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The Shaping of Political Catholicism in the Ruhr Basin, 1848–1881

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Jonathan Sperber
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Extract

Consideration of political life in modern Germany has often centered on two main issues: classically, the vicissitudes of the national state; more recently, the impact of the creation of an industrial society on existing structures of power and on the position of ruling elites. Without denying the centrality of these questions, an exclusive focus on them can obscure the importance of other factors in German political development, both in their own right, and in the way they mediated the experience of state-building and industrialization to different sections of the population. Two such relevant factors are regionalism and confessional identity.

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Articles
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Central European History , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , December 1983 , pp. 347 - 367
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Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1983

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References

An earlier version of this paper was read at the 1981 meeting of the American Historical Association. I would like to thank Jeffry Diefendorf, Steve Hochstadt, and Elizabeth Tobin for their comments and criticism.

1. On political regionalism in modern Germany, see Gollwitzer, Heinz, “Die politische Landschaft in der deutschen Geschichte des 19./20. Jahrhunderts,” Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 27 (1964): 523–52Google Scholar. Perhaps not surprisingly, regional history has been practiced in a most sophisticated and scholarly way in Bavaria, some recent examples being Dietrich Thränhardt, Wahlen und politische Strukturen in Bayern (Düsseldorf, 1973)Google Scholar; Unger, Ilse, Die Bayernpartei: Geschichte und Struktur 1945–1957 (Stuttgart, 1979)Google Scholar; Blessing, Werner, Staat und Kirche in der Gesellschaft: Institutionelle Autorität und mentaler Wandel in Bayern während des 19. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Broszat, Martin, Fröhlich, Elke, Mehringer, Hartmut, and Wiesemann, Falk, eds., Bayern in der NS-Zeit, 6 vols. (Munich, 1977–1983)Google Scholar. Outside of Bavaria, the volume of essays on the Konstanz region, Zang, Gert, ed., Provinzialisierung einer Region: Regionale Unterentwicklung und liberale Politik in der Stadt und in Kreis Konstanz im 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1978)Google Scholar provides a stimulating, if not always totally convincing, approach to regional history.

2. This can be seen in the studies of Rhenish electoral sociology carried out by the students of the late Bonn historian Max Braubach. Much of their work has remained unpublished and is conveniently summarized by Müller, Klaus, “Das Rheinland als Gegenstand der historischen Wahlsoziologie,” Annalen des Historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein 167 (1965): 124–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An historical approach towards the political implications of confessional identity is suggested by Rohe, Karl, “Wahlanalysen im historischen Kontext: Zu Kontinuität und Wandeln von Wahlverhalten,” Historische Zeitschrift 234 (1982): 337–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Wilhelm Brepohl's work provides a classic account of the creation of the Ruhr basin as a region: Der Aufbau des Ruhrvolkes im Zuge der Ost-West Wanderung (Recklinghausen, 1948)Google Scholar and Industrievolk im Wandel von der agraren zur industriellen Daseinsform dargestellt am Ruhrgebiet (Tübingen, 1957).Google Scholar

4. On the pre-industrial setting of political Catholicism in southern Germany, see Möckl, Karl, Die Prinzregentenzeit: Gesellschaft und Politik während der Ära des Prinzregenten Luitpold in Bayern (Munich, 1972)Google Scholar and especially David Blackbourn, Class, Religion and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany: The Center Party in Württemberg before 1914 (New Haven and London, 1980).Google Scholar

5. Repgen, Konrad, Märzbewegung und Maiwahlen des Revolutionsjahres 1848 im Rheinland (Bonn, 1955) pp. 296–97Google Scholar and passim; Schulte, Wilhelm, Volk und Staat; Westfalen im Vormärz und in der Revolution von 1848/49 (Münster, 1952) pp. 182—211, 218–30, 243–47, 290 and passimGoogle Scholar; Pülke, Engelbert, “Geschichte der politischen Parteien im Kreise Recklinghausen 1848–1889,” Vestische Zeitschrift 41 (1934): 3–163, esp. pp. 35–72.Google Scholar

