Rebecca Ayako Bennette. Fighting for the Soul of Germany: The Catholic Struggle for Inclusion after Unification. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012. x + 368 pp. $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-674-06563-5.
Reviewed by Michael Rowe (King's College London)
Published on H-German (September, 2014)
Commissioned by Chad Ross
Catholics and the Kulturkampf in Germany
This book explores the evolution of the national identity of German Catholics in the decade following unification in 1871. These were years overshadowed by the Kulturkampf, the struggle between Bismarck’s state and its liberal backers, and the majority of Germany’s Catholics. In this study, Bennette argues that Catholics responded to the challenge of these years by asserting a distinctive German national identity that nonetheless was comparable to the "official" version. In arguing this, Bennette qualifies the notion that Catholics only became properly integrated into the German Reich under Wilhelm II (1888-1918).
Bennette uses Catholic German newspapers as her main, albeit not exclusive, source. These papers reached a high proportion of the Catholic population: their circulation exceeded six hundred thousand by the late 1870s, and their actual readership must have been substantially higher. Through these, Bennette analyzes the German Catholic Weltanschauung during these years of siege. In many respects Catholic views were not significantly different from those of other Germans. This was the case, for example, when it came to perceptions of the other European powers—Britain as materialistic, Austria as a polity in decline, corrupted France, Italy as a joke nation, and a Russia characteried by "Mongolian brutality." More distinctive, though, was the Catholic imagination of Germany’s geography, which is the subject of one of the stronger chapters. Catholic emphasis on region and locality as the foundation for Germany complemented the dismissal of "heathen" Berlin as a potential center of the new nation. The Rhineland and Westphalia, for a variety of reasons that Bennette clearly identifies, emerged as the two regions that best qualified to be admired as quintessentially German from the perspective of the Catholic press. Catholics celebrated these western regions as centers of the medieval Christian Reich, but they were also dynamic and hence could be used to counter accusations that Catholics were somehow backward when it came to Kultur, Bildung, and Wissenschaft.
German Catholics never lost their faith in the Reich. Unlike devout Catholics in Italy, who boycotted elections, their co-religionists north of the Alps were if anything more likely to vote than non-Catholics. The sense that they enjoyed some support beyond their own community, including notably from conservative Protestants--and not least from the Kaiser himself--provided Catholics with a psychological lifeline. This sentiment was reflected in the Catholic press, which throughout adopted an antiliberal rather than an anti-Protestant tone. Whether this care on the side of the Catholic leadership to avoid stoking sectarian prejudices had much impact on the ground is another question that Bennette addresses, albeit briefly. She notes cases of interconfessional conflict, but on the whole stresses their relative insignificance. Nor did the Catholic leadership, in its attempts to reach out to conservative Protestants by emphasizing their common Christianity, exploit antisemitism as a potential bond. Rather, it was antisocialism that played this role, and this became much more prominent in Catholic publications in the later 1870s. There were always discordant voices on the Catholic side about antisemitism and other issues, and Bennette does not ignore such divergence. There was some significant division on the Catholic side when it came to education, including whether or not it was better to separate from or integrate with non-Catholics. Bennette reminds us that even in 1874, at the height of the Kulturkampf, up to a quarter of Catholic voters opted for a party other than the Catholic Center Party.
The end of the Kulturkampf in the late 1870s further threatened the cohesiveness of the Catholic bloc, as other, more divisive policy issues came to the fore. However, in other respects, German Catholics had grounds for optimism in that the Reich was moving in their direction on a variety of issues. In the realm of international relations, the break with St. Petersburg and durability of the alliance with Vienna was in harmony with Catholic Russophobia and lingering pro-Habsburg sentiment. Similarly, the discovery of Heimat and acceptance of regional diversity as the century drew to a close also brought the "mainstream" closer to the Catholic line.
Bennette’s account is convincing in its conclusion that the hard years of the Kulturkampf helped Catholics forge their own sense of what it meant to be German, and that this hastened their integration after Bismarck and the papacy agreed to end the conflict. However, there are areas that the reviewer would have liked to see expanded upon. Bennette accepts the premise that identities tend to be multiple and overlapping, not singular and exclusive. Given this, she might have paid more consideration to the fact that the inhabitants of the Rhineland and Westphalia had a potential Prussian identity as well as regional (Rhenish, Westphalian) and national (German) ones. Turning to the eastern extremity of Prussia, Bennette could have written more about the impact of the Polish question, given its potential to wreck German-Catholic attempts to reconcile religion with nationality. Finally, the study would have benefited from greater consideration of how the Catholic press was structured and how it functioned, including issues of funding, ownership, determination of editorial policies, and the relationship between the newspapers and the Center's leadership. However, these observations aside, Bennette in this study has contributed much to our understanding of the evolving identity of German Catholics.
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Citation:
Michael Rowe. Review of Bennette, Rebecca Ayako, Fighting for the Soul of Germany: The Catholic Struggle for Inclusion after Unification.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
September, 2014.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=39681
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