Die katholische Arbeiterbewegung in Bayern nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (1945-1963) (review)

Die katholische Arbeiterbewegung in Bayern nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (1945-1963). By Dietmar Grypa. [Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Zeitgeschichte Reihe B: Forschungen, Band 91.] (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. 2000. Pp. 594. DM 150.00.)

A thoroughly researched study of efforts to organize Catholic labor after 1945, Dietmar Grypa's published dissertation completes a trilogy of works on the Catholic workers' movement in Bavaria. Begun with Hans Dieter Denk's Die christiche Arbeiterbewegung in Bayern bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Mainz, 1980) and continued with Dorit-Maria Krenn's Die christiche Arbeiterbewegung in Bayern vom Ersten Weltkrieg bis 1933 (Mainz, 1991), the story is continued as Grypa's work skips over the National Socialist years to bring it through the Adenauer era. Like many works about the postwar era in Germany, Grypa starts at a Stunde Null (Zero Hour) from which all begins anew, referencing his predecessors' work in passing and assuming readers' familiarity with the issues laid out by Denk and Krenn. He does, however, reference more than twenty archives, more than fifty newspapers and other contemporary publications, and over five hundred secondary sources. He also utilizes interviews with eleven surviving leaders from the movement. The documentation of the movement in this time period is nothing short of exhaustive, and his work, as with his predecessors', stands as a necessary foundation for any further research on this subject.

The strength of the research leads Grypa into discussions of several important topics concerning the Catholic workers' movement. He begins with the question of whether the old Catholic workers' associations should be simply re-established as self-standing parish clubs or rather re-founded on a new basis as part of a larger regional organization (the latter won out) and details the organizational structure and activities of the movement. He then goes on to discuss in detail relationships between the Bavarian Catholic Workers' Movement and other regional Catholic workers' movements, Catholic youth organizations, secular and Christian trade unions, and various political parties. Ignored until the end of the work, however, is the political context of the movement, the continuing division between southern and western German Catholics, the American occupation, the intricacies of Bavarian politics under the Christian Social Union, and the Adenauer era as a whole. Grypa assumes the reader has an extensive background in the history of postwar Germany as well as Bavaria, one that a reader with more of an interest in the labor or Catholic sides of the story, not the German, may not have.

For those with the requisite background, Grypa successfully highlights both the continuities and changes in the thinking of Catholic labor leaders, many of whom had experience in the Weimar Republic, concerning numerous issues, three of which stand out. First, they still sought the reformation of German society along the lines of Catholic social thought, hence the leaders' active participation in the grass-roots foundation of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (although not in its leadership). Second, they initially supported a unified trade union of both socialist and Christian workers, primarily because they had no choice under American occupation, but they eventually split in 1955 to form a renewed Christian trade union. Third, their perspective on the role of women shifted with the formation of a unitary movement no longer split into male and female wings. This was a significant change in Bavaria, one that Grypa rightly points out was also not followed by the Catholic workers' counterparts in the Rhineland.

Most importantly, Grypa clearly demonstrates how post-1945 Catholic leaders expanded the notion of worker (Arbeiter) to include all wage-paid employees (Arbeitnehmer), a position that broadened the base of potential members beyond the industrial working class, and spouses of these employees. This change was reflected in the choice of a new name for the organization. Instead of being the Union of Catholic Workingmen's and Workingwomen's Associations, as they were before...