation in pursuing the Kulturkampf January 28, 1886, in: . Contrary to other parts of the German Empire, in Greater Poland - then known under the German name of Provinz Posen - the Kulturkampf did not cease after the end of the decade. Although Bismarck finally signed an informal alliance with the Catholic church against the socialists, the policies of Germanization did continue in Polish-inhabitated parts of the country.

In 1886, in line with Eduard von Hartmann's slogan of eradication of Slavs on the German soil, the authorities of Prussian part of Poland prepared a new policy of Germanisation of the land. According to Heinrich Tiedemann, the author of the plan, the reason why all earlier attempts at bringing more German settlers to the Poznań area failed was that they allegedly felt uncertain and alien there. The proposed solution was to assure them of correctness of elimination of Poles from public life and land property, as well as to promote land acquisition by administrative means. The state-controlled Colonization Commission was to buy off land and estates from the local Poles and sell it, at a much lower price, to Germans. Although it managed to attract circa 22,000 families to the area , the overall percentage of Polish inhabitants of the land was not changed. Similarly, the activities of the Eastern Marches Society met with little success. Instead, the German actions following the start of the Kulturkampf resulted in strengthening the Polish national awareness and creation of several nationalist organization similar to the ones created against Polish culture and economy. By 1904, when the new law on settlement which effectively forbade Polish peasants from construction of new houses, the sense of national identity was strong enough to cause a period of civil unrest in the country. Among the notable symbols of the era were the children's strike of Września and the struggle of Michał Drzymała who effectively evaded the new law by living in a circus van rather than a newly-built house.

All in all, the policies of Germanisation of the Poznań area mostly failed. Although most of the administrative measures aimed against the Poles remained in force until 1918, between 1912 and 1914 only four Polish-owned estates were expropriated, while at the same time Polish social organizations successfully competited with German trade organizations and even started to buy off the land from the Germans. The long-lasting effect of the Polish-German conflict in the area was development of a sense of Greater Polish identity, distinct from the identity common in other parts of Poland and primarily associated with nationalist ideas rather than socialism, prevailing in other parts of the country in 20th century.

Other uses of the term

The word Kulturkampf has also been used to refer to similar cultural conflicts in other times and places. In the United States, the term "culture war" has been used by Patrick Buchanan, among others, to describe what he saw as an analogous conflict starting in the 1960s and continuing to the present between religious social conservatives and secular social liberals (Buchanan used the English "culture war," though in the context Buchanan used it, as a war between traditional morality and avant-garde liberalism, it clearly evoked memories of the earlier German experience). Ironically, Buchanan himself is descended from German Catholics on his mother's side. This theme of "culture war" was the basis of Buchanan's fiery keynote speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention, which was seen by political commentators as alienating to many social moderates in the Republican party and as aiding the election of Bill Clinton. The term culture war had by 2004 become commonly used in the United States by both liberals and conservatives.

See also

With respect to the German Empire

With respect to Catholicism

With respect to Poland

With respect to the USA

Notes and references

In-line:
General:
  1. Hahn, Geschichte des Kulturkampfs in Preussen, (Berlin, 1881)
  • Wiesmann, Geschichte des Kulturkampfs, (Leipzig, 1886)
  • Robinson and Beard, Development of Modern Europe, volume ii, (Boston, 1908)
  • C. D, Hazen, Europe since 1815, (New York, 1910)
  • David Blackbourn, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford, 1993)
  • Ronald J. Ross, The failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf : Catholicism and state power in imperial Germany, 1871-1887, (Washington, D.C., 1998)

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    History of Catholicism in Germany | Anti-Catholicism | Anti-Polonism | German Empire | Religion and politics | 1870s | German loanwords

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