By creating categories of enemies within was Bismarck successful in uniting Germans?
By creating categories of ‘enemies within’ was Bismarck successful in uniting Germans?
The second half of the 19th century witnessed one of Central Europe’s defining developments, the unifying of Prussia with the host of small provinces to form a German Empire, and it is Otto von Bismarck’s name which is synonymous with this process. As has been seen on countless occasions throughout history, the joining of a collection of previously independent states brings with it a whole host of issues that would need to be tackled if there was any chance of the Empire succeeding, and ‘Bismarck was as aware as anyone that political unification did not signal national unity’. At the forefront of German Unification was the matter of bringing together the people who had comprised all of these smaller states into a united German people. In order to do this, Bismarck’s attempts centred around an effort to create categories of enemies within, as he had ‘always held that struggle against a common enemy was the simplest method for attaining political unity’. According to A.O. Meyer, Bismarck ‘was motivated throughout his career by a German national patriotism which was as fundamental to his thought and action as his Lutheran faith and his monarchical loyalty’, and so as to ensure this patriotism was allowed to flourish, the Centre Party, Social Democrats and ethnic minorities were all at the mercy of his policies. The policies against ethnic minorities were often harsh and his attacks in the Catholics and Socialists, which were ultimately unsuccessful, left the German Empire and its political system with a troubled inheritance that would prove problematic for years after Bismarck left power.
Until the middle of the 19th century, the Catholic Church had remained an important political power within Germany, including Protestant Prussia. With Germany now unified as a country, Bismarck was eager to crush anything that might inhibit his goal for a unified people, and it was clear that a separate loyalty to the Pope in Rome could prove a major issue in the achievement of this goal. It is therefore unsurprising that the state proceeded with a policy of ‘repressive interference of the state towards the Catholics during Kulturkampf’. Catholic schools were brought under state control and the Jesuit Order was banned from Germany in 1872, followed by the ‘May Laws’ of 1873, the introduction of civil marriage in 1874 and, in 1875, the banning of all religious orders except nursing orders. Equally, cranium measurements became a popular means of proving the hereditary nature of papal stupidity. With regard to the banning of Jesuit Orders, Gordon Craig observes that “one might have thought that this glaring example of discriminatory legislation would have moved even the most ardent anti-Jesuits to reflection, for it set an ominous precedent. It did not have this affect, and the law was greeted nationally with enthusiasm bordering on rapture.” One might therefore wonder why the news was greeted with such fervour. For discriminatory politics of this kind to prosper, it was essential for there to be some sort of pre-existing anti-Catholic feeling amongst the population. Ronald J. Ross has identified ‘the disparate strands of anti-Catholicism from middle-class rationalism and Protestant distaste of Catholic rituals and beliefs, to popular prejudices and fears of Catholic subversion of the new national state’ as being present, and this would appear to provide the key as to why such policies were, initially at least, met by such support. These were people and fears that could be present in any of the pre-Empire states, and so it is unsurprising that those who shared these views were both supportive of the new policy and the efforts of the new government. However, it quickly became apparent that those possessing these anti-Catholic sentiments were not a united front. As time progressed, ‘some of Bismarck's supporters found his measures excessive, or questioned his goal and abandoned his cause’ and ‘a good number of Protestants feared losing a significant ally in the battle against secularism and socialism’5. Support for the anti-Catholic measures were essentially unstable and did not amount to a majority of the non-Catholic population. With this in mind, it is perhaps unsurprising then that Bismarck’s attempt to make Catholicism one of the ‘enemies within’ was unsuccessful in uniting Germans.
