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Introduction
- University of Michigan Press
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Introduction In 1945, small numbers of Protestants joined former members of the Catholic Center Party throughout occupied Germany to found the country’s first avowedly interconfessional political party, the Christlich-Demokratische Union (Christian Democratic Union [CDU]). Their intention to fashion a new form of politics was part of a larger project to rechristianize defeated Germany. Together with its Bavarian counterpart, the Christlich-Soziale Union (Christian Social Union [CSU]), the CDU soon dominated the postwar German political landscape. As the state’s leading party until 1969, the CDU and its policies influenced West Germany’s formation and early character so completely that, for many Germans, the party became psychologically identified with the postwar state.1 More than any other political movement, Christian Democracy forged the state of West Germany and, after 1989, German unification. The ascendant form of post–World War II Catholic politics, Christian Democracy represented the transformation of German political Catholicism. Marked by the embrace of democracy and interconfessional anti-Marxism, postwar Christian politics contributed substantially to the stabilization of the Federal Republic, not least through the integration of conservative voters.2 Labeled a people’s party (Volkspartei) and “corporatist catch-all party,” the CDU both laid an indispensable foundation for West German democracy and, by integrating diverse constituencies, provided a model of internal democracy.3 In the 1950s and 1960s, Christian Democratic policies, including NATO membership, European economic integration, and social market economics, dictated more than a West German political identity. West German anticommunism represented a linchpin of Western Cold War strategy, as the division of Europe rested to a significant degree on disavowal of the German Democratic Republic. Economically, Christian Democratic policies facilitated a rapid recovery that reinforced trans-Atlantic antisocialism, while interstate integration anchored West Germany in a peaceful and prosperous postwar Western Europe . Socially and culturally, the CDU set the tone for, among other issues, 2 The Origins of Christian Democracy engagement with the Nazi past; the place of the family, children, and women in West German society; and the role of the churches, particularly the Catholic Church, in a postwar German democracy. At the same time, the CDU embodied one of the most striking developments in twentieth-century German history, the transformation of confessional relations. Following World War II, West German society experienced a marked diminution of intra-Christian tension; by the late 1960s, the Protestant-Catholic cleavage so long characteristic of German life had largely faded from public view. Politically, democratic German politics shifted definitively from a system marked by self-evident confessionalism to one inhospitable to a confessionally based party. As Germany’s first professed pan-Christian party, the CDU represented both an active agent and a reflection of this process. This book focuses on the origins of German Christian Democracy in occupied Germany, when Protestants and Catholics, against the backdrop of decades of political animosity, first cooperated in the name of Christian politics. In the early postwar years, Germany remained a society defined by religious identity and suspicion. Despite the CDU’s commitment to Christian cooperation , Protestant-Catholic tensions as well as divisions within each confessional camp roiled the new movement. In answer to his question, “How did the Germans succeed in rising out of the physical destruction and moral degradation created by the war of annihilation and Holocaust for which they were to blame?” Konrad H. Jarausch suggests a “collective learning process.”4 An important element of that learning process was the defusing of confessional hostilities inherited from pre-1945 German society. Their continuance and resolution within the CDU shed important light on the dynamics of postwar German history. Confessional Milieus in Germany This study locates Christian Democracy’s origins in the context of German nineteenth- and twentieth-century politics and religion. Enemies or at best uneasy allies since the founding of the German Reich, religious Protestants and Catholics shared limited experience in political cooperation. Despite the lack of Catholic consensus on elemental principles of political and social organization , most German Catholics exhibited before 1945 what Wilfried Loth has labeled a “specific Catholic consciousness.”5 In his study of the Catholic worldview in Bamberg, Werner Blessing included not only Catholics of deep religious conviction but also those attached to the Catholic community through [18.223.43.142] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 23:19 GMT) Introduction 3 church attendance, organizations, gatherings, the Catholic press, and Catholicorganized political parties, primarily the German Center Party (Deutsche Zentrumspartei, Zentrum).6 Bourgeois Protestants forged an equally distinct identity in nineteenth-century Germany, a cultural...