Caritas: un siècle de charité organisée en Alsace. La Fédération de Charité du Diocèse de Strasbourg 1903-2003 (review)

Works of charity are central to Christianity, and so, accordingly, one might expect that charity would figure at the center of historical studies of the Church. Histories of charitable institutions have, in fact, proliferated over the past generation, but the rationales for these works have not always been apparent. Since history is limitless, the story of an institution should not be recounted simply because it can be recounted, but because the institution made a difference in the cumulative history of its home society, culture, and nation. The subtitle of Caritas is–in English—"a Century of Organized Charity in Alsace." A historian might start on the drama of Alsace in the Europe of World Wars I and II (and, before that, in the era of the Franco-Prussian war) and then proceed to the charities that responded to the trials of the period. Catherine Maurer did this in her book, Le Modèle allemand de la charité. Le Caritas de Guillaume II à Hitler (Strasbourg, 1999). But the present book is really an album presenting the history of the essentially clerical administration of La Fédération de Charité—Caritas d'Alsace. Maurer brings the talent of a historian to bear on a series of administrative records and correspondence in a tribute to the institution. This work, then, was designed for admirers of the institution rather than for anyone, historian or interested lay person, who comes with substantive questions about the relationship of religious and national identity, of institutional progress and cultural products, or of political and religious authority conflicts—although these issues are adverted to along the way. It is a celebration of dedicated priests and nuns, especially of the founder and subsequent head, Father Paul Müller-Simonis, who, coming from wealth himself, knew well how to make good use of it. Although internal tensions receive little attention from Maurer, they probably do not merit anything more. The year-to-year running of the institution is at the center of the narration here, but the resourceful reader can see how institutional life was buffeted, and then interrupted, by World War I and by the later Nazi conquest. As for the charitable works themselves, readers may wish that the Alsatian outreach to North Africans and other Muslims could be explored for detail and meaning. Printed on glossy paper, the study benefits from a large number of photos in a series of unnumbered pages at the end of the volume, which help to offset the dry statistics necessary to give solidity to the institutional history.