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The limits of secularization: on the problem of the catholic revival in nineteenth-century Germany*

Part of: Historiographical Reviews

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Margaret Lavinia Anderson
Margaret Lavinia Anderson
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University of California at Berkeley
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Historiographical Review
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The Historical Journal , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , September 1995 , pp. 647 - 670
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 ‘Ranke's history of the popes’, written in October 1840, in Critical and historical essays, Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay (New York, 1965), pp. 275–314Google Scholar, quotes on pp. 300, 312, 313. The German title of Ranke's work was Die Römischen Päpste (3 vols., 1834–9).

2 Fyodor, Dostoyevsky, The brothers Karamazov, trans, by David, McDuff (London, 1993), pp. 288–9, 295Google Scholar. Italics in original. Brothers was written in 1878 and published in 1880.

3 F[riedrich], Naumann, ‘Das Zentrum’, Die Hilfe, XIII, 8 (24 02. 1907), 114–15.Google Scholar

4 Here is Sybel: ‘One still hears naive liberals saying that in our enlightened age, clerical rule cannot last for long. Our eventful century certainly has many great pages, but in religious matters, as the facts have shown, it counts not among the enlightened, but among the reactionary ages. Scholarly literature has surely become more critical and oppositional, but in Germany it has in equal measure lost its following.’ von Sybel, Heinrich, Klerikale Politik im Meunzehnten Jahrhundert [1874], in Kleine Historische Schriften, III (Stuttgart, 1880), 452.Google Scholar

5 George, Kitson Clark, ‘The religion of the people’, in The making of Victorian England (London, 1962), pp. 147–96Google Scholar; quote, pp. 147–8; Eric, Hobsbawn, ‘Methodism and the threat of revolution’, in Labouring men (London, 1964), pp. 22–33Google Scholar; Thompson, E. P., ‘The transforming power of the cross’, in The making of the English working class (New York, 1963), pp. 350–400Google Scholar. Both men were stimulated by the interpretation in Elie, Halévy, England in 1815 (London, 1924), pp. 410–59.Google Scholar

6 Richard, J. Jensen, The winning of the Midwest. Social and political conflict, 1888–96 (Chicago, 1971). p. 63.Google Scholar

7 Emmet, Larkin, ‘The devolutional revolution in Ireland, 1850–1878‘, American Historical Review, LXXVII (1972), 627–52Google Scholar. The revival in protestant Ireland puts some pressure on Larkin's periodization and explanation: cf. David, Hempton and Myrtle, Hill, Evangelical protestantism in Ulster society, 1740–1890 (London and New York, 1992).Google Scholar

8 An excellent critical discussion of the topic as well as a superb overview of the French-language literature: Ralph, Gibson, A social history of French Catholicism 1789–1914 (London and New York, 1989).Google Scholar

9 Franz, Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte im 19. Jahrhundert (Freiburg im Br., 1929)Google Scholar, Bd. 4 Die Religiöse Kräfte, which is concerned primarily with institutional and intellectual developments, is only a partial exception. The same is true, especially in the chapters on Germany, for the excellent volumes in the seven-volume Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte (Freiburg, Basel, Vienna, 1962–1979)Google Scholar, edited by Hubert, Jedin: cf. Wolfgang, Müller et al. , Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte, Bd. v. Die Kirche im Zeitalter des Absolutismus und der Aufklärung (1970)Google Scholar; Roger, Aubert et al. , Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte, Bd. VI. Die Kirche in der Gegenwart. Erster Halbband: Die Kirche zwischen Revolution und Restauration (1971)Google Scholar; Roger, Aubert et al. , Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte, Bd. VI. Die Kirche in der Gegenwart. Zweiter Halbband: Die Kirche zwischen Anpassung und Widerstand (1878 bis 1914) (1973)Google Scholar. Italian historiography has also neglected religion. Cf. Derek, Beales' sharp remarks in ‘Italy and her church’, Historical Journal, XXV, 1 (1982), 238Google Scholar. Owen Chadwick's magnificent The popes and the European revolution (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar, which treats the religion of the people and mentalities as well as catholic institutions and politics c. 1700–1830, and draws its examples from Italy, Spain, and the German states as well as the more usual France, is a model of how religious history should be written.

10 Useful: Rudolf, Lill, ‘Reichskirche – Säkularisation – Katholische Bewegung. Zur historischen Ausgangssituation des deutschen katholizismus im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Anton, Rauscher, ed., Der soziale und politische Katholizismus. Entwicklungslinien in Deutschland 1803–1963 (Munich and Vienna, 1981), pp. 15–45.Google Scholar

11 Sperber, J., Popular Catholicism in nineteenth-century Germany (Princeton, 1984).Google Scholar

12 By rediscovering the most important mass mobilization in Germany before 1848, Schieder demonstrated the existence of a religious subject-matter to social historians of Germany. Schieder, W., ‘Kirche und Revolution. Sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte der Trier er Wallfahrt von 1844’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, XIV [1974], 419–54Google Scholar; an English translation, ‘Church and revolution. Aspects of the Trier pilgrimage of 1844’, is in Clive, Emsley, ed., Conflict and stability in Europe (London, 1979), pp. 65–95Google Scholar. Schieder's interpretation of his evidence has been sharply criticized, inter alios by Rudolf, Lill, ‘Kirche und Revolution’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, XVIII (1978), 565–75Google Scholar; by Eduard, Lichter, ‘Die Wahlfahrt der Maria Fröhlich aus Neuwied zum HI. Rock in Trier im Jahre 1844’, in Kurtrierisches Jahrbuch, XVIII (1978), 86–104Google Scholar; and his general direction, by Wolfgang, Altgeld, Katholizismus, Protestantismus, Judentum. Zur Bedeutung religiös begründeter Gegensätze und nationalreligiöser Ideen in der Geschichte des deutschen Nationalisms (Mainz, 1992), pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

