Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T19:06:23.377Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Anti-Judaism in Intra-Christian Conflict: Catholics and Liberals in Baden in the 1840s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Dagmar Herzog
Dagmar Herzog
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This essay examines the paradoxical relationship between Jewish emancipation and the revival of Catholic neoorthodoxy in the years preceding the revolutions of 1848/49. My focus is on the Grand Duchy of Baden, renowned as the most liberal of all the nineteenth-century German states. The rise of neoorthodoxy in Baden provoked political liberals to rethink the relationship between church and state and, consequently, through a conjunction of circumstance, to make Jewish emancipation a central plank in their political platfrom. The Jewish emancipation implemented by the liberals in the revolutionary years, however, would be heavily burdened from its inception by the manner in which the new Catholic “religious right” deployed anti-Jewish rhetoric in its struggle for religious and political influence.

Type
Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , September 1994 , pp. 267 - 281
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. See Gall, Lothar, Der Liberalismus als regierende Partei: Das Grossherzogtum Baden zwischen Restauration und Reichsgründung (Wiesbaden, 1968) xi-xii and 23–57;Google Scholar and Lee, Loyd E., The Politics of Harmony: Civil Service, Liberalism, and Social Reform in Baden, 1800–1850 (Newark, DE, 1980).Google Scholar

2. Sander, Verhandlungen der Stände-Versammlung des Grossherzogthums Baden (II. Kammer), 27 September 1833, 14. Protokollheft, 308; and cf., Rotteck's related remarks, 353–67.

3. Merk, Verhandlungen (II. Kammer), 27 September 1833, 14. Protokollhelft, 283 and 285. Another typical fervent pro-emancipationist—Karl Mez—put it this way: “I want to give them freedom… because I want to better them, and because I am convinced, that only in freedom… can one truly thrive… We should seek justice, and then all else will be given unto us. Then also the Jews will be given unto us, that means they will no longer hesitate… to accommodate themselves more fully to our conditions.” Mez, in Verhandlungen (II. Kammer), 18 February 1845, 12. Protokollheft, 78. (Emphasis here, as elsewhere in this essay, was in the original.) Precisely liberalism's intrinsic preoccupation with progress hampered liberals' ability to embrace Jewish equality without trying to remake Jews, for pro-emancipationists shared anti-emancipationists' assumptions about Jews as unioquley backward, trapped in an earlier stage of history.

4. Seltzam and Bader, Verhandlungen (II. Kammer), 16 December 1831, 35. Protokollheft, 20 and 22; cf., the related remarks by Itzstein, Merk, Welcker, Mittermaier, and Rotteck, 15–24 and 60–61.

5. Strobel, Ferdinand, Der Katholizismus und die liberalen Strömungen in Baden. Teildruck: Der Kampf mit dem kirchlichen Liberalismus (Speyer, 1938), 87.Google Scholar

6. See [Strehle, Adolf], Die gemischten Ehen in der Erzdiözese Freiburg (Regensburg, 1846), 38 and 71;Google ScholarDer Streit über gemischte Ehen und das Kirchenhoheitsrecht im Grossherzogthum Baden (Karlsruhe, 1847), 80–81Google Scholar; Catholic Church Section (Ministry of the Interior) to the Archbishop of Freiburg, Ignaz Demeter, 16 November 1838, Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe 233/32303; and Archbishop Ignaz Demeter, “Bemerkungen des Erzbischofs von Freiburg” (30 January 1839), Erzbischöfliches Archiv Freiburg, Nachlass Demeter, Nb 2–8.

7. Die Musterehe und die Nothwendigkeit einer Wiederherstellung der Ehe nach der Musterehe (Freiburg i. B., 1850), 17.Google Scholar

