History of Germany from 1871 to 1887.

An imperial constitution was promulgated on 16 April 1871 that established relations between Prussia and the other German states that retained their independence in a federated system, as it was rebuilt on the constitution of 1867. The national government in Berlin was responsible for foreign policy, the military, economic and social policy, and federal law. Each of the member states continued operating their own parliamentary legislatures and constitutions. Bavaria and Württemberg maintained its own postal and telegraph systems and railroads, and the king of Bavaria maintained control of its army in peacetime, and Bavaria maintained its own diplomatic representations. A national parliament, the Reichstag, was to be elected by universal, equal manhood suffrage and received budgetary rights but it was deprived of the power to dissolve the government, which was a power that was solely granted to the emperor. A second chamber, the Federal Council (Bundesrat), consisting exquisitely of the representatives of the German princes, was to function as a conservative check on the influence of the Reichstag. Armies remained partly the matter of the single states, but were bound to follow a common Prussian command at wartime under the emperor as the supreme commander. Bismarck assumed a commanding influence in the new German empire by being appointed as the chancellor, whereby he directed both German domestic and foreign policies. He was concurrently the President of the Council and the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Prussia, and thereby also directed the domestic and foreign policies of the leading state in the imperial federation, and also served as the Prussian Minister of Commerce.
      The new constitutional order was a mixture of Prussian-dominated and monarchical states composed of sovereignty vested in twenty-two rulers – four kings, six grand dukes, eight princes, and the senates of three free cities – that created the empire by a voluntary act of association, with the underlying element of the southern German states seeking to preserve their sovereignty that contributed to creating the empire by a voluntary act of association. While Prussia constituted the most powerful state in it, especially with the territories that had been annexed in 1866, with two-thirds of its territory and population, the other states could express their interests in the Reichstag that was nationally elected every three years, which represented a concession to the spirit of mass democracy that also symbolised the unity of the empire. It shared legislative power with the Bundesrat, the federal council assembly of fifty-one representatives as ambassadors from the twenty-five states, and constituted the executive body of the empire that was to give its consent was necessary for all legislation. Foreign policy was theoretically supervised by a special Bundesrat committee. It held the right to review all non-military expenditures, before it was allowed to review the military budget every seven years after 1874. The German emperor was the head of the imperial executive and civil service, and the supreme leader of the armed forces of the empire.
Although the Reichstag was elected by universal and equal manhood suffrage and gave the Reichstag and had the right to approve or reject the budget, there were many conservative safeguards. The Prussian lower assembly remained elected by the same property-based three-class suffrage that allowed the wealthiest men of the state to elect two-thirds of the representatives, which impeded political representation from the working class composing the majority of the population, while affording disproportionate power to the wealthiest segments of society who paid the most in taxes. Most of the states also had an upper chamber, whose members were appointed by aristocratic rulers, or owed their seat to the privileges of old aristocratic families. These upper chambers, usually loyal to the rulers, were able to check the influence of the lower, popularly-elected, chambers. The most important was the Bundesrat that ratified for all legislation with its consent. It could veto constitutional modifications, and foreign policy was theoretically supervised by a special Bundesrat committee. The Bundesrat representatives were appointed by their governments, of which not any were democratically constituted. Most of state parliaments continued being elected by a restricted franchise that favoured privileged property owners through partitioning electoral districts that heavily favoured rural over urban ones, which consequently excluded large segments of the population that were concentrated in the growing industrialising cities. Reichstag representatives were also unpaid, and therefore limited those who were capable of exercising their political duties full time.
Although the 1871 constitution granted universal and equal manhood suffrage, it had many conservative safeguards. The consent of the Bundesrat was necessary for all legislation, it could veto constitutional changes and foreign policy was theoretically supervised by a special Bundesrat committee. Although the rulers of the separate states were theoretically equal, Prussia maintained the greatest degree of political power in practice, while the Prussian king as German emperor was head of the imperial executive and civil service, and also the supreme commander of all of the armed forces of the empire during wartime. States were represented in the Bundesrat according to their size and power, with Prussia holding seventeen of the fifty-eight seats, which enabled blocking constitutional amendments that were contrary to their state interests, and thereby subvert the Reich it had created, while Prussia’s parliamentary system remained favouring the propertied classes. Bavaria had six and the smaller states each had one. Since Prussia had three more delegates than the fourteen that were necessary for a veto, the Prussian Bundestag delegation could alone nullify all legislation coming from a potentially more democratically inclined national Reichstag. Besides, the Bundesrat representatives were appointed by their governments, none of which were constituted democratically. In practice, the smaller states never opposed Prussia on important issues. Moreover, imperial ministers who were members of the Bundesrat were not accountable to the Reichstag.
