Part 209

"For reasons relating to its own internal affairs the state, even though it took no special attitude to the dogma of infallibility in itself, could not avoid being drawn into the conflicts which that dogma was bound to call forth between its upholders and its opponents. It was the duty of the state to prevent the evil results to its citizens of the anathema which the bishops hurled at those who denied the infallibility; it was necessary for it to interfere and, by introducing civil marriages, to render marriage possible to those apostates who were not allowed to receive the sacraments; it was necessary for it to protect in the exercise of their office those of its public teachers who rejected the new dogma, even if their spiritual superiors should declare them unfit to hold such office. In cases, finally, where whole congregations, or majorities of them, remained true to the old teachings it was necessary for the state to protect them in the possession of their churches of which the bishops tried to deprive them. Already in November and December 1870 the first cases had occurred with regard to which the Prussian minister of education had been obliged to draw these conclusions. Professors of the Bonn and Breslau universities who, because they denied the infallibility, had been forbidden to lecture by Archbishop Melchers of Cologne and Prince-bishop Forster of Breslau, appealed to the protection of the minister. Certain pastors and teachers of gymnasiums, who had joined in a declaration drawn up at Nuremberg (August 25, 1870) against the new dogma, and who had in consequence been threatened with ecclesiastical punishments, did the same. Mühler had no other course than to declare that, so far as officials appointed by the state were concerned, the state must maintain its exclusive disciplinary power, and that he would continue in future to regard as catholics those whom he had so regarded before the decree of infallibility was passed, even if they saw fit to reject that dogma. Similar conflicts broke out in Bavaria where the minister, Lutz, upheld the pastor Renftle, of Mering near Augsburg, in the enjoyment of his benefices in the face of the bishop, and where the Munich professors, Döllinger, Friedrich, Huber and others courageously refused such assent to the dogma as the Archbishop Scherr, on October 20, 1870, demanded from them. Döllinger's written justification of himself, published on March 20, 1871, seemed to give a firm basis and a distinguished leader to the whole movement. … Twelve thousand signatures were collected in a few weeks for an address to the king of Bavaria and an appeal was made to the catholics of Germany, Austria and Switzerland in favor of common action. … Meanwhile the other party had been busy enough. Hundreds and hundreds of ecclesiastics protested against Döllinger's assertion that thousands of the clergy thought as he did. A lay assembly in Munich, held on April 23, which expressed itself in favor of infallibility, was the forerunner of countless similar ones. … Already some weeks earlier the archbishop of Munich had ventured to excommunicate Döllinger. … On August 27 Lutz sent a writing to Archbishop Scherr claiming the right to regulate afresh the relations with the church as the dogma of infallibility was something essentially new: at the same time he announced that the government would do its utmost to protect the upholders of the old teachings and to secure the independence of civil affairs from ecclesiastical right of compulsion. In Munich such decisive measures would probably not have been adopted had not matters in Prussia taken a similar turn. The conflict had been brought to a climax here by the demand of Bishops Krementz and Ermeland that two teachers in Braunsberg, Wollmann and Treibel, should be dismissed for denying the infallibility. This demand the minister had refused on March 18, 1871, and on June 29 had even given his approval to the regulation that scholars who should obey the orders of the bishop to absent themselves from the class in religious instruction of these teachers should be expelled from the gymnasium. The bishop had retaliated by excommunicating the two teachers in question, as well as Professor Michelis, one of the chief opponents of infallibility. In the dioceses of Cologne, Paderborn and Breslau also, the conflicts had become more fierce on account of excommunications imposed by the bishops. Still more important was it that the chancellor of the empire had now personally entered the lists. As his cool attitude already before the council had given reason to expect, the Vatican dogma did not much trouble him. All the more alarming seemed to him the agitation which the clergy were stirring up among the Polish nobles, and the league of Guelphism and Catholicism as illustrated by Windhorst's position in the Centre. … He [Bismarck] caused the announcement to be made in an article of the Kreuzzeitung that the government would not only continue on the defensive against the Centre, but in turn would proceed to attack it. The ultramontanes had better consider whether such a struggle could turn out to the advantage of the Roman Church. If, he concluded, three hundred years ago Teutonism in Germany was stronger than Romanism, how much stronger would it be now when Rome is no longer the capital of the world, but on the point of becoming the capital of Italy, and when the German imperial crown no longer rests on the head of a Spaniard but of a German prince. … In the Federal Council Lutz moved an amendment to the criminal code which should threaten any clergyman with imprisonment up to two years if he should misuse his office and discuss state affairs so as to disturb the peace. … This 'pulpit-paragraph' was accepted with 179 to 108 votes and became law December 14th 1871. … The Prussian diet was opened on November 27, 1871, with the announcement of four new laws which should regulate marriages, the registration of civil personal matters, the withdrawal from existing churches, and the supervision of schools. … {3780} The conservative party was in wild excitement over these measures and the Kreuzzeitung became the organ of decided opposition, especially against the school-supervision law which was chosen as the first object of attack. The conservatives collected petitions from all parts of the land to kill this law which they prophesied would make the schools a tool