Kulturkampf

The German term Audio|De-Kulturkampf.ogg|Kulturkampf (literally, "culture struggle") refers to German policies in relation to secularity and the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, enacted from 1871 to 1878 by the Chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck.

Until the mid-19th century, the Catholic Church was still a political power. The Pope's Papal States were supported by France but ceased to exist as an indirect result of the Franco-Prussian War. The Catholic Church still had a strong influence on many parts of life, though, even in Bismarck's Protestant Prussia. In the newly founded German Empire, Bismarck sought to bolster the power of the secular state and reduce the political and social influence of the Roman Catholic Church by instituting political control over Church activities.

The 1871 "Kanzelparagraf" marked the beginning of a series of sanctions against Catholicism that Bismarck imposed until 1875. To characterize Bismarck's politics toward the Catholic church, the pathologist and member of the parliament of the "Deutsche Fortschrittspartei" (Progressive Liberals) Rudolf Virchow used the term "Kulturkampf" the first time on January 17, 1873 in the Prussian house of representatives.en icon cite book | author = | coauthors = | title =New Catholic Dictionary | year =1910 | editor = | pages = | chapter =Kulturkampf | chapterurl =http://www.catholic-forum.com/SAINTS/ncd04572.htm | publisher = | location = | id = | url =http://www.catholic-forum.com/SAINTS/indexncd.htm | format = | accessdate = | quote=It was the distinguished liberal politician and scientist, Professor Rudolph Virchow, who first called it the Kulturkampf, or struggle for civilization.] As this conflict brought him an ever growing political defeat, he moderated his struggle with the Catholic Church and in the wake of Pius IX's death on February 7, 1878, reconciled with the new Pope, Leo XIII, lifting some sanctions. The Kanzelparagraf remained in force till 1953, several religious orders like the Jesuits remained banned from the German Empire, confiscated properties were not returned, a de facto discrimination against the Catholic minority continued in Civil Service positions and civil marriage remained mandatory.

It is generally accepted amongst historians that the Kulturkampf measures targeted the Catholic Church under Pope Pius IX with discriminatory sanctions. Many historians also point out anti-Polish elements in the policies in other contexts.en icon cite book | author =Norman Davies | coauthors = | title =God's Playground | year =1982 | publisher =Columbia University Press | location =New York | id =ISBN 0-231-05353-3 ] en icon cite book | author =Adam Zamoyski | title =The Polish Way: A Thousand-Year History of the Poles and Their Culture | year =1993 | publisher =Hippocrene Books | location = | id =ISBN 0-7818-0200-8] pl icon cite book | author =Maciej Milczarczyk | coauthors =Andrzej Szolc | title =Historia; W imię wolności | year =1994 | editor = | pages =196—198 | publisher =WSiP | location =Warsaw | id =ISBN 83-02-05454-2 ] pl icon cite book | author =Andrzej Chwalba | title =Historia Polski 1795-1918 | year =2000 | pages =671 | publisher =Wydawnictwo Literackie | location =Kraków | id =ISBN 83-08-03053-X ] pl icon cite journal | author=Piotr Szlanta | title=Admirał Gopła | journal=Mówią wieki | year=2001 | volume=501 | issue=09/2001 | url=http://www.mowiawieki.pl/artykul.html?id_artykul=200 ] en icon cite book | author = | coauthors = | title =New Catholic Dictionary | year =1910 | editor = | pages = | chapter =Kulturkampf | chapterurl =http://www.catholic-forum.com/SAINTS/ncd04572.htm | publisher = | location = | id = | url =http://www.catholic-forum.com/SAINTS/indexncd.htm | format = | accessdate = | quote=It was the distinguished Liberal politician and scientist, Professor Rudolph Virchow, who first called it the Kulturkampf, or struggle for civilization.] en icon cite web | author=Leonore Koschnick, Agnete von Specht| year=2001| title=The Social Dimension: "Founders" and "Enemies of the Empire" | work=Bismarck: Prussia, Germany, and Europe | url=http://www.dhm.de/ENGLISH/ausstellungen/bismarck/169.htm | accessdate=2006-02-16 ] In the USA, the term "Kulturkampf" and its calque "culture war" is used since 1960 to describe conflicts between Conservatives and Liberals.

