Kulturkampf (quora)

Q

What was the Bismarck's Kulturkampf?
https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-Bismarcks-Kulturkampf/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Answer requested

by Renan Herodek

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Self Employed at Writer and Composer

Answered just now

You know Communist persecution of Christianity, despite officially tolerating Christian cults?

Well Kulturkampf was a bit the same, but especially directed against Catholicism.

It was more tolerant, and it involved the régime (a bit like Stalin during WW-II) espousing a version of Christianity.

In fact, Evangelische Kirche was an attempt to stop Christian inquarreling, especially among Protestants, by uniting Lutherans and Calvinists in a new less doctrinal Church - this started decades before Kulturkampf.

In the Soviet case Communist-Orthodox agreed to persecute the non-such considered most fanatic (Catholics, esp. Ukrainean Uniates, ROCOR like Orthodox, Baptists like “Ivan Nazaroff”). In the Kulturkampf case there was exactly one version of Christianity considered too fanatic for them, that was Ultramontane Catholicism.

The difference is, Kulturkampf failed fairly soon, because even in Bismarck’s small Germany (even if excluding parts of German nationals who were Catholic, like Austrians and Sudet Germans) there were so many Catholics opposed to it.

It set some traces, though.

• 1) Markan priority, since the Traditional Matthaean priority was too Popish for the Prussian taste. Like often in the Soviet case, you don’t find a government decision, you find Christians volunteering for the position they knew would be most pleasing to the government and making a big show of pretending it was all for Christian reasons.
• 2) Altkatholiken - Döllinger’s new sect, which rejected the Vatican Council and Papal infallibility was very promoted by Bismarck. Part of his failure was the refusal of Catholics to see Döllinger as a German patriot rather than as a traitor to Pope and Bishops.