The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany

by Michael B. Gross

"A lucid, innovative work of top-flight scholarship. Gross shows us the depths of anti-Catholicism in nineteenth-century Germany; he explains why the German Kulturkampf had such force and why prominent liberals imagined it as a turning point not only in Germany but in world history."
---Helmut Walser Smith, Vanderbilt University

"A marvelously original account of how the Kulturkampf emerged from the cultural, social, and gendered worlds of German liberalism. While not neglecting the 1870s, Gross's analysis directs historians' attention to the under-researched 1850s and 1860s-decades in which liberals' anti-Catholic arguments were formulated against a backdrop of religious revival, democratic innovation, national ambition, and the articulation of new roles for women in society, politics, and the church. The drama of these decades resonates in every chapter of Gross's fine study."
---James Retallack, University of Toronto

"Michael Gross has put the culture back into the Kulturkampf! Integrating social and political analysis with illuminating interpretations of visual and linguistic evidence, Gross explores the work of religious cleavage in defining German national identity. An emerging women's movement, liberal virtues, and Catholic difference come together to explain why, in a century of secularization, Germany's Catholics experienced a religious revival, and why its liberals responded with enmity and frustration. Vividly written and a pleasure to read, this groundbreaking study offers real surprises."
---Margaret Lavinia Anderson, University of California, Berkeley


An innovative study of the relationship between the two most significant, equally powerful, and irreconcilable movements in Germany, Catholicism and liberalism, in the decades following the 1848 Revolution.

After the defeat of liberalism in the Revolution of 1848, and in the face of the dramatic revival of popular Catholicism, German middle-class liberals used anti-Catholicism to orient themselves culturally in a new age. Michael B. Gross's study shows how anti-Catholicism and specifically the Kulturkampf, the campaign to break the power of the Catholic Church, were not simply attacks against the church nor were they merely an attempt to secure state autonomy. Gross shows that the liberal attack on Catholicism was actually a complex attempt to preserve moral, social, political, and sexual order during a period of dramatic pressures for change.

Gross argues that a culture of anti-Catholicism shaped the modern development of Germany including capitalist economics, industrial expansion, national unification, and gender roles. He demonstrates that images of priests, monks, nuns, and Catholics as medieval, backward, and sexually deviant asserted the liberal middle-class claim to social authority after the Revolution of 1848. He pays particular attention to the ways anti-Catholicism, Jesuitphobia, and antimonastic hysteria were laced with misogyny and expressed deeper fears of mass culture and democracy in the liberal imagination. In doing so, he identifies the moral, social, and cultural imperatives behind the Kulturkampf in the 1870s.

By offering a provocative reinterpretation of liberalism and its relationship to the German anti-Catholic movement, this work ultimately demonstrates that in Germany, liberalism itself contributed to a culture of intolerance that would prove to be a serious liability in the twentieth century. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars of culture, ideology, religion, and politics.

Genres: History, Germany

376 pages, Paperback

First published June 28, 2004

Reviews

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an eye-opening book for me. I have found out that half of my ancestors came from Germany in the 1800's and I wanted to know more about what was going on in Germany at that time. I was really engrossed in the conflict between Protestants and Catholics and the Kulturkampf, the officially-sanctioned cultural struggle against the Catholic Church. It seemed that the Catholic Church became the poster child for backward, Medieval ways, and the Protestant Church took on the mantle of modern, progressive, personal development (Bildung). Fascinating conflict of concepts. It has actually spurred me to start a course in German to understand the throw-way phrases and book titles used in the text. One comment I would make on the text--it was sometimes ponderous to read, being in scholarly erudite phrasing. It reminds me of when I was in Law School and there was a movement afoot for "Plain English for Lawyers," trying to get lawyers to speak in less obscure language. There should be a "Plain English for Scholars." Do we really have to translate "the confessional divide" into "different belief systems," or other obscure phrases?

[Jim Gulley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a history of the rise and fall of the Kulturkampf during German reunification in the mid-nineteenth century. It is an ironic portrayal of Enlightenment liberals who leveraged the power of the state to oppress the Roman Catholic Church and undermine its influence over society. The Kulturkampf itself was a set of six laws passed between 1872 and 1875 that brought the secular clergy under state control, outlawed most regular clergy, and confiscated church properties. The movement, however, was short-lived. By 1879 the German government had moved on to more pressing concerns.

There are many parallels with Tackett’s Religion, Revolution, and Regional Culture in Eighteenth-century France. Both Tackett and Gross use statistical analyses of census-type data as primary sources, but Gross’s narrative style makes for a more compelling read.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book sheds valuable light on the ideological conflict between Ultramontane Catholicism and secular Liberalism in 19th century Germany. Gross does an excellent job of presenting primary source documents that give the reader a good sense of the animosity and fear that existed between the two groups. On the negative side, this book presents so much information to establish Gross's arguments that it often feels redundant. In addition, although Gross does a great job of building up to the Kulturkampf, he barely touches on that conflict when he finally gets to it toward the end of the book. Also, here's a quick tip: do yourself a favor and skip the introduction, unless you are a scholar in this field with knowledge of prior academic debates surrounding the German Kulturkampf.