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The Center Wages Kulturpolitik: Conflict in the Marx-Keudell Cabinet of 1927

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Ellen L. Evans
Ellen L. Evans
Affiliation:
Georgia State College
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Extract

In descriptions of the political structure of the Weimar Republic, the German Center Party is usually grouped as a party of the “middle,” together with the German Democratic Party and German People's Party, between the left-wing Social Democrats and the right-wing German Nationalists. In the years after 1928, the Center showed an increasing disinclination to work in coalition with the Social Democratic Party and finally, under the leadership of Dr. Ludwig Kaas, the last chairman of the Center Party, broke completely with the Socialists. During the same years Heinrich Brüning, Chancellor of Germany from 1930 to 1932, made persistent, though futile, attempts to find an acceptable coalition partner for the Center on the Right, hoping, among other possibilities, to encourage a secession movement from the Nationalist Party in 1930. Because of the rapid dwindling of electoral support for the other parties of the middle, very little attention has been paid to the Center's relationship with them. It is the purpose of this article to show that the mutual antipathies between these parties and the Center were as great or greater than its antipathy toward Social Democracy on certain matters which were vital to the Center's existence. By 1928, in fact, coalition with the parties of the middle had become as unsatisfactory to the leaders of the Center as coalition with the party of the Left. The turning-point in this development was the breakup of the Marx-Keudell right-wing cabinet of 1927. The failure of that government to attain the party's goals in the realm of Kulturpolitik, i.e., religion and education, confirmed the Center's disillusionment with the workings of the parliamentary system itself.

Type
Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , June 1969 , pp. 139 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1969

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References

1. See Morsey, Rudolf, “Die deutsche Zentrumspartei,” in Matthias, E. and Morsey, R., eds., Das Ende der Parteien 1933 (Düsseldorf, 1960), pp. 281–453.Google Scholar

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8. The state agreed to continue specified financial aid to the Church, to respect the freedom of the Church and the independence of its organization, and to permit a Church veto on undesirable appointments to the faculty of state theological schools. The Church, in return, agreed to allow the state a veto on high Church appointments (a veto which the national constitution forbade a state to “impose” but which could presumably be “permitted”), and to allow as bishops, heads of orders, priests, or teachers only German citizens educated in Germany. Hilling, p. 679.

9. Ibid., p. 675.

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14. The nominal chairman of the Landtag delegation was Felix Porsch, who held the post from 1904 until his death in 1930, but in the postwar years his role was chiefly an honorary one and the acting delegation leader was Hess, who then became chairman from 1930 to 1932.

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22. The cabinet as formed consisted of three Nationalists, Keudell for the Interior, Schiele for Food and Agriculture, Hergt for Justice and Vice Chancellor; three Centrists, Marx as Chancellor and for Occupied Territories, Brauns for Labor, and Köhler for Finance; Stresemann as usual for the Foreign Ministry; two other men from the People's Party and Bavarian People's Party; and Gessler, a former Democrat, for Defense.

23. Frankfurter Zeitung, July 29, 1927.

24. Ibid., Aug. 23, 1927.

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26. Monsignor Kaas was a professor at the seminary for the priesthood in Trier.

27. Braun, p. 224.

28. Germany's population at that time was approximately one-third Catholic, two-thirds Protestant.

29. Sutton, III, 286–89.

30. Verhandlungen des Reichstags, CCCXCIII (04. 1927), 10506–508.Google Scholar

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34. The bill was sponsored by Chancellor Marx, who was the chairman of the Catholic School Union in Germany.

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36. Ibid.

37. Sutton, III, 293–95.

38. Braun, p. 230.

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40. Numerous references to this were recorded at the Party Congress in 1922. Offizieller Bericht des Zweiten Reichsparteitages der deutschen Zentrumspartei (Berlin, 1922), pp. 114–15.Google Scholar

41. The two parties agreed to cooperate closely in the Reichstag and to give up all election rivalry. The Centrist deputy from the Bavarian province of the Palatinate was to become a member of the BVP and the Center was to give up its separate campaigning in that province. The terms of the reconciliation were distinctly favorable to the Bavarians, who still continued to oppose the republican form of government.

42. Frankfurter Zeitung, Sept. 5, 1927.

43. Ibid., Sept. 13, 1927. As noted above, however, the DNVP did not exploit this issue to its own advantage as much as it might have done.

44. Kölnische Volkszeitung, Aug. 9, 1927.

45. Grebing, Appendix, p. 16; Joos, Josef, “Nach der Wahl,” Kölnische Volkszeitung, 05 14, 1928;Google Scholar and Frankfurter Zeitung, May 31, 1928.

46. It might be noted that one of the defeated candidates, Adam Stegerwald, was a consistent and outspoken opponent of clericalism in the party.