Fighting for the Soul of Germany: The Catholic Struggle for Inclusion after Unification by Rebecca Ayako Bennette (review)

Rebecca Ayako Bennette has given us good reason to reconsider the 1870s in German Catholic history. Her book analyzes Catholic public discourse on German national identity, bringing contemporary cultural analysis to bear on the subject. Rather than interpreting the 1870s as a period of Catholic reaction and rejection of the Reich, Bennette argues convincingly that the basis of Catholic integration is forged in this decade.

Bennette has divided her study into two parts, highlighting her two major challenges to traditional historiography. Part I is a close chronological analysis of the Kulturkampf. Here Bennette separates the Kulturkampf into its component parts as a corrective to customary historical shorthand. This allows us to see more clearly the development of Catholic thought about the nation after the defeat of Austria in 1866, then through an initial phase of Catholic integration in 1871–72, and then through the political battles of 1873–75. Throughout these phases, Catholic journalists and politicians never questioned the core concept of a German Reich, but rather argued that Bismarck’s policies and the Liberals were leading Germany down an essentially “un-German” path.

Part II addresses four themes in the Catholic construction of national identity, where Catholic leaders challenged the concepts of the nation of Bismarck and the Liberals. First, Bennette examines how regionalism was “central” to the new nation and to the Catholic view of German-ness. Second, German Catholic writers at least briefly offered a “feminine gendering of the nation” (p. 13) as an alternative to the Protestant, masculine, and militaristic images. Third, Bennette examines Catholic attempts to claim German scholarship (Bildung and Wissenschaft) and attack Liberal bias in the professoriate. Bennette’s fourth theme is the Catholic vision of a new German epoch. Through these themes, Catholic writers fashioned their own version of the “special path” (Sonderweg) for the German nation, one that heralded the New Imperialism to come and brought true Christian culture to a world threatened by materialist civilization. Catholic writers argued that it was their duty to fend off the Liberal destruction of true German-ness so that Germany could embrace its moment in world history and lead in the advancement of Christian civilization.

Bennette notes that her analysis relies heavily on newspapers, but her study reaches beyond newspapers into the larger body of Catholic publications and the personal records of Catholic leaders. Newspapers and “confessional” journals, however, present unique challenges for historical research. Newspapers can provide a “dialogic format,” as Bennette states, in which the publications both shape public opinion and respond to it. Yet Catholic public opinion, especially in the 1870s, is difficult to grasp. Given the Church’s censorship of materials as well as the self-censorship of Catholic writers, we need to question the dialogic openness of these publications. Bennette comments that roughly half of German Catholics did not vote for the Center Party. This is a significant fact that suggests a very large portion of Catholics did not engage in sustained dialogue with writers for Germania, the Historisch-Politische Blätter, or the Kölnische Volkszeitung. The chasm that existed, with social elites and their “mass” publications on one side and the German Catholic population on the other, is still a major problem for historical analysis.

Bennette’s work is nonetheless a masterful study of the Catholic journals and their vision of Germany in the Kulturkampf era. Her work rightly brings us to reconsider the problem of Catholic integration in the Kaiserreich and provides a solid basis for further historical inquiry.