Restrictions on Catholics

Since the Protestant reformation, the German states were divided into Protestant states in the North and Roman Catholic states in the South. When the German Empire was founded in 1871, the bulk of the empire was constituted from the Prussian-led Protestant states of the former North German Confederation. Catholic South German states also joined the empire, but the odds were for the Protestants as Austria, the largest Catholic South German state, was excluded from the empire. Bismarck saw the addition of the southern states (especially Catholic Bavaria) as a possible threat to the Empire's stability. Tensions were also increased by the 1870 Vatican Council proclamation on papal infallibility. There were also significant Catholic populations in eastern parts of Germany (mainly Poles), the Rhineland and in Alsace-Lorraine. Moreover, Bismarck had deliberately formed the German Empire against interference from Austria, a more powerful Catholic country than those previously mentioned.

Among the measures taken to reduce the influence of the Catholic Church was the addition in 1871 of § 130a to the German Criminal Code "(Strafgesetzbuch)", which threatened clergy who discussed politics from the pulpit with two years of prison; this article was dubbed the "Kanzelparagraph" (from the German "Kanzel" — "pulpit").

In March 1872 religious schools were forced to undergo official government inspection and in June religious teachers were banned from government schools. In addition, under the May Laws administered by Adalbert Falk, the state began to monitor the education of clergy closely, created a secular court for cases involving the clergy, and required notification of all clergy employment. In 1872, the Jesuits were banned (and remained banned in Germany until 1917) and in December the German government broke off diplomatic relations with the Vatican.

The Papal encyclical Etsi multa of Pope Pius IX in 1873 claimed that Freemasonry was the motivating force behind the Kulturkampf."Some of you may perchance wonder that the war against the Catholic Church extends so widely. Indeed each of you knows well the nature, zeal, and intention of sects, whether called Masonic or some other name. When he compares them with the nature, purpose, and amplitude of the conflict waged nearly everywhere against the Church, he cannot doubt but that the present calamity must be attributed to their deceits and machinations for the most part. For from these the synagogue of Satan is formed which draws up its forces, advances its standards, and joins battle against the Church of Christ." Para 28, [http://www.ewtn.com/library/encyc/p9etsimu.htm Etsi Multa] ] The Catholic Encyclopedia also claims that the Kulturkampf was instigated by Masonic lodges."They also instigated the "Kulturkampf". The celebrated jurisconsult and Mason, Grandmaster Bluntschli, was one of the foremost agitators in this conflict; he also stirred up the Swiss "Kulturkampf"." From [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09771a.htm Masonry (Freemasonry)] in the Catholic Encyclopedia and "German Freemasons fostered the Kulturkampf and helped further the dominance of the Prussian state." " [http://www.trosch.org/bks/freemasonry.html Freemasonry] ', "New Catholic Encyclopedia", 1967 ed, Volume 6, p 135, McGraw-Hill, New York.]

On July 13 1874 in the town of Bad Kissingen Eduard Kullmann attempted to assassinate Bismarck with a pistol, but only hit his hand. Kullmann cited church laws as the reason why he had to shoot Bismarck.

In 1875, marriage became a mandatory "civil" ceremony, removed from the control of the Church.

Bismarck's attempts to restrict the power of the Catholic Church, represented in politics by the Catholic Centre Party, were not entirely successful. In the 1874 elections, these forces doubled their representation in the parliament. Needing to counter the Social Democratic Party, Bismarck softened his stance, especially with the election of the new Pope Leo XIII in 1878, and tried to justify his actions to the now numerous Catholic representatives by stating that the presence of Poles (who are predominantly Catholic) within German borders required that such measures be taken.

