Bismarck domestic policies, 1871-1890
The beggaring of mass politics was a great problem for Bismarck because more people were getting aware of what happen in politics and more people could vote. When the Vatican declares that every thing that the Pope sead should be obey by the catholic.
From the defeat of Austria in 1866 until 1878 Bismarck was allied primarily with the National Liberals. Bismarck had not counted on the emergence of new parties such as the Catholic Center or the Social Democrats, both of whom began participating in imperial and Prussian elections in the early 1870s. Along with the left liberal Progressive Party, he labeled them all enemies of the empire. Bismarck's aim was clearly to destroy the Catholic Center Party. He and the liberals feared the appeal of a clerical party to the one-third of Germans who professed Roman Catholicism. With the change of Pope Bismarck ended the Kulturkampf. Then he began the campaign against socialism that as with the catholic center party it failed the socialist party keep on getting stronger and getting more seats in the Reichstag.
Bismarck believed that German Catholics were subservient to the pope and that the political power of the Center Party threatened his authority over the empire. To combat this, in the early 1870s Bismarck initiated the so-called Kulturkampf. This movement, fueled by nationalist propaganda, attempted to portray Catholic allegiances as intellectually backward and dangerous to German security. The empire, soon after its establishment, was troubled by the Kulturkampf, fierce struggle between the states on the one hand and the Roman Catholic Church and Catholic Center party on the other. The conflict initiated a period of cooperation between Bismarck and the liberals, who were violently anticlerical. However, the struggle lost intensity after Bismarck failed to break the power of the Center party, which made large gains in the Reichstag in 1878. All church appointments were to be approved by the state. Clerical civil servants were purged from the Prussian administration. Hundreds of parishes and several bishoprics were left without incumbents. The campaign against Catholicism failed to achieve its goals and, if anything, convinced the Catholic minority that their fear of persecution was real. Bismarck gradually toke away some of this policies, especially after the death of the activist pope, Pius IX, in 1878. In 1878-79
