Confessional Particularism in Prussian Society and the Making of the School Law

Abstract

More than half a century passed before the promise of a school law contained in the Prussian constitution of 1850 was fulfilled. The dissatisfaction of the Catholic bishops with Adalbert von Ladenberg’s draft of a school law in 1850 and the unhappy fate of Heinrich von Mühler’s school bills of 1868 and 1869 revealed the deep division of opinion within Prussian society on the school question and the conflicting interpretations that state officials, church leaders, and the liberal parties gave to those articles in the constitution that provided the fundamental principles for a school law. The experience of the Kulturkampf engendered in the Catholics an enduring distrust of the school administration, and in the following years a school law was always one of the prime concessions that the Center party sought as a quid pro quo for their support of government bills in the Reichstag. Catholic politicians looked to a school law to provide a secure foundation for a confessional public school system and solid protection for the rights of the church and confessional minorities in school districts. The possibilities of winning such a concession were enhanced after 1890 when the massive electoral vote of the Social Democrats increased the strategic value of the Center party’s seats in the Reichstag, which now held the balance between the Left and the Right. Assuming that this pivotal position gave the Center party more political power than it actually had, historians have generally seen the School Law of July 28, 1906 as a reactionary, Clerical measure, which was introduced by the government as a concession to the Center party and passed by a coalition of parties strongly motivated by antisocialism.1 An examination of the making of the school law from 1890 to 1906 produces a more detailed and complete picture of what happened and a more profound view of the society of imperial Germany. No progress was made in putting the school system on a modern legal foundation during the 1880s because of Bismarck’s political objections to the reform of school maintenance.