of atheism, a hot-bed of revolution, unnationality and immorality. They succeeded in getting together more than 300,000 signatures. … At the first reading in the House of Deputies the school-supervision law was passed, although by a majority of only 25 votes. … At the second reading the majority increased to 52. … The chief struggle was expected in the House of Lords. … The vote here was favorable beyond all hopes, resulting on March 8th in a majority in favor of the law almost as great as that in the House of Deputies. … By no means calm was the attitude of the pope towards the increasing complications, and when, a few weeks later, on June 24th, 1872, he received the German 'Leseverein' in Rome he complained bitterly of the prime minister of a powerful government who, after marvellous successes in war, should have placed himself at the head of a long-planned persecution of the church; a step which would undoubtedly tarnish the glory of his former triumphs. 'Who knows if the little stone shall not soon be loosened from above that shall destroy the foot of the Colossus!' The chief cause of this embitterment lay in the expulsion of the Jesuits which had meanwhile been decreed by the diet. … The more the national opposition to the Roman claims increased, the more passionate did the frame of mind of the ultramontanes become; and also, in no small degree, of the pope. An allocution addressed to the cardinals on December 22, 1872, surpassed in violence anything that had yet been heard. … Even Reichensperger found it advisable in excusing a vehemence that thus went beyond all bounds to call to mind that the Latinized style of the papal chancery was not to be taken too literally. The German government, after such a demonstration, had no other alternative than to recall the last representative of its embassy to the papal court. … Already in November Minister Falk had laid before the House a draft of a law concerning the limits of ecclesiastical punishments and disciplinary measures; on January 9, 1873, followed the drafts of three new laws. … Still more passionately than in the debate concerning the change in the Constitution did Bismarck come forward in the discussion of April 24-28. … Windhorst and Schorlemer-Alst answered him back in kind. … With violent attacks on Bismarck they prophesied that these Draconic laws would rebound against the passive opposition of the people; that dawn was glimmering in men's minds and that the victory of the Church was near. To the great majority of the German people, who had followed the political-ecclesiastical debates with the liveliest interest, such assurances seemed almost laughable. They felt sure of victory now that Bismarck himself had seized the standard with such decision. The 'May Laws' which the king signed on May 11, 1873, were considered a weapon sure to be effectual, and even the advanced-liberals, who had followed many of the steps of the Government with hesitation and doubt, declared in an appeal to their electors on March 23 that the conflict had assumed the proportions of a great struggle for enlightenment (Kulturkampf) in which all mankind were concerned, and that they themselves, in junction with the other liberal parties, would accordingly support the Government. … On August 7 (1873) Pius IX sent a letter to the emperor under pretext of having heard that the latter did not sympathize with the latest measures of his government. He declared that such measures seemed to aim at the annihilation of Catholicism and warned him that their final result would be to undermine the throne. He deduced his right to issue this warning from the fact that he was bound to tell the truth to all, even to non-catholics: for in one way or another—exactly how this was not the place to make clear—everyone who had received baptism belonged to the pope. The emperor answered on September 3rd in a most dignified tone. … 'We can not pass over in silence the remark that everyone who has been baptized belongs to the pope. The evangelical faith which I, as your Holiness must know, like my forefathers and together with the majority of my subjects, confess, does not allow us to accept any other Mediator in our relations with God save our Lord Jesus Christ.' … Among protestants this royal answer was greeted with jubilant acclamations and even in foreign lands it found a loud echo. The aged Earl Russell organized a great meeting in London on January 27, 1874. … Soon after the opening of the Prussian diet Falk could bring forward the draft of a law which handed over to state-officials [Standesbeamte] all matters referring to the celebration of marriages and the registration of civil personal matters. This draft was sure from the first of a good majority. … On March 9th 1874 the law could be proclaimed. In the same month still the deputies Hinschius and Völk made a motion in the diet to introduce civil marriages throughout the whole empire. … It furthermore seemed necessary to take stronger measures against bishops and priests unlawfully appointed and whom the state had either deposed or refused to recognize. The mildest measure was to remove them from their dioceses or parishes, to banish them to certain fixed places and, in the worst cases, to expel them altogether from the lands of the empire. … The draft of the law (to this effect) was warmly supported and at last, April 25, 1874, was accepted by a vote of 214 to 208. … On July 13th, 1874, as Prince Bismarck, who had gone to take the cure in Kissingen, was driving to the Saline the twenty-one year old cooper's-apprentice Kullmann, of Magdeburg, fired a pistol at him, and wounded him in his right hand which he had just raised for the purpose of saluting. At once arrested, Kullmann declared to the chancellor, who visited him an hour later in his prison, that he had wished to murder him on account of the laws against the church. … The reading of ultramontane papers and the violent discourses of the catholic clergy had driven him to the deed. He atoned for it with fourteen years in the House of Correction. Not alone did public opinion make ultramontanism accountable for the deed, but Bismarck himself laid very strong emphasis on the fact that the criminal had spoken of the Centre as 'his party.' 'You may try as hard as you please to rid yourselves of this murderer,' he cried out in the diet of December 4th, 'he none the less holds fast to your coat-tails!'"