6. The history of political life in the Ruhr basin between 1850 and 1866 remains to be written, but some indications can be found in Eisfeld, Gerhard, “Die Anfänge der liberalen Parteien in Dortmund 1858–1870,” Beiträge zur Geschichte Dortmunds und der Grafschaft Mark 65 (1969): 79–86Google Scholar; Moellers, Paul, “Die politischen Strömungen im Reichstagswahlkreis Essen zur Zeit der Reichsgründung und des Kulturkampfes (1867–1878)” (Diss., Bonn, 1954) pp. 1ffGoogle Scholar; Mähler, Ursula, “Die ‘Rhein- und Ruhrzeitung’ und ihre Vorläufer zur deutschen Frage: Aus den Anfängen der politischen Meinungsbildung im Ruhrgebiet,” Duisburger Forschungen 8 (1965): 148–214Google Scholar and from archival material in Staatsarchiv Münster [STAM] Oberpräsidium [OP] Nr. 501, Regierung Arnsberg [RAR] I Pr. Nr. 90 and I Nr. 102; Hauptstaatsarchiv Düsseldorf [HSTAD] Regierung Düsseldorf [RD] Pr. Nr. 564–65 and Pr. Nr. 866. On political Catholicism in the area, see HSTAD RD Pr. Nr. 565 Bl. 36–37, 45; STAM RAR I Pr. Nr. 90 Bl. 29; 1863 reports on the press in Bochum in STAM OP Nr. 97; Sonntagsblatt für katholische Christen (Münster) 14 (1855): 681–82Google Scholar; Kölnische Zeitung (Dortmund correspondent) Nov. 28, 1861. More generally, on political Catholicism in Rhineland-Westphalia at this time, see Sperber, JonathanPopular Catholicism in Nineteenth Century Germany: Society, Religion, and Politics in Rhineland-Westphalia, 1830–1880 (Princeton, 1984) chap. 3.Google Scholar

7. Tenfelde, Klaus, Sozialgeschichte der Bergarbeiterschaft an der Ruhr im 19. Jahrhundert (Bonn-Bad Godesberg, 1977) pp. 46–48, 191–203Google Scholar; Brepohl, , Aufbau, pp. 72–73Google Scholar; Degen, Kurt, “Die Herkunft der Arbeiter in den Industrien Rheinland-Westfalens bis zur Gründerzeit” (Diss., Bonn, 1916)Google Scholar; Obermann, Karl, “Die Arbeiteremigration in Deutschland im Prozess der Industrialisierung und der Entstehung der Arbeiterklasse in der Zeit von der Gründung bis zur Auflösung des Deutschen Bundes (1815 bis 1867),” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte, pt. 1, 1972: 135–89, esp. pp. 164ffGoogle Scholar;Hochstadt, Steve, “Migration and Industrialization in Germany, 1815–1977,” Social Science History 5 (1981): 448–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jackson, James Jr., “Migration in Duisburg 1867–1890: Occupational and Familial Contexts,” Journal of Urban History 8 (1982): 235–70, esp. pp. 248–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. This is not the whole explanation. Protestants in Rhenish and Westphalian rural areas were more likely to emigrate overseas than to move to German cities, not a direct consequence of confessional differences but a result of the presence of rural proto-industry. See Kamphoefher, Walter, “Transplanted Westphalians: Persistence and Transformation of Socioeconomic and Cultural Patterns in the Northwest German Migration to Missouri” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Missouri, 1978).Google Scholar

