Theodor Wacker

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Theodor Wacker (born November 5, 1845 in Bohlsbach , † November 9, 1921 in Freiburg ) was a German Catholic clergyman and Baden politician.

Wacker studied from 1865 to 1868 in Freiburg Catholic theology , attended the seminary in St. Petersburg and received on 4 August in 1869 by Erzbistumsverweser Lothar von Kübel the priesthood . After a station as vicar in Constance , he became a beneficiary at the Freiburg Minster in 1870 . From 1883 he worked as a pastor in Zähringen .

He began his political career in 1874 as the head of the Catholic Citizens' Association in Freiburg. He was also the editor of the “Freiburger Bote” and in this way agitated against the nationally liberal and Protestant- dominated Baden government. On the occasion of the Reichstag elections in 1874 , he published an “Electoral Lesson” with “Ten Commandments for Voters”. At the state level he was involved in the Catholic People's Party , for which he was a member of the Baden Estates Assembly from 1879 to 1887 .

In the dispute that had been going on within the Catholic People's Party since 1883 about how to deal with the national liberal majority faction in the state parliament, he was the main opponent of party chairman Franz Xaver Lender , who at the request of Bishop Johann Baptist Orbin wanted to cooperate. After Lender was no longer elected chairman in 1887, Wacker, encouraged by the center politician Ludwig Windthorst , took over the party leadership himself. In October 1888, the party laid down the confrontational line in six fundamental resolutions and changed its name to "Center Party" in order to underline the agreement in terms of content with the sister party of the same name in Prussia .

In 1891 Wacker was re-elected to the state assembly. His opposition work, however, bore no political fruit in the following years, only the ban on missions for foreign religious was lifted in 1893. From 1897, Wacker argued in the press with the Bonndorf pastor Fridolin Honold , whom Wacker wanted to have spied on after Honold had let his parishioners decide to vote for the Center Party.

In 1899/1900 the second chamber decided that medals could also resettle in Baden itself, but this was not confirmed by the first chamber. After this failure, Grand Duke Friedrich I and the Baden government signaled to the new Bishop Thomas Nörber that the government would only be willing to compromise if the Center Party appeared less confrontational in the state parliament. Not wanting to stand in the way, Wacker left the state parliament in 1903, but remained party chairman until 1917.

In the intra-Catholic trade union dispute at the national level , Wacker took the position that Catholic workers should also join non-denominational unions. As a result, he came into a conflict with the official church after Pope Pius X. in 1912 in the encyclical Singulari quadam only permitted Catholic workers to be members of non-Catholic workers' organizations as an exception. Nevertheless, at a conference of the Center Party on February 15, 1914 in Essen, Wacker sharply attacked the supporters of the purely Catholic workers' organizations and also demanded that the political activities of Catholics should not be subject to the authority of the official Church . His speech with the title “Center and Church Authority”, which was printed in a brochure “Against the Cross-drivers”, was then indexed on June 3, 1914 . Wacker, who was badly hit by this, signed a declaration on August 13, 1914, which the Congregation on the Index satisfied.

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  1. ↑ Dr. Krone: A memorable spiritual letter in: Willibald Beyschlag (Ed.): Deutsch-Evangelische Blätter. Journal for the entire field of German Protestantism . 23, 1898, pp. 140-145, full text in Google Book Search USA
personal data
SURNAME Wacker, Theodor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German clergyman (Catholic) and politician from Baden
DATE OF BIRTH November 5, 1845
PLACE OF BIRTH Bohlsbach
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 1921
Place of death Freiburg