confessionalization and state building in germany

7/27/2019 Confessionalization and State Building in Germany

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Confessionalization, Community, and State Building in Germany, 1555-1870Author(s): Joel F. Harrington and Helmut Walser SmithSource: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Mar., 1997), pp. 77-101Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2953433 .

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Review ArticleConfessionalization,Community,andStateBuildingin Germany,1555-1870*Joel F HarringtonVanderbiltUniversityHelmutWalserSmithVanderbiltUniversityThe principle cuius regio eius religio belongs to the fundamentalstructuresof mod-em Germanhistory.Juridically set at the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, expanded toinclude Calvinists and reapplied at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, it governedpolitical and religious relations in the German lands until the dissolution of theHoly Roman Empire in 1803. Stipulating that the religion of the ruler should bethe religion of the ruled, cuius regio eius religio constituted an attempt to amelio-rate the vexing problems of religious coexistence, religious pluralism,andreligiousconflict that the Lutheran Reformation and subsequent Protestant reform move-ments introduced into the fabric of German society. These problems, in turn,pow-erfully influenced the special trajectoryof German state and nationbuilding, ensur-ing that the Germanpath, more perhaps even than those of the French or English,would be markedby problems of religious, and thereforecultural,disunity.In what follows we will consider how religious division affected state buildingand civil society in Germany from 1555 to 1870. While historians of early modemGermanyhave recently devoted a considerable amount of researchto this problem,suggesting complex interactions between confessional formation and the emer-gence of the early modern state, historians of nineteenth-century Germany havebeen slower to recognize the impact of religious division on nineteenth-centuryGerman society. Moreover, neither early modern historians nor their counterpartswho deal with the modern era have attemptedto trace thecontinuities anddisconti-nuities across what has become a strict disciplinary barrierbetween the two peri-ods. In this article we will consider both periods, but we will also focus on thecontinuities across the barrier.Such an analysis implies two sets of questions. The first concerns the creation-sometimes by suasion, sometimes by force-of confessional unity: What impactdid the formation of confessional homogeneity have on state structure,on the con-

* We would like to acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of our colleaguesMichaelBess and ArleenTuchman.[TheJournalof ModernHistory 69 (March1997):77-101]? 1997byTheUniversityfChicago.022-2801/97/6901-0004$01.00Allrights eserved.

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78 Harringtonand Smithstruction f "imagined ommunities,"n the underlying ssumptions f Germannationalism?Did the reality, nd later he utopia,of religioushomogeneity hapethe "imagined ommunities"f stateand nation n theGerman ands?

The second set of questionsaddress he legacy of differenceand division.Forcuius regioeius religiowas a governing rincipleo whichthereweremanyexcep-tions. Some exceptions, ike the free cities of religiousparity n which LutheransandCatholics ivedwithinthe same city walls, hadalreadybeen set in the Peaceof Augsburg; thers,suchas the mixed areasof the Palatine-Electorate,eflectedthe changingconfessionalallegiancesof rulers;andstillotherscameas a conse-quenceof conquest-the Prussianannexation f CatholicSilesia, for example.Thusdespitethe overarching rincipleof religioushomogeneity, considerableamount f religiousmixingoccurred hroughouthe empire.Moreover,hismixingwas dramatically cceleratedn the nineteenth entury,n partby the Napoleonicrationalizationf the German tates,which n almostall cases broughtProtestantsandCatholics ogetherundera commonruler,n partby the demographic ullofurbanization ndindustrialization, hich irrevocably lteredconfessional and-scapes,bringingProtestants ndCatholics ntothesamecities, towns,andvillages.What, hen, werethe consequences f the de facto religiousmixing and religiousplurality?Did religiouscoexistencecreate hepreconditionsor the developmentof religious olerance, f an ethic of religiouspluralism?Didit reinforce runder-mine confessionaldentities?Did it dissolve the links, fastened or centuries,be-tweenreligiousandpolitical dentity?Ordid these links tightenas a resultof pro-cessesof religious ntegration?The worksunder eviewaddress hesequestions, ometimes, houghnotalways,as central hemes.Herewe wish to gauge the stateof historical esearch n thesequestions,obring ntorelief lines of inquiryparticularo historians f earlymod-ern as well as modernGermany,o suggestareasof overlap, o tracecontinuitiesanddiscontinuities,ndto reflecton theplaceof confessionaldivision n Germanhistoryandhistoriography.ITheimpactof theProtestant eformation nearlymodern tatebuildingwasunde-niablyprofound, sgenerationsf scholarshavedemonstrated. utthat mpacthasalso generated omepervasivemyths.'Though heyhave assumedmany guises,two variations emainmost common,and both stemfrom modernbiases aboutreligiousandpoliticalcausation.Thefirstmythoveremphasizeshe Reformation'sinfluence nthestatebyclaiming hatProtestantismnitiated hefullsecularizationof all institutional ower, hus clearing he wayfor the growthof modern tates,thepinnacleof whichwas Bismarck's econdEmpire.The secondmythexagger-ates the nature nddegreeof the Reformation'sesonancen the socialandcultural

IFor a convenient ntroduction o this vexing problem,see the essays in JamesD. Tracy,ed.,Luther and the Modern State in Germany (Kirksville, Mo., 1986), esp. the opening articlebyTracy,"Luther ndtheModem State:Introduction o a NeuralgicTheme,"pp. 9-19.