13 Sperber, , Popular Catholicism, quote: p. 36Google Scholar. Secularity, secularization: e.g. pp. 13, 18, 35–6. The concept of a catholic social–moral milieu, with a negative valuation, was brought to prominence in Carl, Amery'sDie Kapitulation oder Deutscher Katholizismus heute (Reinbek, 1963)Google Scholar and imported into academic discussion by Lepsius, M. Rainer, ‘Parteisystem und Sozialstruktur: zum Problem der Demokratisierung der deutschen Gesellschaft’, in Wilhelm, Abel et al. , Wirtschaft, Geschichte und Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Friedrich Lütge (Stuttgart, 1966), pp. 371–93Google Scholar, reprinted in Gerhard, A. Ritter, ed., Deutsche Parteien vor 1918 (Cologne, 1973), pp. 56–80Google Scholar. The ‘milieu’ has become a research field in itself.

14 Sperber's periodization is questionable. The same processes are described as continuous in Werner K. Blessing's brilliant social history of Bavarian, Catholicism, Stoat und Kirche in der Gesellschaft: Institutionelle Autorität und mentaler Wandel in Bayem während des 19. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 1982)Google Scholar. Christoph Weber's stimulating institutional and intellectual history of Catholicism in the Koblenz, Region, Aufklärung und Orthodoxie am Mittelrhein, 1820–1850 (Munich, 1973)Google Scholar, sees the revival beginning around 1830. My own critique of Sperber, Schieder, , Blessing, et al. : ‘Piety and politics: recent work on German Catholicism’, Journal of Modern History, LXIII (12. 1991), 681–716, esp. pp. 682–9.Google Scholar

15 E.g. Sperber, , Popular Catholicism, p. 55Google Scholar. Blessing is a welcome exception to intentionalism, and recently Otto Weiss has offered a more nuanced picture of the political side of ultramontanism than appeared in his earlier work. Cf. ‘Katholiken in der Auseinandersetzung mit der kirchlichen Autorität. Zur Situation des katholischen Wien und des Wiener Katholikenvereins in den Jahren 1848 bis 1850’, Rottenburger Jahrbuch für Kirchengeschichle, X (1991), 23–54, esp. pp. 29, 52–4Google Scholar. Ch. Weber's latest contribution to the study of ultramontanism, on the other hand, goes in the opposite direction. ‘Ultramontanismus als katholischer Fundamentalismus’, in Wilfried, Loth, ed., Deutscher Katholizismus im Umbruch zur Modeme (Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln, 1991), pp. 20–45.Google Scholar

16 Similar misgivings: Andreas, Holzem, ‘Geßlerhüte der Theorie? Zu Stand und Relevanz des Theoretischen in der Katholizismusforschung’, Tübinger Theologischer Quartalschrift, CLXXIII, 4 (1993), 273–87Google Scholar; Altgeld, Katholizismus, Protestantismus, Judentum, introduction.

17 See, however, on Cologne: Eduard, Hegel, Das Erzbistum Köln: Zwischen der Restauration des 19. Jahrhunderts und der Restauration des 20. Jahrhunderts 1815–1962 (Cologne, 1987)Google Scholar; on Berlin; Kaspar, Elm and Hans-Dietrich, Loock, ed., Seelsorge und Diakonie in Berlin. Beiträge zum Verhältnis von Kirche und Großstadt im 19. und beginnenden 20. Jahrhundet (Berlin and New York, 1990)Google Scholar, as well as the important articles on the dioceses of Passau by Herbert Wurster, Speyer by Hans Ammerich, Hildesheim by Hans-Georg Aschoff, Dresden–Meissen by Heinrich Meier, Cologne and the French-influenced districts on the left side of the Rhine, by Erwin, Gatz, in Gatz, , ed., Pfarr- und Gemeindeorganisation. Studien zu ihrer Entwicklung in Deutschland, Öslerreich und der Schweiz seit dem Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts (Paderborn, 1987).Google Scholar

18 Essays drawn from her Habilitationsschrift on the Baden, Clergy, Klerus und abweichendes Verhalten. Zur Sozialgeschichte der katholischer Priester im 19. Jahrhundert: die Erzdiözese Freiburg 1821–1914 (Göttingen, 1994)Google Scholar, are: ‘Die Ultramontanisierung des Klerus. Das Beispiel der Erzdiözese Freiburg’, in Loth, , ed., Deutscher Katholizismus im Umbruch, pp. 46–75Google Scholar, and ‘Klerus und Ultramontanismus in der Erzdiözese Freiburg. Entbürgerlichung und Klerikalisierung des Katholizismus nach der Revolution von 1848/49’, in Schieder, W., ed., Religion und Gesellschaft im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1993), pp. 113–43Google Scholar. The only other social analyses of the secular clergy of which I am aware are also devoted to Baden: Barbara, Richter, ‘Der Priestermangel in der Erzdiözese Freiburg um 1850. Ursachen und Lösungsversuche durch Pastoralvertretungen aus der Diözese Rottenburg’, Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv, CVIII (1988), 429–47Google Scholar, and Gerhard, Merkel, ‘Studien zutn Priesternachwuchs der Erzdiözese Freiburg, 1870–1914’, Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv, XCIV (1974), 4–169.Google Scholar

19 Hoppen, K. Theodore, Elections, politics, and society in Ireland 1832–1885 (Oxford, 1984), p. 171Google Scholar. France was better supplied with priests than Prussia or Ireland: with one priest to every 657 laymen in 1877 – a ratio that in 1891 had worsened only slightly. Gibson, , A social history, pp. 65, 67. 73.Google Scholar

