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Review of Lucia Scherzberg, Zwischen Partei und Kirche: Nationalsozialistische Priester in Österreich und Deutschland (1938-1944)

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 26, Number 3 (September 2020)

Review of Lucia Scherzberg, Zwischen Partei und Kirche: Nationalsozialistische Priester in Österreich und Deutschland (1938-1944), Schriftreihe “Religion und Moderne” Band 20 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2020). 645 pages, 49,00,- €, (44,99,- € E-Book), ISBN: 9783593444185.

By Kevin P. Spicer, Stonehill College

This review was originally published in theologie.geschichte and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the publisher. The original review is available here: http://universaar.uni-saarland.de/journals/index.php/tg/article/view/1154/1211.

In Zwischen Partei und Kirche, Lucia Scherzberg, professor of systematic theology at Saarland University and co-editor of Theologie.Geschichte, studies a relatively small group of Catholic priests and select laity from Germany and Austria who actively promoted a positive relationship between the National Socialist state and the Catholic Church. In the book’s introduction, among many questions, she asks, “Were they a few crazy fanatics? Were the members isolated or did they find their support in the rest of the clergy?” and “How much did the priests differ in their convictions and actions from the rest of the leadership of the Catholic Church?” (14). Scherzberg finds that though they were fanatical in their support for National Socialism, these Catholic clerics and laity were far from deranged. Rather, they were intelligent, intensely calculating, and fully cognizant of their actions in support of Hitler and the Nazi government and party. Yet, as Scherzberg reveals, at times, their outlook was not always exceptional when compared with some of their fellow clergymen. Still, they made the ill-advised mistake of imperiously bucking the Church’s hierarchical system by assuming roles and tasks traditionally reserved for the Church’s episcopate, and thereby became persona non grata in their dioceses.

As I have shown in Hitler’s Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism, there were approximately one-hundred-fifty “brown priests” who publicly supported and aligned themselves with National Socialism.[1] In my more broadly based work, I devoted a chapter to examining the National Socialist Priests’ Group (NS-Priests) studied by Scherzberg. By contrast, Scherzberg spent years researching the NS-Priests’ personalities, tracking down minute details, and uncovering extensive networks between and among them. Her research deepens our knowledge of the complexity of church-state relations under National Socialism and builds upon previous works such as Hitler’s Priests. Additionally, the pioneering studies of the late contemporary witness Franz Loidl, professor of church history at the Catholic-Theological Faculty of the University of Vienna, provided Scherzberg with a basic introduction to the NS-Priests that included vital primary documents, though the study was limited in scope and often apologetic in analysis.[2] Josef Lettl’s brief but impressive Diplomarbeit (Master’s Thesis), Arbeitsgemeinschaft für den religösion Frieden 1938 (Association for Religious Peace 1938), offered a general introduction to the initial but short-lived public organization of the NS-Priests.[3] More recently, in Hitlers Jünger und Gottes Hirten (Hitler’s Disciples and God’s Shepherds), Eva Maria Kaiser examined a few of the leading NS-Priests in her study of the Austrian bishops’ post-war advocacy for former National Socialists.[4] In the end, Scherzberg’s study is authoritative and will become a standard work.

Scherzberg uses the 1938 Anschluss to divide her work into two parts that contain headings but without chapter numbers. In the first part, Scherzberg identifies the original members of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für den religiösen Frieden (AGF), the initial rendering of the NS-Priests that became public after the March 1938 Anschluss. The AGF consisted of both lay and ordained Catholics, primarily under the leadership of three individuals: Johann Pircher, a former religious of the Deutsch-Orden who had incardinated into the Vienna archdiocese in 1921 and joined the NSDAP in 1933; Wilhelm van den Bergh, a former Capuchin friar from the Netherlands who like Pircher had incardinated into the Vienna archdiocese in 1929; and Karl Pischtiak, a lay Catholic, National Socialist, and SA-Sturmbannführer who had ties with Josef Bürckel, Reichskommissar für die Wiedervereinigung Österreichs mit dem Reich (Reich Commissioner for the Reunification of Austria with the Reich;1938-1939) and Reichsstatthalter and Gauleiter of Vienna (Reich Governor and NSDAP District Leader; 1939-1940). According to Scherzberg, the AGF developed from the remnants of several Catholic pro-Anschluss groups. The same individuals had also been entangled in more politically aligned extreme right-wing associations such as the Katholisch-Nationalen (Catholic Nationals), the Deutsche Klub (German Club), and the Deutsche Gemeinschaft (German Community). Many of these same individuals had likewise been involved in the post-war Catholic youth movement, which had been heavily influenced by the writings of theologian Michael Pfliegler. Pfliegler criticized political Catholicism and emphasized the importance of the Church’s pastoral mission, especially to promote peace between church and state. Youth associations such as Reichsbund Jungösterreich, Bund Neuland, and Quickborn rejected the Peace Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye (1919), supported a Greater-Deutschland, and embraced various forms of antisemitism, though generally not racial. Many of their members also rejected the Austrian Corporative State, especially the close alignment between the Austrian Catholic Church and the Dollfuß and Schuschnigg governments. Catholic priests from Styria, whose borders had been affected by the 1919 treaty, particularly rejected the situation of post-war Austria. Scherzberg provides a comprehensive overview of Austria’s pre-Anschluss history to contextualize the AGF’s foundation.

Before the 10 April 1938 National Referendum on the Anschluss, the Austrian bishops issued a solemn declaration that expressed their goodwill towards National Socialism. The Holy See, however, was not pleased by the stance of the Austrian episcopate, especially after the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (With Deep Anxiety), that criticized the German state’s encroachment on the rights of the Catholic Church. On 8 April 1938, Schmerzensfreitag (Friday of Sorrows), many of the individuals who were predisposed to form the AGF, issued a letter directed to Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, archbishop of Vienna, in support of the Anschluss and critical of the Vatican. Eight days later, on 17 April, Pircher, van den Bergh, and two other priests in the name of the AGF issued a public appeal to the Catholic clergy to support the political developments between Austria and the German Reich. Newspapers covered it and reported that the appeal allegedly resonated with the clergy. Immediately, Jakob Weinbacher, Innitzer’s secretary, made it known that he did not approve. As early as May 1938, the Vienna Diözesanblatt (Diocesan Gazette) reminded clergy that they were not to be involved in politics and should limit their realm of activity to the pastoral sphere. On 30 September 1930, Cardinal Innitzer ordered diocesan newspapers to announce a ban against the AGF. Pircher and van den Bergh were never personally informed beforehand. In October 1938, Pircher issued a statement carried by Austrian newspapers that announced the disbandment of the AGF.

Scherzberg’s argument reveals that the prohibition was not due solely to a question of tactics or a difference of opinion about applying them that led to the AGF’s ban. Instead, one could attribute it more to the nature and function of the diocesan hierarchical structure, whereby only a bishop or his delegate speaks in the name of the Church. The ban also took place during a period of tense church-state conflict as the two sides negotiated for power in annexed Austria. With pressure on his back from the Holy See to assert the rights of the Church and to critique National Socialism, Innitzer could not allow a renegade group of priests to speak for his diocese. Pircher and van den Bergh were not alone. Pircher claimed that 525 priests were members, and an additional 1844 expressed their support (out of 8,000 priests in Austria). Scherzberg finds that these numbers may not be entirely overstated. Through meticulous research, she identifies at least 150 priests who joined the AGF and offers convincing arguments about the missing individuals not accounted for.

