Religionen und Katholizismus, Bildung und Geschichtsdidaktik, Arbeiterbewegung: Ausgewählte Aufsätze (review)

This edition collects some of the most important works produced during a forty-year career that began with a lectureship in Cologne’s Teachers College (Pedagogische Hochschule) and that continues with a professorship in history and history education at the University of Cologne since Cologne’s teachers college has been integrated into the university. This helps explain the broad range of Michael Klöcker’s publications, which stretch from history education and the Rhenish labor movement to the particularities of Rhenish Catholicism. With the exception of a lengthy introduction by series editor Christoph Weber, all essays included were published previously in other journals, reference works, or proceedings. The essays typify the solid archival research of someone who has conducted primarily regional research as a means to offer a more differentiated view of larger scholarly issues. An excellent example of this is Klöcker’s article on the question of Catholic parity—or, rather, imparity—in academic appointments at the University of Cologne during the Weimar years.

Klöcker’s work addresses Rhenish history from the Napoleonic occupation to the present. In particular, he focuses on the development of the Catholic laity. The Rhineland is a region with a comparatively large Catholic middle class (especially compared to Bavaria and Silesia), which historically took the initiative in developing lay associations of all types. Klöcker’s work reveals the transformation of Germany’s laity from one loyal to the hierarchy and observant of the Church’s teachings to one that largely sees religious ritual as a consumer good and where the magisterium has lost much of its authority. Klöcker questions how Catholicism will fare in a postmodern pluralistic society. He sees contemporary German Catholicism facing a crisis moment where it can welcome either a new antimodernism or a new aggiornamento (pp. 335–36).

Given Klöcker’s analyses of the particularly Rhenish qualities of Cologne’s Catholicism, one need not guess where his sympathies lie. He identifies a Rhenish-Catholic mentality that is undogmatic, strong-willed, and critical of authority (p. 467). For example, for years before and after World War I, archbishop and clergy would mount an intense campaign against carnival celebrations. Beginning right after Christmas, every Sunday homily would include an admonition that Catholics should go on retreat rather than anticipate Lent with little intention of later observing Lenten self-discipline (p. 417). Klöcker drily notes that the hierarchical appeals remained ineffective. Similarly, Klöcker helps explain Adenauer’s political flexibility and pragmatism by pointing to his Rhenish origins.

Of particular interest is an article on the definition of German political Catholicism, which was originally published in 1971. Klöcker’s argument that political Catholicism should be defined more broadly and inclusively was novel then; now it is commonplace. Just how much of a shift this represents can be understood by the fact that no one less than E.W. Böckenförde, one of the institutional Church’s fiercest critics, recommended the article for publication.

Also included in the volume are several contributions made by Klöcker in other areas. For example, he offers an interesting comparison of economic concepts and relevant moral teachings of the three monotheistic religions. In several other articles, Klöcker summarizes the state of the field such as in a 2005 article on National Socialism as a religion or as in two articles, from 1980 and 2003 respectively, on the state of history education in Germany.

Overall, although the individual articles might be useful primarily to scholars of modern Rhenish Catholicism, the collection as a whole not only reflects forty years of scholarly engagement but also reflects forty years of German Catholic historiography.