Kulturkampf Then: Ludwig Windthorst vs. Bismarck
by Richard H. Schaefer
It is hard to understand how a man as remarkable as Ludwig
Windthorst (1812-1891) could disappear so completely from modern
history, especially Catholic history where he wrote some
remarkable pages defending the Faith in the first Kulturkampf,
when the Prussian state, through its disordered genius Bismarck,
sought to emasculate the Church. A hydrocephalic at birth, legally
blind most of his adult life, barely five feet tall, of misshapen
appearance, this little man led his fellow Catholics through the
decades of the 1870s and 1880s against the leadership of the most
powerful state in Europe, newly victorious over Catholic Austria
and France. Consider this panegyric of his public life as
summarized by his English biographer Margaret Lavinia Anderson:
Ludwig Windthorst was Imperial Germany's greatest parliamentarian.
Counting his terms in the diet of the Kingdom of Hanover, he
served 35 years in the various legislatures of his country. His
skill in debate was equalled by no other deputy; his tactical
genius, only by Bismarck. August Bebel can compare with Windthorst
in his skill at keeping warring factions together in a powerful,
disciplined party, but the Social Democrats faced neither the
opportunities nor the dangers confronting Windthorst's party - the
Catholic Zentrum-and consequently Bebel's parliamentary task was a
much simpler one.... Windthorst's influence outside parliament was
in many ways as powerful as his influence in it. In his handling
of party machinery and his relation to the masses-his nearest
analogues are Daniel O'Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell. In the
Church he came to exercise an influence over appointments that
rivaled that of any bishop and that was no less decisive for being
informal....
The uncrowned king of Catholic Germany, he was also its unofficial
Kultusminister.... By his opponents Windthorst was continually
vilified as the 'Father of Lies', an 'enemy of the state', a
'democrat', and the 'evil genius of the German nation'. Within
Catholic Germany, on the other hand, he was revered long after his
death, and the Windthorstbund, established to keep his legacy
green, was dissolved only by Hitler. Yet today, except among
professional historians, the man is forgotten (Anderson, whose
biography is the source of most of the information in this
article, examines some of the reasons for this serious neglect,
the legacy Windthorst opponents of a hundred years ago. This
neglect is no longer merely a question of doing justice to
Catholic history, important as that is. For though German
Catholics lost that first Kulturkampf, in spite of having an
extraordinary leader, a mass political party and a flourishing
press, they left a rich, complex history of political and social
struggle, which as America's own <Kulturkampf> sharpens, cries out
for examination and evaluation. If we conclude there are no
lessons to be drawn-the situations are too disparate-we can still
take heart from the titanic battle little Windthorst and his brave
fellow Catholics waged against the most powerful state in Europe,
very much in the spirit Pope John Paul II exhorts us to battle-"Do
Not Be Afraid"-against the most powerful ideologies of our time.
The "why" of the first Kulturkampf is still a matter of debate.
Anderson insists it was no accident. "'State builder' from Henry
VIII and Peter the Great to Richelieu and Cavour have invariably
attempted to suppress the institutional church. Bismarck was no
exception. He had intended for some time to attack-or reform-the
established positions of both churches in Prussia and to disengage
them from public affairs by ending their authority over schools,
introducing civil marriage and making it easier to end
affiliation." And what better time to challenge the Roman Church
(the Protestants were largely ignored) than the early 1870s, with
the papacy freshly stripped of its temporal holdings and Prussia
still exultant from its victories over the great Catholic powers,
Austria (1866) and France (1871) E.E.Y. Hales' observation made a
number of years ago is still accurate: "The prestige of the Pope
within the Church may have been very high after 1870, but outside
the Church, and especially in the chancelleries of the great
states, it was desperately low, and governments felt free, as
never before, to attack both the Church and her head with
impunity."
(John Paul II's papacy is vigorous. Circumspection and deference
mark the relations of today's chancelleries with the Vatican. No
head of state, remembering events in eastern Europe, would
deliberately confront the Pope or his Catholic constituents as did
Bismarck. Yet President Clinton, charm itself when he greets John
Paul on American soil, impervious to the warnings of the Pope,
Mother Teresa, and the American cardinals and bishops, still
plunges ahead with his pro-abortion agenda. His confidence, of
course, comes from the polls which show (truthfully or not) a
"majority" of American Catholics disagree with their Church on
matters as serious as contraception, divorce and even abortion.