9. To cite some contemporary observers' opinions of the relationship between class and confession: Father Wiemann (Dortmund) to Bishop of Paderborn, June 10, 1853, Archiv des General-Vikariats Paderborn [AGVP] XVI, 12; Vicar Petri (Lütgendortmund) to General-Vicariat Paderborn, Mar. 20, 1866, AGVP XIV, 2; the remarks of the Landrat of Kreis Duisburg in 1870, cited in Hunly, J., “The Working Classes, Religion and Social Democracy in the Düsseldorf Area 1867–1878,” Societas 4 (1974): 131–49, p. 145 n. 47Google Scholar. Among the modern historians' judgments of this, Tenfelde, , Bergarbeiterschaft, p. 247Google Scholar; Adelmann, Gerhard, “Führende Unternehmer im Rheinland und in Westfalen 1850–1914,” Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 35 (1971): 335–52Google Scholar; Zunkel, Friedrich, Der rheinisch-westfälische Unternehmer 1815–1879 (Cologne and Opladen, 1962) pp. 29–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and especially the works of Helmuth Croon, “Die Stadtvertretung in Krefeld und Bochum im 19. Jahrhundert,” Forschungen zum Staat und Verfassung: Festschrift für Fritz Härtung, ed. Dietrich, Richard and Oestrich, Gerhard (Berlin, 1958) pp. 389–96Google Scholar and Die gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen des Gemeindewahlrechts der Rheinlande und Westfalen im 19. Jahrhundert (Cologne and Opladen, 1960)Google Scholar. On Catholics and the Bochum building trades, Kraus, Antje, “Gemeindeleben und Industrialisierung: Das Beispiel des evangelischen Kirchenkreises Bochum,” Fabrik, Familie, Feierabend: Beiträge zur Sozialgeschichte des Alltags im Industriezeitalter, ed. Reulecke, Jürgen and Weber, Wolfhard (Wuppertal, 1978), pp. 273–95 on p. 279Google Scholar. An example of Ruhr basin Catholic notables was the Wiese family of Werden. In 1823 the merchant Mathias Wiese rescued the artisans' mutual benefit society from bankruptcy (Landesarchiv Koblenz [LAK] 403 Nr. 7281 Bl. 379–449); the textile manufacturer Mathias Wiese, possibly a nephew or grandson of his namesake, was a leading figure in the Catholic politics of the western Ruhr basin from the 1860s through the 1890s.

10. Tenfelde, , Bergarbeiterschaft, pp. 63–181, 161–282, 361–96 and passim.Google Scholar

11. Sperber, , Popular Catholicism, chap. 2.Google Scholar

12. Father Denso (Coeurl) to Bishop of Paderborn, July 19, 1858, AGVP XVI, 14.

13. Sperber, Jonathan, “The Transformation of Catholic Associations in the Northern Rhineland and Westphalia 1830–1870,” Journal of Social History 15 (1981): 253–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Tenfelde, , Bergarbeiterschaft, pp. 363–93.Google Scholar

15. Gatz, Erwin, “Kaplan Josef Istas und der Aachener Karitaskreis,” Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 36 (1972): 205–28, esp. pp. 207–8Google Scholar. Similarly, but in greater detail, Klöcker, Michael, “Der soziale Katholizismus im vormärzlichen Rheinpreussen: Eine Analyse der neuen Wege,” in Christliches Engagement in Gesellschaft und Politik: Beiträge der Kirchen zur Theorie und Praxis ihres Sozialauftrages im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert in Deutschland, ed. Koch, Lothar and Stanzel, Josef G. (Frankfurt, Bern, and Circencester, 1979) pp. 83–109Google Scholar. The new ways Klöcker describes were new forms of charitable organization.

16. See, for instance, Father Memer (Menden) to General-Vicariat Paderborn, Feb. 28, 1860; Dean Fleischmann (Huckerde) to General-Vicariat Paderborn, Apr. 28, 1863; Vicar Petri (Lütgendortmund) to General-Vicariat Paderborn, Mar. 20, 1866, AGVP XIV, 2. The Catholic clergy of Niederweniger (a miners' village near Bochum) called on the authorities to prohibit popular festive practices such as the traditional West phalian Gebehochzeit or the overly secular celebration of the feast of the village's patron saint, but also founded a St. Anthony's Miners' Association, with statutes requiring strict religious and moral behavior for membership, which grew to encompass virtually every adult male in the village. Fathers Strick, Cremer, and Schaefermeyer to RAR, Aug. 11, 1856, STAM RAR I Pa Nr. 412 and the report on the St. Anthony's Knappenverein in Niederweniger, 1874, in STAM RAR I Nr. 101.

17. There was another element besides conservatives and radicals on the political scene: the newly organized “national” (i.e., pro-Bismarckian) liberals—a group, however, which enjoyed no Catholic support at all. In general, on politics in Rhineland-Westphalia in 1866–67, see Sperber, , Popular Catholicism, chap. 4Google Scholar.

18. On the Essen constituency, Moellers, , “Reichstagswahlkreis Essen,” pp. 58–69Google Scholar. The lack of any discussion of cooperation or conflict between Catholic Church and state in the Dortmund constituency in STAM RAR I Nr. 1419, a dossier otherwise bristling with such accounts, suggests that neither a formal alliance nor open hostility appeared there.