_C. Bulle, Geschichte der neuesten Zeit (translated from the German), volume 4, pages 20-41._

{3781}

At the Session of the Lower House of the Prussian Diet January 30, 1872, Deputy Windthorst spoke in opposition to the royal order for the abolition of the separate Roman Catholic section of the department of worship and public instruction and Prince Bismarck, in reply, said: "The party to which the gentleman belongs has contributed its share to the difficulty of obliterating the denominational standpoint in matters political. I have always considered it one of the most monstrous manifestations in politics, that a religious faction should convert itself into a political party. If all the other creeds were to adopt the same principle, it would bring theology into the parliamentary sessions and would make it a matter of public debate. … It has always been one of my fundamental principles that every creed ought to have full liberty of development, perfect liberty of conscience. But for all that I did not think it was a necessary corollary that a census of each denomination be taken merely for the purpose of giving each its proportional share in the Civil Service. … Where will you stop? You begin with a Cabinet; then you count the Chiefs of Division. I do not know what your ratio is—I think you claim four to seven—nor do I care to know. The subordinates in the Civil Service follow next. It is a fact, moreover, that the Evangelicals are by no means united in one denomination. The contrast is not merely between Protestants and Catholics. The United Prussian Established Church, the Lutheran Church, the Reformed Church, all have claims analogous to those of the Catholics. As soon as we cut up the state into denominational sections, giving each creed its proportional share, then the large Jewish population will come in for its part, a majority of which, distinguished by its special capacity, skill and intelligence, is peculiarly fitted for the business of the State. … We cannot admit the claim of the ecclesiastical authorities to a further share in the administration and in the interest of peace we are obliged to restrict the share they already have; so that we may have room beside each other and be obliged, as little as possible, to trouble ourselves about theology in this place."

_Die politischen Reden des Fürsten Bismarck (translated from the German), volume 5, pages 231-240._