20 I calculate a ratio of 1:1,015·5 in 1873 for Prussia as a whole, but authoritative statistics are lacking. The royal bureau of statistics, which in 1884 compiled seventeen pages of statistics on the protestant church as of 1881, dealt in two pages with the catholic church – but only as of 1867! An asterisk leads to the laconic footnote: ‘More recent data are unobtainable in sufficient completeness.’ Undoubtedly some civil servant decided that, after ten years of Kulturkampf, such information as ratio of priests to parishioners was politically too sensitive to publish. Jahrbuch für die amtliche Statistik des Preussischen Staates, herausgegeben vom Königlichen Statistischen Bureau, V. Jahrgang (Berlin, 1883), 356–7. My table is compiled from figures given in Paul, Majunke, Geschichte des ‘Kulturkampfes’ in Preuβen-Deutschland ([1886], Paderborn, 1902), p. 184Google Scholar. The relatively high ratio of priests to souls in 1881 (except in the eastern dioceses) is especially telling because Fr. Majunke collected these numbers to demonstrate the emergency caused by the shortage of priests because of the Kulturkampf. In Bavaria, after an acute shortage of priests at the beginning of the century, the ratios became even more favourable than in Prussia. Blessing, , Staat und Kirche, pp. 35, 240, 364 n. 231.Google Scholar

21 ‘Die Ultramontanisierung’, pp. 64–6. The strength of anti-clerical liberalism in Baden was unique for a state whose population was predominantly catholic. The state's shutdown in the 1870s of the seminaries' feeder schools, where at least 1/3 of the future clergy were educated, naturally affected recruitment. But see also Richter, ‘Der Priestermangel’, passim.

22 Adolf, Kardinal Bertram, Geschichte des Bistums Hildesheim (Hildesheim and Leipzig, c. 1925), p. 310Google Scholar. Cf. for the diocese of Münster, Sperber, , Popular Catholicism, pp. 94–5.Google Scholar

23 Compiled from Jahrbuch für die amtliche Statistik des Preussischen Staates (Berlin, 1883), pp. 520–1Google Scholar. These figures all look good compared to the great urban parishes of England. Clark, , The making of Victorian England, p. 150Google Scholar; cf. also pp. 169–73, 192–3.

24 Although the numbers vary, the literature is unanimous that the religious orders in Germany showed a steadily favourable ability to recruit from 1872 to 1907. In 1855 there were only 600 religious altogether in Prussia; in 1872 there were 900 men and 7,000 women. Hermann, Rust, Reichskanzler Fürst Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst und seine Brüder Herzog von Ratibor, Cardinale Hohenlohe und Print Constantin Hohenlohe (Düsseldorf, 1897), pp. 703–4Google Scholar. In 1872 there was one religious for every 914 catholics in Prussia. After the caesura of the Kulturkampf, when the orders were outlawed, the ratios improved continuously: 1:843 in 1891, 1:640 in 1896; 1:448 in 1906. By 1907 there were 30,828 religious (a growth of 145·2 %) in Prussia of which 26,893 (i.e. 87·28%) were women. Percentages for Bavaria are similar. Ratios and percentages calculated from the figures in Karl, Bachem, Vorgeschichte, Geschichte und Politik der deutschen Zentrumspartei (Cologne, 1927–1932), VII, 360–1.Google Scholar

25 Helmut, Walser Smith, German nationalism and religious conflict. Culture, ideology, politics (Princeton, 1995), p. 94.Google Scholar

26 For France: Claude, Langlois, Le catholicisme au Féminin. Les congrégations françaises à supérieure générale au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1984)Google Scholar. The disproportion of women was obvious to contemporary catholics. When the anti-clerical Rudolf Gneist complained in the Jesuit debates that the ‘head count today is already more than 20,000’ (leaving it completely unclear whether he was referring to priests in Germany, Jesuits in the world, or both), he was interrupted by cries from the Centre party of ‘Nuns! Nuns!’ ‘Die Jesuiten-Petitionen im Reichstag (Mai 1871)’, Annalen des Deutschen Retches (Berlin, 1872), cols. 1121–70.Google Scholar

27 References to the piety of women may have been a convenient way for anti-clericals to use misogynist stereotypes to discredit the clergy. Cf. David, Blackbourn, ‘Progress and piety’, in Populists and patricians. Essays in modern German history (London, 1987), p. 158Google Scholar. Indications that German piety was becoming feminine: Lucian, Hölscher, ‘Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der statistischen Erfassung kirchlicher Bindungen’, in Elm, and Loock, , eds., Seelsorge, p. 58Google Scholar. For the topic in general: Hugh, McLeod, ‘Weibliche Frömmigkeit – männlicher Unglaube? Religion und Kirchen im bürgerlichen 19. Jahrhundert’, in Ute, Frevert, ed., Bürgerinnen und Bürger. Geschlechterverhältnisse im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1988), pp. 134–56.Google Scholar

28 Here is Macaulay: ‘Even for female agency there is a place in her system. To devout women, she assigns spiritual functions, dignities, and magistracies. In our country, if a noble lady is moved by more than ordinary zeal for the propagation of religion, the chance is that, though she may disapprove of no doctrine or ceremony of the Established Church, she will end by giving her name to a new schism…. Place St. Theresa in London. Her restless enthusiasm ferments into madness, not un tinctured with craft…. Place Joanna Southcote at Rome. She founds an order of barefooted Carmelites, every one of whom is ready to suffer martyrdom for the Church; a solemn service is consecrated to her memory; and her statue, placed over the holy water, strikes the eye of every stranger who enters St. Peter's.’ ‘Ranke's history’, p. 303.