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Confessionalization n Germany 79spheres; t restson the mistakenassumptionhatreligiousreform ed to nationalawakening,hat f not thepurpose henat leasttheresultof religiousreformwas aprotonationalistndoctrinationf "German"ociety. nboth nstances, herelation-shipof religious o politicalchange s misrepresented.Theproblembeginswiththeassumption,entral o thestructure f bothmyths,thattheReformationepresented radicalrupture ndrestructuringf the medi-evalChurch-Stateelationship.ndeed, heentirenotionof a transnational,nifiedChristianity eingshattered y the Reformationgnoresthedecentralized atureof medieval cclesiasticalorganizationndpractices ndthusof religious dentity.Forwhateverdoctrinaldecisionsweremadeby theologians, ouncils,andpopes,the greatestadministrativend thereforepracticalpoweralwaysremainedat theepiscopalorregional evel.This was the mainreason hat ayinvestiture f bishop-rics and otherbeneficeshad beenso contentioushroughoutheMiddleAges aswellas the mainreasonwhy the Reformationid notconstitute hedramatic reakthatmanyscholarshaveassumedt did.Alreadybythe fifteenth entury,hedomi-nationof diocesanpower haddecisively shiftedback to secularrulers,withthesamepotentates surping nincreasing umber f ecclesiastical fficesandrights.As a significantbody of recentresearchhas shown,the Reformation enerallyacceleratedbut by no means initiated this process of secular governmental2expansion.Similarly,manyhistorianshaverepresented rotestantismn general,andLu-theranismn particular,s anomnipotent orce forindoctrinationn theserviceofthe modemstate.There s some truth n this. TheReformation radidin fact wit-ness unprecedentedtandardizationf religious beliefs andpractices,a processaidedby theprintingpress,which eased theproduction nddissemination f reli-giouspamphlets,reatises, ialogues,poems,songs,woodprints,lays,catechisms,and,of course,Bibles.Moreover, lericalpersonnelof alldenominations erere-cruitedandtrainedwithanunprecedentedegreeof thoroughnessndsophistica-tionbeforebeingsent off as domesticandforeignmissionaries.But it is danger-ously misleadingto assume that such attemptedstandardization f religiouspractice ither mmediately ucceededorautomaticallyontributedo thegrowthof earlymodemstates.Thisview,as GeraldStrausshasdemonstrated,asilyover-estimates hedepthandrapidity f religiouslynspired ocialchange.3At thesametime, it also ignoresthe communal,quietist,and even revolutionaryersionsofsomeevangelicalbeliefsandpractices.Thelong-term olitical rajectoryf theReformation astorepress uchrevolu-tionaryandquietistversions,but thattrajectorywasby no meanspredeterminedby the natureof Evangelical aith or by ambitious tate-buildinggendasamong

2 See, e.g., the late medievalerosion of ecclesiastical jurisdictiondescribedin Jorg Muller-Volbehr, Die geistliche Gerichte in den Braunschweig-Wolfenbiittelschenanden (G6ttingen,1973); Georg May,Die geistliche Gerichtsbarkeitdes Erzbischofs von Mainz in Thuiringenesspdten Mittelalters Leipzig, 1956);andHenryJ. Cohn, TheGovernment f the Rhine Palatinatein theFifteenthCentury Oxford, 1965).3Gerald Strauss,LuthersHouseof Learning:Indoctrination f the Youngn the GermanRefor-mation(Baltimore,1978).



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80 Harringtonand SmithGerman ulers. ndeed, he initialpoliticaldirectionof GermanProtestantismp-pearedstrikingly ntiauthoritarian.he current onsensus n Reformation istori-ography xplainsthe subsequentpoliticalevolutionof sixteenth-centuryuther-anism (and later Calvinism)by referenceto threeprogressiveand somewhatoverlapping hases,usuallycalledthe popular r communalReformationuntil hePeasants'Warof 1524-25), the magisterialReformationfromabout the sametime until the Peace of Augsburg n 1555), and the territorialReformationca.1540-1618).Despite he oversimplificationsf this schema, t allowsus to concep-tualize new "imagined ommunities" nd the connectionsbetween ChurchandState mplicit n each.Bothcommunal ndmagisterialnterpretationsf Church-Stateelations mongearly Evangelicals epresented istinctly raditional ersionsof a simultaneouslyreligiousand political gemeinschaft, r community,n the local sense. In a nowclassicworkon theearly appealof Luther'seachings,BermdMoellerargued hatoneof the mainreasons he reformer'seachingsdid so well in imperial ities wasthe sharedvision of religiousidentitywithin a local communalcontext.4Otherhistorians,most notablyPeterBlickle,have found Moeller's o-calledecclesiola(smallchurch)modelequallyapplicablen rural ettings,althoughwith dramati-cally differentmplications.According o Blickle, the Reformation f ruralcom-munes Gemeindereformation)mbodieda dynamicblendof revolutionary oliti-cal andreligiousconcepts hatstruckattheverycore of theexistingsocial order.5Scholars ontinue o debate he causesandconsequences f the brutal uppressionof theGemeindereformationuring he Peasants'Warof 1524-25, agreeingonlythatGermanProtestantism'srief associationwithpoliticalradicalismwas effec-tively marginalizedromthispoint.The subsequentmagisterialReformation lsorepresented communal reccle-siola interpretationf theReformation,ut one thatwasset in thecontextof mu-nicipal politicsand was thereforemore authoritariann nature.In his studyofStrasbourg,orinstance,ThomasBradyclearlydemonstratedhewell-establishedandpervasive ocial dominance f anurbanoligarchyof "mixed entier-merchantclasses"andaristocrats hoconsistently reventedhe moreradical ersionsof thenew religionfromtakingroot.6Despite frequentactionalism n all other ssues,Strasbourg'soliticalelite remainedunited n opposing hedreaded"Swiss solu-

4Bernd Moeller, ImperialCities and Reformation,trans. H. C. Erik Midelfortand MarkU.Edwards 1966; Cambridge,Mass., 1972).5 Forthe most concise statementof his positionin English,see PeterBlickle, CommunalRefor-mation:TheQuest or Salvationin Sixteenth-CenturyGermany, rans.ThomasDunlap (London,1992).6Thomas A. Brady,Jr.,RulingClass, RegimeandReformation t Strasbourg,1520-55 (Leiden,1978). Comparesimilarconclusionsof LornaJaneAbray,ThePeople sReformation:Magistrates,Clergy,and Commons nStrasbourg,1500-98 (Oxford,1985);and WinfriedBecker,Reformationund Revolution(Munster, 1974); as well as R. Po-ChiaHsia, Society and Religion in Miinster,1535-1618 (New Haven, Conn., 1984), esp. pp. 59 ff. See also the very comprehensive urveyofBernhardRuth,"ReformationundKonfessionsbildungm stiidtischenBereich:PerspektivenderForschung,"Zeitschriftder Savigny-StiftunguirRechtsgeschichte,KanonistischeAbteilung77(1991): 197-282, esp. pp.223 ff.