The chancellor as the chief imperial officer who supervised the administration of the new empire exercised the enormous executive power vested in the emperor and the Bundesrat. They were not obliged to act upon resolutions passed by the Reichstag, and votes of no-confidence could not remove them from office. They were appointed by the emperor and remained in office for as long as they had confidence in them. The chancellor’s power also emanated from Prussia, as the office of chancellor was usually combined with the minister-presidency of Prussia. While the chancellor was under no constitutional obligation to adopt policies approved by the Reichstag, they were obliged to secure Reichstag support for their own legislative proposals, as Bismarck anticipated how the support of the Reichstag was a useful device for maintaining the balance between a unitary empire and the forces of federalism, and thereby ensuring the active cooperation of a popularly elected body for the state to function, which was mainly limited to criticizing government bills. Cooperation with the Reichstag, which would likely become composed of conservative representatives who did not receive any salaries from the state, was thus a matter of expediency. While sovereignty was divided between the imperial authorities and the member states, the imperial government was responsible for defence, customs, coinage, banking, communication, and the civil and criminal codes. The states had considerable powers over education, justice, agriculture, relations with the churches, and local government. Only the separate states could levy taxation, while the empire depended on indirect taxation.
Parliaments in most of the states continued being elected by a restricted franchise that privileged property owners and excluded large segments of the population. For example, the Prussian Landtag was elected by a three-class suffrage that allowed the wealthiest men of the state to elect two-thirds of the representatives, as was set forth in 1850, which continued to be in force until 1918. Most of the states also had an upper chamber whose members were appointed by the monarchs, or owed their seats to the privileges of old aristocratic families. These upper chambers, usually loyal to the rulers, were also able to check the influence of the lower popular chambers.  The empire was thus an uneasy compromise between conservative federalist forces, the liberal unitary principle, and Prussia’s military power while legislative power was divided between the separate states and the imperial authorities.
In addition to the loose federation of German states, the German Empire was also not completely German since it had foreign minorities. Bismarck intended to preserve Austria-Hungary, since its disintegration could bring its Slavic population under Russia’s influence. On the other hand, the non-Germans within the new German empire, such as the French and German speaking inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine who considered themselves to be French, and thwarted every effort by German authorities to deter separatist sentiments in these imperial provinces, whose representatives in the Reichstag did not have the same rights as other elements of the empire, while their local government was determined by the emperor and his counsellors instead of by themselves, and were therefore maintained in subjection by military force.
Bismarck’s policy of integrating the French in Alsace-Lorraine as part of an Imperial Territory (Reichsland) on 1 January 1874 under a Prussian administrative dictatorship, with legislative power exercised with the assent of the Federal Council, proved to be unsuccessful. The difficult terms offered to those who opted for French citizenship, restrictions imposed on using the French language in schools and in official intercourse, and the stringent control of schools, where only German teachers were appointed, only antagonized these new populations. Their delegates, who were hostile to the existing form of the state when they were allowed representation in the Reichstag in 1874, expressed how they were never reconciled or fully integrated into the empire
Bismarck’s attitude toward the Danish minority in northern Schleswig likewise lacked tactfulness. They were not given the opportunity to decide their own fate in a plebiscite, as had been provided for in the Treaty of Prague, was not held. Danes, who had the right to retain Danish citizenship, were forced to do military service in the Prussian army, or to leave the country. Danish was also steadily displaced by German in the schools. Although article five of the Peace of Prague in 1866 stated that a plebiscite was to be held in northern Schleswig to allow the Danish-speaking population to determine their future, Prussia repudiated this provision in 1879.  Hence, Danes were therefore not fully integrated into the empire, while only being granted representation in the Bundesrat in 1911, in addition to their representation in their own Reichstag party.
The Poles in the east were likewise never reconciled or fully integrated into the state. Bismarck and his successors at times tried to “Germanise” the Poles in Prussia by declaring German the only language that could be spoken in offices and classrooms.  Bismarck also attempted to repress Polish political aspirations through adapting an idea of “internal colonisation” of the Prussian Polish provinces through the Prussian state making land purchases of Polish owned land to be settled by Germans, with disappointing results, as the settlers were not necessarily upstanding citizens, while some married Polish women and had children who came to identify themselves as Poles. In addition, Poles were influenced into consolidating greater solidarity to defend their identity and started organising cooperative societies, and developing a greater consciousness of their separate nationality. (See H-German: Bismarck and the “Polish Question.”)
Several measures were taken to attend to the organisation and material progress of the newly established empire. recognised the importance of contemporary commercial and industrial developments, and also diverted a part of the enormous indemnity received from France into business channels that that provided an impetus for an economic boom, along with political unity encouraging economic expansion, particularly in heavy industry and railway construction. An Imperial Bureau of Railroads was established in 1873 to oversee the successful coordination of national railroad developments. A single national gold standard of currency was established in 1873. Different measures were introduced in 1875 to establish unity in various governmental functions that eliminated barriers between the separate states from a central source to bring uniformity to legal and financial systems, and also spurred economic development. A Reichsbank was instituted to become the central institution for national economic activity in 1875, including the exchange, finance and issue of Reichsmark bank notes for the entire empire. These economic policy measures all contributed to fostering a new national sentiment by breaking down former barriers between the separate states. The Imperial Post Office was reformed and extended. Imperial jurisdiction was extended over the whole range of legal procedure in both civil and criminal law, following the enactment of an elaborate code of Trade Law was enacted in 1870. Criminal law was codified in 1877, which was followed with the codification of the civil law code in 1900. A system of military jurisprudence and of procedure in the military courts was codified in 1874. The administration of justice jurisdiction, with an imperial court of appeal was established in 1879.