19. HSTAD RD Pr. Nr. 1233 Bl. 18–21; STAM RAR I Nr. 101; HSTAD RD Pr. Nr. 866 Bl. 51–93; Hohmann, Friedrich Gerhard, “Die Versammlung der Katholiken Rheinlands und Westfalens in Dortmund 1867,” in Paderbornensis Ecclesia: Beiträge zur Geschichte des Erzbistums Paderborn: Festschrift für Lorenz Kardinal Jaeger zum 80. Geburtstag am 23. September 1972, ed. Scheele, Werner (Munich, Paderborn, and Vienna, 1972) pp. 495–514, esp. p. 509.Google Scholar

20. Hohmann, , “Versammlung,” passim; Moellers, “Reichstagswahlkreis Essen,” pp. 161–62Google Scholar; Tenfelde, Klaus, “Mining Festivals in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Contemporary History 12 (1978): 378–412, esp. pp. 400–1Google Scholar; Sperber, , Popular Catholicism, chap. 4; STAM OP Nr. 1601 I Bl. 41Google Scholar.

21. HSTAD RD Pr. Nr. 577 Bl. 143; cf. Moellers, , “Reichstagswahlkreis Essen,” pp. 79–80Google Scholar and HSTAD RD Pr. Nr. 566 Bl. 137a. On the socialist movement in the Ruhr basin during the late 1860s, see Hemer, Hans-Otto, “Die Bergarbeiterbewegung im Ruhrgebiet unter dem Sozialistengesetz,” in Reulecke, Jürgen, ed., Arbeiterbewegung am Rhein und Ruhr (Wuppertal, 1974) pp. 81–109, esp. pp. 90–92Google Scholar; Moellers, Paul, “Die Essener Arbeiterbewegung in ihren Anfängen,” Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 25 (1960): 42–65Google Scholar; Tenfelde, , Bergarbeiterschaft, pp. 437–64.Google Scholar

22. Tenfelde, , Bergarbeiterschaft, p. 468Google Scholar; Zurstraessen, H. J. S.J. (Essen) to Melchers, Archbishop of Cologne, 12 22, 1870 and 02 15, 1871Google Scholar; Pf. Hohe, (Steele) to Melchers, Archbishop, Jan. 14 and Jan. 26, 1871Google Scholar; Lenterborn, Rektor (Dilldorf) to Melchers, , June 18, 1871Google Scholar; Historisches Archiv des Erzbistums Köln Gen. XXIII 4 I; Germania (Essen correspondent) Dec. 4, 1872.

23. On the two wings of the movement, see the careful study of Lepper, Herbert, “Kaplan Franz Eduard Cronenberg und die christlichsoziale Bewegung in Aachen 1868–78,” Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsvereins 79 (1968): 57–143, esp. pp. 64–67Google Scholar. The beginnings of tensions between the two wings in Essen can be seen in the letters of Father Zurstraessen cited in the previous note and in HSTAD RD Pr. Nr. 1233 Bl. 118–21.

24. On the development of national and parliamentary Catholic politics in this period, see Bachem, Karl, Vorgeschichte, Geschichte und Politik der Zentrumspartei, 2d (reprint) ed., 9 vols. (Aalen, 1967) 3: 29–132Google Scholar; Anderson, Margaret Lavinia, Windthorst: A Political Biography (Oxford, 1981) pp. 121–29Google Scholar; Lill, Rudolf, “Die deutschen Katholiken und Bismarcks Reichsgründung,” in Reichsgründung 1870/71, ed. Schieder, Theodor and Deuerlein, Ernst (Stuttgart, 1970) pp. 345–65Google Scholar; Hohmann, Friedrich, “Die Soester Konferenzen 1864–1866: Zur Vorgeschichte der Zentrumspartei in Westfalen,” Westfälische Zeitschrift 114 (1967): 293–342Google Scholar. The account of Windell, George, The Catholics and German Unity 1866—1871 (Minneapolis, 1954)Google Scholar is not always entirely reliable about events in Rhineland-Westphalia.