8. Hirscher, Johann Baptist, Die Christliche Moral als Lehre von der Verwirklichung des göttlichen Reiches in der Menschheit (Tübingen, 1851) 5th ed., vol. 3, 513 and 516.Google Scholar Further important texts from the conservatives' campaign against mixed marriages include: Ludwig Buchegger, “Gutachten über die gemischten Ehen im Grossherzogthum Baden” (29 January 1839), Erzbischöfliches Archiv Freiburg B2–18/25; [Strehle], Die gemischten Ehen; Buss, Franz Josef, “Aufgabe der Zeitschrift,” Capistran. Zeitschrift für die Rechte und Interessen des katholischen Teutschlands 1, no. 1 (1847);Google Scholar‘Rosshirt, Franz’, Beleuchtung und actenmässige Ergänzung der Karlsruher Schrift: “Der Streit über gemischte Ehen und das Kirchenhoheitsrecht im Grossherzogthum Baden” (Schaffhausen, 1847);Google Scholar excerpts of Hirscher's, Christliche Moral reprinted in the Süddeutsche Zeitung für Kirche und Staat (Freiburg) (SZKS) 12 01 1846, 25;Google Scholar and the Süddeutsche's own essays, 29 November 1846, 1077 and 2 December 1846, 1085.

9. See Schieder, Wolfgang, “Kirche und Revolution: Sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte der Trierer Wallfahrt von 1844,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 14 (1974);Google ScholarLill's, Rudolf critique of Schieder, “Kirche und Revolution: Zu den Anfängen der katholischen Bewegung im Jahrzehnt vor 1848,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 18 (1978);Google Scholar and Paletschek, Sylvia, Frauen und Dissens (Göttingen, 1990), 19–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. The best and most up-to-date general history of the dissenting movement can be found in Paletschek, Frauen. Also valuable are Prelinger, Catherine M., Charity, Challenge and Change: Religious Dimensions of the Mid-Nineteeth-Century Women's Movement in Germany (New York, 1987);Google ScholarGraf, Friedrich Wilhelm, Die Politisierung des religiösen Bewusstseins. Die bürgerlichen Religionsparteien im deutschen Vormärz: Das Beispiel des Deutshkatholizismus (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1978);Google Scholar and (on the Protestant dissenters) Brederlow, Jörn, “Lichtfreunde” und “Freie Gemeinden”: Religiöser Protest und Freiheitsbewegung im Vormärz und in der Revolution von 1848/49 (Munich, 1976).Google Scholar

11. Congregations were established in Mannheim and Heidelberg (these two were the largest), Pforzheim, Durlach, Constance, Stockach, Waldshut, Hüfingen, Bondorf, and Neukirch. On the Mannheim congregation, see Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe 213/3597; Mannheimer Abenszeitung, 3 June 1846, 590; and 5 January 1847, 15; as well as Rechnungs-Vorlage nebst Rechenschafts-Berichte, Budgets, Vorstandswahl 1846/59–60 in the archive of the Freireligiöse Gemeinde Mannheim. On the Heidelberg congregation, see Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe 213/3597 and 356/566. On the other congregation, see Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe 231/1436; 233/32307; 359/1906/20/1163; and 379/1934/2/147: as well as Mannheimer Abendzeitung, 24 October 1845, 1253; and Verhandlungen (II. Kammer), 3 October 1848, 8. Protokollheft, 7.

12. Oberrheinische Zeitung (Freiburg), 5 July 1846. On Badenese mixed couples' particular attraction to dissent see Katholische Kirchenereform (Berlin) (October 1845): 94; and (December 1845): 189; Mannheimer Abendzeitung, 25 November 1845, 1375; and the Mannheim and Heidelberg congregation membership lists in Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe 362/1342 and 356/566.

13. Katholische Kirchenreform (June 1845): 165: and Kirchliche Reform (Halle) (October 1846): 1. The fullest articulation of these views in Baden came from dissenting preacher Friedrich Albrecht. See esp. his “Ueber die Ehe,” Predigten, Aufsätze, Mittheiltungen no. 5 (Ulm, 1846), 8Google Scholar; and Albrecht, Friedrich, “Erbsünde,” in Religion. Eine Sammlung von Predigt-Vorträgen im Geiste des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts vol. 1 (Ulm, 1857), 290 and 292.Google Scholar

14. The Grand Duke's decree of 20 April 1846 formally denying dissenters the political rights they had previously held is reprinted in Verhandlungen (II. Kammer) 26 June 1846, 7. Beilagenheft, 129–31. Already in 1845, however, as liberal delegate Karl Zittel noted the Badenese government “partially disputed [the dissenter'] state-citizen rights,” while “all civil servants are kept in a state of uncertaintly about whether or not they will lose their position if they follow their conviction and join the new church”. See Karl Zittel, “Begründung der Motion des Abgeordneten Zittel, auf Gestattung einer Religionsfreiheit, wie sie der gegenwärtige religiöse Bildungsstand und das wohlverstandene Interesse des Staates und der Kirche selbest unabweislich fordern,” Verhandlungen (II. Kammer), 15 December 1845, 6. Beilagenheft, 35.

