German Catholicism

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The German Catholics - or German Catholic movement  - was one since the mid- 1840s years in the states of the German Federal active for several years religious-political movement against the by their followers perceived as rigid and reactionary dogmatism of the Christian denominations taught and whose outer occasion the protest against the exhibition of the holy skirt by Bishop Wilhelm Arnoldi during the Trier pilgrimage of 1844 . In its time it was an oppositional manifestation of the late Vormärz period and shaped by the ideals of a social liberalism that sought to establish an all-German nation- state. After the failure of the March Revolution of 1848/49, it was increasingly exposed to the repression of the conservative principalities. The free religious movement arose from German Catholicism and the originally Protestant friends of light .

Historical background

Pilgrimage to the Holy Rock in 1844

After King Friedrich Wilhelm IV ascended the throne in Prussia, the relationship between state and church changed . Visible expression was the Trier pilgrimage of 1844 to the “Holy Rock”. Throne and altar created the prerequisites and organization of this mass movement, which took half a million pilgrims within 50 days with remarkable discipline to Trier and to the parade past the exhibit.

The suspended Silesian priest Johannes Ronge protested in a public appeal against the “festival of idols” and on this occasion turned against the “tyrannical power of the Roman hierarchy”. Ronge liked the role of a second Martin Luther in the eyes of the Catholics, but found an astonishing response. The German Catholic movement he initiated declared the Bible, interpreted rationally, to be the only norm, rejected the ecclesiastical teaching office and the papal primacy, abolished the veneration of saints , confession , celibacy and the traditional forms of liturgy and only recognized baptism and the Lord's Supper as sacraments. The rationalistic view of the Enlightenment , an anti-Roman tendency and reservations about the Catholic attitude in the practice of mixed marriages also contributed to the fact that German-Catholicism experienced a brief, but initially enthusiastic acceptance.

Under the spiritual guidance of Ronge and the organization of the March revolutionary Robert Blum , the first German Catholic Council took place in Leipzig in 1845 .

Development of the German Catholic parishes

The church planting was an expression of social protest that was religiously motivated and based on Christianity. The centers were the industrial regions in Silesia and Saxony as well as in the Rhineland , which were affected by an economic crisis that also led to the weavers' revolt in Silesia in 1844 . In 1847 there were around 250 parishes with around 60,000 members, a third of whom were former Protestants. The lower middle classes provided the social basis. The German Catholics also developed a social policy program that was particularly interesting for workers. This included the demand for a public school system, for industrial lessons, time for recreation and personal hygiene, doctors for the poor, poor funds, and gymnasiums and bathing establishments. In the environment of the free communities and also of the friends of light, associations for practical help in life developed.

Right from the start, Ronge was in contact with prominent representatives of political radicalism in Vormärz, and sometimes the lines between religious movement and political party became blurred. Prominent members of the radical democratic wing of the German Catholics in the Grand Duchy of Baden were, for example, the revolutionary couple Amalie and Gustav Struve .

The German Catholic parishes, like the Free Protestant Friends of Light, were banned and exposed to political persecution, especially in the period from 1850 to 1852, because they were viewed as political currents with a liberal-democratic, free-thinking orientation.

In 1850, the Friends of Light were banned in Saxony because of their social program and their socialist ideals, but could be transferred to the tolerated German Catholicism. The establishment of a religious community of free congregations planned in Leipzig on May 23, 1850 was hindered by the police, although the constitutional revision of January 31, 1850 had extended the individual freedom of belief to include religious freedom of association and collective freedom of belief . By 1852, 20 parishes in Prussia were banned, including the large Königsberg parish with around 12,000 members. Despite the persecution by state organs and the withdrawal of many bourgeois members, there were around 300 German Catholic and around 89 free Protestant communities in 1858. In Austria the Friends of Light were banned in 1851 and their associations were dissolved on the grounds that they were pursuing political party efforts “under the guise of an allegedly religious creed”.