Around the time of the AGF’s prohibition, a power struggle ensued between Pircher and Pischtiak. Scherzberg speculates that Pischtiak used his connections with Bürckel to have the Gestapo confiscate the AGF’s membership index from its headquarters in Pircher’s home. At this point, it might have been helpful if Scherzberg had also analyzed the contemporary lay-cleric dynamics in this power struggle. Nevertheless, in the end, Scherzberg reveals that Pircher proved more skillful at power-play, apparently enjoying a more significant share of Bürckel’s trust. Pitschtiak then separated himself from the AGF and disappeared from the historical record.

Even though the AGF had formally disbanded, Pircher refused to let go of his dream to create a mass organization for priests within the NSDAP structure. Moving underground, Pircher maintained his contacts with like-minded priests. In a November 1938 letter to a former AGF member, he declared that the NS-Priests needed to retain, “‘reconciling, mediating, and state-affirming ideas [until] a modus vivendi can be achieved in religious terms’” (228). He was not alone. Pfarrer, Richard Hermann Bühler, a retired priest of the Limburg diocese, suggested that they establish an NS Religionsdiener-Verband (National Socialist Religious Servants Association) that would educate the clergy in a National Socialist spirit. Yet, in the disbanded AGF world, these efforts had little practical impact as the actual group of priests dwindled over time to a select few.

Amid this post-AGF climate, in December 1938, Pircher travelled to Cologne to meet for the first time Richard Kleine, a priest of the Hildesheim diocese and religion teacher at the Duderstadt Gymnasium. Though the specific origins of their initial contact are unknown, Kleine would become a leading figure among the NS-Priests as well as its primary theorist. Kleine’s entry along with others would also broaden the group’s geographic scope, enlarging it from its primarily Austrian locale to a broader demographic reach that would encompass the Greater German Reich.

Scherzberg’s research reveals a great deal more about Kleine than previous studies uncovered. To avoid scandal over Kleine’s illegitimate birth, he had to be ordained for Hildesheim instead of his home diocese of Cologne. Likewise, he was rejected as a Feldgeistlicher (military chaplain) in the First World War. While not overemphasizing these points, Scherzberg speculates that they had an impact on his self-perception and world outlook. Still, Kleine had further influences. His professor, Arnold Rademacher, a specialist in fundamental theology at the University of Bonn, advocated for both church reform and the reunification in faith among the Christian denominations. In the same vein, at University of Tübingen, Wilhelm Koch, professor of dogmatics and apologetics and a progressive intellectual, provided Kleine with a religious worldview that contrasted with the dominant neo-scholastic approach of his era. Accused of the heresy of modernism, Koch ended up leaving teaching and returned to full-time pastoral ministry. The impact of Rademacher and Koch on Kleine would especially be felt when Kleine raised issues that preoccupied him and shared them with members of the NS-Priests.

In addition to Pircher, Kleine, van den Bergh, and Bühler, other prominent members included Alois Nikolussi, a priest of the Trient diocese who in 1919 became a Chorherr of St. Augustine at Stift Sankt Florian; Simon Pirchegger, a priest of the Graz-Seckau diocese, a Dozent of Slavic Studies at University of Bonn, and an NSDAP member; Joseph Mayer, an Augsburg priest and professor of moral theology at Theologische Fakultät Paderborn; and Adolf Herte, a Paderborn priest and a professor of church history and patristics also at Paderborn. As Scherzberg’s previous works have also shown, Karl Adam, professor of systematic theology at the University of Tübingen, later joined this group.[5] A few Catholic laymen were also involved, including Josef Bagus, editor of the Kolpingsblatt, and Alois Brücker, an editor and NSDAP member living in Cologne. For each of these individuals, Scherzberg provides extensive background information to contextualize their support of National Socialism and initial contact with Pircher and Kleine. Additionally, she concludes the first part of her study by discussing the theological positioning of the group. The individual egos of the group’s members, along with the intermittent commitment of each, did not easily lead to consensus on religious questions. Pircher, for example, remained obsessed and convinced of the group’s ability to influence the outlook of high-ranking National Socialists on the Church. Kleine became fixated on an antisemitic interpretation of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, interpreting it as a declaration of war on Judaism. Finally, Mayer and Herte appeared reluctant in their involvement, having to be nudged along by Pircher.

Part two of the work focuses on the activities of the NS-Priests, who never agreed on an official name for the group. The outbreak of war for Germany, with its decisive initial victories and subsequent harsh defeats, created a radicalization in the group’s outlook. Scherzberg’s systematic theological expertise is evident throughout her writing, especially in part two, as she analyzes the publications and presentations of the group’s members. Most chilling is the parallel she draws between the NS-Priests’ antisemitism, which led members to advocate the removal of references to Jews in Catholic sacramental rites, and the dormant antisemitism among members of a subcommittee dealing with liturgical reform in the Fulda Bishops’ Conference who discussed and similarly advocated for the removal of Jewish names from the marriage rite. Though the German bishops never agreed upon a revised rite for the sacraments under National Socialism, one did appear in 1948, with the Jewish names discussed above removed.

The ideas of the NS-Priests appeared in Kameradschaftlicher Gedankenaustausch (Comradely Exchange of Ideas; KG), a newsletter that ran inconsistently for twenty-seven issues from September 1939 to January 1945. With the help of a Catholic laywoman, Pircher edited and distributed each issue that typically was four pages in length. Pircher published most articles with pseudonyms. Nevertheless, Scherzberg spends significant time and does crucial detective work identifying the authors of the contributions. The KG’s language was overtly nationalistic and repeatedly implored its readers to serve their fatherland faithfully, especially in wartime. Increasingly in each issue, the KG’s language also became more militant and antisemitic. Alongside the KG, on his own initiative, from 1938-1940, Pircher wrote Information zur kulturpolitischen Lage (Information on the Church-Political Situation), mirroring the SD’s Meldungen aus dem Reich (Reports from the Reich), in which he reported on church issues that he believed would be of interest to the state. He shared the reports with Gauleiter Bürckel, who, it appears, for a brief time financially supported Pircher’s efforts. Despite their actions and National Socialist worldview, Pircher and Kleine had little sympathy for priests who proposed a more radical course for the Church’s clergy, such as abandoning clerical celibacy. Likewise, Pircher revealed his allegiance to Catholicism by including criticisms of the state’s treatment of the Catholic Church in his reports. He confided to Kleine that he might end up in Dachau for his more critical comments. Two separate party proceedings to remove Pircher from the NSDAP were eventually introduced, but neither succeeded.