Bismarck accomplished German unification on a federal basis that led to the foundation of a German empire under Prussian hegemony, which altered the fundamental framework of European international relations. Germany’s defeat of France and the unification of all of the German states outside of Austria led to Germany holding a strong central position in European politics as a new great power, while France and Austria were recovering from defeat, Russia was turning its attention to central Asia as well as Europe, and Britain was isolationist. The primary aim for the new German empire in 1871 was maintaining peace, while it appeared inevitable that a dismembered and humiliated France would wage a successful war of revenge to revise the Treaty of Frankfurt, provided that France could secure allies for this purpose. In view of this contemporary international order, Bismarck then sought to maintain the status quo by establishing a system of multiple alliances, and following the guiding principle of isolating France by preventing it from allying itself with another country that would be potentially hostile to the new balance of power with Germany at the centre. The most effective way of accomplishing this purpose was organising central Europe with the other states in subordination to the new German empire.
A further matter of concern was precluding re-establishing Polish unity that was dismembered since 1795, and maintained in 1815, which contributed to reinforcing the strength of Prussia, including during the ongoing Kulturkampf that included the Polish Catholic population in Prussia. Bismarck believed Prussian Poland composed a home policy problem that he sought to Germanise these provinces through drastic means. An Edict of 5 May 1885 expelled all Poles who were not Prussian subjects, leading to the expulsion of thirty-four thousand Poles on the grounds of state necessity. An expropriation bill was introduced in 1886 to authorise the government to raise funding to acquire Polish estates to be leased to German farmers who were obliged to marry Polish women, and transferred the supervision of all popular education in the district to the central executive, likewise in the interest of preserving the Germanic character of these provinces, which Bismarck believed was threatened by the Polish population. This policy of voluntary and then forcible expropriation failed as a result of the false assumptions that nationalism could be extirpated through administrative action, in connection with the alleged superiority of a culture that was only evident to those administering it, in addition to expecting the Poles would not combine to defeat this policy, and the government could completely control the economic situation. Attempting to Germanise the Polish population therefore proved to be futile, regardless of the numbers of German colonists settling in these provinces, and the increased economic prosperity therein only reinforced the economic capacity of the Poles to purchase German estates.
Nationalist sentiments were likewise patent in Alsace-Lorraine, regardless of ending the military government in 1874, and allowing fifteen Reichstag representatives from these provinces. These representatives added to domestic opposition, and did not exert any practical influence on German political life. Their united hostility to the government in the form of a continuous protest against the annexation and the policy of internal coercion. These provinces were nevertheless maintained for the purpose of providing a defensive bulwark against France, which refused to accept their loss.
Bismarck primarily oriented policymaking on the basis of considering the maintenance and progress of the state, while also preserving those of Prussia, and then of Germany that emerged into an exposed position in the centre of a system of great powers, with large borders strips unprotected by natural barriers. Authority was not to be fragmented. Emphasis on unity forced Bismarck into the attempt to eliminate any influences that could compete with him for the allegiance of German citizens. Although Prussia’s military effectiveness and economic power influenced support for its leadership for German unity among the German states, the sense of unity was affected by three different sources. First, the Prussian landed aristocracy, the Junker class to which Bismarck belonged, dominated Prussia, and saw their power threatened by the South German states. A second potential source of division in the new empire came from the southern states that had adopted more liberal constitutions than Prussia. Universal suffrage gave democrats from these states an opportunity to vent their anti-authoritarian feelings by sending democratic deputies to the Reichstag. A third problem to national unity was religious division, particularly in the southern and western German states, since many Catholics felt uneasy about living in a state whose highest administration was clearly dominated by Prussian Protestants, which could lead to religious conflict. Tension over these religious dissentions led to a conflict that constituted a primary problem in domestic affairs.
This underlying element in Germany followed Catholics opposing the rising power of Prussia as a Protestant state that had driven Austria as the military arm of the Vatican out of the German states and Italy. The Vatican increased their difficulties by condemning the encroachments of states on educational and church affairs.
Furthermore, having been challenged by growing hostility to the political role of the church, the dominant party at the First Vatican Council issued a dogma of Papal Infallibility on 18 July 1870, which was intended to impose the authority of the papacy, which could be interpreted as undermining the sovereignty of states, and over all causes and individuals, both ecclesiastical and civil, This declaration was to be regarded as an alleged revealed article of faith that undermined the civil authority over its Catholic citizens, since the pope could not teach erroneous doctrine when speaking on matters of faith and morals, which could supersede civil authority. This religious controversy was directly aimed against the Italian government, but was interpreted as challenging the nature, competence and limits of the sovereignty claimed by secular states over all persons and causes. The Vatican Council declared all ecclesiastical powers concentrated in the papacy made the pope’s utterances infallible, and their repudiation would result in excommunication. The papacy also enforced the claim that the secular state had the duty to implement the decisions of the infallible spiritual authority, and defining what constituted a question of religion or morals ultimately lay with the church, through which the supreme and infallible pontiff spoke by virtue of his intrinsic, inalienable and inherent superiority of spiritual to secular authority.