15. Zittel's motion is in Verhandlungen (II. Kammer), 15 December 1845, 6. Beilangenheft, 33–45: the other liberals' remarks are in Verhandlungen (II. Kammer) 15 December 1845, 1. Protokollheft, 136–49.

16. Aside from the ones by Buss and Stolz to be quoted below, typical examples of tracts attacking Zittel's motion include Stern, Wilhelm, Antrag auf Glaubensfreiheit (Karlsruhe, 1846);Google ScholarMone, Franz Josef, Beleuchtung der Zittelschen Motion über Religionsfreiheit (Bonn, 1846);Google ScholarCapstorph, Ludwig, Sendschreiben als unterthänigste Petition an die Allerhöchste Badische Staatsregierungund Hohe Badische Ständekammer hervorgerufen durch die Motion des Herrn Abgeordneten Zittel (Banden-Baden, 1846);Google Scholar and Hirscher, Johann Baptist, Beleuchtung der Motion des Abgeordneten Zittel (Freiburg i. B., 1846).Google Scholar See also Staudenmaier, Franz Anton, Das Wesen der katholischen Kirche. Mit Rücksicht auf ihre Gegner dargestellt (Freiburg i. B., 1845), esp. 177–93.Google Scholar

17. For example, see Stolz, Alban, Mixtur gegen Todesangst, zusammengesetzt von einem badischen Jesuiten: Kalender für Zeit und Ewigkeit 1843 (Villingen, 1842), the first of eighteen such almanacs.Google ScholarDorneich, Julius, Franz Josef Buss und die katholische Bewegung in Baden (Freiburg, 1979)Google Scholar provides both the best overview of Bus's life and a useful discussion of the high cirtculation and impact of Stolz's almanac (127–29).

18. Buss, Franz Joseph, Das Rongethum in der badischen Abgeordnetenkammer (Freiburg i. B., 1846), 75, 63, 21, 70 and 90.Google Scholar

19. Stolz, Alban, “Landwehr gegen den badischen Landstand” (1845), reprinted in Alban Stolz, Gesammelte Werke 3rd ed., vol. 8 (Freiburg i. B., 1913/1914), 7–14.Google Scholar The information about the public readings comes from editor Julius Mayer's introduction (vii) and his editorial footnote (14).

20. Ibid., 9.

21. Stolz's self-conscious engagement with the lack of reading skills and the tradition-bound rural ways of much of his audience is evident, for example, in Stolz, Alban, “Amulett gegen die jungkatholische Sucht” (1845)Google Scholar, and Alban Stolz, “Der neue Kometstern mitseinem Schweif, oder Johannes Ronge and seine Briefträger” (1846), both reprinted in Gesammelte, 19 and 58.

22. Stolz, “Amulett,” 43, 30 and 32–33.

23. Stolz, “Kometstern,” 56–58.

24. For a fuller discussion of dissenters' paradoxical views on gender and sexuality, see Herzog, Dagmar, “Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Politics of the Private Sphere: Rethinking the Roots of German Feminism,”Google Scholar paper presented at the conference on Gender and Gender Relations in German History, Lancaster, England, 25 March 1994.

25. The full quote makes Buss's meaning unmistakable. Buss was criticizing the way “ubiquitous Judaism… with its lust for emancipation” was supporting “the storms of the Catholic and Protestant flesh-cravers [i.e. the dissenters] against Christian orthodoxy”: “It is well-known that Young Israel edits most of the German newspapers, and that it does so with the evershifting agility so peculiar to that little Oriental people… [In those newspapers] the [Christain simpletons] are undessed in any possible, and when then the species human being stands there, naked and plucked, like the cock… then they say: are you not like we are we not like you [?] Give us emancipation in the de-Christianized state!” See Buss, , “Aufgabe”, Capistran 1, no. 1 (1847): 15–16.Google Scholar The essay was written in December 1846: its main goal was to summarize all the different ways the Catholic church in Baden was being harmed.