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Confessionalizationn Germany 81tion" of popular,egalitarianpolitical and religious authority.In a laterwork, Bradyarguedthatit is in fact only our modernteleological perspective on nationbuildingthat has continued to blind many historians to the option (viable for many of theimperial cities and smaller principalities of the Holy Roman Empire) of "turningSwiss." The medieval combination of local particularism and political alliances orconfederations, he maintains, represented a form of the early modern "state"thatwas just as legitimate as the territorialmodel (witness Switzerland or the Nether-lands). What nineteenth-century Germans lamented as a "failed transition"or a"national error"Brady therefore sees as occurring mainly because conservativeandjealously independent urbanmagistratesfound neither the Swiss nor the impe-rial model acceptable and instead formed a third alliance with various territorialrulers-the doomed Schmalkaldic League-which in turn had crippling effects onall three types of Germanstates.7 But this process was far from foreordainedby aniron logic of premodernreligious and political change.With the suppression of communal tendencies and the failure of the Schmalkal-dic League, the subsequent dominance of territorial states in defining Protestantpolitical and religious identity seems less surprising. Even those historians whoenvision a much more spontaneous Volksreformation oncede thatprobably by the1530s and certainly by 1555 the social and political aspects of urban religiousreforms had been successfully suppressed by the urbanmagistracy and its conser-vative agenda. From this point on, territorialrulers-or, more precisely, the juristsand theologians who advised them-introduced the most important nnovations inChurch-State relations. Here too, though, the social andculturaldynamics betweenthe religious and political spheres were too complex, the interconnectedness toointricate, to be reduced to a rigid narrativeof the emergence of modern states.The interconnectedness of religious and political change in sixteenth-centuryGermany is in fact the primaryemphasis of the relatively recent historiographicalterm "confessionalization." Its earliest advocates, Heinz Schilling and WolfgangReinhard,have sought to convey a social process thatrepresentsthe full interactionof religious, political, economic, and other interpersonaldynamics in a given re-gion.8 Working on Reformed and Catholic states, respectively, each scholar has

7Thomas A. Brady,Jr.,TurningSwiss (Cambridge,1985), pp.3-7. Bradymakes a similarpointin "SomePeculiarities of German Histories in the Early Modem Era'" n GermaniaIllustrata:Essays on EarlyModernGermanyPresentedto GeraldStrauss, ed. AndrewC. Fix and SusanC.Karant-NunnKirksville, Mo., 1992),pp. 199 ff.8 See esp. WolfgangReinhard,"Gegenreformationls Modernisierung?Prolegomenazu einerTheorie des konfessionellenZeitalters,"Archiv ar Reformationsgeschichte 8 (1977): 226-52,and"Reformation,Counter-Reformation,nd the EarlyModemState:A Reassessment,"CatholicHistoricalReview75, no. 3 (1989): 383-404. Heinz Schilling'smost importantdeas on confes-

sionalizationmay be found in Religion, Political Cultureand the Emergenceof Early ModernSociety:Essays in GermanandDutchHistory(Leiden, 1992),as well as in his earliermonograph,Konfessionskonflikt nd Staatsbildung:Eine Fallstudie iiber das Verhdltnisvon religiosemundsozialemWandel n derFriihneuzeit mBeispielder GrafschaftLippe(Guitersloh, 981).Schillinghas also written a briefhistoriographical verview of confessionalization:"Konfessionalisierungund konfessionellesZeitalter-ein Literaturbericht," eschichte in Wissenschaftund Unterricht42 (1991):447-63. See also the recentsurveyby HeinrichRichardSchmidt,Konfessionalisierungin der FriihenNeuzeit(Munich, 1993).



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82 Harrington and Smithdiscovered strikingly similar developments during the late sixteenth century that,in the words of Schilling, "enabled states and societies to integrate more tightly, anintegration that could not be achieved in any other way because of the specificform of Old European society."9 Both Schilling and Reinhard acknowledge theirindebtedness to previous approaches, specifically to Ernst Walter Zeeden's idea ofconfessional formation (Konfessionsbildung) and Gerhard Oestreich's concept of"social disciplining" (Sozialdisziplinierung).10Like Zeeden, Schilling and Rein-hard emphasize parallel developments among Lutheran,Reformed, and Catholiclocalities and states. Drawing from Oestreich, they also incorporate the idea of anincreasingly authoritarianpolitical elite. But while Zeeden and Oestreich focus ontheology and law, Schilling and Reinhard fix theirgaze principally on bureaucracyand politics. They argue that while the Peace of Augsburg marked the beginningof enforced coexistence and religious tolerance in the cities, the concept of cuiusregio eius religio spurredterritorialrulers to greater aggressiveness in official con-fessionalization. The more ambitious and increasingly confrontational methods ofthese rulers in the years leading up to the Thirty Years' Warhave in fact led HeinzSchilling to propose the title "Second Reformation"or,alternatively,"ConfessionalAge" for the period from 1555 to 1619.11Scholarly support for confessionalization appears to be reaching the level ofconsensus.12 Certainly some historians object to what they consider too sharp adistinction between the earlier and later periods of the Reformation. Others findSchilling's tight integrationof long-termand largely independent political and reli-gious developments-mainly bureaucraticin nature-misleading, particularlyinhis overestimation of their combined social impact in the short term."3Still, most