These contemporary developments in Italy extended as a universal matter concerning the interests of the Catholic church, which was suspected of meddling in German political life. The new Centre Party, which appeared at the first session of the new Reichstag, or national parliament, with most of its members from southern Germany in order to defend the church and its influence over education while standing for states’ rights and efforts to strengthen the powers of the federal government, could potentially express opposition to the newly established Second Reich. This party denied the validity of the treaties that constituted the German empire, and demanded a truly more federal state with greater liberty for the federated states, along with the complete freedom and independence of the Catholic church in Germany.
The aim at elevating spiritual over temporal power to make the voice of the papacy supreme in the world had been weakened by the unexpected defeat of Austria and then more crushingly unexpected defeat of France by predominantly Protestant Prussia, and the loss of the papal states that were incorporated into the kingdom of Italy. This new dogma of Papal Infallibity then led to disputes among German clerics, as well as arousing great alarm in liberal and Protestant circles. The Catholic bishops of Breslau and Ermland and the archbishop of Cologne asked Prussia to dismiss dissenters from teaching posts in schools and in Catholic theological faculties at universities in accordance with the provisions of this proclamation. The government refused, maintaining that the state was committed to principle of religious toleration, and therefore could not interfere in disputes between sects. In Prussia where the Catholic church had been on good terms with the state since the governance of Frederick William IV and the religious guarantees were included in the Prussian constitution of 1850, the state held jurisdiction over university faculty members in accordance with Article 12 of the Prussian constitution also guaranteed civil and political rights independently of religious belief, and Articles 20 and 22 ensured the freedom of instruction while acting as public officials, which included members of the clergy holding teaching positions in universities, seminaries and schools, or serving as military chaplains. Article 23 stated that teachers had the rights and duties of civil servants, while the archbishop’s action implied that the Prussian state was to suspend or deprive its public servants of a right conferred on them under legal guarantees at the bidding of an authority, in itself only exercising jurisdiction defined by, and drawing emoluments under the under the protection of the state. It therefore followed that the papacy could determine that kind of teaching and by whom it would be given in every university or school throughout Germany, and the conditions in which instructors in state universities and schools, paid for and controlled by the state, would hold office or be liable to suspension, dismissal or deprivation of their rights. It had also been agreed to leave religious matters completely in the hands of the states in 1867, which were likewise subjected to papal authority undermining their secular authority
The separate political parties in the national parliament each represented different elements of the population. The National Conservatives served the interests of Prussian landowners; the National Liberals the interests of leading industrialists; the Social Democrats the interests of the working class. On the other hand, the Centre Party represented German Roman Catholics regardless of their economic class. Whereas Bismarck appeased liberal demands through establishing national unification, he remained suspicious about how the Catholic church could yet exert its influence, initially with control over education, and then influencing political life as a whole. The new empire increased the Catholic population to roughly one third of the total national population, which Bismarck believed could potentially religious dissension conflict, as considerable numbers of Germans protested against and repudiated the new papal doctrine of infallibility, in addition to raising suspicion about Catholic influences in the new unified German state due to measures proposed by the Centre party.  In contrast to France and England where rulers had strived for and nearly reached religious homogeneity by siding with one church and persecuting others, the new German empire had about one third Catholics and two-third mostly Lutheran Protestants.
Since Bismarck believed papal infallibility implied a distinct claim of the supremacy of the Catholic church over the civil authorities, he therefore engaged in a prolonged attack on the Catholic Church known as the Kulturkampf, or “cultural struggle,” or a so-called “struggle between civilisations,” resulting from antagonistic theories of the basis and competence of authority in a politically organised community and society as a consequence of the abolition of the papacy’s temporal power when Italian troops occupied Rome on 20 September 1870, which ended the political system of the papacy of the Renaissance and the Counter-reformation, and the Declaration of Papal Infallibility of 18 July 1870 that concentrated all ecclesiastical powers in the person of the pope, and also enforced the claim that the duty of implementing the decisions of the infallible spiritual authority rested with the secular state. Defining and deciding what constituted a question of religion or morals ultimately lay with the Catholic church, expressed through the person and office of the supreme and infallible pontiff, by reason of the intrinsic, inalienable and inherent superiority of spiritual to secular authority. Bismack rejecting these papal decrees resulted in launching a political assault against politicised Catholicism by reducing the influence of ultramontane priests and bishops over the church, as well as the Centre party’s opposition to a robust federal government and the dominant role of Prussia therein.
A series of stringent laws were promulgated to impose various restrictions on the influence of the papacy representing Catholic interests in Germany who were perceived to be enemies of the state. According to Bismarck’s own interpretation, launching this “preventive war” purely followed political rather than religious motivations, believing that German Catholics, composing roughly one third of Germany, could only give a fraction of their allegiance to the German state, and must reserve a certain degree of their loyalties to a non-German authority with international connections, which could threaten Prussian-German interests.