But here, as did Bismarck's decades ago, he may make a major
miscalculation. Bismarck's repeated accusations that the Center
Party was unpatriotic, was opposed to the new Reich, was subject
to alien directives, etc., quickly united Catholics from the
Rhineland, Bavaria, Prussia and scattered enclaves throughout
Germany with Alsatians and Polish Catholics in Silesia. Windthorst
often remarked that Bismarck made the Center Party and with his
Kulturkampf shaped it. Nowhere else in Europe did such a
confessional party come into being. Clinton's zealous advocacy of
the Kultur of Death, as demonstrated once more by his veto of the
partial birth abortion ban, may eventually lead him into who knows
what further excess, until finally the most hardened Catholic
conscience in America awakes with Horror to what it has condoned.
The boyish Clinton could prove to be a bloodier enemy of the
Catholic Church than the "Iron Chancellor of the Prussians.")
Anderson dates the <Kulturkampf> from January 1871. Windthorst had
delivered a "routine attack" on the Prussian state's
discriminatory policy against Catholics in the civil service
Bismarck's rebuttal stunned the House. For length and abusiveness
it was "without precedent. When I returned from France," he
concluded, "I could not consider the formation of this fraction
(the Center Party) in any other light than a mobilization of a
party against the state.
"Thereafter followed a week of Bismarck's rage, hoping to isolate
Windthorst from his party, to the point where he barely stopped
short of accusing Windthorst of treason. The Little Giant gave as
roundly as he received. "For my part, you may be assured, I will
not submit to this pressure." And his party still unsure of itself
in this early stage of the Kulturkampf, rallied staunchly to his
defense. "We are proud to have in our midst so distinguished a
member as the Deputy for Meppen.... do not believe, gentlemen,
that our taste is so unique here in this land. Be assured that
there are few names which in wide circles and also in the Prussian
provinces, are so popular as the name of the Deputy for Meppen," a
party spokesman declared to the House. This was true. Windthorst's
name was well known to the leaders of European governments also.
Ironically, in Protestant England, which would soon be Germany's
bitter foe, Bismarck was the hero, the champion of modern ideas;
Windthorst and Pius IX were the leaders of reaction.
But Bismarck pushed on. He discovered a governing technique that
was to serve him well in the next two decades-invoking the Roman
menace. According to Anderson, certain sections of the publishing
industry, seeing quick profits in the new climate the Chancellor
had breathed into German public life, responded with a comic
satire of the Jesuits, <Pater Filucius>.
This work, previously withheld from release for fear of
prosecution "for impiety," quickly became a best seller and
established the cartoonist's popularity across Germany. It also
prefigured the anti Semitic cartoons of later years.
Within a few months, May 1872, petitions denouncing and supporting
the Jesuits, flooded the Reichstag. By a huge majority deputies
called on the government for legislation regulating the order.
When the government's proposals proved too mild, the legislators
passed their own laws, abolishing all Jesuits settlements within
six months, deporting foreign Jesuits and excluding the Society
completely from the empire. This was the first of the so-called
"May laws" directed against the Catholic Church and one of the
most rigorously enforced.
In May of the following year priests were forbidden to study in
Rome or at any diocesan seminary not under state control.
Discipline of the clergy was taken away from the church and given
to a Royal Tribunal. If a priest refused to initiate proceedings
against his bishop, the Tribunal could move on its own.
The May law of 1874 enabled a provincial governor to take over in
the name of the state a rebellious parish or bishop's see. In May
of 1875 Catholics, and even their sympathizers in the civil
service could be removed by law from their positions. Also in that
year the remaining religious orders, with the exception of nursing
orders, were dissolved. (Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem "The Wreck of
the Deutschland", commemorated the death by drowning of five of
these sisters, exiled by the May laws.)
A Frankfurt newspaper that year published "a list of flees,
arrests, and other acts of enforcement" carried out during the two
years of antiCatholic legislations: 241 priests had been arrested,
136 editors and 210 Center Party members. Twenty newspapers were
confiscated, 74 houses searches, 103 expulsions and internments
effected and 55 meetings and organizations dissolved. Five
Prussian bishoprics were vacant by Judicial removal; 989 parishes,
one fourth of the parishes of Prussia, were without priests.