9Heinz Schilling, "Confessionalizationn the Empire:Religious andSocietal Changein Ger-manybetween 1555 and 1620," n his Religion,Political Culture,p. 209.10See esp. ErnstWalterZeeden,Die Enstehungder Konfessionen:Grundlagenund FormenderKonfessionsbildungm Zeitalter der GlaubenskdmpfeMunichandVienna, 1965), as well as hisessayscollected in Zeeden,Konfessionsbildung: tudienzurReformation,Gegenreformation ndkatholischenReform Stuttgart,1985).GerhardOestreich's ollection of essays on the subjecthasbeen translated s NeostoicismandtheEarlyModem State(Cambridge,1982).See also thehelp-ful historiographicalverview of R. Po-ChiaHsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation:CentralEurope,1550-1750 (London and New York, 1989).11For Heinz Schilling'speriodization,see "The Rise of EarlyModernBurgerElites duringtheSixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," n his Religion, Political Culture,pp. 155 ff., as well as"Confessionalization n the Empire,"pp. 205 ff., and his article from the 1985 conference onthe Second Reformation:"The Second Reformation-Problems and Issues," n Die reformierteKonfessionalisierungn Deutschland-Das Problem der "ZweitenReformation" Wissenschaft-liches Symposendes Vereinsur Reformationsgeschichte 985), ed. Heinz Schilling (Guitersloh,1986), pp.247-301, esp. pp.254 ff.12 For introductions o the scholarlywork on German confessionalization,see, on Lutheranstates,Hans-ChristophRublack,ed., Die lutherischeKonfessionalisierung Gutersloh,1992);andHsia,Social Discipline, pp. 10-25. On Calviniststates,see Schilling,ed., Die reformierteKonfes-sionalisierung;VolkerPress, Calvinismusund TerritorialstaatStuttgart,1970);andHsia, SocialDiscipline, pp. 26-38. OnCatholicstates,see WolfgangReinhardand Heinz Schilling, eds., DiekatholischeKonfessionalisierungGuitersloh, 995);andHsia,Social Discipline, pp. 39-52.13 With respect to the Palatine-Electorate,VolkerPress argues,"In any case a close connec-tion between religious and administrative nnovationis hardlydiscernible-since the time of



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Confessionalization n Germany 83would concede Schilling's major point, namely, the intensification of confessionalformation and related conflicts during the period 1555 to 1619, particularly withrespect to the Reformed (Calvinist) territorialstates. Moreover,all would agree thatregardless of the individual political or religious circumstances, the intertwining ofstate building and confessional interests representeda universal phenomenon in allearly modem German states.What, then, constituted the advantages of "confessionalization" for state build-ing during this period? Confessionalization first entailed "social disciplining" byearly modern elites. A concept thatoriginates from Max Weber,social discipliningis perhaps the most hotly debated aspect of confessionalization. Among historiansthe point of contention is not the existence of political and religious elites, nor thatthese elites played a decisive role in confessionalization and state building.14Rather, the principal historiographical debate revolves around the nature of therelationship between elites and the rest of society, and, by extension, the impact ofofficial religious reforms supported by the elites and at times forced on the people.Some cases represent clear-cut impositions. Certainly some urban elites-inHanover and Augsburg, for example-imposed their minority Catholicism on pre-dominantly Lutheran populations.15 Some scholars, such as Lyndal Roper, BobScribner,and Hans-Christoph Rublack, have described an even more antagonisticrelationship between rulers and ruled, particularly in imperial cities, where thetools of ecclesiastical bureaucracy and religious indoctrination were combined toextend the magistracy's local power.16 But for the majority of German cities andterritorialstates, the nature of the relationship is more ambiguous. Volker Press,Frederick I bothcontinuedon theircourse, paralleland bearing ittle connection between them."See Press,"Die 'Zweite Reformation' n derKurpfalz,"n Schilling, ed., Die reformierteKonfessi-onalisierung,p. 123. See also JoelF.Harrington,ReorderingMarriageandSocietyinReformationGermany Cambridge,1995), pp. 11-15, 199-214, and247-53, for an argumentaboutthe long-termdevelopmentof religiousandgovernmentalmarriagereformsin the same regionas well asfor observations oncerningthedifficultyof bureaucraticntegrationand effective enforcementofnew reforms(particularlyn geographicallysprawling erritorial tates) duringthe late sixteenthandearlyseventeenthcenturies.Onthe latterpointsee also HeinzSchilling,"Between he Territo-rialStateandUrbanLiberty:Lutheranism ndCalvinism n theCountyof Lippe," n The GermanPeople and theReformation, d. R. Po-ChiaHsia (Ithaca,N.Y., 1988), p. 280.