Rather than being moved by Protestant animosity to the Catholic church, he was alarmed by the possibility of the latter organizing a hierarchy of power that could arise within the empire that could be hostile to the state that he sought to preserve. including Rhineland Catholics with both particularist interests, Protestant Hanoverians who opposed Prussian rule and supported Roman Catholics, the Polish minority populations in Silesia, Posen and West Prussia, while Roman Catholic industrialists in the Rhineland and in Bavaria supported Bismarck who would serve their specific class interests through economic policy and legislation, such introducing uniform coinage, lifting restrictions on freedom of enterprise, and allowing limited companies and trade combinations. Similar political suspicions about Catholic influences were present in other countries where political leaders sympathized with Bismarck who considered Catholicism to potentially constitute a threat to the continued stability of the empire’s unity, while suspecting that the Catholic clergy claimed a share in the secular government as a political institution under clerical forms. This included Russia that was in conflict with Roman Catholic Poles, Italian nationalists who were in conflict with the papacy, the liberal anti-clericalist government in Austria, as well as French radicals and English Protestants, such Earl John Russell who hailed Bismarck as “a fellow soldier of liberty.” During this time when German nationalists, especially in Prussia, were engaged in campaigning for state control of all education, as well as the abolition of all clerical privileges that precluded civil supremacy, the doctrine of papal infallibility that encouraged the unity of all classes in defence of the Catholic church further aggravated the question of what constituted the inherent superiority of spiritual to secular authority. These matters were given expression by the Centre party, which Bismarck described as “the most monstrous phenomenon in politics,” denying the validity of the treaties on which the empire was based, and demanded, along with a more truly federal state while opposing the unifying and administrative action of the imperial sovereignty, the complete freedom and independence of the Catholic church within the empire.
The aim at elevating spiritual over temporal power to make the voice of the papacy supreme in the world had been weakened by the unexpected defeat of Austria and then more crushingly unexpected defeat of France by predominantly Protestant Prussia, and the loss of the papal states that were incorporated into the kingdom of Italy. This new dogma of Papal Infallibity then led to disputes among German clerics, as well as arousing great alarm in liberal and Protestant circles. The Catholic bishops of Breslau and Ermland and the archbishop of Cologne asked Prussia to dismiss dissenters from teaching posts in schools and in Catholic theological faculties at universities in accordance with the provisions of this proclamation. The government refused, maintaining that the state was committed to principle of religious toleration, and therefore could not interfere in disputes between sects. In Prussia where the Catholic church had been on good terms with the state since the governance of Frederick William IV and the religious guarantees were included in the Prussian constitution of 1850, the state held jurisdiction over university faculty members in accordance with Article 12 of the Prussian constitution also guaranteed civil and political rights independently of religious belief, and Articles 20 and 22 ensured the freedom of instruction while acting as public officials, which included members of the clergy holding teaching positions in universities, seminaries and schools, or serving as military chaplains. Article 23 stated that teachers had the rights and duties of civil servants, while the archbishop’s action implied that the Prussian state was to suspend or deprive its public servants of a right conferred on them under legal guarantees at the bidding of an authority, in itself only exercising jurisdiction defined by, and drawing emoluments under the under the protection of the state. It therefore followed that the papacy could determine that kind of teaching and by whom it would be given in every university or school throughout Germany, and the conditions in which instructors in state universities and schools, paid for and controlled by the state, would hold office or be liable to suspension, dismissal or deprivation of their rights. It had also been agreed to leave religious matters completely in the hands of the states in 1867, which were likewise subjected to papal authority undermining their secular authority.
Within three months of this proclamation, Bishop Krementz of Ermland excommunicated one of his subordinates of his diocese for refusing to subscribe to the new dogma, which was a violation of the principle of religious freedom that had continued in Prussia for nearly a hundred and fifty years. The Archbishop of Cologne excommunicated four “old Catholic” professors at the State University of Bonn for refusing to subscribe to this dogma, which was likewise in direct contravention to Prussian law that stated faculty members held their position under the authority of the state. The government refused while maintaining that the state was committed to the principle of religious toleration, and would not interfere in disputes between religious sects. When the bishops persisted in their demands, the government retaliated by suspending subsidies to these offending prelates.
Bismarck considered there to be primarily political considerations from the outset of the declaration of the Decrees of Infallibility that were aimed at retaining the temporal power of the papacy. The Second French Empire under Napoleon III had been the main political supporter of the papacy. Another underlying consideration was the potential threat posed by the Centre party formed in 1870 as a political wing of the Catholic church, at a time when Catholics came to compose a thirty-seven percent minority in a Protestant state under a Protestant emperor, and therefore became fearful of the growing power of Protestant Prussia and mounting liberal hostility to their church.
     This new Centre party proposed a resolution on 30 March 1871 that emperor William I had the duty to interfere on behalf of the pope and drive Victor Emmanuel out of Rome. Another demand closely followed, demanding independence for Poles living in Posen, which meant separation from the German empire for a small community that could not constitute an independent political organisation, and would potentially lead to composing a centre of revolutionary movement that would extend to Russian Poland, and then lead to an alliance between Russia with France. This motion was defeated by a significant majority of 243 to 63. The Centre Party next moved to add contents to the imperial constitution of the three liberal principles of the Prussian constitution – complete independence of the church, freedom of the press, and the right to hold public meetings – in the interest of placing the Catholic church beyond the sphere of government suspicion, which was likewise defeated, as it had been agreed in 1867 to leave religious matters in the hands of the states, rather than including the Prussian constitutional guarantees of religious toleration into the national constitution.
