Center dispute

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The center dispute was a dispute within the center party about the future course after the turn of the 20th century.

backgrounds

Before the First World War, there were fundamental disputes between modern and anti-modern tendencies within the Catholic milieu . While the first was represented in particular by Social Catholicism, for example the People's Association for Catholic Germany , the supporters of the other side were called integralists some time later . These disputes, which were carried out at the socio-political level in the so-called trade union dispute, also took place within the Center Party. Within the Catholic Party there were also political reasons to look for new positions. On the one hand, there was the changed position in imperial politics. The center was no longer a pure opposition party, but rather important for the government to gain a majority. The party's election results stagnated, albeit at a high level.

course

The trigger was a writing by the Catholic author and politician Julius Bachem from 1906 with the programmatic title “ We have to get out of the tower ”. In it the thesis was put forward that the future politics of the party must be independent of ecclesiastical influences and ultimately must also open up to Protestants. In the party, the fundamentally non-denominational character of the center in the tradition of Ludwig Windthorst was largely undisputed, so the reaction to the article was initially positive. The main focus of this direction were the Prussian western provinces of Rhineland and Westphalia - at the time one spoke of the "Cologne direction". The " Kölnische Volkszeitung " became her journalistic mouthpiece.

The opposite side, known as the “Trier direction” (the Bishop of Trier Michael Felix Korum played a leading role ), was numerically smaller, but was supported by large parts of the episcopate and the Roman curia. These adhered to the center's close ideological ties to Catholicism.

Mainly because of this resistance, no real decision was made. The factions of the center in the Prussian House of Representatives and in the Reichstag took a middle position, emphasizing on the one hand that the party was fundamentally non-denominational, but on the other hand acknowledged wanting to represent the interests of the Catholic part of the population. It remained in this limbo when the party turned against the Integralists in 1914 and professed interdenominationalism. Even during the first years of the Weimar Republic attempts to open up to Protestantism failed, but the center continued to follow a course not directly determined by the church. A Christian-oriented people 's party was only founded with the emergence of the CDU and CSU after 1945.

literature

  • Friedrich Hartmannsgruber: The Christian People's Parties 1848-1933. Idea and reality. In: History of the Christian-Democratic and Christian-Social Movements in Germany. Part 1. Bonn, 1984. ISBN 3-923423-20-9 , pp. 274-276.
  • Walter Tormin: History of the German parties since 1848. Stuttgart, 1967. P. 106–108.
  • Thomas Nipperdey: German History 1866-1918. The world of work and civic spirit. Munich 1990. pp. 466-468.