The Origins of Christian Democracy: Politics and Confession in Modern Germany

5. Antimaterialism Applied: Ideological Positions in the Early CDU

105 Chapter 5 Antimaterialism Applied: Ideological Positions in the Early CDU The translation of the CDU’s vision of a Christian, antimaterialist state into a coherent political program constituted an ongoing process throughout the occupation years that would test the two confessions’ commitment to an interconfessional union. Of the host of prescriptions Christian Democrats offered for the German future, the CDU’s vision of a Christian state was manifest above all in the cultural and economic spheres. Germany’s gender and family order, confessional schools, and economics were central pillars on which the CDU sought to construct a rechristianized state; consequently, these three case studies provide valuable insights into the birthing hour of Christian Democracy. The patterns of the party’s organization—the dominance of former Center Party and Christian Trade Union members and clergy over divided and smaller numbers of Protestants—necessarily shaped early CDU policy debates. While the Rhenish Catholics’ ascendancy guaranteed continuity with the Cologne line of political Catholicism, pre-1933 traditions of Protestant-Catholic cooperation on cultural issues offered the prospect for pan-Christian communion. On the reconstruction of the German familial and gender order, Protestants and Catholics, male and female, revealed strong similarities. But as the Weimar-era relationship between the Center Party and the DNVP made clear, alliances between conservative Protestants and Catholics had been colored by tension and disappointment, particularly regarding confessional schools; the early CDU’s experience would be no different.At the same time, the intraparty battle over Christian Socialism highlighted the resilience of class tensions within the Catholic milieu. In contrast to the Weimar years, however, Protestants would play an important role in this debate, as both Rhenish Protestants and Catholic opponents of Christian Socialism challenged trade union Catholics in the name of interconfessionalism.1 106 The Origins of Christian Democracy Cultural policies and economics were naturally not the only issues with which the early CDU grappled. Early Christian Democrats addressed numerous facets of the new state’s organization, ranging from denazification to media restrictions to foreign and military policy. One notable position many party leaders took concerned the shape of the future state—democratic and, in a clear expression of the traditional Catholic rejection of Prussian centralism , federal. As Konrad Adenauer explained in March 1946, “We do not want a Bismarckian Reich under Prussian leadership. We do not want the centralized Germany of National Socialism. We do not want a German confederation [Staatenbund].”2 Instead, Christian Democrats invoked Catholic German traditions to call for an explicitly federal Germany3 that would operate as a “protective defense of freedom against excesses of centralized power.”4 Although some Protestant Christian Democrats supported a more centralized future government, this issue would remain secondary for the CDU until the Parliamentary Council, when the CDU’s broad commitment to federalism would conflict with the CSU’s greater demands for regional autonomy.5 More pressing for most early Christian Democrats was the call for a Christian ethos to infuse German economic and cultural reorganization. In the words of the Schwäbisch-Gmünd CDU, “We demand the organization of a Christian cultural state as an organism in which the separate areas of life such as religion, science, law, economics, technical science, and the arts are intertwined completely with one another to form a living whole.”6 As the British zone CDU explained in March 1947, “Culture means to us nothing less than the fashioning of God’s creation according to the principle of God’s order and based on the vital energies of Christianity. . . . The Christian Democratic Union wants a Christian culture and a Christian state order.”7 That same month, the Rhenish CDU put it succinctly: “Who votes CDU wants the public rule of the Ten Commandments in our Heimat.”8 In keeping with “the recognition of Christian culture as the basis of the state,”9 the organization of Germany’s schools, family, and gender order constituted key elements of the CDU’s Kulturpolitik. Already constituent features of Catholic and Protestant politics before 1933, these issues appeared all the more pressing in the wake of Nazism and unprecedented war. While Protestants and Catholics might differ on how to codify Christian cultural policies, particularly regarding schools, their underlying ideological accord was clear. In the earliest years of Christian Democracy, cultural policy served largely to highlight Christian antimaterialist commonalities. Antimaterialism Applied 107 Gender and Family Order in the Early CDU The early postwar years saw...