The efforts of the NS-Priests brought them in contact with like-minded clergy and laity from other Christian denominations, and even in contact with representatives of völkisch non-Christian groups. Kleine pursued unification efforts with the Nationalkirchliche Bewegung Deutsche Christen (National Church Movement of German Christians; DC), and with the Völkisch-Religious Gemeinschaft (Ethnonationalist-Religious Community) nurtured by Ernst Graf von Reventlow from Postdam. Though Kleine at first was taken aback by the involvement of a few former Catholic clergymen in the DC, he soon adjusted and began to work with them. The dialogue that ensued led to a series of meetings where the participants attempted to work out the significant obstacles that existed between them. Scherzberg painstakingly analyses the discussion at these meetings and the individuals involved. Due to numerous factors, nothing of note resulted in the end. However, Kleine did receive an invitation from the Protestant biblical studies professor, Walter Grundmann, to join his Institut für Erforschung und Beseitgung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben (Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life), which he accepted. As a result, Kleine’s antisemitism became more radical and even at one point promoted an ecclesiastical solution parallel to the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.

Kleine’s work with the DC led him into contact with the Mecklenburg Landesbishof (state bishop) Walther Schultz, who was sympathetic to Klein’s ecumenical efforts. Kleine also sought a similar collaborator from the Catholic side and believed he had found one in the newly appointed archbishop of Paderborn, Lorenz Jaeger, a former Wehrmachtspfarrer (army chaplain). While a previous biography has been sympathetic to Jaeger’s choices under National Socialism[6], Scherzberg’s findings reveal that while Jaeger was staunchly nationalist and open to listening, in the end, he rejected Kleine’s efforts at a joint Protestant-Catholic Pastoral Letter and refused to sanction Kleine’s understanding of church and ecumenism. Yet, Kleine did succeed in bringing together Schultz and Jaeger to a meeting with him to discuss the pastoral letter. A research commission focusing on Jaeger is ongoing in the Paderborn archdiocese.

As the war turned for the worse for Germany, the NS-Priests became more embittered, and their antisemitism proportionally increased. In their voluminous correspondence, they condemned the 1943 Decalogue Letter, which was critical of the state and adopted by the plenary assembly of the Fulda Bishops’ Conference. Scherzberg concludes that the worsening of the war situation and the party’s dwindling attention and notice given to the NS-Priests led to this escalation. One might also perceive that the radical antisemitism was always present, and that the apocalyptic situation at the end of the war provided the impetus for the priests to express their views more openly and, in turn, attempt to prove their allegiance even more. After the war, most of the known members of the NS-Priests, centered around Pircher and Kleine went through some form of denazification and lost their positions. The lay members, less so. Yet, Scherzberg reveals that none dropped their racist National Socialist views, but instead, merely suppressed them.

In her introduction, Scherzberg offered a theoretical framework that included the sociological theories of (de)-differentiation, (de)-secularization, and (re)-sacralization, to understand and evaluate how the priests interacted with the church and state. She returned to this framework in her conclusion. For Scherzberg, the priests she studied lived in a differentiated and often secularized society, operating within their own independent sub-system. She continued, “They demanded freedom of religion, freedom of the church and freedom of conscience. In their understanding state and church were responsible for separate areas – the state for the welfare of the people, the church for the salvation of souls. Consequently, the members of the group consistantly rejected attacks by the state or the party on the church and the practice of religion” (599-600). Yet, in their own way and according to their values, the priests were traditional, upholding priestly celibacy and religious education. Often, they wanted the best of both worlds, rejecting political Catholicism while still hoping to influence political and social processes. At the same time, they were willing to accept the state’s oversight in areas such as the training of clergy.

Scherzberg also considered how the polycratic nature of the NS-State, especially evident in the leadership of Vienna’s Reichsstatthalter und Gauleiter Josef Bürckel and Baldur von Schirach, affected the NS-Priester. Like many Germans, the NS-Priester did not blame Hitler for the persecution of the Church. Instead, they relegated the responsibility to lower-level National Socialists or more likely than not to clergy themselves for not supporting the party and state. While not identifying state leadership style as polycracy, the NS-Priests attempted to benefit from the regionally differentiated leadership approaches at-large by courting Bürckel and Schirach with varying levels of success. Finally, Scherzberg considered the role that masculinity and comradeship played in the relational milieu that NS-Priests fostered. Most of the NS-Priests, for example, bought into the overtly militaristic language of the time, with some taunting or jeering the hesitancy of fellow priests to act, accusing the latter of a breach in masculinity. The comradely address shared between them and displayed boldly on their newsletter, however, ultimately had little weight as conflict and doubt arose among them. In the end, according to Scherzberg, they appear to be lone agents out for themselves and only brought together by a prevailing ideology. Each seemed willing to sell out the other, if necessary, to become more recognized by National Socialist leadership.

Lucia Scherzberg has produced an excellent study that should be widely read. It significantly helps the reader to understand the dangers of extreme nationalism and the temptation to misshape religion for personal and political gain.

Notes:

[1] Kevin P. Spicer, Hitler’s Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism, DeKalb, IL, 2008; vgl. „Gespaltene Loyalität. ‚Braune Priester‘ im Dritten Reich am Beispiel der Diözese Berlin“, übersetz. Ilse Andrews, Historisches Jahrbuch 122 (2002), S. 287-320.

[2] z.B. Franz Loidl, Religionslehrer Johann Pircher. Sekretär und aktivster Mitarbeiter in der ‚Arbeitgemeinschaft für den religiösen Frieden‘ 1938 (Vienna 1972); ders., Hg., Arbeitgemeinschaft für den religiösen Frieden 1938/1939. Dokumentation, 1. Teil (Vienna 1973); ders., Hg., Arbeitgemeinschaft für den religiösen Frieden 1938/1939. Ergänzungs-Dokumentation, 2. Teil (Vienna 1973).

[3] Lettl was a former student of Rudolf Zinnhobler, professor of church history at the katholische Privatuniversität Linz. Josef Lettl, Die Arbeitsgemeinschaft für den religiösen Frieden 1938, Diplomarbeit (Linz 1981).

[4] Eva Maria Kaiser, Hitlers Jünger und Gottes Hirten: Der Einsatz der katholischen Bischöfe Österreichs für ehemalige Nationalsozialisten nach 1945 (Wien/Köln/Weimar 2017).

[5] Lucia Scherzberg, Kirchenreform mit Hilfe des Nationalsozialismus. Karl Adam als kontextueller Theologe. (Darmstadt 2001) and ders., Karl Adam und der Nationalsozialismus (Saarbrücken 2011; theologie.geschichte, Beiheft 3).

[6] Heribert Gruß, Erzbischof Lorenz Jaeger als Kirchenführer im Dritten Reich. Tatsachen-Dokumente-Entwicklungen-Kontext-Probleme (Paderborn 1995).

“The German Catholic Bishops and the Second World War: A Historic Reappraisal”

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 26, Number 1/2 (June 2020)

“The German Catholic Bishops and the Second World War: A Historic Reappraisal”

By Mark Edward Ruff, Saint Louis University

On May 8, 2020, the 75^th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s surrender to the Allies, the German Catholic bishops issued a statement, “Germany’s Bishops during the War,” admitting their complicity in the Second World War. “By not unequivocally saying ‘no,’ to the war and by strengthening instead the resolve (to fight and persist), they came to share in the guilt for the war,” declared their twenty-three page message released during a video conference because of the coronavirus epidemic.

