Religious Cultures and Confessional Politics

In: Weir , T & Greenberg , U 2021 , Religious Cultures and Confessional Politics . in R Nadine & Z Benjamin (eds) , Oxford Handbook of the History of the Weimar Republic . Oxford University Press . https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198845775.013.28

Abstract

This chapter argues that the role of religion in the political and social dynamics of the Weimar Republic was determined by two axes of confessional conflict. Alongside the Catholic–Protestant antagonism, there were also significant tensions between secularism and Christianity. Both axes contributed to the formation of different social milieus during the Kaiserreich and supported their continued articulation during the Weimar Republic. The chapter explores developments within the milieus, such as the significant growth and radicalization of freethought within the socialist and communist parties, as well as the shifting relationships between them, which created a fractured and complex set of political struggles, compromises, and alliances. The republic was bookended by efforts to overcome confessional divides in Germany through revolutionary means, on the one hand through the aborted attempt to fully secularize the German state in 1918 and, on the other, the campaign by the National Socialists to win Christian support by calling for 'positive Christianity' to heal Germany's confessional divide by unifying Protestants and Catholics and destroying secularism.