14 Heinz Schilling providesa useful definition of political elite in "UrbanElites and the Reli-gious Conflictsof the SixteenthCentury,"n his Religion,Political Culture,p. 62. See also Hsia,Social Discipline, pp. 15 ff., 174-82, and the bibliographicalnotes on pp. 191-92 and 211-12.15 See esp. PaulWarmbrunn, wei Konfessionen n einer Stadt:Das Zusammenleben on Ka-tholikenund Protestanten n der paritdtischenReichsstadtenAugsburg, Biberach,Ravensburg,und Dinkelsbiihlvon 1548 bis 1648 (Wiesbaden, 1983), pp. 11 ff.; andSchilling,"UrbanElites,"p. 70. CompareHsia, Societyand Religion in Miinster,pp. 7 ff., on the remarkable urvival andrevival of Catholicism n the famousAnabaptist tronghold.16 LyndalRoper,TheHoly Household:Womenand Morals in ReformationAugsburg Oxford,1989); Bob Scribner,"The Reformationas a Social Movement,'"n Stadtbiirgertum nd Adel inder Reformation:Studienzur Sozialgeschichteder Reformationn EnglandundDeutschland,ed.WolfgangJ. Mommsen(Stuttgart,1979), pp. 49-79; Hans-ChristophRublack,Die GescheiterteReformation:FriihreformatorischendprotestantischeBewegungenin sud- und westdeutschengeistlichen Residenzen Stuttgart,1978).See also Rublack,"Reformatorische ewegungund stad-tische Kirchenpolitikn Esslingen,"n StddtischeGesellschaftundReformation, d. IngridBatori(Stuttgart,1980), pp. 191-220.



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84 Harrington and SmithBernardVogler, and Joel Harringtonhave all found strong and widespread resis-tance to most of the reforms of religious and secular elites in the CalvinistPalatinate-Electorate,but also-as in other co-confessional states-some popularsupport.'7Official confessionalization, it seems, often intensified the level and na-ture of local conflicts, thus making state building more difficult. Still, one shouldnot imagine early modem state making as simply a matter of coercive acculturationof a hostile populace.The work of Heinz Schilling suggests an alternative interpretation,emphasizingnot conflict but ratherthe convergence of elite and popular attitudes toward reli-gious reform within a variety of political contexts. His reapplication of Moeller'scommunal ecclesiola model seems especially appropriate o a number of northernGerman cities, where nonconformist Lutheranswere genuinely viewed by magis-tracy and citizens alike as dangers to civic peace.'8 But Schilling's most significantcontribution concerns the new orientation of imperial cities toward the growingterritorialstates of the seventeenth century.According to Schilling, exclusive con-centrationon the confessional conflicts of imperial cities has generally obscured anequally dramatic tension between urban centers and neighboring territorialstates.Within the cities, Schilling sees the decline of guild dominationof urbanleadershipduring the sixteenth century and the gradualemergence of a new professional bu-reaucracy dominated by jurists.'9 For a variety of reasons, including careerism,most of these new leaders felt greateraffinity with the growing absolutist territorialstates than with their own tiny "homelands." Yet, as in the case of the failedSchmalkaldic League, traditional civic patriotism prevailed, bolstering the causeof urban identity and political independence and frustratingthe state-building am-bitions of territorialrulers and jurists alike. Thus civic republicanism did not dieduring the Second Reformation but was instead resuscitated, thriving throughoutthe empire until the catastropheof the ThirtyYears' War.20Confessionalization, then, broughtboth centripetaland centrifugalforces to bearon early modern state building. For Schilling, the process of confessionalization isbased on the "central axis of state and society . . . [running] parallel to, though

17 See Press, Calvinismusund Territorialstaat;BernardVogler,Viereligieuseen pays rhenandans la seconde motie'duXVIesiecle, 3 vols. (Lille, 1974);andHarrington.HansKlueting,"DiereformierteKonfessions-und Kirchenbildungn den westfalischen Grafschaftendes 16. und 17.Jahrhunderts,"n Schilling, ed., Die reformierteKonfessionalisierung,pp. 220-21, even arguesthat n theWestphalianMark here s evidenceof reform nitiatedby thecongregations hemselves.18 Heinz Schilling applies Moeller's characterization f imperialcities to the second half ofthe sixteenthcentury,arguingfor wider lay involvementamong Protestants both LutheranandCalvinist),with "extensiveoverlappingof the ecclesiastical and thepoliticalcircle of leadership,"particularlyn presbyters.See Schilling, "Rise of EarlyModernBurgerElites,"pp. 184 ff. See

also Schilling, "Alternatives o the LutheranReformationand the Rise of Lutheran dentity,"nFix and Karant-Nunn,ds. (n. 7 above),esp. pp. 112-16.19 Schilling,"UrbanElites,"pp. 61-134, and "Riseof EarlyModernBurgerElites,"esp. pp. 155ff. See also Hsia, SocietyandReligionin Miinster(n. 6 above), pp. 200 ff.20 Schilling,"UrbanElites,"pp. 130-31. See also HeinzSchilling,"CivicRepublicanismnLateMedieval andEarlyModern GermanCities," n his Religion, Political Culture(n. 8 above), pp.51-54, and "DutchRepublicanismn Its HistoricalContext,'"n ibid., pp. 13-27, which examinesthe cleverappropriationf "freedom"and"republic" y the antimonarchicalRegents'party.



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Confessionalizationn Germnany 85occasionally in opposition to, the rise of the early modem state and the formationof an early modern society of disciplined subjects.?'2'Emphasizing the centripetalforce of Protestant and Catholic reforms, Schilling calls these official governmen-tal reforms "athirduse of the Law" (a reference to Calvin'scomments concerningthe state and social discipline) and shows how they aided ambitious rulers.22Simi-larly, Reinhard summarizes the "decisive comparative advantages" of these re-forms for rulers engaged in state building as "enforcement of political identity,extension of a monopoly of power, and disciplining their subjects.'23The centrifugal forces of territorialconfessionalization were, however, also for-midable. Religious divisions, along with personal assaults, riots, and vandalism,exacerbated rivalries within and between dynasties to the point of open warfare.According to Schilling, the immediate consequences of confessionalization in-cluded "an alarming mixture of subjective guilt, blindness, indifference, fanati-cism, and indeed diabolical implacability on the one hand,anda fatal accumulationof structuralcircumstances on the other [that] blocked political stabilizing mecha-nisms and encouraged confrontations.?24Some scholars have blamed religiouselites-particularly Catholic Jesuits andCalvinist preachers-for the escalation oftensions duringthe late sixteenth century.Otherspoint to the fundamental inabilityof religious or political elites to compromise on questions of religion.25But thedisastrous results of increased confessionalization-foreign policies driven by acombination of religious fervor and dynastic rivalries-are obvious to all histori-ans, for these policies ultimately culminated in one of the most devastating warsever fought in central Europe.Ironically,the thirty years of destruction that broke the backs of rising territorialstates such as Austria and the Palatinate also wiped out most of the resistance toterritorial state building. In the years preceding and following the Peace of West-phalia in 1648, lesser nobles, urban magistrates, and individual subjects and citi-zens displayed an unprecedented willingness to submit to territorial rulers on avariety of issues, thus initiating a long period of economic recovery and govern-mental expansionism.26For the next 150 years, German cities and territorialstatesreturned to the process of cultural and political confessionalization, but with an