Without a doubt, this statement’s critical tones marked a massive departure in how the German bishops portrayed their conduct during the war. Earlier claims of the hierarchy’s guilt had been met with fire and fury. When in September 1959, the American Catholic pacifist, Gordon Zahn, accused the German bishops of having unconditionally supported what he called “Hitler’s predatory wars,” the West German bishops responded critically, commissioning a team in the Central Committee of German Catholics to gather exculpating documents.[1] No less than Cardinal Augustin Bea, who later would gain a reputation as an influential ecumenical representative at the Second Vatican Council, attempted to have him removed from his position as a tenured professor at Loyola University, Chicago.[2]

What made possible this remarkable shift? The recent bishops’ statement was, in part, the fruit of Professor Heinrich Missalla, a Catholic theologian based for much of his career at the University of Essen and a pacifist. Missalla was long known as an ardent and passionate critic of the Catholic Church’s conduct during the Third Reich. His last published book from 2015 was entitled, Remembering for the Future: How the Catholic Bishops supported Hitler’s War.[3]

Missalla had hoped to publish an open letter to the bishops for the 80^th anniversary on the outbreak of war in 2019. But his death on October 3, 2018 put an end to those plans. The left-wing Catholic newspaper, Public Forum, instead published his letter posthumously in its August 2019 edition under the imposing title: “Do you finally have the courage to face the truth? Not only Protestant but also Catholic Bishops let themselves be carried away by the enthusiasm for war.”[4] In this final statement, Missalla raised the questions that had occupied him for his entire life: how was it possible that the German Catholic bishops could send soldiers to their deaths up to the very end in a war of unspeakable cruelty and annihilation – and justify this with religious and theological arguments? Why did they hold on for so long to their justifications for fighting which included “duty,” “obedience,” “readiness to sacrifice,” and “Christian struggle.” As he put it: “It remains a puzzle why nearly the entire German episcopate did not call out the criminal nature of Hitler’s war by name and accordingly called on the faithful entrusted to it to place itself (at Hitler’s command) obediently and with a willingness to die.”

But Missalla was also preoccupied by the church’s failures in the postwar era. Why were the bishops not able to find the courage to own up to their failure and guilt after 1945? Missalla believed that inadequate historical research was part of the problem. “In reality,” he wrote, “there are numerous documentations and investigations of the events and problems of this dark period of German Catholic Church history. It is somewhat astounding, however, that no comprehensive account of the conduct of the German Catholic Church in the war has been put together.”

This claim is, of course, not entirely accurate. Numerous scholars, including many church critics, addressed the conduct of the church in the war, from Gordon Zahn’s classic work from 1962, German Catholics and Hitler’s War: A Study in Social Control, to Lauren Faulkner’s monograph from 2015, Wehrmacht Priests: Catholicism and the War of Annihilation. [5] Thomas Brodie’s book from 2018, German Catholicism at War, 1939-1945, provided precisely the comprehensive, critical and nuanced account Missalla was calling for.[6] Yet even on the other side of the Atlantic, Karl-Joseph Hummel’s and Christoph Kösters’ 600-age edited volume from 2007, Kirchen im Krieg: Europa, 1939-1945, provided valuable snapshots into the theology, conduct, and world-view of the German church hierarchy.[7]

However inaccurately as Missalla may have represented the state of existing scholarship, the chair of the German Bishops Conference, the Bishop of Limburg, Georg Bätzing, nonetheless expressly acknowledged Missalla’s lifelong engagement when he formally presented the Bishops’ Statement to the public. The Bishops Conference, moreover, did draw on recent and critical findings from scholars, most from contemporary German historians and theologians, in putting together its statement. They turned to the scholarship of the recently retired church historian and theologian from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Wilhelm Damberg, who had critically analyzed the theologies of war and understandings of just war that had informed the thinking of theologians from the 1920s through the 1950s.[8] In this vein, they also drew on the scholarship of the Tübingen theologian and church historian, Andreas Holzem.[9] Both Damberg and Holzem played a significant role in steering the Bonn-based Kommission für Zeitgeschichte in a new direction over the course of the last decade. Long seen by critics as a nexus for defensive and apologetic accounts of the church during the Third Reich, the Kommission für Zeitgeschichte under Damberg’s leadership in particular shed this reputation as a fortress for Catholic culture warriors. It brought in many younger scholars, theologians and historians alike, into its ranks. Just this year, it received a multi-million Euro grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to research the history of the Catholic Church in Germany from 1965 through 1989. Scholarship from the Kommission für Zeitgeschichte during the last twenty years thus marked a decisive break from that of earlier generations which focused primarily on the “resistance” and “distance” brokered by the ecclesia and laity alike.

This increasingly nuanced and even critical scholarship from the 2000s and 2010s about the church and the war found its way directly into the Deutsche Kommission Justitia et Pax of the Bishops Conference. It informed not just the ensuing statement’s tone but its epistemology. “As difficult it is to understand and as incorrect the conduct of our predecessors in the ranks of the bishops might seem to us today, it does not defy historical understanding. Only this way can we escape the temptation of letting the events from that time not come close to us today.”

The commission drew on the findings of these theologians and historians who had pointed to the resources that the church provided for Hitler’s war. These ranged from patriotic pastoral letters to the nationalistic exhortations of military chaplains and even to the role played by women religious in military hospitals and sick wards. The bishops thus duly painted a picture of ambivalence. In spite of an inner distance to National Socialism and on occasion even enmity, they stated, the Catholic Church in Germany remained part of a “war society.” In this regard, the increased repression towards Christianity, the war of annihilation, the change in the tides of war between 1940 and 1943, and the increasing casualties as a result of the bombing war against Germany changed the bishops’ attitudes but little.

At the same time, the Bishops Conference did not want this statement to be seen as a formal “ostracism” (Scherbengericht) of their predecessors. On the contrary: they saw it instead as a new link in a chain of Catholic institutional memory, one understood not as an end in itself but rather as a tool for peace and the reconciliation of peoples.

“With the distancing effect of time, the reality that for many years there was no understanding of the suffering and sacrifice of others is particularly shameful,” asserted the closing section of this declaration. “Exchanges and the paths to reconciliation with our neighbors, especially Poland and France, have helped us to put behind this way of seeing things, which was characterized by avoidance, repression and a fixation on our own pain. Through this, we hope to experience that these meetings and contacts also have contributed and contribute to the renewal of the church.”

To no surprise, this declaration was received well by Germany’s neighbors, and in particular Poland. This showed that the church in Germany has made an important stride forward as far as the politics of the past is concerned. It followed Missalla’s dictum: “remember for the sake of the future.”

The text of the declaration and the statements to the press from April 29, 2020, can be found at the following link:

https://dbk.de/nc/presse/aktuelles/meldung/wort-der-deutschen-bischoefe-zum-ende-des-zweiten-weltkriegs-vor-75-jahren-veroeffentlicht/detail/

An English-language translation is scheduled to be made available in June 2020.

