"Knowledge Is Power": The Borromäusverein and Catholic Reading Habits in Imperial Germany

"KNOWLEDGE IS POWER" THE BORROMÄUSVEREIN AND CATHOLIC READING HABITS IN IMPERIAL GERMANY BY JeffreyT. Zalar* The history of Catholicism in Imperial Germany (1871-1918) features the intellectual and spiritual difficulties of coming to terms with the modern world. Beginning with the foundation of the new Reich on the Kleindeutsch model, Catholics assumed pariah status. Thus commenced a long-enduring struggle for acceptance by their fellow citizens who, moved by a spirit that was Liberal and Protestant in political, social, and cultural outlook, discriminated against their Catholic neighbors . Stock-in-trade stereotypes of Catholics as intellectually inferior, economically backward, culturally incompetent, and politically treacherous reinforced the institutional bias. A satirical poem entitled "No Peace!" captured these sentiments in 1871: "It must become light, where it was dark./Even in this year we must/do away with the Army of Darkness./No peace with the lingering riff-raff,/no peace with the pride of the narrow-minded./Attack! Attack! Through darkness to the light." The image of the medieval, retrograde Catholic was a painful stigma for Catholics to bear, and its effects influenced the trajectory of their history in the Imperial era. An important turn in this history came around 1900,when a group of intellectuals concerned with Catholic literary culture launched a move- *Mr. Zalar is a doctoral candidate in history at Georgetown University. He wishes to thank his advisor, Professor Roger Chickering, for directing this piece of research, as well as Professors Ellen Evans, Margaret Lavinia Anderson, Helena Waddy, Raymond Sun, and Rüdiger vom Bruch and this journal's referees for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. 'Taken from the December, 1871, issue of the Kladderadatsch and reproduced in FriedhelmJürgenmeister,Die katholische Kirche im Spiegel der Karikatur der deutschen satirischen Tendenzschriften von 1848 bis 1900 (Trier, 1969), p. 141. 20 BYJEFFREY T. ZALAR21 ment associated with Reform Catholicism. Their flagship journal, Hochland, edited by the young journalist Karl Muth, began publication in 1903.The contributors to this journal, through critical reviews of art, history, literature, society, and politics, attempted to lead Catholics out of their perceived "Ghetto" and into the mainstream of German intellectual life. Many scholars begin and end their discussion of Reform Catholicism with Karl Muth and Hochland.2 But the history of the massive Association of Saint Charles Borromeo shows that Catholic contact with "modern" literature was not confined to university-educated elites and the Hochland circle. Rather, in the thousands of libraries and reading rooms that were sponsored by the Association, large numbers of Catholics from an expanding middle class appropriated through"modernized " reading habits the dominant values of German cultural superiority, nationalism, and scientific awareness. On the basis of the BorromäusBl ätter, the Association's journal of book reviews and literary criticism, which also began publication in 1903,3 1 shall analyze a concerted effort by its contributors to negotiate a compromise between the Catholic faith and the canon of German national literature. This effort, led by a faction in an ongoing debate within German Catholicism over the best way to meet the challenges posed by modern life and thinking, represented a confessionally informed adoption of the tradition of German self-cultivation or Bildung.After introducing the Borromäusverein and its activities in the German Empire, I shall examine the idea of Bildung and its implications for Catholics. Then I shall turn to the strategies the Borromäusverein employed to promote Bildung among the Catholic reading population, to "cultivate cultivation," and to insist upon the obligation of Catholics to be well-versed in the German cultural canon.4 For in the opinion of the Association's leadership, exposing Catholics to German art and letters meant more than expanding their field of cultural experience. In adopting the idiom of the dominant cultural dis2Summaries oíHochland are ubiquitous. Of especial interest is Thomas Nipperdey's article "Religion und Gesellschaft: Deutschland um 1900," Historische Zeitschrift, 246 (1988), 591-615, and Victor Conzemius and Régis Ladous, "Allemagne," in Jean-Marie Mayeur et al. (eds), Libéralisme, Industrialisation, Expansion Européenne (1830- 1914), Vol. 11 oí Histoire du Christianisme: des Origines à nos Jours (Paris, 1995), p. 670. 'The journal changed its name in October, 1906...