These actions convinced Bismarck that the Centre party was devoted to placing religious matters above political life, and his suspicions were deepened when it became a rallying point for opponents of the empire who had been incorporated into the new German empire against their will. These included enemies of Prussia, the seven Reichstag members of the Guelf party from Hanover who resented its annexation by Prussia, fifteen members from Alsace-Lorraine calling for greater autonomy, and Danish and Polish nationalists. Bismarck hereafter sustained the untenable Kulturkampf due to a misconceived belief that there was a Vatican-inspired conspiracy against Prussia in the Reichstag aiming at destroying the empire, and therefore had considered himself to be acting in defence of the state. Another aggravating factor was how the use of Polish was encouraged by the Catholic clergy and school inspectorate in Poland, in spite of his attempts to promote the use of German, which maintained Polish nationalism at a time when the indigenous Polish population was rising, and therefore Bismarck hoped to curb the influence of the Church in Poland to loosen the ties between nationalism and Catholicism.
As Bismarck perceived the papacy as an enemy of national consolidation, a number of measures designed to harass and weaken the influence of the Catholic Church in Germany were implemented between 1871 and 1875, due to the belief that national unity was incomplete as long as the Germans professed different religions. During the first phase of the Kulturkampf up to 1872, measures were taken to delimit the spheres of influence of church and state. Bismarck’s first actions taken against the Centre Party that he considered to be a political abomination, a political party formed on a religious basis, was abolishing the Catholic section of the Prussian Ministry of ecclesiastical and educational affairs 8 July 1871, and thereby depriving Catholics of their voice at the highest state level, while he considered it to be an obstacle between the public and any laws that the Reichstag might enact, and represented the interests of the church rather than the state. This was followed by the Reichstag adopting a new clause into the criminal code, the Kanzelparagraph, in December 1871 that imposed penalties on clergy who misused their pulpits for political purposes, such as “political sermons” encouraging voting for particular political candidates, in reaction to Catholic priests inciting their parishioners against the government.
There was then a second phase in which Bismarck intended to subordinate the church to the state. A system of strict government supervision of schools was applied from January 1872, making the board of school inspectors subject to government appointment, and thereby removing courses of study and textbooks in use in primary and secondary schools from the supervision of the clergy in both Protestant and Catholic communities. The Prussian Landtag passed legislation in March 1872 that nominally placed all Prussian schools under state supervision, while the clergy acted as school inspectors in the name of the state, rather than the churches. Religious instructors connected with schools were not to be interfered with, provided that they avoided obnoxious dogma and made no attempt to prejudice students against the state. The Jesuits and all orders connected with them were to be banished from Germany. This was followed by passing a bill on 14 June 1872 to exclude Jesuits and all other religious orders from all priestly and scholastic functions, and Jesuits were expelled from Germany altogether in a Reichstag law passed on 4 July 1872. This was then followed by the severance of diplomatic relations with the Vatican in 1872.
Bismarck could not trust the Catholics since he believed the “centre of gravity” of much of Catholic life “lay outside the German Reich,” he harassed Catholicism as a “state within a state,” and was particularly anxious to eliminate the anti-German influence of the clergy in Prussian Poland. This was followed by the enactment of the May Laws, or Falk Laws, from 15 May 1873, named after the Minister of Public Education, Dr. Adalbert von Falk, who was appointed minister of public worship on 6 January 1872 and sought to impose remedial measures to set distinctions between the powers of the state and the Catholic church authorities by removing matters from their jurisdiction, and regulate Catholic institutions in Germany more effectively by subordinating them to state regulations. These actions created a conflict that would have been tantamount to a declaration of war, as a result of the national government’s intention for all citizens of the empire to become Germans before they identified themselves as otherwise.
    The first law granted each church the right of discipline imposed by Catholic ecclesiastics on the members of their diocese or parish, or within the sphere of religious governance. This law regulated conditions of membership, even to dismissal, while forbidding the church to enter into the sphere of civil rights in terms of pronouncing sentences against the person, property, freedom, or the reputation of a German citizen, and declaring that the church should not use its discipline to bring obedience to the laws of the land into question, to coerce or intimidate a voter, or degrade a civil servant from doing their duty, by withholding these matters from church jurisdiction. This was to obviate the recurrence of conflicts between temporal and spiritual powers. This measure reduced the disciplinary powers of Catholic bishops on the members of their dioceses or parish, or taking any action affecting their civil rights by allowing appeal from ecclesiastical conditions to a public court of lay jurors, while the church retained the right to regulate the conditions of church membership, an also dismiss members who had infringed on the laws of religious jurisdiction. This was especially designed to prevent intimidation or undue influence with regard to voting at elections.
The second law related to the training and appointment of the clergy that was transferred to the state, providing that no one was to be admitted to the sacred ministry of whatever denomination who had not passed the final examination at a public high school, studied theology for three years at a German university, and obtained a certificate of proficiency in the various branches of a liberal education, which involved passing an examination on German history, philosophy, literature and classics. Clerics could choose to study in a seminary in Rome thereafter, but first had to become a German citizen by education and habit of thought. All existing seminaries and monastic colleges were placed under the surveillance of a state board of inspectors, and forbade the opening of new ones. All ecclesiastical superiors or clerics were subject to appointment or transfer to state inspectors, and empowered the government to veto either these acts on the ground of insufficient education, or the criminal or suspected political character of the nominated. All exercise of spiritual office by unauthorised persons was punishable by loss of civic rights, and the state was empowered to withhold payment of the state endowment from recalcitrant bishops. Legislation was thus applied to nationalise and “Germanise” the clergy, and elevate them as public officials who were to be educated in a civil setting.