The general ideological enthusiasm among the liberals for the Kulturkampf"Liberals were the most enthusiastic champions of the general policy, because it satisfied a tradition of passionate anti-clericalism. It was, in fact, a Progressive party deputy in the Prussian legislature - the distinguished medical scientist and pioneer of public health methods, Rudolf Virchow - who coined the term "Kulturkampf" to describe the stakes. Virchow meant it as a term of praise, signifying the liberation of public life from sectarian impositions (though the term was later taken up by Catholic leaders in a spirit of bitter derision)." From [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0377/is_n125/ai_18798593 A Supreme Court in the culture wars] by Jeremy Rabkin in the Fall edition of the Public Interest] was in contrast to Bismarck's pragmatic attitude towards the measures"Even Bismarck - who initially saw a variety of tactical political advantages in these measures - took pains to distance himself from the rigors of their enforcement." From [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0377/is_n125/ai_18798593 A Supreme Court in the culture wars] by Jeremy Rabkin in the Fall edition of the Public Interest] and growing disquiet from the Conservatives."Conservative political forces, centering on the old Prussian aristocracy, became increasingly critical of these measures, fearing that they would jeopardize the status of their own Protestant Evangelical Church."From [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0377/is_n125/ai_18798593 A Supreme Court in the culture wars] by Jeremy Rabkin in the Fall edition of the Public Interest]

Kulturkampf was hardly a success of Bismarck's government, despite temporary gains within the government itself.en icon cite book | author =Piotr Stefan Wandycz | title =The Price of Freedom: A History of East Central Europe | year =2001 | pages =185—186 | publisher =Routledge | location =London | id =ISBN 0-415-25491-4 | url =http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&vid=ISBN0415254914&id=vdS_WBHGBcYC&num=10&pg=PA186&lpg=PA186&dq=Kulturkampf+isbn:0415254914&sig=NcYw5wcBY2PyDNE013NfsxAcyyU]

Kulturkampf and Germanisation policies in the Prussian Province of Posen

The Kulturkampf had a major impact on the regions of Prussia with a Polish population. Since 1772, Poland did not exist as a state and had been partitioned between Austria, Prussia (which in turn became part of the German Empire) and Russia. Within the Prussian partition was Greater Poland, which during the Kulturkampf was encompassed by the Province of Posen. Here, Germans constituted a minority while most of the inhabitants were Roman Catholic ethnic Poles. The struggle against Catholicism and Catholic southern German states started almost simultaneously with an extensive campaign of Germanisation in the lands formerly belonging to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Polish Kingdom. Therefore, the anti-Catholic elements of the Kulturkampf can be tied to Germanisation efforts involving language and culture within the empire.en icon cite book | author=Henry Bogdan | coauthors = | title =From Warsaw To Sofia; A History of Eastern Europe | year =1989 | editor =Istvan Fehervary | pages =128 - 130 | publisher =Pro Libertate Publishing | location =Santa Fe, New Mexico | url =http://www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/bogdan/bogdan00.htm | id =ISBN 0-9622049-0-0 ]

After the Falk Laws (May Laws) had been passed, the Prussian authorities started to close down most of the religious-minded schools teaching the Polish language. Instead, the German language schools were promoted. In November 1872 minister Falk ordered all classes of religion to be held in German by the spring of the following year. The wave of protests on the side of Polish Catholics and the clergy was pacified the following year, when the Catholic Seminaries of Posen (Poznań) and Gnesen (Gniezno) were closed down, and the state took up the supervision of education, previously carried out mostly in church-sponsored schools. The estate of the Church was confiscated, monastic orders dissolved, and the paragraphs of the Prussian constitution assuring the freedom of the Catholics were removed. In the Province of Posen the Kulturkampf took on a much more nationalistic character than in other parts of Germany.en icon cite web | author=Jarmila Kaczmarek, Andrzej Prinke | year=2000| title=Two Archaeologies in one Country: Official Prussian versus amateur Polish activities in Mid-Western (i.e.: Greater) Poland in XIXth-early XXth cent. | work=Poznań Archaeological Museum publications | url=http://www.muzarp.poznan.pl/archweb/archweb_eng/Publications/dwarch/index_dwa.html | accessmonthday=February 16 | accessyear=2006]