29 Felix, Escher, ‘Pfarrgemeinden und Gemeindeorganisation in Berlin bis zur Gründung des Bistums Berlin’, in Elm, and Loock, , eds., Seelsorge, pp. 265–92.Google Scholar

30 Figures: The catholic encyclopedia (New York, 1909), VI, 166, 177Google Scholar; cf. also Jean, Paul Charnay, ‘L'église catholique et les élections français’, Politique. Revue Internationale des Doctrines et des Institutions, Nrs. 19–20 (Jul.–Dec. 1962), 193–306Google Scholar; 269. According to Gibson, anti-ultramontane bishops were the most exacting, the most dictatorial. A social history, pp. 61, 62.

31 Ireland. Statistical abstract 1992 (Central Statistics Office, Dublin, 1992), p. 54Google Scholar; bishops: Hoppen, , Elections, p. 174Google Scholar. Figures for catholics extrapolated from Bachem, Zentrumspartei, VII, 360. I counted twenty-six bishops in Ernst-Rudolf, Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789 Bd. IV. Strukturen und Krisen des Kaiserreichs (Stuttgart, 1969), 660–3Google Scholar. The catholic encyclopedia unaccountably omits the diocese of Regensburg in its ecclesiastical map of Germany. The relative paucity of German bishops has, so far as I know, been unremarked by other scholars.

32 Most recently: by Götz von Olenhusen (cf. n. 18). The surveillance and disciplinary trials that she describes, however, might just as easily be seen as an attempt – itself a sign of professionalization – to ensure ‘quality control’ over the profession. We in the U.S. have unfortunately recently had more than enough reason to believe that some episcopal ‘surveillance’ of the pastoral clergy is a necessity; which makes me much less inclined than she to view the convictions of Baden priests for paedophilia as entirely an artifact of the Kulturkampf.

33 A similar argument: Gibson, , A social history, p. 230.Google Scholar

34 Wolfgang, Graf, Kirchliche Beeinflussungsversuche zu politischen Wahlen und Abstimmungen als Symptome für die Einstellung der katholischen Kirche zur Politik (Allgemeiner Zeitraum: Deutschland von 1848 bis zur Gegenwart) (Diss., Mainz, 1971), pp. 185–7.Google Scholar

35 Jean, Delumeau, Le pêche et la peur. La culpabilisation en Occident XIIIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1983)Google Scholar; idem, L'Aveu et le pardon: Les Difficultés de la confession XIIIe–XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1990)Google Scholar; Philippe, Boutry, Prêtres et paroisses au pays du Curé d'Ars (Paris, 1986)Google Scholar; Gibson, , A social history, pp. 247–9, 262–3Google Scholar. The confession box as a symbol: Hanham, H. J., Elections and party management (Hassocks, Sussex [1959], 1978), p. 305.Google Scholar

36 The quickest way to approach Liguori is through the collection of articles edited by Jean, Delumeau: Alphonse de Liguori. Pasteur et Docteur (Paris, 1987)Google Scholar. See also Marciano, Vidal, La Morale di Sant' Alfonso. Dal Rigorismo alla Benignità (Rome, 1992)Google Scholar. A revealing trip through the changing interpretations of Liguori is Otto, Weiss, ‘Alfons von Liguori und seine Biographen. Ein Heiliger zwischen hagiographischer Verklärung und historischer Wirklichkeit’, Spicilegium Historicum, XXXVI-XXXVII (1988–1989), 151–284Google Scholar. My suggestions about confession are inspired by Chadwick, , The popes, pp. 133–50Google Scholar and Gibson, , A social history, pp. 247–9, 262–3Google Scholar. German scholars are markedly less positive. Information on German editions of Liguori's work: Klemens, Jockwig, C.Ss.R., , Die Volksmission der Redemptoristen in Bayern von 1848 bis 1873. Dargestellt am Erzbistum München und Freising und an den Bistümem Passau und Regensburg. Ein Beitrag zur Pastoralgeschichte des 19. JahrhundertsGoogle Scholar in Georg, Schwaiger und Josef, Staber (eds.), Beiträge zur Geschichte des Bistums Regensburg (Regensburg, 1967), pp. 41–408Google Scholar; see p. 374.

37 A pathbreaking analysis of confession in the German-speaking world: Edith, Saurer, ‘Frauen und Priester. Beichtgespräche im frühen 19. Jahrhundert’, in von Dülmen, Richard ed., Arbeit, Frömmigkeit und Eigensinn. Studien zu historischer Kulturforschung (Frankfurt, 1990), pp. 141–70Google Scholar; quote, p. 154.

38 Johann, Emmanuel Veith, Monumenta Hofbaueriana (15 vols., Thorn–Krakau–Röm, 1915–1951), XI, 30–47Google Scholar. Quoted in Otto, Weiss, ‘Wie Ultramontan War Klemens Maria Hofbauer? Überlegungen anläßlich einer neuen Hofbauerbiographie’, Spicilegium Historicum, XXXIX (1992), 41–93; 38.Google Scholar

39 Isaac Hecker (1819–88), a major figure in the history of U.S. Catholicism, also belonged to the Redemptorists. Though he eventually left to found, with four Redemptorist colleagues, an order more suited to American conditions, the Congregation of the Missionary Priests of St Paul the Apostle (Paulist Fathers), he took Liguorian pastoral theology with him.