26. Only thirty-one petitions had been sent in support of the religious freedom motion. See Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe 231/1436.

27. Becker, Josef, Liberaler Staat und Kirche in der Ära von Reichsgründung und Kulturkampf (Mainz, 1973), 21;Google ScholarKluxen, Kurt, “Religion und Nationalstaat im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Schoeps, Julius H., ed., Religion und Zeitgeist im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart and Bonn, 1982), 41.Google Scholar

28. There were confessional tensions within the conservative camp which hampered campaigning—traditional Protestant government loyalists, for example, were quite uncomfortable making common cause with upstart ultramontane Catholics; meanwhile, the emerging tension between radical and moderate liberals was temporarily put aside in the interests of combatting the religious Right. Furthermore, as liberals later analyzed it, it is also likely that, although rural Catholics would mobilize to defend their faith and economic interests in a petition campaign, they saw their political interests best guaranteed by liberals who were not trained—as conservatives were—by association with the local government administrators they often detested. Conservative observers, by contrast, called attention to the peculiarities of Baden's indirect voting system, which favored the persistence of a “politics of notables” in which well-known individuals routinely got voted into public office regardless of their ideological affiliation. For contemporaries' contrasting views, see Zittel, Karl, “Die politischen Partheiungen in Baden,”Jahrbücher der Gegenwart (1847): 352–53 and 358–61Google Scholar; and SZKS, 9 April 1846, 292; 15 April 1846, 308; and 24 June 1846, 542–43. Also cf., Deuchert, Norbert, Vom Hambacher Fest Zur badischen Revolution: Politicshe Presse und Anfänge deutscher Demokratie 1832–1848/49 (Stuttgart, 1983), 201;Google Scholar and Hörner, Manfred, Die Wahlen zur badischen zweiten Kammer im Vormärz (1819–1847) (Göttingen, 1987), 454–68.Google Scholar

29. In the most recent debate on the subject, for example, in Feburay 1845, one antiemancipationist had summarized the delegates' choices this they way: “The giving-up of [Jewish] nationality is either the prerequisite or the result of so-called emancipation… We and all diet decisions since 1831 demand certain concessions, the clearing-away of the obstacles inhibiting equalization, we attach to emancipation conditions that must be fulfilled beforehand, but the petitioners and their Christian friends say: Emancipate us first, and then the fulfillment of your demands will come of its own accord; for the is the for this is the necessary effect of emancipation.” Fauth, Verhandlungen (II. Kammer) 19 February 1845, 13. Beilagenheft, 362. In August 1846, the operative question had changed entirely. As a pro-emanicpationist put it in 1846: “Choose one or the other of the two opposing posibilities, either take a stand for emancipation or against it. In both cases, what is at stake is the principle of religious freedom, and here everyone is consistent if he says, I demand sameness [Gleichheit] of religion in a state, or if he says, in relation to the state it is not necessary for all members to have the same religion…if one starts from the principle [that the religion of the individual should be irrelevant to the state], then one can with respect to the Jews no longer be in doubt even for a moment, that one must also declare them to have equal rights in relation to the state.” Christ, Verhandlungen (II. Kammer), 21 August 1846, 9. Protokollheft, 47–48.

30. Hecker, Verhandlungen (II. Kammer), 13 August 1846, 8. Protokollheft, 106.

31. Mannheimer Morgenblatt, 14 April 1847, 491.

32. See esp. the remarks of Bassermann, Soiron, and Kapp, in Verhandlungen (II. Kammer), 21 A 1846, 9. Protokollheft, 61–62 and 67; and Brentano's remarks in Verhandlungen (II. Kammer), 7 August 1846, 7. Beilagenheft, 342 (Brentano's report of August 7 served as the basis for the August 21 discussion).

33. A number of previous opponents of equal rights for Baden's Jewish community indicated clearly that—although they retained deep ambivalence about Jews and about some aspects of emancipation—the changed context was leading them to support emancipation for the first time; other longstanding anti-emancipationists simply voted queitly for emancipation, without making any speech at all. Furthermore—according to Die Reform des Judenthums in Mannhein—of the delegates missing on the day of the vote, “five as well as the president of the chamber had already earlier expressed their support for [Jewish] equalization; thus, forty-two members, i.e. exactly two-thirds of the chamber, have voted for emancipation, surely a happy outcome.” (26 August 1846): 176.