Soon afterwards the Prussian authorities responded with repressions, with 185 priests imprisoned and several hundred others forced into exile. Among the imprisoned was the Primate of Poland Archbishop Mieczysław Ledóchowski. A large part of the remaining Catholic priests had to continue their service in hiding from the authorities. Although most of the imprisoned were finally set free by the end of the decade, the majority of them were forced into exile. Many observers believed these policies only further stoked the Polish independence movement. There is also a question regarding possible personal antipathy towards Poles behind Bismarck's motivation in pursuing the Kulturkampf.Provinz Posen" - the Kulturkampf did not cease after the end of the decade. Although Bismarck finally signed an informal alliance with the Catholic church against the socialists, the policies of Germanization did continue in Polish-inhabited parts of the country.

In 1886, the authorities of Prussia prepared a new policy of Germanisation of the provinces with a Polish population. According to Heinrich Tiedemann, the author of the plan, the reason why all earlier attempts at bringing more German settlers to the province failed was that they allegedly "felt uncertain and alien" there. The proposed solution was to assure them of correctness of elimination of Poles from public life and land property, as well as to promote land acquisition by administrative means. The state-controlled Settlement Commission was to buy off land and estates from the local Poles and sell it, at a much lower price, to Germans. Although it managed to attract circa 22,000 families to the area,pl icon cite encyclopedia | ency=Wielka Encyklopedia PWN | edition=web | year=2005 | article=KOMISJA KOLONIZACYJNA] the overall percentage of Polish inhabitants of the land was not changed. Similarly, the activities of the Eastern Marches Society met with little success. Instead, the German actions following the start of the Kulturkampf resulted in strengthening the Polish national awareness and creation of several nationalist organization similar to the ones created against Polish culture and economy. By 1904, when the new law on settlement which effectively forbade Polish peasants from construction of new houses, the sense of national identity was strong enough to cause a period of civil unrest in the country. Among the notable symbols of the era were the children's strike of Września and the struggle of Michał Drzymała who effectively evaded the new law by living in a circus van rather than a newly-built house.

Prussia's Germanisation policies in the Province of Posen mostly failed. Although most of the administrative measures aimed against the Poles remained in force until 1918, between 1912 and 1914 only four Polish-owned estates were expropriated, while at the same time Polish social organizations successfully competed with German trade organizations and even started to buy land from the Germans. The long-lasting effect of the Polish-German conflict in the area was development of a sense of Greater Polish identity, distinct from the identity common in other parts of Poland and primarily associated with nationalist ideas rather than socialism, prevailing in other parts of the country in 20th century.

Use of the term Kulturkampf or Culture War in the USA

The word Kulturkampf has also been used to refer to similar cultural conflicts in other times and places. In the United States, the term culture war has been used by Patrick Buchanan, among others, to describe what an analogous conflict starting in the 1960s and continuing to the present between religious social conservatives and secular social liberals (Buchanan used the English "culture war," though in the context Buchanan used it, as a war between traditional morality and avant-garde liberalism, it clearly evoked memories of the earlier German experience). Coincidentally, Buchanan himself is descended from German Catholics on his mother's side. This theme of "culture war" was the basis of Buchanan's keynote speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention. [http://www.buchanan.org/pa-92-0817-rnc.html] The term "culture war" had by 2004 become commonly used in the United States by both liberals and conservatives. However, Buchanan's opinions have no relevance to the actual Kulturkampf as it was conducted in Germany in the 1800s.

