Although the decision to launch the campaign was Bismarck’s alone; he did however have enthusiastic support from the National Liberals. Different in their motives, but with a common goal of objecting Catholicism, they united and throughout the 1870’s this relationship turned out to be vital in retaining Bismarck’s control of the Reichstag.
These minor successes can however be countered by the fact that in 1874, the Centre party had doubled its vote in the Reichstag elections and had emerged as a significant force in German politics – the complete opposite result of Bismarck’s aim. This fact in itself strongly agrees with the title, unarguably the exact opposite effect that Bismarck desired constitutes complete failure.
The persecution of the Catholics, whilst it seemed radical and harsh turned out to be unsuccessful. The sheer scale of the persecution was quite staggering, and the result even more so. The ‘May Laws’ constituted many laws including bringing the church under state control, catholic education under state supervision and civil marriage. The actual persecution was in fact more important to the liberals than Bismarck, he merely wanted support from the liberals to consolidate his main aim of state control – so therefore we can say that if the persecution was divided and weak in its motives then its failure to achieve the desired effect was in fact inevitable. The laws that remained after the repeal such as the continued banning of the Jesuits and the existence of civil marriage show that whilst some remain, the over-riding fact that the persecution strengthened catholic morale and determination to the extent that it increased the Zentrum’s political control mean the result demonstrates failure.
The aim of decreasing the influence of the Pope was resultant from the publishing in 1864 of the Syllabus of Errors and in 1870 – Papal Infallibility. The actions which arose from this aim include the banning of the Bishops publishing the letter from the Pope. The letter instructed them to disobey the anti-catholic laws. The Jesuits were expelled, and the clergy exiled. Whilst the Jesuits remained banned, the underlying failure of this aim is clear – the fact that Bismarck had to hide his failure by blaming Dr.Falk shows his own belief that his campaign had been a monumental failure. The improved relations between the Catholic Church and Bismarck are testament to the fact that he knew he’d failed, and that his underestimation of the Catholic Church proved pivotal to the failure.
It does turn out that whilst superficially the Kulturkampf was a complete failure; there were in fact subtle hints that suggest it succeeded. The most important aim in my view was Bismarck’s, to increase state control turned out to be what the others were based around.
In one sense, and only to a small extent, I believe Bismarck was remotely successful in retaining and increasing state control, this can be seen in the more notable ‘Falk Laws’ such as the education and civil/legal rights coming under state control.
However, the sheer fact that the Zentrum’s power increased as a direct result of the failure of the ‘Falk Laws’ means it failed to decrease the power of the Central Party. Any of the remaining laws or evidence of the Kulturkampf show that some aspects survived and were successful, but these minor successes are countered by a host of failures. These failures can be seen in Bismarck’s attempts to completely disassociate himself with the Kulturkampf, the increase in power of the Zentrum party – failure of the Kulturkampf’s main aim. While the term ‘complete failure’ is probably not accurate, the Kulturkampf was unsuccessful in a majority of its aims.
