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202 Conclusion The history of the Christian Democratic Union is tied inextricably to the evolution of German confessional relations. The party’s origins as well as its success rested on the dismantling of the Catholic Turm and what Josef Kannengießer dubbed Germany’s “centuries-old barrier” of confessional hostility. The end of the German “religious Sonderweg” was a clear function of the dramatic political , social, and demographic impact of World War II.1 And yet the process of interconfessional accommodation would unfold over decades and involve innumerable twists and turns. Although in profoundly different ways than in the 1920s or 1950s, West Germany remained a confessionalized society. Even in the unified Germany of the twenty-first century, more Catholics continue to vote for the CDU than do Protestants, and religion classes in German public schools remain, with notable exceptions, confessionally divided.2 In today’s Germany, however, it is difficult to find strong evidence of the influence of intra-Christian difference on the public sphere. When confessional complaints are raised, they fail to gain traction within broader society. In 1990, for example, some western Catholics expressed fears that German unification would return Germany to Protestant dominance; Rhenish Catholics would soon protest the return of the capital to “Prussian” Berlin.3 Later that decade, former East Germans criticized the influx of (western) Catholic politicians— specifically, that four of the five new minister-presidents were Catholic—while other detractors speculated that the Vatican was directing unified Germany’s politics.4 But tensions between Catholics and Protestants hardly framed German unification, and confessionalized analyses of the process were striking for their dearth. When religion did enter public discussion, it was generally in reference to clashes between western German abortion and educational laws and practices and those of a formerly atheistic state; Brandenburg’s abolition of religious instruction in public schools underscored that tension.5 In the present-day CDU/CSU, confessional differences have been largely elided, at least publicly. While committed to articulating a Protestant voice Conclusion 203 within the CDU, the EAK has little national profile.6 The old proportionality system, by which Protestant and Catholic appointments were closely calibrated , is no longer practiced. Nevertheless, Sarah Elise Wiliarty argues, Chancellor Angela Merkel advanced within the CDU structure so quickly in part because she fulfilled an internal quota for Protestants (as well as for women and easterners).7 Clear cultural differences also exist between CDU/CSU southern and western Catholics and Merkel, a woman raised in an East German Protestant minister’s home who served in 1992–93 as chair of the EAK. Those differences were underlined in February 2009, when Merkel challenged the Pope over his handling of an antisemitic priest. Contrasting Merkel, “a remarried , divorced Protestant woman,” with Konrad Adenauer, Catholic journalist Martin Lohmann accused her of “possibly having a deep-seated problem with the Catholic Church.” He cited her refusal to support the (re)organization of a CDU Catholic Working Group to offset the EAK and the “eastern and more heathen” character of the Federal Republic after unification.8 In casting his critique in the categories of Christian and secular, Lohmann highlighted a difference in German society far greater than that between Protestants and Catholics—that is, the gap between Christians and non-Christians. While Catholics and Protestants are evenly divided in Germany today, both groups are smaller than those who describe themselves as having other religious affiliations or as having no religious affiliation;9 Lohmann’s ultimate success in founding in 2009 a Working Group of Engaged Catholics (Arbeitskreis Engagierter Katholiken [AEK]) signals the alienation traditional, practicing Catholics feel even within the CDU.10 Indeed, the number of Germans currently attending weekly services at Christian churches is low and diminishes annually.11 Elections in unified Germany demonstrate that religiously devout Protestant and more numerous Catholic churchgoers disproportionately support the CDU.12 Politically and culturally, Protestants and Catholics who attend weekly services have more in common with each other than they do with secular Germans or, in the view of many Union members, with Muslims. CDU/CSU politicians now invoke their parties’ Christian roots and profile primarily in debates concerning Islam in Germany; in an echo of von Brentano’s controversial 1956 speech, some even contrast Islam with Germany’s abendl ändische culture.13 That the centuries-old confessional divide in German history has been subsumed by a larger gulf between Christians and non-Christians ironically reflects the worldviews of the CDU’s founders. Their goal to join Christian...

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