Academic culture war

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The clashes between Catholic and liberal student associations in the German Empire and in Austria at the beginning of the 20th century are called the Academic Kulturkampf . It is a term that emerged afterwards, by means of which the events are based on the Kulturkampf of the 19th century.

Historical development

The prehistory of the Academic Kulturkampf includes the dispute over the appointment of Catholic scholars - such as the historian Martin Spahn and the church historian and theologian Albert Ehrhard - to the newly founded University of Strasbourg in 1901. The realm of Alsace-Lorraine was after the Franco-German War in 1870 / 71 was formed. Unlike the federal states , it was directly subordinate to the German Kaiser .

After Friedrich Meinecke had been proposed for the chair for history there , the Protestant and head of administration at the Prussian universities, Friedrich Althoff, suggested that Martin Spahn should fill a second chair for history for the Catholic students. Such denominationally bound Catholic history professorships already existed at the universities of Bonn , Breslau and Freiburg . The Philosophical Faculty of Strasbourg refused to follow the proposal and intervened with Kaiser Wilhelm II , whereupon Althoff, in agreement with the Kaiser and against the will of the Philosophical Faculty, appointed Spahn professor in Strasbourg. Nobel laureate Theodor Mommsen chose to go public and argued with the catchphrase of “research without preconditions”.

The dispute was a vehicle for fundamentally clarifying the concept of academic freedom . From the Catholic point of view, this dispute quickly turned out to be a pretext for maintaining the Protestant character of the universities in Germany.

This became all the more clear when, starting in 1904 , anti-church and liberal student corporations from the University of Jena , in the name of academic freedom, demanded the elimination of Catholic student corporations. One example of this is the Sugambria Catholic student association in Jena. The dispute quickly spread to the universities of Berlin , Hanover , Aachen , Karlsruhe , Darmstadt , Strasbourg , Vienna and Graz . The disputes between the individual corporations quickly gave rise to a scholarly dispute that preoccupied the media in the entire German-speaking area ( German Empire and Austria-Hungary ).

In the course of the expansion to other university cities, the Catholic corporations in Strasbourg were also affected, including the Catholic student association Frankonia , which, however, experienced a large influx of members at this time and therefore symbolically created two daughter associations at the same time, the Staufia and Merovingia. As a result of this re-establishment, around 30 suddenly became 90 students with the same, catholic attitude. It became possible to significantly shape the university policy of the Kaiser Wilhelm University of Strasbourg and to influence the Kulturkampf.

The later so-called “Academic Kulturkampf”, based on the Kulturkampf , came to an end in the German Reich before Catholics called for a non-denominational Christian trade union, which led to the so-called trade union dispute. In the empire , the open confessional conflict came to an end under the auspices of the First World War in the increasing truce policy .

Austria

In Austria overall there is less talk of a cultural war than of important cultural conflicts in the then multi-ethnic state, in which early forms of Austrian consciousness succeeded in overarching plural national and confessional identities. The clashes at the universities, at which many Reich German students were also active, were significant and sometimes quite violent. The Basic Law on the General Rights of Citizens of 1867 and the so-called May Laws of 1868 triggered some conflicts with the Catholic Church. They have also become part of the Austrian Federal Constitution and are still relevant today. With the emergence of Catholic student associations since the end of the 19th century, there were regular violent clashes between liberal and Catholic fraternity students loyal to Austria.

Student controversy and brawls

The Vienna oyster battle , one after the K.Ö.St.V. Austria Wien named violent conflict between Catholic and national-liberal connections in Vienna in 1889 is the best-known conflict of this Austrian wooden comment . The name refers to the members of Austria who are referred to as Viennese oysters , a term that was of course also popular for snails in the gastronomy at the time. The non-beating Catholic corporations were attacked by the beating national-liberal connections. On October 26, 1889, members of Austria and Norica were beaten up by 600 to 800 hostile national-liberal students at the university. A commemorative event planned by the ÖCV at the University of Vienna led to irritations in 2009. The focus was in Graz. Caroline Anton Geser from Graz died in February 1906 as a result of an attack, the circumstances of which could never be clarified. Among other things, the Wahrmund affair in 1908 led to violent clashes throughout Austria and a public controversy. In Innsbruck, the funeral of a medical student, Max Ghezze , who died of a brawl in 1912, turned into a demonstration with thousands of participants.

On May 16, 1908, the Grazer Bauernsturm broke out, in which liberal students wanted to prevent a doctorate in the couleur of a functionary of the farmers' association. On May 14, 1931 there was a brawl in Graz similar to the oyster battle . On this day, members of the KATV Norica in Graz tried to report the founding of the same to the rectorate of the University of Graz in order to be officially approved as a university association. Members of striking student associations tried to prevent this by blocking the entrances. The blockade could be broken with the help of all other Catholic connections, but there were further disputes as a result. Order was only restored through the intervention of the security authorities.

literature

  • Christopher Dowe: Deo et patriae! On the history of KV in the German Empire. In: Wolfgang Löhr (Ed.): Reconsideration and Outlook. KV studenthood after 150 years (= Revocatio historiae. Writings of the Historical Commission of the Cartel Association of Catholic German Student Associations [KV]; Volume 8). SH-Verlag, Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-89498-159-8 , pp. 53-70.
  • Gerhard Hartmann: The CV in Austria - its origin, its history, its meaning. 3. Edition. Lahn-Verlag, Limburg-Kevelaer 2001, ISBN 3-7840-3229-X .
  • Peter Stitz: The academic culture struggle for the raison d'être of Catholic student corporations in Germany and Austria from 1903 to 1908. A contribution to the history of the CV (The White Tower; Volume 3). Society for CV History, Munich 1960.
  • Peter Stitz: History of the KDSt.V. Sugambria to Jena and Göttingen . 2nd Edition. Altkönig-Verlag, Oberursel 1960 (former title History of the Catholic German Student Union Sugambria in Jena ).
  • Christoph Weber : The " Spahn Case " (1901). A contribution to the science and culture discussion in the late 19th century . Herder, Rome 1980 (special print from: Roman quarterly for Christian antiquity and church history , vol. 73 (1978) and vol. 74 (1979), ISSN  0035-7812 ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Götz: Gratwanderungen In: Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Dieter Langewiesche (Ed.): Nation and religion in German history. Campus Verlag, 2001, p. 477
  2. ^ Pfleger, Peter: Was there a culture war in Austria? Munich 1997.
  3. ^ Heinrich Obermüller: Forbidden and persecuted: From the beginnings to 1918. Austrian Association for Student History, 2003, p. 58.
  4. ^ Gerhard Hartmann: The CV in Austria. Lahn-Verlag, 2001, ISBN 3-7840-3229-X , p. 39.
  5. ↑ Cartell Association irritated by the University of Vienna's approach. Retrieved May 15, 2015 .
  6. ^ Catholic associations and the Cartel associations. In: www.oecv.de. Retrieved May 15, 2015 .
  7. ↑ "For God and Fatherland". In: Small newspaper. Retrieved May 15, 2015 .
  8. ^ Gerhard Popp: CV in Austria, 1864–1938: Organization, internal structure and political function. Böhlau, 1984.