(One can only imagine the human cost of this onslaught on
Germany's Catholics in terms of livings lost, families split and
the unavoidable recriminations, accusations, suspicions and griefs
such upheavals must bring. Yet in the elections of November 1873,
when the Zentrum urged Catholics to turn the election into a
"great plebiscite" for their Church, they did. The popular vote
for the Center Party almost doubled. (Unfortunately, the
government parties gained also, if not as dramatically, and
remained the largest bloc in the Reichstag.) Although at different
periods the Center Party became the largest in the Reichstag, it
was never the majority party. It was this fact of political life
that dictated strategy for Windthorst and provided the setting in
which he built his great reputation and won the grudging respect
of his foes.)
The resistance of Catholics during this war waged by their
government against them was awesome. Prussian bishops refused
cooperation completely. Not a single seminary applied for state
accreditation, nor would any bishop register his clerical
appointments. When they refused to pay their fines their property
was confiscated and finally they were imprisoned.
Nor was the laity passive. They left their dead unburied rather
than have a state appointed priest officiate. In Trier in the
Rhineland infantry and cavalry had to be called out when over a
thousand Catholics surrounded seminary professors the state had
expelled. And in parish after parish, parishioners bought back
church property and clerical belongings confiscated for unpaid
fines.
Excepting pro-choice and gay rights groups there is really no
anti-Catholic feeling in America that equals in ferocity and wide
public support what German Catholics faced during the Kulturkampf.
At that time the first Vatican Council had roused anticlericals
and Protestants across Europe. In Germany one result was petitions
calling for the expulsion of all monastic orders, "hotbeds of
superstition, fornication and sloth." In Vienna, the German
Journalists Convention "proclaimed it a "debt of honor for every
thinking man to enter the lists' for the abolition of cloisters
and the expulsion of the Jesuits." Vatican II was different. The
media portrayed it as a great liberating event in the history of
the Church. That interpretation promoted a false peace with modern
society, at least in media stories replaced now by hostility, as
the message of John Paul, repeated again and again around the
world slowly sink in: namely, that the Council taught what the
Church has always taught. So instead of the invective heaped on
Plus IX and Vatican I, there is a smouldering hate today, looking
for scandal, for missteps, for another opportunity to tell another
false tale about Pius MI or a documentary on the Bible, full of
solemnity and lies. AntiCatholicism in Bismarck's day was bold and
arrogant and in your face. Anderson quotes one contemporary:
"Every day the Catholic had to read-in the great newspapers that
he was an enemy of the Fatherland, a little papist, a dumbhead and
that his clergy were the scum of humanity." The Augsburger
Allgemeine described the Zentrum as a poisonous "fungus feeding
relentlessly on our viscera." Its very presence in the Reichstag a
worse misfortune than "the loss of a great battle on the Loire."
These characterizations manifested themselves in public life where
Zenkum delegates were often hooted and jeered inside and outside
the legislative chambers. Even the distinguished Bishop von
Ketteler suffered the hoots of Berlin's skeet urchins. In 1869 a
small Dominican chapel in one of the capital's suburbs was
vandalized by a mob and its two priests expelled.
If the American media piously disclaim any anti-Catholic agenda,
their reporting of her history -her teaching, her hierarchy is so
weighed down with the views of Catholic dissenters that the same
end is achieved: slander of the Church and the Faith. In the
German Kulturkampf the battle was out in the open, the issues were
clear (At least initially. Windthorst frequently remarked that the
first phase of the struggle, for all of its ferocity, was the
easiest to counter. Later, as Bismarck feigned conciliation, as
division entered Catholic ranks, as the role of the papacy
changed, as weariness and spiritual fatigue took its toll, the
defense and counter attack was much more difficult to manage. Even
Windthorst, fighter that he was, in his later years suffered much
from depression and despair.
It is impossible to detail all the issues, aside from those
affecting the Church, on which Windthorst had to give leadership
as the Center Party grew and the Kulturkampf dragged on. His
positions (and almost always the positions of the party, no matter
how much haranguing and browbeating Windthorst had to administer)
are heroic testimony to the man and his fellow Catholic believers.