This measure brought the education of the Catholic clergy under the supervision of the state, providing that neither priest nor bishop was to be appointed unless they were a graduate of a German high school and had studied theology in a German university. All religious seminaries and monastic institutions were placed under the direct guardianship of the civil government through a board of inspectors for all religious seminaries and monastic institutions. Catholic bishops were to give previous notification of priests to particular parishes, or their transfers from one parish to another, and forbade appointments or changes without the approval of these state inspectors. All exercise of spiritual office by unauthorised persons was punishable by loss of civic rights, and the state was empowered to withhold payment to recalcitrant bishops from the state endowment
The third law was to protect Catholic dissenters to allow the same freedom of opinion in the church communities. All vexatious restrictions on this subject were replaced by the rule that anyone might secede with legal effect from any church by declaring their will in this respect before a local judge. This facilitated congregations to secede from the Catholic Church in the event of there being dissenters, who would be protected by law if they expressed their difference in belief in a law court.
The fourth law provided methods whereby there could be appeals made from ecclesiastical courts, or church reformatories, to secular courts of law by creating a royal tribunal of revision and appeal for ecclesiastical causes. The discipline of ecclesiastics was placed under the supervision of the state while forbidding all secret and arbitrary forms of chastisement, including corporeal chastisement and excommunication as ecclesiastical punishment, and placed all monastic institutions under the supervision of state inspectors, removing these functions from Catholic priests. Church members were thus protected to allow for freedom of thought.
There were exceedingly stricter measures in Prussia, which constituted nearly two-thirds of the empire, where administrative execution of the May Laws was mainly the duty of the Prussian Minister of the Interior to impose separate conditions. Ecclesiastical salaries were withheld for any member of the clergy who had been appointed contrary to civil regulations, or were unwilling to subscribe to implicit obedience to the May Laws and take an oath to support the government. The state made appointments to vacant church positions under the supervision of government inspectors. Civil marriage became compulsory in Prussia on 9 March 1874, and then throughout Germany on 6 February 1875. All states were granted powers to restrict the freedom of movement of the clergy and to expel offending priests from Germany; births, deaths and marriages were to be notified to the civil registrar rather than church authorities in 1874,, which was then extended to all states in 1875. These were followed by the Congregations Law of May 1875 that abolished religious orders in Prussia, particularly the Jesuits, and apart from those concerned with caring for the sick, were ordered dissolved orders in Germany due to their suspected opposition to the state. The Sisters of Mercy were exempted from this regulation as serviceable and harmless members of society. The state was empowered with suspending state subsidies to the Catholic church in dioceses or parishes where the clergy resisted the new legislation, and removed religious protections from the Prussian constitution. All citizens of the empire were to become Germans before they became anything else. The papacy retaliated on 5 February 1875 by publishing an encyclic letter to German Catholic bishops declaring the May Laws to be invalid, and forbade all faithful followers, both clergy and laity, from rendering them obedience.
Church leaders who refused to acknowledge the new laws were imprisoned. Mieczysław Halka-Ledochowski, the archbishop of Posen, was fined, sentenced to four years of imprisonment, and then dismissed from his bishopric for having refused to cease engaging in raising contributions from all of the parishes in his diocese, in addition to facing accusations of having attempted to exclude German language study from the schools in his diocese, and the police discovered that he was in active correspondence with certain Russian Poles who were under suspicion of planning a new revolution. Pius IX promoted him to the position of cardinal during his confinement in a show of contempt for German jurisprudence. The archbishop of Cologne, and the bishops of Trier and Paderborn were likewise imprisoned for short terms for not conforming to religious legislation. Nearly a quarter of the Catholic parishes in Prussia were devoid of a priest, and ten out of twelve dioceses were without a bishop who were in exile or arrested. By 1876, over one thousand and three hundred parishes did not have any recognised and “loyal” Catholic priest. Roman Catholics throughout Germany refused to recognise the validity of the coercive legislation, and thousands were fined or imprisoned.
In spite of intense forms of persecution, the Catholics did not show any sign of wavering, and in some respects, actually generated encouragement to resist the state. Priests and bishops who resisted the Kulturkampf, as it was coined by Rudolf Virchow, a prominent Prussian Progressive, were arrested or removed from their positions. By the height of anti-Catholic legislation by the end of 1878, half of the Prussian bishops were in prison or in exile. Suspending governmental salaries resulted in eight out of twelve bishoprics vacant, and a quarter of the parishes did not have officiating clergy. Half the monks and nuns had left Prussia, a third of the monasteries and convents were closed, more than 1,800 parish priests were imprisoned or exiled, thousands of laypeople were imprisoned for helping the priests, and over sixteen million Reichsmarks of ecclesiastical property was seized. These measures also resulted in the closing of nearly half of the seminaries in Prussia by 1878.