34. SZKS, 13 January 1847, 53; and 22 August 1847, 941.

35. SZKS, 22 August 1847, 942.

36. SZKS, 26 May 1848, 495.

37. For example, see SZKS, 12 March 1848, 237–38; 26 May 1848, 495; 27 June 1848, 593; and 27 August 1848, 800.

38. On the incidents in 1846, see Hundsnurscher, Franz and Taddey, Gerhard, Die jüdischen Gemeinden in Baden. Denkmale, Geschichte, Schicksale (Stuttgart, 1968), 16;Google Scholar and Lewin, Adolf, Geschichte der badischen Juden seit der Regierung Karl Friedrichs (1738–1909) (Karlsruhe, 1909), 277.Google Scholar On the incidents in 1848, see Riff, Michael Anthony, “The Anti-Jewish Aspect of the Revolutionary Unrest of 1848 in Baden and its Impact on Emancipation”, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 21 (1976): 27–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39. SZKS, 13 September 1846, 815; and 16 September 1846, 822.

40. SZKS, 26 May 1848, 495; cf. 11 March 1848, 233; and 15 March 1848, 245.

41. Badenese liberals' newfound dedication of Jewish emancipation was longlasting, as were the reasons for it. Liberals and fundamentally reconceived their attitudes about Christianity in light of the rise of religious orthodoxy in the pre-revolutionary period; the further successes of orthodoxy in the years after 1849 solidified their commitment. Already in 1849, liberals had succeeded in making the Frankfurt Parliament's Basic Rights part of Badenese law as well. Thereby, they established the concept that political rights should be independent of religious affiliation, and ensured that Jews at least had political equality in the narrow sense. In the years that followed, a number of Jews in Baden did enter political office at various levels. But Badenese Jews were not granted the right to move from one community to another without permission from the new community until the onset of the “liberal era” in Baden in the 1860s, when it was instituted as part of a comprehensive effort to secularize the state. The classic cumulative statement of liberals' transformed attitude toward Jewish emancipation was made by the liberal Lower Chamber delegate Ludwig Häusser in 1862, speaking on behalf of the Chamber's liberal majority. Although occasionally placing the need for full Jewish emancipation in the context of liberals' (quite recently-acquired) attachment to the principles of freedom of trade and free movement more generally, Häusser's statement continually returned to the need to combat religious exclusivism and intolerance, and to develop a humane and secular polity in which religious differences were honored and freedom of religious association guaranteed. See Ludwig Häusser, “Bericht der Commission über den Gesetzentwurf über die bürgerliche Gleichstellung der Juden,” in Verhandlungen (II. Kammer) 23 April 1862, 6. Beilagenheft, 125–40, esp. 128–30, 133, and 135–7. Similar motivations were expressed by liberal Minister of Interior, August Lamey, when he presented the draft of the new law to the diet, in Verhandlungen (II. Kammer) 20 January 1862 4. Beilagenheft, 244. The dedication of liberals to securing emancipation in 1862 was enhanced by an anti-emancipation petition campaign which they suspected had been instigated by conservative Catholics, and which they rightly understood as an assault on liberal programs more generally. See Rürup, Reinhard, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus: Studien zur “Judenfrage” der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Göttingen, 1975), 71 and 165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar True to form, Alban Stolz a few years later (when liberals instituted compulsory civil marriage) articulated the connections that conservatives perceived among the various liberal innovations with inimitable and brutal clarity. He declared the Jewish-Christian marriages made possible by civil marriage to be “nought but fornication.” He went on to compare compulsory civil marriage to a requirement that all Christian boys henceforth be circumcised. And he lamented how, since 1862, Jews had been allowed triumphantly, “with banners waving,” to enter all towns which once possessed the “precious freedom” of “Jewlessness [Judenlosigkeit].” See Stolz, Alban, “Der Wechselbalg, womit Baden und Österreich aufgeholfen werden soll” (1868), in Gesammelte, 535, 540, and 543.Google Scholar