Liberal historians scorn the Church's role in modern history as
one of reaction and defense of the status quo. But Windthorst and
the Center Party are blazing refutations of such dishonest
scholarship (as are many other instances-to name just one, the
leading role of Catholics in the founding of European and American
labor unions)When Bismarck demanded, after an assassination
attempt on the Kaiser, that the fledging Social Democratic Party
be outlawed. Windthorst retorted "We cannot fight Socialism any
better than by striving very seriously and persistently to find
out in what points the gentlemen of Social Democracy are
correct... We should do everything we can think of to come to the
aid of the working classes.... If Socialism is now reaping a very
great harvests this is because of the misery of the times, which
to be sure, the gentlemen of 'capital' do not grasp." Windthorst
maintained this position even after a second attempt on the
Kaiser's life brought horrendous pressure to pass an even stricter
antiSocialist law. Windthorst was never enticed by Socialist
ideas, but as a leading member of a harshly persecuted minority,
he appreciated the protection of constitutional law against an
evil and vindictive state. (Windthorst new full well that
sometimes even that protection failed. Many of Bismarck's laws had
been declared unconstitutional and yet still remained on the books
and were enforced. Nevertheless, Windthorst insisted: "Equal
rights and equal protection for all." This included Protestants
and assimilated Jewish deputies whom he noted again and again-,
along with the anti clericals, voted away Catholic rights. "I will
on every occasion represent the right that I claim for the
Catholic Church and her servants for the Protestants also, and not
least for the Jews. I want this right for all," he told the
Reichstag. And he was as good as his word, again and again, often
alone in his party and the Reichstag, combating the anti-Semitism
that "suffused the atmosphere of Imperial Germany."
(A bright spot in the alignment of forces in our American
<Kulturkampf> contrasted with 19th century Germany's, is the
remarkable unity of purpose between Catholic and Evangelical
Protestants. Though organizational unity is minimal, the prolife
agenda unites both confessions at all levels of society.
Windthorst, who repeatedly pled with Protestants and Jews to join
the Center Party, never saw such results. If one asks whether
German Catholics might have been more successful if they had
joined other political parties rather than "isolating" themselves
within their own, consider the words of historian Ellen Evans in
her study of the Center Party: ". . it should be pointed out that
the Center Party in its final form was organized after existing
parties had defined. . .themselves in terms which specifically
excluded Catholic interests;. . .the liberal parties had become
belligerently anti-clerical...while the Conservatives remained
closely tied to the Protestant faith and issued no welcoming
invitation." Windthorst's orthodoxy which combined "an
unembarrassed" even exuberant assertion of Catholicism as the true
faith with a complete lack of bigotry toward others was as rare in
his day as in ours.)
With the election of Leo XIII to the papacy in 1878 began the most
difficult and controversial period of the <Kulturkampf>. Both men
obviously wanted what was best for the Church and her German sons
and daughters. But Windthorst's years of struggle of the most
intense nature, gave him a perspective that not even the Roman
pontiff could change. Eventually the two became estranged without
ever giving any public hint of discord. Windthorst loyally trying
to meet the pontiff's wishes, even if in a barely minimal, less
than straight forward manner, and Leo ever protesting the great
value he placed upon the Center Party and its leaders. Between
them both, of course, stalked the ominous figure of Bismarck,
exploiting every advantage (during this period he was often better
informed than Windthorst about Vatican affairs and through his
press continually painted Windthorst and his Party as the only
obstacles to the end of the <Kulturkampf>, even though all his
anti-Catholic laws were in force. He had won the <Kulturkampf>.
His state controlled the education, appointment and discipline of
the clergy," and "could perform the only legally valid marriage
ceremony." But he wanted more, namely a docile Reichstag and to
achieve that, he needed to break Windthorst's hold on the Center
Party. This he never accomplished. The devotion of the Center
Party faithful to Windthorst never diminished, even after his
death.
