‘Loyal Sons of the Church and Fatherland’? Center-Polish Relations in Upper Silesia, 1871-1907

Abstract

This article examines the German Center party’s changing relationship with its Polish-speaking constituency in Upper Silesia between 1871 and 1907. In doing so, it explores the development of the Center party from a party representing the interests of Catholics in Germany to a party representing the interests of German Catholics. In Upper Silesia the Center built a unique (and hitherto unexplored) constituency of German and Polish Catholics during the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf of the 1870s and 1880s. By the 1890s, however, German Catholics throughout the Kaiserreich no longer faced the type of overt harassment that Poles continued to deal with. As a result, the national Center assumed a more conciliatory posture toward the government. In Silesia, heightened nationalist tensions in the region led local party leaders to become increasingly ambivalent towards the demands of their Polish-speaking constituency and sympathetic German-speaking moderates. As a result of the intransigence of local leaders hoping to capitalize on intensified German nationalism in Silesia, Polish voters turned towards Polish Center candidates in the 1890s and then toward locally organized Polish parties that routed the Center by 1907. This shift illustrates a certain degree of flexibility within the Wilhelmine political system. Underlying this discussion of political culture is an attempt, following the work of James Retallack and Alon Confino, to tease out the ways that local contexts shape understandings of the nation and vice versa.