The Battle for the Catholic Past in Germany 1945–1980 by Mark Edward Ruff (review)

Mark Edward Ruff has studied Holocaust-related issues for several years. This volume represents his most thorough effort to date, particularly in terms of archival exploration, evidenced in the one hundred and ten pages of notes at the end, many from church and other archives previously unexamined in English-language publications.

His overarching question is why so much attention has been paid to the Catholic response when the German Protestant Church's record shows greater collaboration and less resistance. Still more important questions are the Protestant-Catholic culture war in Germany after World War II; and the lack of nuance in the picture of Catholic indifference and even collaboration, despite acknowledged Catholic diversity in response to Nazism, particularly from the 1960s. Ruff's methodology is strictly historical. While ethical issues emerge, he himself does not engage in moral judgments relative to the Catholic posture. At most, one occasionally discerns a personal stance in his narrative.

The core of the book addresses seven key episodes in the organized ecclesial and academic Catholic effort to come to terms with the Church's actions under National Socialism. What becomes apparent is that previous and new realities played roles in the endeavor. Hence an adequate understanding of the postwar Catholic self-examination inescapably depends on an appreciation of the issues that dominated Catholic concerns throughout the era. Ruff's analysis makes it evident that what happened to the Jewish community and other victims of Nazi bioracism did not occupy a major role in that self-examination. Ruff refrains from any commentary on whether the Catholic concerns he details amounted to an adequate investigation.

Following the introduction, Ruff concentrates chapters on seven key features of German Catholicism's effort to confront its posture under Nazism. These include the initial postwar effort to develop anthologies outlining the perceived Catholic response; the intense debates about the Holy See's concordat with Hitler; the emergence of a younger group of Catholic scholars and their views; the writings of American professor Gordon Zahn, Rolf Hochhuth and his play The Deputy, and German-born professor Guenter Lewy's evaluation of the German Catholic response; and finally the intensive debate between professors Konrad Repgen (Catholic) and Klaus Scholder (Protestant). In several chapters the decisive role of the Catholic Association for Contemporary History comes to the fore. That Association advocated for a "Catholic" form of scholarship distinctive from Protestant and secular approaches.

The anthologies created between 1945 and 1949 provided rather mediocre results, in part because the persons involved had inadequate time. Their work aimed at portraying the German Catholic Church as a victim and at chronicling acts of opposition; little appeared in the way of a critical appraisal. The anthologies strongly reflected several prevailing attitudes in contemporary German Catholicism: (1) strong support for the Konrad Adenauer government as Germany's first Catholic-dominated government since the Kulturkampf; Catholic second-class status since Bismarck had finally been overcome; (2) a firm commitment to rearm Germany; and (3) a commitment to "re-Christianization" after Weimar liberalism and Nazi paganism. Any substantive critique of the Church would have undercut these purposes.

In the second substantive chapter Ruff details discussions between 1945 and 1957 regarding the continued legality of the Reichskonkordat, including the Constitutional Court debate culminating in an ambiguous verdict on March 26, 1957. Much of the public and the judicial discussion focused on continued funding of denominational schools stipulated in the Concordat. The Catholic-led government of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria generally favored this educational system, hence the continuing validity of the Concordat. A Constitutional Court decision left the Concordat intact but disappointed Catholics by decreeing that the ultimate decision rested with state governments: Protestant-dominated states were free to abolish the denominational school system. The debate also highlighted the critical nature of retention of the Concordat as a way of preserving Catholicism's...