Although it is impossible to do justice to the courage and
faithfulness of Windthorst's life in a short article, Anderson's
brief summary of his mature political objective-he began his
political life as a monarchist-show how profoundly democratic and
Catholic the man was. "Unlike the Church's representatives in
centuries past, Windthorst did not seek an island of security for
Catholics within the existing order. Unlike Zentrum leaders of the
early 20th century, he was not satisfied with the assimilation of
Catholics into the order either.... Instead, he accepted the
necessity of critically resisting and thus eventually reforming
("Renewing all things in Christ.") the entire political order that
was the source of Catholic distress. Under Windthorst's leadership
German Catholics generalized their particular confessional
complaints to make them maxims for all of society. In Windthorst's
view in order to solve the problems of the Church, it was
necessary to 'deabsolutize' the State. He did not expect to see it
happen in his lifetime." Nor, can we probably expect it in our
lifetime.
After a-brief bout of pneumonia, Ludwig Windthorst went to his
death bed at age seventy-nine. ". . the was given last rites by a
Jesuit. Since the Society of Jesus was still outlawed, it was the
Zentrum leader's last political act. Most of the time Windthorst
was delirious, constantly trying to get out of bed. On his last
night he delivered a long, well-constructed speech, in a loud,
clear voice, against the Jesuit law. In one of his lucid moments
he was able to bless Maria, his only remaining child (of eight
children), and to send his last words of love to Julie (his wife
of 55 years).- As the end approached, he joined the Sister of
Mercy at his side in the prayer for the dying. At the words
'Father into your hands I commend my spirit, Windthorst expired.
It was 8: 15 a.m., March 15, 1891."
From our perspective, two world wars later, it is certainly easy
to agree with Bismarck's successor as Chancellor, General Caprivi,
that Windthorst's death was "the worst blow that could have struck
the German state at this time." By the turn of the century,
without Windthorst's strong hand, the Center Party had become a
government party, unable to resist the blandishments of German
nationalism, eager after so many years on the outside to finally
have the door opened and be welcomed.
But what about us, our <Kulturkampf>? What can we possibly learn
from this 19th century Prussian world, so different from our own?
First of all, any young aspiring Catholic politician should read
and study Windthorst's public and parliamentary life. The material
there is rich and applicable today as it was in his day. Secondly,
all Catholics can draw inspiration from Windthorst's spirit,
dwelling in a small, misshapen body, struggling with poor
eyesight, subject to despair and depression, he continued to fight
the good fight. Thirdly, we must never forget that the Kulturkampf
is spiritual war, the struggle for men's souls. Gifted heroic
leaders, mass parties, powerful media, important as they all are,
may not carry the day. We face a subtler foe, a more patient foe
than Bismarck and his Prussians. At least so it seems. That will
mean more prayer, even fasting if we are to persevere, not lose
our own souls. If we are given someone as gifted as Windthorst to
lead us, let us be grateful. But we may get no one. We may have to
stand alone or in small groups. We will have to constantly remind
ourselves of our Lord's words, repeated to us again and again by
the Holy Father, "Do Not Be Afraid"'
Barely a year after Windthorst's death the new Reichstag building
was completed, dedicated, believe-it or not, to the German people.
Inside its impressive courtyard stood three larger than life
statues of famous Germans. Windthorst, the great parliamentarian,
was not one of them, nor was any other parliamentarian. The three,
all in uniform, were Bismarck, Moltke, the conqueror of France,
and Roon, the Prussian Minister of War. A more ominous portend for
the future of any nation could hardly be imagined. ..unless one
imagined heaps of fetuses, Dr. Kervorkian, and an AIDS ward.
Bibliography
Anderson, Margaret L. <Windthorst, A Political Biography>, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1981.
Evans, Ellen L. <The German Center Party 1870-1933, A Study in
Political Catholicism>, Carbondale and Edwardsville, Illinois:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1981.
Kiefer, Br. William J., S.M. <Leo XIII, A Light From Heaven>,
Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1961.
Hales, E.E Y. <The Catholic Church in the Modern World>, Garden
City, New York: Image Books, 1960.
Taylor, A.J., P, <Bismarck, the Man and the Statesman>, New York:
Vintage Books, 1967.
Richard H. Schaefer writes from Fresno, California.
Taken from the June 1996 issue of "Fidelity" Magazine, 206
Marquette Avenue, South Bend, IN 46617. Subscription price is
$25.00 per year. Letters to the editor may be sent by fax, 219-
289-1461, or by electronic mail to CompuServe 71554,445.
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