Catholic baiting

An anti-clerical and anti-Catholic mood, including violent riots in Silesia and Brandenburg before and during the German War of 1866, is referred to as Catholic incitement . The political battle term from particularly Catholic journalism and the underlying conflicts are considered to be the forerunners of the Kulturkampf .

Origin of the term

The term "Catholic incitement" for the anti-Catholic events in Silesia and Brandenburg goes back to the Bishop's Secretary Linus Mache . In the autumn of 1866, the Historisch -politische Blätter for Catholic Germany , the organ of political Catholicism, published a report entitled “The hate speech in Prussia during the German war”. In it the anonymous author - actually Linus Mache - described anti-clerical and anti-Catholic incidents in Silesia and Brandenburg. For the report, Mache used articles from two Catholic Silesian newspapers.

Leading Catholics in Germany saw the conflict between Prussia and Austria as well as the Italian national movement both as a danger to the position of the Pope and as a direct threat to Catholicism. Conversely, anti-Catholic resentment was widespread in Protestant Prussia. The educated bourgeoisie in particular considered Catholicism backward.

literature

• Linus Mache: The incitement to Catholics in Prussia during the German war. In: Historical-Political Papers for Catholic Germany. No. 58 pp. 654–680 (reprinted in: Der Kulturkampf. Ed. And licensed by Rudolf Lill with the collaboration of Wolfgang Altgeld and Alexia K. Haus (Contributions to Catholicism Research , Series A, Source Texts on the History of Catholicism, Vol. 10), Paderborn / Munich / Vienna / Zurich 1997, p. 39ff.) Digital version of the original article from 1866
• Joseph Wick . From my life, notes on my fifty-year jubilee as a priest for the Silesian Catholic clergy and the Catholic people, who have always been well-disposed towards me. Breslau 1895. [Joseph Wick was editor of the Breslauer Hausblätter in 1866.]
• Margaret Lavinia Anderson: The Kulturkampf and the Course of German History. Central European History 19/1 (1986), 82-115.
• Robert Hogg: Fighting the Religious War of 1866. Silesian Clerics and the Anti-Catholic Smear Campaign in Prussia. In: Michael Geyer, Hartmut Lehmann (Hrsg.): Religion and Nation - Nation and Religion. Contributions to an unresolved history (= building blocks for a European religious history in the age of secularization 3). Göttingen 2004, pp. 49-75.
• Johannes Kißling: History of the Kulturkampf in the German Empire. Volume 1: The prehistory. Freiburg im Breisgau u. a. 1911.
• Lukas Moj: The denominational tensions in Silesia against the background of the conflict between Prussia and Austria in 1866. Master's thesis Univ. Bayreuth, Bayreuth 2006, summary and table of contents online (PDF; 32 kB).
• Mieczysław Father: Katolicki ruch polityczny na Śląsku w 1866r. Śląski kwartalnik historyczny (1960), pp. 37-61. [The Catholic political movement in Silesia in 1866].
• Franz Xaver Schulte: History of the Kulturkampf in Prussia. Shown in files. Essen 1882.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Digitized version of the original article from 1866
2. ↑ Lukas Moj: The denominational tensions in Silesia against the background of the conflict between Prussia and Austria in 1866 . Bayreuth 2006, Master's thesis Univ. Bayreuth. Summary and table of contents online ( memento of the original from January 18, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 32 kB).