Catholics resisted, and bishops instructed their congregations to resist. Instead of weakening the affection of German Catholics for their church, Bismarck’s actions strengthened the Catholic community that expressed itself through the Centre Party. While twenty-three percent of Prussia’s Catholics for the Centre Party in 1871, this later number increased to forty-five percent in 1874, largely as a result of the Kulturkampf that confirmed most Catholics’ belief that a separate party was necessary for the defence of their church. Bismarck realised that the policy had been a failure. The anti-Catholic laws were thus gradually abandoned when Bismarck later realized the futility of his policy. When the more diplomatic and conciliatory Leo XIII became the pope in 1878 after Pius IX, who had condemned anti-Catholic legislation, wrote to Emperor William on 20 February expressing his earnest wish for improved relations, Bismarck relaxed his campaign while facing solid opposition from Catholics as well as from the royal family, and was eventually abandoned since imposing state power could not extirpate the Catholic faith, and turned lawbreakers into martyrs for conscience, which led to the law abiding citizens not sympathising with the state imposing indiscriminate brute strength. Bismarck thus proved to be completely mistaken about the extent of Catholic resistance or surrendering to rigorous coercion.
When the more diplomatic and conciliatory Leo XIII became the pope in 1878 after Pius IX, who had condemned anti-Catholic legislation, wrote to Emperor William on 20 February expressing his earnest wish for improved relations, Bismarck relaxed his campaign while facing solid opposition from Catholics as well as from the royal family, and was eventually abandoned since imposing state power could not extirpate the Catholic faith, and turned lawbreakers into martyrs for conscience, which led to the law abiding citizens not sympathising with the state imposing indiscriminate brute strength. Bismarck thus proved to be completely mistaken about the extent of Catholic resistance or surrendering to rigorous coercion. The appointment of von Puttkammer succeeding Dr. Falk led to neither active resistance on the part of the bishops, nor persecution on the part of the government by the end of 1878, as von Puttkammer evidently intended to interfere as little as possible. Pope Pius IX deceased on 7 February 1878, and his more conciliatory Pope Leo III expressed his intention to end the Kulturkampf and have improved relations in a letter to Emperor William I on 20 February. There was a tacit understanding between Bismarck and Leo XIII to end the conflict with a stalemate, which also proved to have failed to check the encroachments of Victor Emmanuel while the authority of the papacy in the states of the Catholic church was eliminated, along with Victor Emmanuel himself being out of office, while King Humbert did not share his antagonism to the Vatican.
Priests were largely dispensed from the necessity and conditions of the state examinations that had been prescribed in the May Laws on 31 May 1882. Catholic bishops were released from the obligation to notify the civil authority about ecclesiastical appointments on 11 July 1883, which simply retained a veto power. The dogma of infallibility had thus completely dissipated. By the end of 1883, most of the bishoprics were restored with pardoned bishops and re-endowed with the means of providing their salaries. Nearly every Reichstag session witnessed some modification to anti-Catholic legislation from 1878 to 1887, and the May Laws remained in the statute books could be enforced whenever the government considered it to be expedient, until the May Laws were finally repealed in April 1887. Catholic seminaries were allowed to be re-opened, the civil veto on the appointment of parish priests was abolished, and episcopal power of discipline was restored, purely religious, charitable or contemplative orders were permitted to return, with the exception of the expulsion of the Jesuits that remained in place until the Bundesrat repealed the anti-Jesuit law in 1904.
The Kulturkampf that was intended to undermine the autonomy of the Catholic influence in Germany among approximately forty percent of the population appeared to be vilifying Catholicism, rather than the suspected pernicious influences of a foreign priesthood, and conservatives became increasingly concerned that the government’s practices were discrediting both Prussia and Germany, whereas German Catholics would not be intimidated by state policies. Bismarck had antagonised a perceived enemy of the state he was unable to overcome, which had negative influences on social life by unnecessarily depriving parishes of church services, while the Catholic Centre did not pose any genuine threat to the functions of the national state. He had apparently calculated that the Catholics would either not resist, or if they did, would soon surrender to rigorous coercion, and events proved he was completely mistaken by attempting to use state power, which only converted lawbreakers into martyrs for conscience. Bismarck’s own old protestant friends also encouraged abandoning these practices, believing that he was establishing an absolutist secular state, as the Jacobins had done during the French Revolution, which was supported in the Reichstag and by national public opinion. Bismarck had to repeal the May Laws, allow the exiled clergy to return and resume payments to the church. On the other hand, civil marriage remained compulsory, Jesuits were still forbidden to enter Germany, the “pulpit paragraph” forbidding priests from making politically subversive statements in their sermons was not repealed, and the church agreed to submit the names of all permanent appointments to state authorities. Bismarck had thus opted to wage a miscalculated campaign to curb the influence of the Papacy in Germany, and consequently failed to destroy the increasing support for the Centre party in the popular vote that had been formed in 1870 to protect Catholic interests in a predominantly protestant Germany.
Matters of concern relating to state revenue also took precedence over what had become a meaningless conflict between religious and political matters by the late 1870s, when Papal Infallibility was no longer advocated by Leo XIII, and Germany was beset by serious financial problems. Imperial revenue raised from customs duties and indirect taxation were proving to be completely inadequate as a result of the increasing costs of armaments and administration, whereas the states needed to cover the deficits, with funds raised from direct taxation. German agriculture had also begun to suffer from a series of poor harvests, along with Russia and the United States emerging as major wheat exporters, which made Germany increasingly dependent on importing grain. Industry likewise suffered setbacks as the rate of economic expansion slowed for several years.