40 Weiss, , ‘Alphonse de Liguori et la théologie allemande du XIXe siècle’, in Delumeau, , ed., Alphonse de Liguori, pp. 183–229.Google Scholar

41 The puritanism of the French clergy and the Sulpicians: Gibson, , A social history, pp. 22–3, 27, 82, 90–2.Google Scholar

42 Catholic club life ‘stood under clerical direction, or at least clerical influence was authoritative. But in contrast to its Protestant counterparts, it was not narrow and puritan.’ Thomas, Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch (München, 1988), p. 26.Google Scholar

43 E.g. Liguori's Gloire de Marie was rejected by German theologians for its uncritical credulity about miracles. Weiss, , ‘La théologie allemande,’ p. 190.Google Scholar

44 Weber, E., Peasants into Frenchmen. The modernization of rural France 1870–1914 (London, 1977), pp. 364–6.Google Scholar

45 E.g. Urs Altermatt detects a ‘theology of fear and pastoration of torment’ in Switzerland. Katholizismus und Moderne. Studien zur Sozialgeschichte der Schweitzer Katholiken im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Zürich, 1989), p. 69Google Scholar. While acknowledging confession's therapeutic aspects, Saurer denies that rigorism was giving way to consolation. ‘Frauen und Priester’, pp. 154, 157, 170. Cf. also Jockwig, , Die Volksmission, pp. 276–8.Google Scholar

46 E.g. Thoma, L., Andreas Vöst (1906)Google Scholar. Some contemporary doctors and government officials felt that too rigorous confessors were driving people to madness: Edith, Saurer, ‘Religiöse Praxis und Sinnesverwirrung. Kommentare zur religiösen Melancholiediskussion’, in van Dülmen, Richard, ed., Dynamik der Tradition. Studien zur historischen Kulturforschung Bd. IV (Frankfurt a.M., 1992), 213–39; 232.Google Scholar

47 Private communication. Similar expressions of collegial scepticism were expressed at the Göttingen conference by Edith Saurer, Alois Hahn, and Wolfgang Schieder.

48 My considerable efforts to obtain Hans Kirchesteiger's 1910 novel, Der Beichtvater and Ingeborg Fürst's dissertation, Die Gestalt des katholischen Pfarrers in der deutschen Literatur vom Realismus bis zur Gegenwart (Vienna, 1953)Google Scholar, which might have persuaded me otherwise, were in vain. Conflicts between priests and parishioners certainly arose – over the burial of unbaptized children, over Old Catholic apostates, over the sanctification of the odd mixed marriage. Most instances of clerical severity occurred within a sphere recognized as his by the community in which he lived. One priest's refusal to ring his church's bell at the death of an Old Catholic in Gleiwitz resulted in the police, and ultimately Uhlan, intervention. The subsequent riot, however, suggests that the parish sided with their priest (Görlitzer Anzeiger 1 Jan. 1874, and Görlitzer Anzeiger 4 Feb. 1874). Economic quarrels seem also to have been less common in the German than in the French church. Gibson, , A social history, p. 78Google Scholar, quotes Delpal, B.: ‘The casuel did more to put people off the institutional Church than did all the philosophers of the eighteenth century.’Google Scholar The German priest, at least in Rhineland and Westfalia, derived most of his income from parish real estate. This cushion of support made him less rapacious than the French curé in dunning his parishioners for fees for services. And during the Kulturkampf, when the Prussian state cut off its own contribution to recusant priests, their congregations willingly picked up the tab for the difference. Sperber, , Popular Catholicism, p. 247Google Scholar; Ludwig Windthorst to Freiherr von Ungarn-Sternberg (Dresden), 29 Dec. 1880, Nachlalß Fechenbach, Bundesarchiv Koblenz. When, as in the case of Pfarrverweser Dörr in Fützen, the congregation was tired of being asked for money for renovations, they punished him politically: by voting conservative rather than for the catholic party in national elections. Amtsvorstand Bonndorf to minister of interior, 30 Jun. 1893, Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe, Signatur 236, Nr. 14901.

49 Görlitzer Anzeiger 28 Jan. 1874, 129. Granted: this charge had been an anti-catholic topos dating back to the Reformation. Cf. Josef, Mausbach, Die Katholische Moral und ihre Gegner (Cologne, 1901, 1911).Google Scholar

50 This is Jockwig's précis, in Die Volksmission, pp. 351, 352ff.; the missionaries' treatment of death and hell, pp. 354–8.

51 Jockwig, , Die Volksmission, pp. 239–44, 274–81, 323, 373–85Google Scholar; this and the preceding quote, pp. 242, 243; Weiss, , Die Redemptoristen in Bayern (1790–1909)Google Scholar. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Ultramontanismus (St Ottilien, 1983), pp. 298–9, 1004, 1005–7, 1017–18Google Scholar; Erwin, Gatz, Rheinische Volksmission im 19. Jahrhundert dargestellt am Beispiel des Erzbistums Köln: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Seelsorge im Zeitalter der katholischen Bewegung (Düsseldorf, 1963).Google Scholar

52 ‘Fear of backsliding’, Jockwig, , Die Volksmission, p. 348.Google Scholar

53 Contemporary quotations are from Otto, Weiss, ‘Wie Ultramontan…?’, pp. 56, 64.Google Scholar

54 Edmund, Kreusch, Eduard Müller, der priesterliche Volksfreund, Ein Lebensbild (Berlin, 1898)Google Scholar, which contains large stretches from Müller's youthful diaries and sermons, is an important source for nineteenth-century piety, but has little on his other activity. For that see Ernst, Thrasolt, Eduard Müller. Der Berliner Missionsvikar. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Katholizismus in Berlin, der Mark Brandenburg und Pommern (Berlin, 1953)Google Scholar. I am working on a book on German elections that will include a study of Müller as a popular symbol.

