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Roman Catholicism and the Prussian State in the Early 1850s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Simon Hyde
Simon Hyde
Affiliation:
Christ Church Oxford
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Extract

The relationship between the Roman Catholic church and the state in nineteenth-century German history appears to have been plagued by discord and mistrust. From the secularization of church lands and the dissolution of sovereign ecclesiastical territories at the beginning of the century to the Kulturkampf of the 1870s, church and state found themselves repeatedly at loggerheads. One thinks of the negotiations between Prussia and Rome on a concordat after 1815, the Cologne mixed marriage controversy of 1837, the Frankfurt Parliament's debates on Article III of the Reich Constitution in 1848, and the hostility aroused by the Raumer decrees of 1852. In a recent article on the Catholic church in Westphalia during the 1850s and his book on popular Catholicism in nineteenth-century Germany, Jonathan Sperber has challenged the validity of this picture of conflict between church and state.

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Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 24 , Issue 2-3 , June 1991 , pp. 95 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1991

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References

I must gratefully acknowledge the generosity of the British Council in funding an ascetic two months in Merseburg during the Spring of 1990. Special thanks are due to Robert Vilain for alimentary support. Kenneth Barkin, Michael John, Nicholas Owen, Wolfram Pyta, Glyn Redworth, and Jonathan Wright read the paper. I am uncertain precisely how much blame they will accept.

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2. Compare similar feelings about the implications of Sperber's work in Anderson's, Margaret L. article “The Kulturkampf and the Course of German History,” CEH 19 (1986): 82–84.Google Scholar The reservations of Vernon L. Lidtke, “Catholics and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany: A Comment,” ibid., 117–19, should also be noted, especially his remarks about the diversity of the Catholic community.

3. Quoted in Sperber, “Counterrevolutions,” 55.

4. My stress, ibid., 61. Cf. Sperber, “The Transformation of Catholic Associations in the Northern Rhineland and Westphalia, 1830–1870” Journal of Social History 15 (1981): 257.Google Scholar

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14. Cf. Günther Grünthal's claim that only some 35 percent of the Second Chamber's sitting members were returned after the 1852 elections. Continuity of membership in the First Chamber appears to have been even less. Grünthal, Parlamentarismus, 341–43.

15. RP Aachen to IM Westphalen, 4 November 1852, ZStAM Rep 77 Tit 496a no. 53 Adh lh Bd. 1.

16. My sources here are the Interior Ministry's compilation of results in ZStAM Rep 77 Tit 496a no. 53 Bd. 1, and Lauter, Franz, Preussens Volksvertretung in der zweiten Kammer und im Hause der Abgeordneten vom Februar 1849 bis Mai 1877 (Berlin, 1877).Google Scholar

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20. See Oberpräsident (OP) Kleist–Retzow to IM Westphalen, 5 & 6 November 1852, ZStAM Rep 77 Tit 496a no. 53 Adh Ih Bd. 1.

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22. LR Cochem to IM Westphalen, 3 November 1852, ibid.

23. RP Aachen to IM Westphalen, 4 November 1852, ibid.

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52. On the historiography of the 1850s see Siemann, Wolfram, Gesellschaft im Aufbruch. Deutschland 1849–71 (Frankfurt a. M. 1990), 11f.Google Scholar

53. See, for example, DVh nos. 2 & 32, 3 January & 8 February 1851.

54. DVh nos. 32 & 36, 8 & 13 February 1851.

55. DVh no. 35, 12 February 1851.

56. KZ no. 172, 16 July 1852.

57. DVh no. 70, 25 March 1851.

58. DVh no. 216, 18 September 1851.

59. DVh no. 225, 28 September 1851.

60. See von Petersdorff, Hermann, Kleist-Retzow. Ein Lebensbild (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1907), 194ff.Google Scholar

61. See Heinrichs, Joseph, Die Reaktivierung der Kreis- und Provinzialstände (Bonn, 1917), 38,Google Scholar and also DVh nos. 214 & 217, 16 & 19 September 1851.

62. DVh no. 228, 2 October 1851.

63. DVh no. 241, 17 October 1851.

64. See, for example, the Cologne administration's monthly newspaper report, 9 October 1852, in ZStAM Geheimes Zivilkabinett, 2.2.1, no. 16305 fos. 109–25.

65. DVh no. 234, 10 October 1852, Elberfelder Zeitung no. 217, 9 September 1852, and DVh no. 212, 15 September 1852.

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67. Cf. DVh no. 212, 15 September 1852, and also Historisch-politische Blätter 31 (1853): 205.Google Scholar

68. DVh no. 221, 25 September 1852.

69. DVh nos. 225, 245, & 246, 30 September, 23 & 24 October 1852.

70. DVh no. 233, 9 October 1852.

71. See Bachem, , Bachem, 2:283f.Google Scholar

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73. Polizeidirektor (Pol.D) Kehler to RP Breslau, 22 October 1852, ZStAM Rep 77 Tit 496a no. 57 fos. 15–16a.

