The German Center Party, 1870-1933: A Study in Political Catholicism

Abstract

PREFACEThe Center party has received little attention from American historians, and this informal survey is intended partially to fill this omission. I hope that a study of the political representation of Germany's Catholic population will contribute to the understanding of an aspect of the country's past which is less familiar than most.Some periods in the Center party's history are better known than others, particularly the years of the Kulturkampf} the final years from 1930 to 1933; and the years from 1890 to 1914, well covered in two recent monographs by John K. Zeender and Ronald J. Ross. My doctoral dissertation, completed in 1956, concentrated on the less-examined years of 1924 to 1930, and the present book reflects that emphasis. I have also continued to pursue my original interest, which was to try to explain how the policies and actions of the Center were affected by its Catholic affiliation. Hence the books deals with some issues, such as education, church-state relations, social policy, and corporativism, at much greater length than would be usual in a straight political history. On the other hand, topics such as foreign policy, tariff policy, and the activities of individual Centrists as cabinet ministers, have been dealt with lightly, because they seemed to me to be less relevant to my main theme.Sections of several chapters have appeared in two published articles: The Center Wages Kulturpolitik: Conflict in the Marx-Keudell Cabinet of 1927, Central European History 2 (1969): 139-58; and Adam Stegerwald and the Role of the Christian Trade Unions in the Weimar Republic, Catholic Historical Review 59 (1974): 602-26.My research on the Center party was begun twenty-eight years ago at the University of Wisconsin under the guidance of Professor Chester V. Easum, at that time chairman of the Department of History. I continued the project at Columbia University, where I had the privilege of participating in a seminar with the late Professors Franz Neumann, Hajo Holborn, and Henry L. Roberts. My dissertation was directed initially by Professor Roberts and then by Professor Fritz Stern. I am deeply grateful and appreciative to all of these scholars for their assistance and encouragement.More recently, I have been helped in the preparation of this book by Dr. Arnold H. Price of the Library of Congress and Professor John K. Zeender of the Catholic University. Important eleventh-hour assistance has been rendered by Professor Margaret L. Anderson of Swarthmore College.I also owe a debt of gratitude to several of my colleagues in the history department at Georgia State University, in particular to Gerald H. Davis, who first read and criticized the manuscript, and most especially to my friend and former chairman Joseph O. Baylen, whose encouragement and support have been invaluable.