German Nationalism and Religious Conflict (ebook)

Argumento de German Nationalism and Religious Conflict (ebook)

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.

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"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."--Choice0List 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