Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Rise of the Fourth Confession

Description

Negotiating the boundaries of the secular and of the religious is a core aspect of modern experience. In mid-nineteenth-century Germany, secularism emerged to oppose church establishment, conservative orthodoxy, and national division between Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. Yet, as historian Todd H. Weir argues in this provocative book, early secularism was not the opposite of religion. It developed in the rationalist dissent of Free Religion and, even as secularism took more atheistic forms in Freethought and Monism, it was subject to the forces of the confessional system it sought to dismantle. Similar to its religious competitors, it elaborated a clear worldview, sustained social milieus, and was integrated into the political system. Secularism was, in many ways, Germany's fourth confession. While challenging assumptions about the causes and course of the Kulturkampf and modern antisemitism, this study casts new light on the history of popular science, radical politics, and social reform. Cover Half-title page Title page Copyright page Contents List of Figures and Maps Acknowledgments Abbreviations Time Line of Organized Secularism in Germany and Berlin Introduction Secularism as a Social Formation Secularism in the Religious and Political History of Nineteenth-Century Germany Confession in German History Toward a Quadriconfessional History of Nineteenth-Century Germany Methodological Considerations 1 Dissidence and Confession, 1845 to 1847 The Confessional Order prior to 1845 The Deutschkatholiken The “Tolerance Patent” of March 1847 “Christian State” and “Fourth Confession” 2 Free Religious Worldview: From Christian Rationalism to Naturalistic Monism Negative Work: Dissent and Secularization Positive Work: Monist Worldview around 1850 The Confrontation between Idealistic and Naturalistic Monism 3 The Sociology of Dissent: Free Religion and Popular Science The Social Profile of a Free Religious Congregation The Free Religious as Town Citizens Popular Natural Science as Bildung and Halbbildung Social Change and the Differentiation of Secularism from 1881 to 1914 4 Politics and Free Religion in the 1860s and 1870s The Secularist Political Imaginary Left-Liberalism The Democratic Movement Free Religion and the Formation of Social Democracy 5 Secularism in the Berlin Kulturkampf, 1869–1880 The “Moabit Klostersturm” of 1869 Secularism and Kulturkampf, 1871–1878 The “Socialist Laws” and Free Religion, 1878–1880 6 From Worldview to Ethics: Secularism and the “Jewish Question,” 1878–1892 AntiSemitism and Confession PhiloSemitism and Secularism Jewish Responses to Secularist PhiloSemitism 7 Secularism in Wilhelmine Germany The Confessional Framework Worldview Secularist Sociology Politics and Secularism Epilogue: German Secularism after 1914 Appendix: Membership Statistics of the Principal Secularist Organizations Bibliography Index