25. Moellers, , “Reichstagswahlkreis Essen,” pp. 167ff.Google Scholar; election returns in STAM OP Nr. 501. Cf. STAM RAR I Pr. Nr. 90 Bl. 393 and HSTAD RD Pr. Nr. 566 Bl. 135–37. On the political contrast, Protestant-liberal versus Catholic-Center, first apparent in the 1870 elections, see Graf, Hans, Die Entwicklung der Wahlen und politischen Parteien in Gross-Dortmund (Hanover and Frankfurt, 1958)Google Scholar and Rohe, Karl, “Vom alten Revier zum heutigen Ruhrgebiet: Die Entwicklung einer regionalen politischen Gesellschaft im Spiegel der Wahlen,” in Rohe, Karl and Kühr, Herbert, ed., Politik und Gesellschaft im Ruhrgebiet: Beiträge zur regionalen Politikforschung (Königstein, 1979) pp. 21–73.Google Scholar

26. 1871 election returns in Statistik des Deutschen Reiches, o.s. 14 (1875, pt. 5): 23–31.

27. It was not possible to include the city of Dortmund itself in the calculations, since the city was divided into a series of different (and incompatible) precincts in the two elections and the confessional composition of these precincts is unknown.

28. The best overall study of the Kulturkampf remains the older work of Kissling, Johannes, Geschichte des Kulturkampfes im Deutschen Reich 3 vols. (Freiburg i. Br., 1911–1916)Google Scholar. On events in Rhineland-Westphalia, see Sperber, , Popular Catholicism, chap. 5Google Scholar. The course of the Kulturkampf in the Ruhr basin can be followed through Schulte, Eduard, “Vom Kulturkampf im Ruhrrevier 1871–1886,” Der Münster am Hellweg 20 (1967): 79–90Google Scholar; Brand, Margaret, “Eine Steeler Glockenschrift im Jahre 1874,” Der Münster am Hellweg 19 (1966): 16–23Google Scholar; Moellers, , “Reichstagswahlkreis Essen,” pp. 235ff.Google Scholar; Tenfelde, , Bergarbeiterschaft, pp. 493–97Google Scholar and archival material in HSTAD RD Nr. 1257, HSTAD RD Pr. Nr. 835 I Bl. 46–53; STAM OP Nr. 1601 I-IV, STAM RAR IIE Nr. 354–55, IIC Nr. 4, I Pr. Nr. 91.

29. HSTAD RD Nr. 1257 Bl. 75–89, 95–98, 139–44 and passim.

30. Expansion of the mining industry during the 1870s undermined the ground under some villages and caused them literally to sink. Tenfelde, , Bergarbeiterschaft, pp. 217–18.Google Scholar

31. Sperber, , Popular Catholicism, chap. 5Google Scholar. The Old Catholics were also connected with political liberalism, as the dominant figure in the Bochum Old Catholic congregation, the lawyer Heinrich Schultz, had been the leader of the Progressive Party in the town during the 1860s.

32. On efforts by big business to use its economic power to destroy Catholic workers' loyalties to the church and the Center Party, see Moellers, Paul, “Das ‘Essener Volksblatt’ als Organ des Deutschen Vereins im Kulturkampf 1875–76,” Beiträge zur Geschichte von Stadt und Stift Essen 70 (1955): 95–106Google Scholar; Tenfelde, , Bergarbeiterschaft, p. 491Google Scholar; Germania Nov. 12, 1873, Jan 1 and Sept. 29, 1875; STAM LA Kr. Dortmund Nr. 188 Bl. 29.

33. On the mobilization of Catholic and Protestant voters along confessional lines, STAM LA Kr. Dortmund Nr. 183 Bl. 237–39; Germania (Witten correspondent) Jan. 12, 1874. Sometimes it was possible for Catholics and Protestants to cooperate against big business in local elections. Crew, David, Town in the Ruhr: A Social History of Bochum 1860–1914 (New York, 1979) pp. 128–29.Google Scholar

34. HSTAD RD Nr. 1257 Bl. 95–98, 145–46. A similar example from a later period in Crew, , Bochum, pp. 129ff.Google Scholar

35. HSTAD RD Pr. Nr. 1233 Bl. 118–21.

36. This follows the excellent account of Tenfelde, , Bergarbeiterschaft, pp. 464–545Google Scholar. In 1881, the bourgeois Catholic daily, the Essener Volkszeitung, had a circulation of 16,400 as compared to only 2,600 for the Christian-Social Rheinisch-Westfälischer Volksfreund. LAK 403 Nr. 7155 Bl. 696–97.

37. Tenfelde, , Bergarbeiterschaft, pp. 534, 565–66.Google Scholar

38. On the gradual dissolution of this politicized Catholic milieu after 1945, see Rohe, “Vom alten Revier zum heutigen Ruhrgebiet.”