Ecumenism, Memory, and German Nationalism, 1817-1917

5 A Truce within the Walls

102 5 A Truce within the Walls The Reformation Anniversaries of 1917 in spite of the bitter polemics between German Catholics and Protestants during the early Kaiserreich, the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth were marked by increasing confessional peace. The Kulturkampf had failed, the conflation of Protestantism with German national identity had been rejected for the most part, and German Catholics had assimilated into normative German society and culture. The outbreak of war in August 1914 meant that German Catholics would become even more closely united with German Protestants as the pressures of the war compelled confessional Others to unite in common defense of their fatherland. Indeed, the war compelled adversaries of all kinds within the German Empire to make peace with their opponents. The various political parties of the German Reichstag informally agreed to a truce amongst themselves for the sake of national solidarity.1 A similar informal truce was consented to amongst the separated confessions. Nowhere was this confessional truce more manifest than at the 1917 Reformation anniversaries, where Catholics and Protestants came together to celebrate Luther as a German national hero who had stoically endured struggles and sacrifice on behalf of the fatherland and the Volk. These anniversaries were the occasion at which the confessional question was parried, once and for all, in the interests of German national solidarity. Thus, quite unlike the triumphalist Protestant celebration of Luther at the 1883 anniversaries, in 1917 princes, pastors, and professors Truce within the Walls 103 called on German Catholics and Protestants to recognize one another as fellow German citizens and to unite in common defense of their fatherland. Like previous generations of ecumenists, the celebrants of the 1917 anniversaries sought a rapprochement between Catholics and Protestants for the sake of national concord. To be sure, these celebrations were mostly irenical rather than ecumenical. The confessional “truce” between German Catholics and Protestants did not constitute an agreement to unite the churches. But by then a formal and institutional union of the separated churches would not be necessary to foster a shared sense of German national identity. The uni- fied German state itself could represent that shared national identity. What remained was to agree upon an idea of the German nation and national identity that included both Catholics and Protestants without regard for confessional identity or difference. This was precisely the vision of German identity expressed at the 1917 Reformation anniversaries. Indeed, the irenical celebration of the 1917 Reformation anniversaries points to the culmination of the efforts of previous generations of the nineteenth-century ecumenical movement. The increasing integration of Catholics into German civil society, World War I, the occasion of the 1917 Reformation anniversaries, and a century of German Christian ecumenism were all integral factors in the final resolution of the confessional problem of German nationalism in favor of an interconfessional notion of German unity and identity. Attempts to define the German national idea in confessionally exclusive terms gained minimal traction after 1917. Thus the irenical sentiments expressed at the 1917 Reformation anniversaries represent the conclusion of this alternative history of German national unification. Confessional Relations during the Wilhelmine Era The history of German confessional relations from 1871 through 1917 was a history of Catholic persecution coupled with gradual integration. Alongside the Kulturkampf and other instances of blatant anti-Catholic sentiment, there was evidence of a gradual acceptance of Catholics into German society. Orthodox Protestants, 104 Ecumenism, Memory, Ger m an Nationalism ultramontane Catholics, and Christian ecumenists had after all cooperated to oppose the Kulturkampf. Other German Catholics and Protestants worked together to offer social services at the local level. Catholic missionaries proselytized with Protestants in the German colonies.2 And for a century, irenical Catholics and Protestants worked together to help realize interconfessional peace for the sake of national unity. In addition, the increasing participation and prominence of German Catholics and the Catholic Center Party in German civic life seemed to render moot the charge that German Catholics were disloyal citizens and congenital enemies of the empire. Indeed, by the late nineteenth century the Center Party had become one of most powerful parties in Germany and attracted a confessionally diverse constituency. Like the Center Party itself, Catholic youth groups, social organizations, and trade unions had become increasingly interdenominational.3 Thus by 1914, German Catholics were integrated into a normative German society that was no longer...