German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1870-1914

by Helmut Walser Smith

Overview

The German Empire of 1871, although unified politically, remained deeply divided along religious lines. In German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, Helmut Walser Smith offers the first social, cultural, and political history of this division. He argues that Protestants and Catholics lived in different worlds, separated by an "invisible boundary" of culture, defined as a community of meaning.

As these worlds came into contact, they also came into conflict. Smith explores the local as well as the national dimensions of this conflict, illuminating for the first time the history of the Protestant League as well as the dilemmas involved in Catholic integration into a national culture defined primarily by Protestantism.

The author places religious conflict within the wider context of nation-building and nationalism. The ongoing conflict, conditioned by a long history of mutual intolerance, was an integral part of the jagged and complex process by which Germany became a modern, secular, increasingly integrated nation. Consequently, religious conflict also influenced the construction of German national identity and the expression of German nationalism. Smith contends that in this religiously divided society, German nationalism did not simply smooth over tensions between two religious groups, but rather provided them with a new vocabulary for articulating their differences. Nationalism, therefore, served as much to divide as to unite German society.

Originally published in 1995.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691604459
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/14/2014
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #286
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Acknowledgments

Notes on Usage and Translation

Introduction 5

1 The Kulturkampf and German National Identity 19

Protestantism and Kultur: Constructing a National Canon 20

Force, Freedom, and Cultural Disunity: The Role of the State 37

The Kulturkampf and the Catholic Community 42

2 Visions of the Nation: The Ideology of Religious Conflict 50

The Ideology of the Protestant League 51

Catholics, the Nation, and the Roots of Antagonism 61

3 Religious Conflict and Social Life 79

"The Invisible Boundary" 80

Secularization 85

Confessional Integration and Confessional Conflict 94

The Social Bases of Confessional Conflict 102

4 The Politics of Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 1897-1906 117

Sammlungspolitik, Salutations, and the Jesuit Law: Symbolic Politics 118

The Underground Politics of the Protestant League 127

The Reaction of the Catholic Center 138

5 The Politics of Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 1907-14 141

German Nationalism and the Catholic Center in the Bulow Bloc 142

The Organization of the Nation: Religious Conflict inside the Nationalist Pressure Groups 146

The Collapse of the Bulow Bloc and the Eclipse of Integral Nationalist Politics 154

6 Protestants, Catholics, and Poles: Religious and Nationality Conflicts in the Empire's Ethnically Mixed Areas, 1897-1914 169

The Geography of National and Religious Conflict in the Ethnic Borderlands of the Prussian East 170

German Protestants and Catholic Poles 173

The Protestant League and the Limits of Protestant Organization in the Ethnic Borderlands 178

German Catholics and Polish Catholics: The Making of an Antagonism 185

The Catholic Center and the Nationality Conflict 191

7 Los von Rom: Religious Conflict and the Quest for a Spiritual Pan-Germany 206

The Allure of Nationalism: The Appeal of Los von Rom 211

Throne, Altar, and National Religion 219

Pan-German Politics and the Demise of Los von Rom 225

Conclusion 233

Sources 241

Index 267

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Fluent, full of spark and verve, and very enjoyable to read. Historians and political scientists concerned with modern Europe generally, historians and sociologists of religion, those interested in nationalism and state formation—this book has something to offer them all."—David Blackburn, Harvard University

Editorial Reviews

"Smith describes a familiar narrative in a provocative and novel way. . . . Fruitfully using works in cultural studies, as well as the recent historiography of the politics of religion, Smith presents a finely textured account of Catholic-Protestant difference."

Choice

"Fluent, full of spark and verve, and very enjoyable to read. Historians and political scientists concerned with modern Europe generally, historians and sociologists of religion, those interested in nationalism and state formation—this book has something to offer them all."—David Blackburn, Harvard University

From the Publisher