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75. Gesetzsammlung für die Königlichen Preussischen Staaten 1850, 18f., 27 & 214f.

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78. LR Trier to IM Westphalen, 3 November 1852. ZStAM Rep 77 Tit 496a no. 53 Adh Ih Bd. 1.

79. RP Trier to IM Westphalen, 6 November 1852, ibid.

80. RP Köln to IM Westphalen, 29 October 1852, ibid.

81. LR Geldern to IM Westphalen, 4 November 1852, ibid.

82. RP Trier to IM Westphalen, 31 October 1852, ibid.

83. RP Aachen to IM Westphalen, 29 October 1852, ibid.

84. ZStAM 2.2.1, no. 16342 fos. 155–68.

85. Denk, “Wahlen,” 94, and Kaiser, Strömungen, 98.

86. See Müller, “Rheinland,” 134f.

87. ZStAM 2.2.1. no. 16622 fos. 110–17.

88. Schmidt, Paul, Die Wahlen im Regierungsbezirk Koblenz 1849 bis 1867–69 (Bonn, 1971), 165f.Google Scholar

89. LR Düren to IM Westphalen, 3 November 1852, ZStAM Rep 77 Tit 496a no. 53 Adh Ih Bd. 1.

90. LRAV Prüm to IM Westphalen, 3 November 1852, ibid.

91. LR Cochem to IM Westphalen, 26 March 1853, ibid.

92. RP Düsseldorf to IM Westphalen, 22 November 1852, ibid.

93. Bürgermeister (BM) Josten to LR Kempen, 14 November 1852, ibid.

94. LR Münsterberg to RP Breslau, 30 October 1852, ZStAM Rep 77 Tit 496a no. 57.

95. RP Breslau to IM Westphalen, 1 November 1852, ibid.

96. LR Gladbach to RP Düsseldorf, 4 November 1852, ZStAM Rep 77 Tit 496a no. 53 Adh Ih Bd. 1. Cf. the Trier police report for November, 1852, which claimed that the clerical party had dominated the elections “with an impertinence and shamelessness not even managed by the Democrats in 1848.” ZStAM Rep 77 Tit 375 no. 10, Bd. 1, fo. 125.

97. RP Trier to IM Westphalen, 6 November 1852, ZStAM Rep 77 Tit 496a no. 53 Adh Ih Bd. 1.

98. Haas, Arnim, “Die Wahlen zum preussischen Abgeordnetenhaus im Regierungsbezirk Aachen von der deutschen Revolution 1848–49 bis zum deutschfranzösischen Krieg” (unpublished Ph.D. diss., Bonn, 1954), 74.Google Scholar It would be as well to note here that Kühlwetter was a Catholic. See Poestges, Dieter, Die preussische Personalpolitik im Regierungsbezirk Aachen von 1815 bis zum Ende des Kulturkampfes (Aachen, 1975), 127.Google Scholar

99. DVh no. 263, 14 November 1852.

100. Bachem, Karl, Vorgeschichte, Geschichte und Politik der deutschen Zentrumspartei, 9 vols. (Cologne/Aalen, 1927–1967), 2:103ffGoogle Scholar. Also ZStAM Rep 169C Abschn. 26 no. 46 Bd. 1 fos. 6f.

101. For the statutes see Donner, Hermann, Die katholische Fraktion in Preussen 1852–1858 (Leipzig, 1909), 77f.Google Scholar

102. Donner, Fraktion, 3, and also Bachem, , Vorgeschichte, 2:123.Google Scholar

103. DVh no. 251, 30 October 1852.

104. Bachem, , Vorgeschichte, 2:111, 119f.Google Scholar

105. For some of Reichensperger's early liberal political and economic ideas, see Fenske, Hans, Vormärz und Revolution 1840–1849 (Darmstadt, 1976), 223–33.Google Scholar

106. Bachem, , Vorgeschichte, 2:124.Google Scholar

107. See Donner, Fraktion, 36–55.

108. See a copy in LHAK 403 9035 fo. 59.

109. Grünthal, Parlamentarismus, 423.

110. Bachem, , Bachem, 2:394–415.Google Scholar

111. Sperber, “Counterrevolutions,” 60f.

112. Bachem, , Bachem, 2:407f.Google Scholar

113. Limitations of space have made it impossible here to go into this subject as deeply as I would have wished. I shall, however, return to it in a future article, the purpose of which will be to examine the relationship of Catholics, their political representatives, and the Church to the Prussian State in the period between 1852 and 1858.

114. IM Westphalen to the King, 21 January 1853, ZStAM HA Rep 50 J1563 fos. 44–48.

115. Bismarck to Manteuffel, 15 November 1852, in von Poschinger, Heinrich, Preussen im Bundestag 1851 bis 1859, 4 vols. (Leipzig, 1882–1884), 4:128.Google Scholar

116. Ibid., 131.

117. Quoted in Schoeps, Hans-Joachim, Preussen. Geschichte eines Staates (Berlin, 1966), 370f.Google Scholar