21 Schilling,"Confessionalizationn theEmpire" n. 9 above), p. 209. The arguments the sameas thatof his monograph,KonfessionskonfliktndStaatsbildung n. 8 above).It is also summarizedin Schilling,"Betweenthe Territorial tateandUrbanLiberty,"pp. 268 ff.22 Schillingalso calls theprocess"a turn oward ife" or "reformation f Life,"anintegralaspectof his argumentfor a "second reformation" See Schilling, "The Second Reformation" n. 11above), pp.272 ff.23 Reinhard, "Reformation,Counter-Reformationnd the Early ModernState" (n. 8 above),p. 398.24 Schilling,"Confessionalizationn the Empire,"p. 243.25 See MarcForster,TheCounter-Reformationn the Villages:ReligionandReform n the Bish-opric of Speyer,1560-1720 (Ithaca,N.Y., 1992), pp.118ff., on thepolarizing mpactof the Jesuitsin the diocese of Speyerduring hisperiod;andSchilling,"Between he Territorial tate and UrbanLiberty" n. 13 above), p. 277, on a similareffect of Calvinistpreachersn Lippe.26 RichardL. Gawthrop,"TheSocial Role of Seventeenth-CenturyGermanTerritorial tates,"in Fix andKarant-Nunn, ds., pp. 243 ff.; ThomasRobisheaux,RuralSocietyand the Search orOrder n EarlyModernGermany Cambridge,1989).



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86 Harringtonand Smithimportantdifference. Demilitarized, confessionalization now assumed the form ofpolitical assimilation and culturalhomogenization.Such relative peace, however, was not without its own costs, particularly themany instances of "confessional cleansing."The absence of political parityor reli-gious tolerance in many cities and towns meant that hundredsof thousandsof indi-viduals were forced to migrate to more hospitable locations within the empire orelsewhere.27In some cases, as in the famous Salzburg emigration of 1731-32, thejourney involved thousands of people traveling together to a common destinationhundredsof miles away.In his recent work on this symbol of religious intolerance,Mack Walker analyzes the motives of expellers, expelled, and royal benefactorand, of equal interest, the way in which the Salzburg expulsion was later used inconfessional narratives.Walker retells the story "as successive narrationsof oneevent," each narrationdifferent, each representing "separatebut equal narrativetruths." 8The result is an elegantly conceived, multiperspectivalaccount of an epicevent of confessional conflict that eschews the threadbaredichotomies thatbedevilthe older histories of the expulsion: Catholic zeal here, Protestantsacrifice for thecause of religious freedom there. It may, therefore, be instructive to consider thiswork, as well as the event, in more detail.In Walker'sview, the expulsion constituted a transactionin which the protago-nists shared points of interest, with at least short-term benefits for the politicalactors involved (if quite disastrousconsequences for some of the men, women, andchildren who departedfor the long trek from the Salzburg highlands to the heathsand meadows of East Prussia).Fromthe perspective of the archbishopof Salzburg,Leopold Anton Freiherrvon Firmian,the decision to expel Protestants grew out ofa series of events not all of which Firmian could control, whose origins lay less inreligious fanaticism than in Firmian'sweak and embattled political position in thearchbishopric.Firmian commissioned an investigation into the moral andreligiouscondition of his archbishopric;this, in turn,renewed tensions between the moun-tain peoples (who had hitherto feigned Catholic allegiances) and the officials inthe service of the archbishopric.These tensions were played out in the context ofcomplicated legal structuresconcerning the rules of toleration and expulsion aswell as within the historical context of previous religious dissent in the archbishop-ric. In short, the expulsions were driven by fear of both religious dissent and civilrebellion, and Firmian, whom Walker describes as without a clear idea of what hehad gotten himself into, was "happilyfreed of this wasp's nest."The obliging part-ner though not conspirator-was the King of Prussia, FrederickWilliam I. Forhim, the transaction proved cunningly opportune. With a single stroke, he could"assert leadership in defense of the religious weal and the material interests ofGerman Protestants,while prudentlyadaptingGermanconfessional strife to Prus-

27 Not all migrationswere forced; cf. the apparentlygenuinelyvoluntarymovementsdescribedby Forster,pp. 232 ff.28 MackWalker,TheSalzburgTransaction:Expulsionand Redemption n Eighteenth-CenturyGermany Ithaca,N.Y., andLondon, 1992), pp.xii, 12.



