Der Caritasverband zwischen Kaiserreich und Weimarer Republik: Zur Sozial- und Mentalitätsgeschichte des caritativen Katholizismus in Deutschland (review)

The German Caritas Association, today known simply as Caritas, is the most prominent national Catholic charity in the Federal Republic. In a dissertation edited for publication, Catherine Maurer has written a much-needed history of this important organization. Maurer’s work does not examine how Caritas fought poverty, hunger, or homelessness. Nor does the book analyze Caritas publications or conferences to reveal trends in charity or welfare activity. The conceptual discussion in Maurer’s book focuses on organizational priorities and direction rather than analyzing charitable activity or contrasting ideas of social welfare. Through biographical sketches of key individuals, social analysis of membership data, and mapping of organizational spread, this book provides a thorough institutional history.

In the first half of the study, Maurer reviews German Catholic associational development in the nineteenth century and how Caritas represented a new trend in the late 1880s. Under the guidance of Father Lorenz Werthmann, Caritas was founded in southwestern Germany with two central goals: coordinating disparate charitable efforts into a national organization and promoting the rigorous and systematic study of charity. Caritas thus emerged alongside non-Catholic welfare groups to play a significant role in the professionalization of social work and public health. What was unique, according to Maurer, was the commitment to linking “confessional identity with scientific claims” (p. 146). Early leaders coined the term Caritaswissenschaft, the “science of charity,” to respect the religious foundations of charitable work and to “rationalize” these human welfare activities. The latter was accomplished primarily through publications and conferences directed at experts and practitioners. Caritas was part of a nationalizing trend to combat poverty at the dawn of the twentieth century, a trend meeting with modest success and some skepticism on the part of church leaders.

The urgent and overwhelming needs of World War I and its aftermath transformed Caritas. Committed to the scientific advancement of charity and supported by the Center Party, Caritas was well situated to reach national prominence. The second half of Maurer’s book studies the expansive institutional growth in the Weimar Republic. With a solid organizational and social basis, Caritas capitalized on the new republican order. State assistance flowed through Center Party officials, which further solidified the association financially. Caritas took its place alongside the Red Cross and Inner Mission as a truly national entity. Caritas also participated in and organized international conferences advancing the study of social welfare methods. As an indication of its success, by 1932 the organization was able to found a national institute for public health (Caritasinstitut für Gesundheitsfürsorge).

Caritas’s longevity, according to Maurer, stems from an internal decision to fend off church and state control. Caritas advanced social welfare through the training of field practitioners—many nuns but also many laypeople—and raising public awareness through its publications. The association also maintained its confessional identity. Trying to avoid a bureaucratization of charity, Caritas focused on a principled commitment to the individual in extreme need and to charity work as integral to a healthy community. In an age of desperate social anxieties fanning the ideological fires of social Darwinism, hypernationalism, and eugenics, Caritas promoted values of compassion and solidarity with the suffering. Accepting state support and weathering its own financial scandal, Caritas faced serious public scrutiny. But thanks to the financial and structural autonomy achieved through the Weimar Republic, Caritas was able to prosper until the Nazi seizure of power and then later re-emerge in the Federal Republic.