[1] Archiv der Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, Bonn, NL Walter Adolph, WA 16a, Auszug aus dem Protokoll der Konferenz der westdeutschen Bischöfe, Pützchen, 9.-11.12.1959

[2] Diözesanarchiv Berlin, NL Julius Döpfner, Augustin Bea to Julius Döpfner, February 11, 1960.

[3] Heinrich Massalla, Erinnern um die Zukunft willen: Wie die katholischen Bischöfe Hitlers Krieg unterstützt haben (Oberursel: Public-Forum-Verlags GmbH, 2015).

[4] Heinrich Massalla, „“Haben Sie endlich Mut zur Wahrheit?“: Nicht nur evangelische, sondern auch katholische Bischöfe ließen sich von der Kriegsbegeisterung mitreißen,“ in: Publik-Forum, August 23, 2019, 34-35.

[5] Gordon Zahn, German Catholics and Hitler’s War: A Study in Social Control (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1962); Lauren Faulkner, Wehrmacht Priests: Catholicism and the War of Annihilation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).

[6] Thomas Brodie, German Catholicism at War, 1939-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

[7] Karl-Joseph Hummel and Christoph Kösters, ed., Kirchen im Krieg: Europa, 1939-1945 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2007).

[8] See Wilhelm Damberg, „Krieg, Theologie und Kriegserfahrung,“ in: Karl-Joseph Hummel and Christoph Kösters, ed., Kirchen im Krieg: Europa, 1939-1945 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2007), 203-216.

[9] Andreas Holzem, “Theological War Theories,” in: Angela Kallhoff and Thomas Schulte-Umberg (eds.), Moralities of Warfare and Religion (Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformationin Contemporary Society [J-RaT], Vol. 4), Vienna 2018, 21-37; Andreas Holzem, “Christentum und Kriegsgewalt,” in: Theologische Quartalschrift 191 (2011), 314-338; Andreas Holzem, ed., Krieg und Christentum. Religiöse Gewalttheorien in der Kriegserfahrung des Westens (Krieg in der Geschichte, Bd. 50), (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2009).

Review of Anita Rasi May, Patriot Priests: French Catholic Clergy and National Identity in World War I

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 25, Number 3 (September 2019)

Review of Anita Rasi May, Patriot Priests: French Catholic Clergy and National Identity in World War I (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018), X + 162 Pp., ISBN: 9780806159089.

By Heath Spencer, Seattle University

More than 33,000 French priests and members of religious orders served in the First World War. Although many of them were government-appointed or volunteer chaplains, the majority were involved in other ways—as stretcher-bearers, nurses, and combatants. Anita Rasi May draws on the memoirs, letters and biographies of thirty-three of these individuals in order to shed light on their subjective experiences. She begins with a survey of anticlerical policies during the prewar Third Republic, a “culture war” situation in which the French Catholic Church saw its status and privileges significantly curtailed. She follows up with analysis of the responses of French priests to the outbreak of war, the variety of ways in which they participated, and their perceptions of the war’s meaning for France and the church. As she assesses the consequences of the war on church-state relations, she concludes that “in the postwar period there emerged a new relationship between the priests and the people due in large part to the memory of the priests’ wartime service and to their key role in memorializing their many fallen comrades. This newly won respect provided the atmosphere in which both the government and church leaders worked out compromises in their ongoing relationship” (10).

The anticlerical policies of the prewar era provide an important backdrop for understanding the mentalities and motivations of French priests, bishops and members of religious orders during the war itself. From the 1870s forward, French political leaders feared that Catholic clergy and institutions “did not form patriots but rather encouraged loyalty to monarchical government and to an international organization, the Catholic Church, based in Rome” (16). They responded by dissolving the Jesuits and other religious orders, abolishing the military chaplaincy, and ending priests’ exemption from military service. The Catholic Church’s dubious role in the Dreyfus Affair provided the pretext for further anticlerical measures, including the abolition of church schools and the formal separation of church and state. The government’s open hostility to the Catholic Church was accompanied by a long, steady decline in religious observance, especially among people of the working class, and among men of all classes.

In light of such troubling developments, French clergy saw the Great War as an opportunity to demonstrate their patriotism and prove their worth to national community. Like their counterparts in other belligerent countries, French priests believed their nation’s cause was just, but an equally powerful motivation for supporting the war was the prospect of restoring the Catholic Church to its former prominence and reversing the secularization of state and society. May cites the example of a Franciscan seminarian who believed that the war would lead to a rebirth of “the France of years past, that is to say, the true Christian France” (50). As ordinary people flocked to religious ceremonies and cheered for priests who volunteered for war service, many clergy believed they were witnessing a revitalization of religious life and an end to anticlerical hostility. These hopes and expectations help explain why so many priests volunteered for combat and non-combat roles, why French bishops gave their assent, and why so few French clergy opposed the war and the phenomenon of the soldier priest.

May’s research gives us a glimpse into the inner world of those clergy who spent time at the front. For example, Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who went on to become one of the twentieth century’s most prominent philosophers, was a stretcher-bearer with the 8^th Regiment of Moroccan Riflemen. He saw the war as a “baptism into reality” (52) and hoped his position would give him influence among the men with whom he served. A Franciscan chaplain named Édouard de Massat described the war itself as “a missionary whose voice is more eloquent than our own” and expressed the hope that France would emerge from the struggle “with a new soul” (56). As time went on, priests grew more realistic about the prospects of mass conversion and religious renewal, and their efforts at evangelizing gave way to an emphasis on pastoral care and service to their comrades in arms. This was as true of soldier priests and medical personnel as it was of chaplains.

May notes that most priests adjusted well to military life and found it easy to combine patriotic fervor and military service with their Catholic faith. This was also true of those who experienced combat. May provides numerous examples of priests who were promoted to officer status, led assaults on enemy positions, and participated actively and sometimes enthusiastically in killing. Although none of May’s thirty-three priests were pacifists, all were aware of the horrors of war (especially the damage it inflicted on their own countrymen) and occasionally struggled over the ethics of killing. Although May asserts that “in these memoirs, journals, autobiographies and biographies…there is no love of war for itself” (78), she also quotes a chaplain named Jean Lagardère who said of the front: “I am happy here: the friendship of the men, the rattling of arms, the noise of the cannon, the whistling of bullets, the view of the trenches, their infected mud delights me, thrills me, makes me quiver. I am only at home there, I only breathe there, I only do good there. I only feel myself a man there” (78). They knew the horrors of war, and some loved it anyway.

Priests’ reactions to the war were complicated and contradictory on a variety of levels. For example, they expressed contempt for men who refused to fight or mutilated themselves to avoid military service, yet some of them intervened on behalf of soldiers condemned to death for breaches of discipline. Some regretted killing the enemy, or regretted enjoying it, but few gave much thought to the humanity of the enemy. Most preferred to focus on the French soldier’s self-sacrifice rather than his role as a perpetrator of violence, and they made frequent comparisons with Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. A war sermon by chaplain Louis Lenoir was one of the more eloquent and revealing expressions of this blend of faith, war, and nationalist euphoria: “Like that of Christ, this ‘beautiful blood of France’ was today, as it has always been in history, ‘liberating blood’…spread across Europe and to the extremities of the earth to defend nations against injustice and support religious and social freedom…search all the corners of the world where violated liberty has called for help, everywhere you will find traces of French blood” (85).

