Zwischen Klasse und Konfession: Katholisches Bürgertum im Rheinland 1794-1914 by Thomas Mergel (review)

258 BOOK REVIEWS Late Modern European Zwischen Klasse und Konfession: Katholisches Bürgertum im Rheinland 1794-1914. By Thomas Mergel. [Bürgertum: Beiträge zur europäischen Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Band 9] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1994. Pp. xiv, 460. DM 112,-.) This book is the ninth volume in a series on the "social history of modern Bürgertum"; its focus is thus on social history rather than on political Catholicism . The subtitle's dates, 1794-1914, are misleading, because the author ends both his narrative and his theme with the Kulturkampfoí the 1870's. His subject is the Catholic upper middle class, which formed the elite in the Rhenish cities of Cologne, Bonn, and Aachen, where the nobility played no significant role. Mergel distinguishes among the three categories of Wirtschaftsbürger, leaders in commerce and industry;Bildungsbürger, the educated professionals; and Beamtenbürger, the higher civil servants, but he makes frequent reference to the Kleinbürger also, the shopkeepers, craftsmen, teachers, and lower officials . He traces an extraordinary continuity over more than a century in the great urban families such as the Trimborns and Bachems who served as officials under the Electoral Archbishops, passed easily into the service of the French administration , moved with equal facility into Prussian service, accepted the united Second Reich, and continued to hold prominent positions in the twentieth century. As for the conflict "between class and confession," the author makes it clear that class or status in society was always the more important consideration. These families were comfortable with their Catholicism but subscribed to a liberal, enlightened Hermesian version of it, frequently intermarrying with Protestants and regarding the new ultramontanism as embarrassingly extremist. Such attitudes prevailed, according to Mergel, well past the "Cologne troubles" of the 1840's and the Syllabus of Errors of 1864, only to be temporarily confronted and questioned in 1870 by the dogma of papal infallibility. Even during the early years of the Kulturkampf many Catholic Rhinelanders in the upper voting circles continued to vote for liberal parties rather than for the Center and approved ofmuch ofthe government's legislation, especially the educational reforms. Leaders ofthe Catholic political resistance came largely from the lower middle classes, although many activists had family ties with the Bürger. On the other hand, Mergel shows that discussion about the dogma and the harsh punitive measures at the height of the Kulturkampf, including the loss of civil service jobs for Catholics, did contribute to the creation of a Catholic milieu or subculture in the Rhenish cities that had not existed before the 1860's and that in some degree all of the elitist families acknowledged membership in it. BOOK REVIEWS 259 The one exception to this was the small but socially significant group of Old Catholics who rejected the dogma and were expelled from the Catholic community . The chapter on the Old Catholics is the last in the book and is clearly a vital part of the author's thesis. He departs from the conventional Catholic view of the Old Catholics as a sect composed primarily of overconscientious academics and theologians and those with marital frustrations of various kinds (although his statistics confirm the preponderance of men, single women, and couples in mixed marriages). He also denies that they were a sect or a "secession " from the Church; rather, he sees them as they undoubtedly saw themselves , as truly the "old" Catholics of the Rhineland Bürgertum, who had stayed exactly as they had been earlier while the new ultramontanism took over and changed the Church. According to Mergel, it was intense social pressure rather than deep religious conviction that kept most of the prominent families within mainstream Catholicism. In addition to its provocative thesis, the book provides a wealth of information about the economies, educational systems (Mergel confirms the muchdiscussed "deficit" in Catholic education), municipal government, and social life in the three cities. Ellen L. Evans Georgia State University La formación del pensamiento político del Carlismo (1810-1875). By Alexandra Wilhelmsen. [Fundación Hernando de Larramendi.] (Madrid: Editorial ACTAS—Colección Luis Hernando Larramendi. 1995. Pp. 11,630. Pts. 4,000,- paperback.) Rarely is the reviewer of a scholarly work able to...