55 A St Eduard's Church was built to honour him, his bones were moved there after his death, and for a long time annual memorials were held at his grave. At least as late as spring 1990 Mission Vicar Müller's portrait held pride of place in the gallery of diocesan greats in the entrance hall of St Hedwig's cathedral in East Berlin. ‘Whoever really enters into the life of this man will recognize that he is stepping onto holy soil and will take his shoes off his feet. Truly here is a saint – a saint in the sense in which the people [das Volk], who in former times spontaneously pronounced on saintliness themselves, before and outside ecclesiastical canonization, uses this word’, Thrasolt, , Müller, p. 12Google Scholar; also p. 80.

56 ‘Vereins-Spätabend- und Nacht- und Wirtshaus- und Biertisch- Seelsorge’, Thrasolt, , Müller, p. 67.Google Scholar

57 The repeated ban on visiting taverns cannot be decisive here, as the remark of Thrasolt, himself a priest, about ‘beertable-cure-of-souls’ shows. We can expect light on the quotidian work of priests in catholic associations from the forthcoming study of Raymond Sun (Washington State University at Pullman) on catholic workers’ associations. In the meantime, the mere list of activities of the catholic ‘Volksbureau’ in Essen in 1897–8 is revealing. Cf. Frank, Bajohr, Zwischen Krupp und Kommune. Sozialdemokratie, Arbeiterschaft und Stadtverwaltung in Essen vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Essen, 1988), pp. 32–4.Google Scholar

58 The discussion of the catholic ‘milieu’ has been put on a new level by the Arbeitskreis für kirchliche Zeitgeschichte (AKKZG) in Münster. Cf. AKKZG, , Münster, , ‘Katholiken zwischen Tradition und Moderne. Das katholische Milieu als Forschungsaufgabe’, Westfälische Forschungen, XLIII (1993), 588–654Google Scholar. The graphs on pp. 646–54 are especially valuable. Exemplary: Josef, Mooser, ‘Das katholische Vereinswesen in der Dïozese Paderborn um 1900. Vereinstypen, Organisationsumfang und innere Verfassung’, in Westfälische festschrift, CXLI (1991), 447–61, esp. pp. 459–60Google Scholar. I was not able to obtain Ernst, Heinen, Katholizismus und Gesellschaft. Das katholische Vereinswesen zwischen Revolution und Reaktion (1848/49–1853/54) (1993).Google Scholar

59 For Baden: Götz von Olenhusen, ‘Die Ultramontanisierung’ and Merkel, ‘Studien zum Priesternachwuchs’; France: Gibson, , A social history, pp. 81–2 and passimGoogle Scholar; Ireland: Hoppen, , Elections, pp. 174–7, 183–5.Google Scholar

60 Götz von Olenhusen's thesis on ‘De-urbanization’ (Entbürgerlichung): ‘Neither in urbanization nor in industrialization was the emerging Catholic milieu able to participate’, ‘Klerus und Ultramontanismus’ (1993), p. 129.Google Scholar

61 AKKZG, Münster, , ‘Katholiken zwischen Tradition und Moderne’, p. 639Google Scholar; graphs, pp. 650–1.

62 Even in Ireland and France the clergy found its recruits not in the poorest strata of rural society but from the ranks of ‘strong farmers’. Was that the case in Germany? Götz von Olenhusen, ‘Die Ultramontanisierung’, puts the Baden clergy at the very bottom of the rural social scale.

63 Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich (Berlin, 1893), p. 1Google Scholar. For the way Germans imagined themselves: Mack, Walker, German home towns. State and general estate 1648–1871 (Ithaca, 1971).Google Scholar

64 ‘Priester und Landvolk’, Die Wahrheit, XLIII, 14 (15 Apr. 1909), 421–26Google Scholar; quote on p. 423.

65 Ernest, Gellner, Nations and nationalism (Ithaca, 1983), pp. 14–16Google Scholar. Professor Thalhofer, , ‘Über den Bart der Geistlichen’, Augsburger Pastoralblatt (1863)Google Scholar, reprinted in the Archiv für katholisches Kirchenrecht, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Oesterreich und Deutschland, X, Neue Folge, 14 (Mainz, 1863)Google Scholar, Heft IV: 85ff. Clean-shaven laymen born after 1825 are almost non-existent in the portraits in Bernd, Haunfelder and Klaus, Erich Pollmann, comp., Reichstag des Norddeutschen Bundes 1867–1870. Historische Photographien und biographisches Handbuch (Düsseldorf, 1989)Google Scholar. On sartorial developments: Weber, , Aufklärung und Orthodoxie, p. 184Google Scholar; Blessing, , Staat und Kirche, pp. 39, 133Google Scholar; Hoppen, , Elections, pp. 204–5.Google Scholar

66 Görlitzer Anzeiger, 14 Mar. 1871, 521. The Marquis de Henri Rochefort (1830–1913) was a radical French playwright, journalist, and Communard. Francois Vincent Raspail (1794–1878) was a French scientist, revolutionary, and anti-Jesuit polemicist.

67 Cf. Heinz, Gollwitzer, ‘Der politische Katholizismus in Hohenzollernreich und die Auβenpolitik’, in Werner, Pols, ed., Staat und Gesellschaft im politischen Wandel. Beiträge zur Geschichte der modernen Welt (Stuttgart, 1979), pp. 224–58Google Scholar; 230–40. Ultramontanism in Germany, moreover (unlike France) was not hostile towards protestants. Weiss, , Redemptoristen, pp. 1096–7, 1107.Google Scholar

68 Sperber and Blessing both demonstrate the importance of the pope as a symbolic source of identification for German catholics. French catholics were little interested in the Roman question or other aspects of internationalism. Gibson, , A social history, p. 162.Google Scholar

69 Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler of Mainz and Heinrich Beckmann of Osnabrück were opponents, and even Paulus Melchers of Cologne thought the definition inopportune. Heinrich Forster of Breslau tried to resign rather than enforce conformity to the new definition in his diocese. It is often forgotten that even Ignaz von Dollinger was counted in the ultramontane party before the late sixties.