Whether they were chaplains, medical personnel, or soldiers, French priests took their apostolic work seriously. They administered the sacraments, counseled individual soldiers, mailed or hand delivered letters, procured books and personal items, established social spaces where soldiers could relax, visited soldiers’ families when on leave, and conveyed gifts from those families to soldiers with whom they served at the front. They heard confessions, granted absolution, and gave communion before attacks, and in the aftermath, they performed last rites for the dying, presided over burials and masses for the dead, and helped with the mapping of cemeteries. Not surprisingly, the pastoral ministry of priests at the front seems to have been the role that was most widely appreciated and accepted, even among persons who had left the church and had no interest in returning.

In terms of long-term impact, the priests’ expectations only partly coincided with reality. When the war began, many of them believed they would have the opportunity “to evangelize men who were not the usual churchgoers in early twentieth-century France” (64). They also hoped to demonstrate that they were just as manly and patriotic—and as much a part of the national community—as other French men. Although the mass conversions did not occur, priests did develop “bonds of brotherhood” with many soldiers, “based more on mutual respect than on shared faith. They also found in themselves a capacity for violence and for being swept up into the exaltation of battle, which strengthened their feelings of brotherhood and empathy for their fellows” (109). As an institution, the French Catholic Church enjoyed a slight improvement of its status in the postwar era. The state and the education system remained secularized, but members of religious orders who had returned from exile to fight for France were allowed to remain there when the war had ended. The French government also restored diplomatic relations with the Vatican, and though anticlerical laws remained on the books, they were not always rigorously enforced. In fact, when the government of Édouard Herriot attempted to do so in 1926, veteran priests played an important role in the protests that forced the state to back down. May credits these successes to the fact that priests enjoyed a new level of respect and status due to their wartime service.

May’s book offers a fascinating glimpse into the fears, frustrations and hopes of Catholic clergy during the First World War. The priests themselves are a stark example of the “self-mobilization” that was so prevalent in the “war cultures” of Europe during this period.[1] At the same time, the book suffers from a number of shortcomings in terms of framing as well as the selection and interpretation of sources.

First, it relies too much on priests’ own perceptions of their impact without considering other kinds of data. For example, it would be helpful to see information on baptisms, confirmations and other indicators of religious observance before, during and after the war. To what extent did the war service of priests and the rapprochement between church and state disrupt or mitigate the long, steady decline in public, corporate worship? May also refers to wartime rumors and disinformation in “anticlerical newspapers and speeches” (116) but does not comment on the intensity of anticlerical discourses at different points in time. Tracking changes and continuities in the anticlerical press would be another way of assessing whether the priests’ war service had an impact on popular opinion (i.e. whether they achieved the respect and recognition they longed for or merely imagined it).

A second shortcoming is the fact that May engages the question of clerical violence on only the most superficial level. She notes that soldier priests killed and sometimes expressed regret for killing (or for enjoying it) and follows up with the claim that these experiences made it easier for priests to identify with and minister to other men who had been in combat. May does not explore the long tradition of Catholic theological reflection on violence, nor does she acknowledge that there were many other possible areas of shared experience (visiting brothels, for example) from which priests were expected to abstain. What made military violence different?

May’s temporal framework is also problematic. Her story ends in 1926 at what appears to be a comeback moment for Catholics in France’s culture wars—a happy ending of sorts. Extending the study to 1940 or 1945 would complicate things, as May would have to grapple with those segments of the Catholic Church that supported far right movements, cast their lot with the Vichy regime and celebrated the demise of the Third Republic.

Finally, May’s study adopts an exclusively national perspective with only the briefest references to other European states and the wider world. Comparative analysis across European cultural and religious landscapes would make it more difficult to affirm the validity of bargains in which clergy supported questionable regimes and policies in exchange for acceptance and influence. The response of many German clergy to their country’s “national renewal” in 1933 should serve as a cautionary tale. Likewise, May fails to incorporate insights from a large body of recent research on the global dimensions of the war. Though she notes the existence of colonial troops, she offers no meaningful discussion of their religious and cultural identities or their wartime experiences. Several of May’s priests (including Teilhard and Lenoir) embraced their role as missionaries and affirmed France’s “civilizing mission” throughout the world, but May does not indicate the context in which those efforts and assumptions played out. For example, the majority of France’s colonial soldiers were forcibly recruited through processes that did great violence to them, their families, and their communities. After arriving in Europe, they were deployed as shock troops in an effort to lower the death toll among white French soldiers.[2] We cannot understand the ideas and actions of priests like Teilhard and Lenoir apart from these realities. By neglecting them, May’s book remains confined to the same limited horizons as the priests’ own accounts of the war and its meaning.

[1] See John Horne, “Public Opinion and Politics,” in A Companion to World War I, ed. John Horne (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2004), 280-281.

[2] See Joe Lunn, Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999).

Review of Jeffrey T. Zalar, Reading and Rebellion in Catholic Germany, 1770-1914

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 25, Number 1 (March 2019)

Review of Jeffrey T. Zalar, Reading and Rebellion in Catholic Germany, 1770-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and the German Historical Institute, 2019).

By Kevin P. Spicer, Stonehill College

In 1984, when David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley published The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford, 1984), a revised version of their 1980 work in the German language, they challenged the prevailing historiography, much of which had embraced the Sonderweg thesis. For Blackbourn and Eley, the German bourgeoisie did not experience any abnormalities of growth and development in the nineteenth century, which set them apart from their European counterparts and enabled Germany to pursue a unique path of national development that ended in war and destruction. As we might imagine, much debate ensued.

In Reading and Rebellion in Catholic Germany, Jeffrey Zalar likewise boldly challenges the existing historiography concerning the German Catholic milieu and its culture of reading, a topic that perhaps is less central to historians of modern Germany, but still important, nevertheless. For those who study religious history, especially that of the Catholic Church in Germany, Zalar’s findings have major implications for understanding the inner-workings of the Catholic milieu. For years, historians have portrayed the milieu as “an insular subculture, whose boundaries were policed by an authoritarian clergy” (8).

He acknowledges that some historians, such as Rebecca Ayako Bennette, have begun to view the milieu’s boundaries more fluidly. Nevertheless, Zalar argues that “the core of the milieu idea, however, the narrative at its most tenacious, remains unchallenged” (8). For Zalar, an all-pervasive milieu theory simply cannot be supported by the existing body of evidence. He continues, the body of evidence is “too small, at least to justify the kinds of claims that are routinely made about lay submission to reading disciplines, which have never been demonstrated with documentary or archival evidence” (11).

Zalar advises that he has critically followed John Connelly’s warning not to pluck “‘either disturbing or exonerating phrases out of the church’s murky past’ to satisfy the demands of a thesis when these phrases, if taken in isolation from one other, ‘tell us nothing about how people lived in a past that exists beyond our mental horizons’” (16; quoting From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933-1965, Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2012, 10).