The Breslau prince-bishop Heinrich Förster used the term Christian Catholic in 1859 for the supporters of Johannes Ronge who had been excommunicated by Prince-Bishop Melchior von Diepenbrock at the end of 1845 (see also " Christian Catholic Church ").

literature

  • Manfred Botzenhart : Reform, Restoration, Crisis. Germany 1789–1847 (Modern German History; Vol. 4). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1985, ISBN 3-518-11252-X , pp. 133f.
  • Lothar Geis: Source collection of free religious theses. A compilation of programmatic guiding principles, articles and poems with thesis-like character from 1841 to 1989 . Free religious community, Mainz 1989.
  • Lothar Geis: Free religious source book 1844–1926. A collection of basic texts on the content and goals of Free Religion . Self-published by the Free Religious Community Mainz, 2006ff.
  1. 1844-1926 . New edition 2007
  2. 1926-2000 . 2010.
  • Friedrich Wilhelm Graf : The politicization of religious consciousness. The bourgeois religious parties in the German Vormärz: the example of German Catholicism (modern times under construction; vol. 5). Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-7728-0700-3 .
  • Georg Gottfried Gervinus : The Mission of the German Catholics . 2nd edition Freireligiöser Verlag, Mannheim 1982, ISBN 3-920347-19-6 (reprint of the Heidelberg edition 1845).
  • Horst Groschopp : Dissidents. Freethinking and culture in Germany . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-320-01936-8 .
  • Friedrich Heyer , Volker Pitzer (ed.): Religion without a church. The Movement of the Free Religious . 2nd edition, Quell, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-7918-6003-8 .
  • Philipp Hildmann: "Such rumbling in the church". Studies on Joseph von Eichendorff's pamphlet on German Catholicism (literature, media, religion; vol. 3). Lit-Verlag, Münster 2001. ISBN 3-8258-5028-5 .
  • Wolfgang Leesch: The history of German Catholicism in Silesia (1844–1952) with special consideration of its political position (Breslauer Historische Forschungen; Vol. 8). Scienta Verlag, Aalen 1982, ISBN 3-511-07008-2 (reprint of the Breslau edition 1938).
  • Carl Mirbt , Heinrich Schmid:  German Catholicism . In: Realencyklopadie for Protestant Theology and Church (RE). 3. Edition. Volume 4, Hinrichs, Leipzig 1898, pp. 583-589.
  • Eckhart Pilick (ed.): Lexicon of free religious persons (series Minorities Lexicon ; Vol. 1). Peter Guhl, Rohrbach / Pfalz 1997, ISBN 3-930760-11-8 .
  • Johannes Ronge: Johannes Ronge's first speech, given in the assembly of the free Christian (German-Catholic) community in Vienna, on September 17, 1848. Kaulfuß Witwe / Prandel & Comp., Vienna 1848.
  • Jun Shimoda: Popular religion and authority in modern Germany. Pilgrimages or German Catholicism. Ozorasha Publ., Tokyo 2004, ISBN 4-283-001465 (German edition, including dissertation, University of Tokyo 1999).
  • Helmut Steuerwald: Critical History of Religions and Free Worldviews. An introduction . Angelika Lenz Verlag, Neustadt am Rübenberge 1999, ISBN 3-933037-08-5 .
  • Alexander Stollenwerk: The German Catholicism in the Prussian Rhineland (sources and treatises on the Middle Rhine church history; Vol. 15). Self-published by the Society for Middle Rhine Church History, Mainz 1971

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Manfred Botzenhart: Reform, Restoration, Crisis , p. 133f.
  2. ↑ Horst Groschopp: Dissidents , pp. 87 ff.
  3. ↑ Horst Groschopp: Dissidents, p. 91
  4. ↑ Ordinance of the Minister of the Interior of November 16, 1851, effective for all crown lands, regarding the prohibition of the so-called light friends, German Catholics, free Christians and similar associations.
  5. ^ Heinrich Förster: Cardinal and Prince-Bishop Melchior von Diepenbrock. A picture of life. From his successor in the episcopal chair. The proceeds go to charity. Miniature edition (2nd edition), F. Hirt, Breslau 1859, p. 156.
  6. ↑ Michael Sachs: 'Prince Bishop and Vagabond'. The story of a friendship between the Prince-Bishop of Breslau Heinrich Förster (1799–1881) and the writer and actor Karl von Holtei (1798–1880). Edited textually based on the original Holteis manuscript. In: Medical historical messages. Journal for the history of science and specialist prose research. Volume 35, 2016 (2018), pp. 223–291, here: p. 242 f.

Web link

Wikisource: Christian Philipp Heinrich Brandt: What a connection it has with the so-called religion of the German-Catholic and free communities  - sources and full texts