70 And prevented the appointment of ultramontanes in Baden: von Olenhusen, Götz, ‘Ultramontanisierung’, pp. 66–7.Google Scholar

71 Weiss, , ‘Wie Ultramontane…?’, pp. 47, 71 n. 159.Google Scholar

72 David, Blackbourn, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Bismarckian Germany (Oxford, 1993; New York, 1994)Google Scholar; Gottfried, Korff, ‘Kulturkampf und Volksfrömmigkeit’, in Schieder, W., ed., Volksreligiosität in der modemen Sozialgeschichte (Gottingen, 1986), pp. 137–51.Google Scholar

73 Das bittere Leiden unseres Herm Jesu Christi. Nach den Betrachtungen des gottseligen Anna Katharina Emmerich (Sulzbach, 1833)Google Scholar; the modern edition is Bernhard, Gajek, ed., Clemens Brentano. Sämtliche Werke und Briefe (Stuttgart, 1980), vol. XXVIGoogle Scholar. Both, Weiss, Redemptoristen, p. 99Google Scholar and Thomas, Kselman, Miracles and prophecies in nineteenth-century France (New Brunswick, 1983), p. 222, n. 4Google Scholar, emphasize the influence of this book on contemporary piety.

74 Die Redemptoristen, pp. 551–672, 822–908; and ‘Seherinnen und Stigmatisierte’, forthcoming in a collection of essays on women in nineteenth-century German Catholicism edited by Irmtraut Götz von Olenhusen (Schöningh, Paderborn).

75 Martin, , ‘Ein Besuch bei Luise Lateau’, in his Drei Jahre aus meinem Leben (Mainz, 1877), pp. 88–112Google Scholar; quotes on pp. 104 and 107. Lateau was investigated in 1873 by a commission appointed by the bishop of Tournai, headed by Pater Saraphin; by Professor Leftbvre of the University of Louvain; and by the Brussels' Academy of Medicine. Cf. Leftbvre, Louise Lateau. Sa vie, ses extases, ses stigmates; idem, ‘Louise Lateau et l'Académie de médecine’, which appeared, as did the report of M. Warloment for the commission of the Brussels medical academy in the second April issue of the 1876 Revue catholique.

76 Edith Saurer's analyses of prayer books, however, find ‘a total loss of the belief in miracles’. ‘“Bewahrerinnen der Zucht und der Sittlichkeit”. Gebetbücher für Frauen – Frauen in Gebetbüchern’, L'Homme. Zeitschrift für feministische Geschichtswissenschaft, I. Jg. Heft L (1991), 37–58Google Scholar; 57. A comprehensive history of Catholicism in the nineteenth century would, I am confident, be able to make sense of both these developments – the recovery of the miraculous and the apparent decline in the belief in miracles – in a way that demonstrated their fundamental compatibility.

77 Important initiatives are: Wolfgang, Schieder, ‘Religion in der Sozialgeschichte’, in Schieder, and Volker, Sellin, eds., Sozialgeschichte in Deutschland. Entwicklungen und Perspektiven in international Zusammenhang (Göttingen, 1987)Google Scholar; Gottfried Korff, ‘Kulturkampf und Volksfrömmigkeit’; Urs, Altermatt, ‘Volksreligion – Neuer Mythos oder neues Konzept? Anmerkungen zu einer Sozialgeschichte des modernen Katholizismus’, in Jakob, Baumgartner, ed., Wiederentdeckung der Volksreligiosität (Regensburg, 1979), pp. 105–24Google Scholar; idem, ‘Zur Sozial- und Mentalitätsgeschichte des vorkonziliaren Sonntags’, in Der Sonntag. Anspruch – Wirklichkeit – Gestalt. Festschrift für Jakob Baumgartner (Würzburg/Freiburg i. Ue., 1986), pp. 248–89Google Scholar; idem, ‘Leben auf dem Land nach dem Rhythmus der Glocken? Zum religiösen Mentalitätswandel im Luzerngebiet um 1950’, in Laβt hören aus neuer Zeit. Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft und Politik im Kanton Luzem seit dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Luzern, 1986), pp. 115–23.Google Scholar

78 Cf. n. 12.

79 Die Wallfahrt nach Trier (Regensburg, 1845), p. 153.Google Scholar

80 Carolyn, Walker Bynum'sHoly feast, holy fast. The religious significance of food to medieval women (Berkeley, 1987)Google Scholar and Eamon, Duffy's, The stripping of the altars. Traditional religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven, 1992)Google Scholar are models for how this inner world might be entered.

81 For a differentiated view, see the collection of articles in Frank, Tallet and Nicholas, Atkin, eds., Religion, politics and society in France since 1789 (Rio Grande, Ohio, 1991).Google Scholar

82 It will be apparent to readers that my own view of German ultramontanism is quite different from that of Olenhusen, (‘Ultramontanisierung’, esp. p. 49) and Christoph Weber, (‘Ultra-montanismus’), whose work I otherwise respect. Contrast to them, Nipperdey's deliberately provocative characterization: ‘Ultramontanism and democracy – populist and plebiscitarian xyn they go together as well’, Religion im Umbruch, p. 45.Google Scholar

83 Likewise the sharp distinction so often made between Amtskirche and Volksfrömmigkeit (cf. Gottfried, Korff, ‘Kulturkampf und Volksfrömmigkeit’, pp. 138–9Google Scholar) assumes the same dichotomy.