Instead, Zalar sets out to discern the reading of Catholics from all economic classes, especially uncovering the reading habits of the “intellectually invisible people” of the lower classes by using the “widest possible methodological breath” (12). His evidence, rich and broad in scope, includes state and diocesan church archives, contemporary publications, and numerous parish archives (often neglected by historians), which uncover seemingly lost correspondence, library questionnaires, borrowing statistics of parish libraries, and other forgotten documents. Geographically, Zalar’s study covers the Rhineland and Westphalia, Prussia’s two western province’s that it incorporated formerly at the Congress of Vienna (1815). For Zalar, these provinces “along with Bavaria and parts of Silesia” constitute the “‘core regions’ of German Catholicism,” with the “highest degree of clerical authority and established thickest network of lay associations” (14).

Further into his study, Zalar reveals a second motivation for his study. He writes, “Accordingly, in the 1970s and 1980s, empiricist social and cultural historians seized the field from the Kirchenhistoriker [Church Historians]. But their antipathy to theology was so complete that they disqualified not only its prescriptive encroachments but its descriptive components as well” (57). Like my own research efforts, Zalar redeems the impact of theology and a religious worldview as a causal agent in history. In this, he is quite successful.

Zalar divides his study into eight chapters. He begins by describing the foundation of reading culture in Prussia, which consisted of a contrasting, confessionally marked outlook on reading. The Protestant bourgeoisie defined their reading habits with the terms Geschmack (fine taste and enlightened) and Bildung (education and culture). Reading was a means to educate and refine oneself both to advance in society and to advance society. Protestant reading culture was richly complex. There were terms for those who read too much, read indiscriminately, or read too superficially. Protestant readers who embraced such an outlook looked upon individuals who did not share their perspective as Geschmacklos, exhibiting bad taste. Central in this grouping were Catholics, who Protestants, in general, viewed as “clerically dominated, undereducated, and impoverished” (39). Less clear for Zalar is the place of the Catholic bourgeoisie in society and their relationship with Catholics of the lower classes. Such economic issues are not of central concern to the study. Rather, Zalar explains that there are historical reasons for the limitations that Catholics faced in Prussian society, most notably the 1803 secularization that closed eighteen Catholic universities, confiscated monastic libraries, and eventually placed three million German Catholics under Protestant rulers. Geographic location also negatively affected Catholics who resided disproportionately in rural, agricultural areas, to which the government dedicated fewer educational resources, and who pursued trades that did not allow for significant advancement in bourgeois society.

In his second chapter, Zalar examines the Catholic alternative to the dominant Protestant bourgeois reading culture. He acknowledges that it is partially true that, unlike Protestants, Catholics did not experience a reading revolution at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and cites numerous reasons for this. Catholicism was reticent to promote lay literacy, in part, due to concerns that it might spread Protestant theology through written works. The baroque piety of German Catholicism was “overwhelmingly nonverbal,” encompassing pilgrimages, processions, memorized prayers, and illustrated catechisms (58). More importantly, are the goals of Catholic reading, tied directly to theological concerns. Zalar explains, “Salvation…did not depend upon acquiring right knowledge but upon the practice of virtue in a holy lifestyle that united one to the merits of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and resurrection” (66). Reading then had a spiritual function quite different in nature to Geschmack and Bildung. Its aim was to assist Catholics in their efforts to follow Christ and so achieve eternal salvation. Zalar develops these notions in more detail in Chapter Three (117-119). There he explains that reading imparted an experience of delectatio (delectation), which Zalar defines as “the deliberate accommodation of oneself to these gifts [transcendentals gifted by God] in obedience to God’s will through bracing encounters with good, beautiful, and true objects” (118). Yet, reading could no longer be limited or controlled once it was done in the privacy of one’s home, even when spiritual growth and clerical oversight was emphasized. As a result, personal interpretation and discernment became a part of the reading experience. Although clerics attempted to control and mediate this experience, even in this early period there is evidence of Catholics and Protestants sharing books.

Chapter three concerns Catholic reading habits following the Congress of Vienna and under Prussian rule. While article sixteen of the Federal Constitution guaranteed civil rights for all subjects, Catholics did not receive equal treatment. Rather, Protestants who held most government administrative positions looked down on Catholics as uncultured savages who had to be managed and controlled. A dominant view was that Catholics were incapable of contributing to the Kulturnation (cultural nation). Some public discussions even insinuated that Catholics were “obstacles to economic growth” and politically unreliable (105). Educational deterrents promoted such outlooks and kept Catholics from advancing in society. Gradually, there were changes as more Catholics took advantage of education, but it was a gradual and arduous process. German Catholics did resist such stereotypes and restrictions through their press and journals, portraying Protestants as undermining morality and poisoning society. Amid this confessional antagonism, Catholics broadened the titles they read. Ironically, rectory libraries often contained books purchased by priests that fell outside the confines of spiritual or approved reading. Catholic book clubs also developed that focused upon texts approved by local clergy but also upon religious fiction. Though these clubs often were led or involved clergy, Zalar argues they “ultimately subverted unity” by allowing discussion and consideration of ideas and texts gained from outside sources, thus allowing numerous influences on the formation of Catholic consciences. In the first part of the Nineteenth Century, the Catholic bourgeoisie rejected clerical oversight and moved closer to their Protestant contemporaries, embracing the concept of Geschmack even more. At the same time, reading increased substantially. Zalar notes that students reading in the evening often “spent more on candles than they did on books or coal for heating” (128).

Chapter four focuses on the 1845 foundation of the Association of Saint Charles Borromeo, the Borromäusverein, under the initial leadership of August Reichensperger, a Cologne lawyer, and Max Freiherr von Loë, a Landrat in Siegburg. The namesake was apropos as Borromeo had been a catechist and staunch supporter of the Counter-Reformation. Though the society had many lofty goals upon its establishment, it eventually became a book club with local chapters relegated to promoting and distributing lists of spiritual reading. Its founders and clerical supporters hoped the Association would counter the effects of Catholic lay exposure to Protestant Enlightenment ideals and values. Though meant for all classes, the bourgeoisie generally did not become members as the Association’s goals seemed to oppose their own. Zalar argues that under the Borromäusverein, “never before had or never again did the German church come so close to realizing the Catholic readerly ideal” (155). Yet, in 1870, the Association had only 54,000 members or 1.5 percent of the Catholics living in Westphalia and the Rhineland. Still, the ideals of the Boromäusverein reflected the great chasm that existed between the reading cultures and outlook of German Prussian Protestantism and German Catholicism, especially on the eve of the Kulturkampf. In line with Zalar’s challenge of traditional historiography, he also rejects the notion of Catholics becoming ghettoized during the Kuturkampf, viewing such a concept as “too simplistic, as well as misleading.” Rather, he describes Catholics as tending to “huddle behind an edgy defensiveness” (157). Along with many Catholic institutions, the Borromäusverein was not spared losses and membership because of state persecution. Lay reading discipline also weakened during this period, a point that Zalar emphasizes by countering previous interpretations with documents recording the increase of the volume of reading and clerical denunciation of such activity (171-172). As Zalar argues, the “milieu may very well have been clericalized,” but citing, for example, a priest scolding a parishioner, it is “hardly evidence of lay submission to it” (173). At the same time, Zalar relates that the entire act of censorship had become extremely unpopular with society. Censors, he argues, had earned a reputation as “ignorant, misinformed, fumbling, zealous extremists who mindlessly applied and more often misapplied feckless rules they themselves did not always understand” (178).