Justice Antonin Scalia referenced the term in the Supreme Court case "Romer v. Evans", 517 U.S. 620 (1996), saying "The Court has mistaken a Kulturkampf for a fit of spite." The case concerned an amendment to the Colorado state constitution that prohibited any subdepartment from acting to protect individuals on the basis of sexual orientation. Scalia believed that the amendment was a valid move on the part of citizens who sought "recourse to a more general and hence more difficult level of political decision making than others." The majority disagreed, holding that the amendment violated the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

ee also

With respect to the German Empire

* Otto von Bismarck
* German Empire

With respect to Catholicism

* Anti-Catholicism
* Culture war
* Kultur
* Liberalism in Germany
* Papal Infallibility
* Religion in Germany
* Separation of church and state
* Ultramontanism

With respect to Poland

* History of Poland (1795–1918)
* Anti-Polonism
* Deutscher Ostmarkenverein
* Drzymała's van
* Germanization
* Rota
* Settlement Commission

With respect to the USA

* Culture war
* Paleoconservatism
* Patrick Buchanan
* Conservative
* Liberal

Notes and references

::In-line:
# Hahn, "Geschichte des Kulturkampfs in Preussen", (Berlin, 1881)
# Wiesmann, "Geschichte des Kulturkampfs", (Leipzig, 1886)
# Robinson and Beard, "Development of Modern Europe", volume ii, (Boston, 1908)
# C. D, Hazen, "Europe since 1815", (New York, 1910)
# David Blackbourn, "Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century Germany" (Oxford, 1993)
# Ronald J. Ross, "The failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf: Catholicism and state power in imperial Germany, 1871-1887", (Washington, D.C., 1998)

External links

* [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08703b.htm New Advent: Catholic Encyclopedia online: Kulturkampf] very long description by the Catholic Encyclopedia
* [http://members.aol.com/megxyz/heather.html “Bismarck’s Failure: the Kulturkampf”] long description
* [http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/K/Kulturka.asp Kulturkampf] short description by the Columbia Encyclopedia with links to further articles
* [http://www.historychannel.com/thcsearch/thc_resourcedetail.do?encyc_id=214117 ENCYCLOPEDIA: KULTURKAMPF] short description of an encyclopedia by Funk and Wagnalls
* [http://www.historyhome.co.uk/europe/bisdom.htm Bismarck’s Domestic Polices 1871 -1890] Kulturkampf in the context of Bismarck's entire domestic policies, by a head of history at Catholic University School in Dublin
* [http://www.wlajournal.com/12_1/Boxwell.pdf Kulturkampf Now and Then] 13-paged essay in pdf by a Professor of the United States Air Force Academy
* [http://homepages.stuy.edu/~nikolj/BISMARCK%20AND%20THE%20KULTURKAMPF.htm Short summary of the Kulturkampf on the website of the Stuyvesant High School]
* [http://www.assumption.edu/dept/history/HI14Net/Bismarckessay.html "How successful was Bismarck in consolidating domestic support for the German Empire from 1871 onwards?"]
* [http://www.pvhs.chico.k12.ca.us/~bsilva/projects/germany/2ndreich/kultur.combes.htm Comparison of Kulturkampf and Emile Combes' Struggles with the Catholic Church] German and French Kulturkampf
* [http://h-net.org/~german/gtext/kaiserreich/windhorst.html Ludwig Windthorst Speaks in the Prussian Parliament (1873)] speech of Ludwig Windthorst following its analysis
* [http://www.zum.de/psm/imperialismus/bismarck3e.php Bismarck on the purpose of the Kulturkampf] Speech in the Prussian House of Lords, March 10 1873
* [http://www.litdok.de/cgi-bin/litdok?lang=en&t_multi=x&v_0=THS&q_0=kulturkampf+(1781-1887)%0F Kulturkampf: Bibliography by] LitDok East-Central Europe Herder-Institut (Marburg)

Contemporary

*Pat Buchanan, [http://www.buchanan.org/pa-92-0817-rnc.html 1992 Republican National Convention keynote] , speech dated August 17, 1992.
*Pat Buchanan, [http://www.buchanan.org/pa-92-0914.html The Cultural War for the Soul of America] , speech dated September 14, 1992.
*Pat Buchanan, [http://www.theamericancause.org/patculturewars.htm The Aggressors in the Culture Wars] , column dated March 8, 2004.