84 Karl, Kammer, Trierer Kulturkampfpriester. Auswahl einiger markanten Priester-Gestalten aus den Zeiten des preuβischen Kulturkampfes (Trier, 1926), passim.Google Scholar

85 The table is from Gibson, , A social history, p. 237Google Scholar; see also pp. 240–1.

86 Of twelve bishops, those of Ermland, Kulm, and Hildesheim were all that remained of the catholic hierarchy in Prussia. Lay-led church services in the Bistum Breslau: see Franz, Xavier Seppelt, Geschichte des Bistums Breslau (Breslau, 1929), pp. 119–20Google Scholar. In general the Kulturkampf resulted in a great disordering – and levelling – of ecclesiastical functions. Thus when Bishop Robert Herzog, also jailed for several weeks, fell ill, his job had to be taken over by a ‘prince regent’, Adolf Franz, who was a priest but, perhaps just as important, a Reichstag deputy and editor of a party newspaper. Ibid. p. 121.

87 I have commented on this theme extensively in Windthorst: a political biography, in ‘The Kulturkampf and the course of German history’, Central European History, XIX, 1 (1986), 82–115Google Scholar, and in ‘Inter-denominationalism, clericalism, pluralism: the Zentrumsstreit and the dilemma of Catholicism in Wilhelmine Germany’, Central European History, XXI, 4 (1990), 350–78.Google Scholar

88 Commission on Election Scrutiny, Report on the Second Arnsberg District, Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des…deutschen Reichstags (1907/9), Anlageband 19, Druchsache 636, 4305.

89 Regierungsrat von Horn to the Ober-Präsident in Coblenz, 24 Feb. 1907, ‘Report on the election activity of clergy and Beamten’, Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz, Signatur 403, Nr. 8806, 4V.

90 Examples in Anderson, , ‘The Kulturkampf’, pp. 109–15Google Scholar. It is notable that those dissenting catholics – the Old Catholics of the 1870s; F. X. Kraus; the ‘modernist’ groups around the periodical XX. Jahrhundert after the turn of the century – whom later historians, such as Christoph Weber, champion as modern and liberal, were characterized at least as much by their hostility to the democratically elected, lay-led Centre party as by their dislike of ‘Romanism’.

91 After rightly stressing that the French conflict between church and state lasted much longer than the Kulturkampf, a comparatively ‘short explosion’, Weber then reaches the astonishing conclusion that the latter was ‘actually only a smoke bomb, which passed by without causing lasting change to political culture’, ‘Ultramonanismus’, p. 26.

92 It should go without saying that, as Karl Rohe warns in another context, ‘Parochialitäten sind kein herrschaftsfreie Idylle’. Cf. ‘Konfession, Klasse und lokale Gesellschaft als Bestimmungsfaktoren des Wahlverhaltens. Überlegungen und Problematisierungen am Beispiel des historischen Ruhrgebiets’ in Lothar, Albertin and Werner, Link, eds., Politische Parteien auf dem Weg zur parlamentarischen Demokratie in Deutschland. Entwicklungslinien bis zur Gegenwart (Düsseldorf, 1981), pp. 109–26Google Scholar; quote on p. 121.

93 Hugh, McLeod, ‘Weibliche Frömmigkeit’, p. 152.Google Scholar

94 Catholicism's declining ability to mobilize politically in the Ruhr after 1900 was due neither to the arrival of an independent Polish party nor to the belated consequences of secularization, but because it was either no longer willing or no longer able to integrate socially and culturally the masses of immigrants from the east. Social democracy's sudden breakthrough took place not in the older urbanised, industrial areas but precisely in the newer areas populated by rural newcomers, where society had separated into locals and immigrants, into ‘village’ and ‘colony’. Karl, Rohe, Wahlen und Wählertraditionen (Frankfurt, 1992), p. 80.Google Scholar

95 ‘It was both easier and harder to be a Catholic in Austria’ than in Germany. Boyer, , ‘Religion and political development in central Europe around 1900: a view from Vienna’, Austrian History Yearbook, XXV (1994), 13–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; quote p. 56.

96 As Helmut Smith's pathbreaking German nationalism and religious conflict argues – a work stimulated by Gellner's Nations and nationalism, Altgeld's Katholizismus, Protestantismus, Judentum, and Etienne, François, Die unsichtbare Grenze. Protestanten und Katholiken in Augsburg 1648–1806 (Sigmaṙingen, 1991).Google Scholar

97 The contrary view is argued by Ronald, J. Ross, ‘Enforcing the Kulturkampf in the Bismarckian state and the limits of coercion in imperial Germany’, Journal of Modem History, LVI (09. 1984), 456–82.Google Scholar

98 Twilight of the idols, in Walter, Kaufmann, ed., The portable Nietzsche (New York, 1963), p. 489.Google Scholar

99 On a similarly competitive climate in Ulster: Hempton, and Hill, , Evangelical protestantism, p. 189.Google Scholar

100 Eduard, Müller, ‘“Dann laβ ich 5 Fuß tierfer graben”’, Bonafacius Kalander (Berlin, 1883), p. 3.Google Scholar

101 I am, of course, transposing Benedict Anderson's idea about nationalism to confessionalism. Imagined communities. Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (London, 1983).Google Scholar

102 Karl, Rohe, ‘Forward’, Elections, parties, and political traditions (New York, 1991), p. xiiGoogle Scholar. Cf. also his ‘German elections and party systems in historical and regional perspective’, ibid. p. 3, and especially his Wahlen und Wählertraditionen.