Chapter five examines the transformation of Catholicism under Imperial Germany in the context of Catholic reading culture. Industrialization and urbanization rapidly altered the landscape of German society. Nevertheless, the centuries-old animosities between Catholics and Protestants remained. Such tensions and limitations in a Protestant-dominated society forced German Catholics to become more introspective. Zalar argues that Catholics “did begin to trace their peripheral existence to the attitudes and disciplines of their church” (194). After the 1890s, when more educational opportunities opened for Catholics, they could no longer blame the government for discriminatory policies. Even the German bishops realized their denomination’s plight and, in 1896, assembled in Dortmund to discuss the situation. The result of this discussion, both among clergy and laity, was a greater openness among Catholics to modernization and education. The German Catholic Church founded new associations to promote Catholic scholarship, education, and engagement with secular culture. Eventually, the number of Catholics attending university increased. Such advances not only impacted the upper classes but also the lower classes as new professions opened to them. Some priests, too, participated in promoting new vocational and employment opportunities. Even the Prussian Ministry of Culture and Public Instruction, in 1876, instructed public libraries to become confessionally neutral.

Chapter six documents the fall of the Borromäusverein, locating it even before the beginning of the Kulturkampf. Zalar points out that this did not mean that Catholics had foregone religious books. The texts that had merit were already sacralized in their homes, available to read at moments of crisis and for spiritual discernment. As educational opportunities and the desire for the consumption of knowledge increased, the Association simply did not meet the needs of German Catholics who desired to read more broadly. The craving for advancement led Catholics from all classes to open their minds and hearts to the notion of Geschmack, reading now for personal and societal advancement. Similarly, the introduction of electric lighting, mass entertainment, and the like, expanded Catholics’ experience of the world. By 1897, the executive committee of the Borromäusverein knew that it had to find a different path to pursue to keep their organization relevant. The committee members drew up new statutes and then hired Father Hermann Herz, a Swabian priest, author, and editor, to implement them. Conservatively Catholic to his core, Herz also realized that he had to engage modern culture to capture the attention of Catholic readers. Though Herz was not afraid to stand up for his faith, he also sought to avoid antagonizing Protestants. To this end, none of the publications of the Borromäusverein mentioned the May 1910 encyclical of Pope Pius X, which “condemned the Protestant Reformation as “an enemy of the cross of Christ’” (263). If anything was to be condemned, it was “dirty and trashy literature,” which the Association endeavored to root out (263).

The final two chapters examine the impact of the reconstitution of the Borromäusverein within the context of the changing reading habits of the Catholics of western Germany. Though great advances were made in expanding the libraries to include largely non-religious collections, the Verein still only engaged a minority of the Catholic population. Those who were members came from all classes, though the lower middle class patronized the Verein’s libraries the most. Clerics gradually turned over their leadership and oversight roles to lay volunteers, especially to young Catholic women. Father Herz also encouraged chapters to move their libraries out of rectories to more neutral locations, in order to remove any lingering suspicion of clerical censorship. Despite such efforts, Zalar admits that “a chapter might change in orientation overnight with the arrival of a new priest” (289). Such contradictions are present throughout Zalar’s narrative; yet, to this reader, they are not problematic, but only reveal the realities of German Catholic society as changes gradually took place within the milieu. Modernity crept into the daily lives of German Catholics and as it took root, multi-layered unrest developed. Thus, on the eve of the First World War, Catholics were not far apart in their reading habits as their Protestant counterparts after having replaced the spiritually rewarding delectatio with Geschmack. Zalar concludes that now laity “controlled the word” and were the “new ‘rulers of men’” (363).

With the scarcity of English language works on nineteenth-century German Catholic culture, Zalar’s study is truly welcomed. He has produced a brilliant sophisticated examination of the changing reading habits of Catholics over two centuries. Throughout his narrative, he successfully contextualizes his discussion of books and reading within the larger narrative of Catholic efforts to gain parity in the Protestant-dominated German society of that period. At times, I wanted to learn more about the internal class struggles of Catholics that took place within this narrative. Zalar does provide hints of this tension, especially between the bourgeoisie and lower classes, but I had hoped for more details. However, this in no way reflects negatively on the book’s overall argument. Zalar is persuasive and compelling in his objection to the dominant clerical milieu thesis, pointing out that, at least in their reading habits, German Catholics did not always follow the Church and its clergy’s clearly demarcated boundaries. At least for the nineteenth century, our understanding of the German Catholic milieu must be rethought and reexamined. Likewise, Zalar’s findings and reinterpretations are important to our interpretation of German Catholicism in the Weimar Republic and under National Socialism. It would be very interesting to learn how Zalar interprets the Catholic milieu during these periods, considering the existing historiography. With all this said, I highly recommend Zalar’s work.

Article Note: Martina Cucchiara, “The Bonds That Shame: Reconsidering the Foreign Exchange Trials Against the Catholic Church in Nazi Germany, 1935/36”

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 22, Number 4 (December 2016)

Article Note: Martina Cucchiara, “The Bonds That Shame: Reconsidering the Foreign Exchange Trials Against the Catholic Church in Nazi Germany, 1935/36,” European History Quarterly 45, no 4 (2015): 689-712.

By Doris L. Bergen, University of Toronto

This fascinating and meticulously researched article demonstrates the importance of including the often-forgotten middle years of National Socialism in studies of the churches under Hitler. Martina Cucchiara examines a series of trials in 1935-36 against Catholic orders accused of contravening Germany’s regulations about foreign currency. The details turn out to be intriguing in themselves—we catch a glimpse of Der Stürmer’s blend of misogynist, antisemitic, anti-Catholicism and get a helpful lesson in the functioning of the bond market and the entangled economies of Germany and the United States in the 1920s—but most significant is Cucchiara’s central finding. The foreign exchange trials and the Nazi propaganda campaign that went with them, she argues, were first and foremost an effort by the regime to push the Catholic church “out of the public sphere.” Although she leaves open the question as to whether or not the regime succeeded in this attempt, Cucchiara strongly suggests the answer was “yes.”

Cucchiara’s nuanced analysis indicates that indeed the regime benefited in several ways. The trials were just one of a series of initiatives that stirred up crises and fomented division in Catholic circles. Lack of resolution around the concordat and the issue of lay associations, the episcopate’s pusillanimous responses to the trials, and the resulting alienation of the laity all served to increase what Cucchiara calls the regime’s “leverage” over the church. In addition, she shows, regional and local officials, like sharks who smell blood, “piled on” to pursue their own political agendas at the expense of weakened Catholic institutions. It is outside the purview of Cucchiara’s discussion, but one wonders whether Protestants, looking on, took pleasure in the disciplining of their old confessional rivals or felt a chill of dread as they pondered their own standing in the Nazi German order.