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Confessionalization in Germany 87sian economic advantage."29 ndeed, as Walker shows, the invitation to the Salz-burgerwas "soundbusiness.:30 Similarly, the event provided Charles VI, the HolyRoman Emperor of the German Nation, with an opportunity to act as "an honestbroker" at a time when this position, largely due to the conflict over the PragmaticSanction, was increasingly open to question.3'The role of the broker is central to Walker'sargument, which emphasizes theexpulsion as a transactionand not as a conspiracy.As Walkerwrites, "If this was atrade between them, it was not a conspiracy on either of theirpartsbut a transactionnegotiated at more than arm's length and without direct contact between princi-pals."32The expulsion therefore took place, and could probably only have takenplace, at a very specific juncture of imperial and religious politics. It is also clearthat, aside from the transaction, Archbishop Firmian received little support in theempire, not even from his Catholic colleagues. Indeed, the emperor beseechedhim, as Walker paraphrases, "to put an end to confessional posturing and irrita-tion."33By the mid-eighteenth century, then, the general contours of confessionalconflict and diplomacy had become clear. In terms of its consequences for thestate, the coercive confessionalization practiced by the archbishop of Salzburg hadbecome both outdated and counterproductive.Frederick William I of Prussia, how-ever, with a well-established bureaucracy and civil culture, readily perceived theeconomic, demographic, and propagandisticbenefits of welcoming nineteen thou-sand new subjects, as had his father with respect to twenty thousand French Hu-guenots shortly before. Regardless of the private convictions of individual rulers,enforced religious conformity had become a largely indulgent expense that seriousstate builders could no longer afford.The close connections between state building, economy, and the imperative ofreligious tolerance have also been established by Joachim Whaley with respect toeighteenth-century Hamburg.34Here the cultural and political dominance of Ham-burg'sLutherancommunity clashed with the economic necessity of officially rec-ognizing the right to private religious practice (exercitium religionis privatum-chapels without spires and bells) of local Catholics and Calvinists. Whaley arguesthat it was not, primarily,the discourse of enlightened tolerance ("the spirit of theage") that determined the shift from a narrow to a more tolerant reading of theprinciples enshrined in the Peace of Westphalia.Rather,mercantilistpressure,ren-dered more severe after the economic crisis that followed the Seven Years' War,forced the Lutherancitizenry of Hamburgto concede greatertoleration to the con-fessional groups recognized in the Treatyof Osnabriick.Moreover, the discourseof toleration still remained within the interpretiveframework of cuius regio eius

29 Ibid.,p. 86.30 Ibid.,p.98.3'1Ibid.,p. 118.32 Ibid.,p. 107.33 bid., p. 135.34JoachimWhaley, Religious Tolerationand Social Change in Hamburg1529-1819 (Cam-bridge, 1985).



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88 Harrington and Smithreligio. Even in the city of Lessing in the late eighteenth century, religious toler-ance was not yet pitched in terms of humanite; and Mennonites, Sectarians, andJews were not extended the same rights as Calvinists and Catholics.3s

The economic basis for expanded religious toleration is, of course, neither anew nor an unambiguous idea.36With competing economic interests at stake, thetoleration question could prove especially divisive, as in the so-called Kolner To-leranzstreit of 1787 between Cologne's master craftsmen and the pro-tolerationpatriciate and merchant class. Local studies continue to reveal how and why toler-ance was so fiercely resisted and thus so late to develop. Full legal and politicalrights for members of minority religions remained generally as inconceivable toeighteenth-century state builders as sheer coexistence had been to their early sev-enteenth-century predecessors. In Hamburg,a city known for its toleration, officialtoleration for all Christian religions was not achieved until 1785 and full paritywas not granted until 1819. Territorial states and their clerical backers displayedsimilar recalcitrance. The Toleranz-Patent ssued by Austria's enlightened JosephII led the way in granting parity for religious minorities, but it was only reluctantlyfollowed by Prussia in 1788, by Bavaria and Wuirttembergn 1803, by Baden in1818, by Hesse in 1831, and by Saxony in 1841.37IIThe eighteenth century did, then, mark an importanttransformation n the relation-ship between confessional identity and state building. By the end of the centurythe rigid juridical structures of cuius regio eius religio had begun to crack andcrumble, not just in isolated cities and regions with peculiar confessional compo-sitions but throughout Germany. Consequently, historians have traditionally per-ceived the eighteenth century as constituting the end of an age dominated by con-fessional concerns. In 1965 Ernst Walter Zeeden could argue without much fear ofcontradiction that "from the middle to the end of the seventeenth century,confes-sional influences were on the wane. In the eighteenth century, they only played asubordinate role.:38Yet recent studies-less focused on juridical constraints andhigh politics, more interested in popular mentalite-have begun to expand thedefinition of confessional concerns. Indeed, Etienne Franqois has recently en-treated German historians to consider the post-Reformation religious division as acontinuously central factor in modern Germanhistory,to imagine the architectonicplates of this division as being governed by what Fernand Braudel has called thelongue duree, and to observe the shifting causes of friction, the changing forms ofconfessional affinity and antagonism. From this perspective, historians would not

35 Seeibid.,pp.145-68.36 For older studies, see, in particular, oseph Leclerc, Tolerationand the Reformation,2 vols.(London, 1960);and the collection of essays in HeinrichLutz, ed., Zur Geschichte der ToleranzundReligionsfreiheit Darmstadt,1977).37 See HermannConrad,"Religionsbann,ToleranzundParitatam Ende des Alten Reiches," nLutz, ed., pp. 171-92.38 Zeeden,Die Entstehungder Konfessionen n. 10 above), p. 181.



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Confessionalizationn Germany 89simply narratethe late seventeenth century as the end of the confessional age;rather,they would redirect the focus of their research on confessionalization froma concentration on the questions of state building to a concem with meaning andidentity. How, in other words, was an "imaginarycommunity" constructed acrosswhat Francois calls "the invisible boundary"of confession?This, indeed, is the subject of his pathbreakingstudy of Protestantsand Catho-lics in Augsburg from 1648 to 1806, Die unsichtbare Grenze.39Arguing for thecentrality of the confessional boundaryto the communal life of Augsburg, Franqoisdelineates its twisted path along demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural lines.It is not easy to communicate the shades of subtle differentiation that characterizehis careful analysis. Demographically, he shows a dynamic Catholic populationcounterposed to a stable Protestantone; these demographic scissors, he maintains,were the result partly of confessional attitudes, but more importantly of the wayin which demography and confession overlapped to produce confession-specificconfigurations in migration pattems, marriage patterns, and population growth.Thus, for example, the fact that Lutheranmarriagepartnerstypically came fromdistant Protestant cities, while Catholic partners were drawn almost exclusivelyfrom the nearby countryside, had importantramifications for the comportment ofmembers of each confession.40 He also shows how coexistence and competitionbetween confessions influenced-"dialectically"-demographic patterns withinAugsburg. But perhaps the most important discovery of Francois's study is thedivergence between objective differences and subjective perceptions. Francoisdemonstrates that while Catholics and Lutheranscoexisted in Augsburg in differ-ent, if overlapping and often entangled, social and economic spheres, they never-theless perceived that the boundary between them, far from being invisible, wasquite distinct.As in eighteenth-centuryHamburg,the interests of the Augsburg business com-munity necessitated flexible, undogmatic cooperation across confessional lines.But far from fading, perceptions of difference sharpened in this period. Francoisanalyzes these "subjective" perceptions by looking first at confessional contro-versy, then at confessional identity. He demonstrates that confessional controver-sies-in the form of sermons and pamphlets against the other confession, didactictheater,rituals of intraconfessional solidarity-reached their high point in the lateseventeenth and early eighteenth centuries but declined in power and popularitythereafter.4'Yet in the course of the eighteenth century, Lutherans and Catholicspowerfully reaffirmedtheir confessional identities, as Francois illustratesby docu-menting the increasing tendency of Catholics and Protestants to insist on confes-sionally specific Christian names: in the case of Catholics, an increase, for ex-ample, in "Jesuit" first names (Aloys, Ignaz, Xavier); in the case of Protestants,more "non-Catholic" names as well as more names of Protestant and Germanic

39 EtienneFranqois,Die unsichtbareGrenze:ProtestantenundKatholiken nAugsburg,1648-1806 (Sigmaringen,1991).40Ibid.,pp. 54-60.41 Ibid.,pp. 143-66.



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90 Harrington and Smithheroes.42Following Norbert Elias, Franqoisinterprets this as evidence of a power-ful "process of internalization"and suggests that, by the end of the eighteenthcentury, confessional identity had become so firmly implanted that it "could nolonger be separated from the person and belonged, as it were, to the essence ofevery Augsburg citizen."43This analysis representsa subtle but certain shift in the historiographicalconcernwith confessionalization. Focused less on theology or administrative praxis, thisanalysis seeks to identify the deep contours of culture and identity. As the verygradual nature of confessional formation gains recognition among early modemhistorians, more and more historians have come to share Franqois'semphasis bothon the laterperiod (after the Peace of Westphalia)and on a more interactiveculturalprocess than sixteenth-century studies have suggested. Among the growing numberof works emphasizing the dialectical dimension of the process of confessionaliza-tion, Marc Forster'sprizewinning The Counter-Reformation n the Villages: Reli-gion and Reformin the Bishopric of Speyer,1560-1720 stands out for its emphasison the local processes by which confessional identity was constructed and for itsforceful critique of a self-evident association of confessionalization and statebuilding. Examining the Bishopric of Speyer, one of a number of small territoriesthat made up much of the old regime in southern and western Germany,Forsterargues that the Counter-Reformation ultimately prevailed in the Bishopric ofSpeyer not because of a state-drivenprocess of confessionalization, nor because ofa one-sided acculturation to a new post-TridentineCatholic culture, but ratherbe-cause of the continued vitality of traditional Catholic religion in the villages.44This is an argument of considerable revisionist import, as historians, focusingmore typically on Bavaria and the Habsburg territories,have usually emphasizedthe sorry state of the Catholic hierarchyin the sixteenth century and have, accord-ingly, attributedconsiderable transformativepower to the outside influence of theterritorial state and the post-Tridentinechurch. Forster instead emphasizes the te-nacity of community-orienteddevotion (weekly religious services, masses, proces-sions, local pilgrimages) and shows considerable resistance to post-Tridentine,Counter-Reformation piety (frequent confession and communion, individualprayer,austere self-discipline). Post-Tridentine practices introducedby reformingJesuits, he argues, probably had an impact on clerical concubinage and relatedabuses, but they did not take immediate root in popular consciousness or signifi-cantly shape confessional identity. Indeed, not until the early eighteenth centurycould one discern a distinctive Catholic culture in the bishopric and even then it

42 Ibid., pp. 167-89. See also PeterZschunke, KonfessionundAlltag in Oppenheim:BeitrdgezurGeschichtevonBevolkerungundGesellschafteinergemischtkonfessionellenKleinstadt n derfruhen Neuzeit (Wiesbaden,1984), p. 111,who documentsanincreasing endencyto differentiateaccording o firstnamestoward he end of theeighteenthcenturywithout,however,according hisdevelopmentcentralsignificance.43 Francois,Die unsichtbareGrenze,pp. 178-79.44 Forster(n. 25 above), p. 9. For the social acculturation rgumentsof Frenchhistorians,seeJean Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire:A New View of the Counter-Reformation(London, 1978); and RobertMuchembled, Popular Culture and Elite CultureinFrance,1400-1750 (Baton Rouge, La., 1985).



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Confessionalizationn Gernany 91was characterizedmuchmoreby traditionalndpre-Reformationommunal itu-als and values.Forster's videnceis ultimatelymore extensiveanddetailedforthe failureof official clericalreforms han it is for popularconfessionalization.Nevertheless,his findingschallengehistorians o reconsider onfessional orma-tionas a processmorenegotiatedhan mposed.Forster's bservationslso suggestconsiderable evisions n the way we look atthe hardening f confessionaldivisionand antagonism.According o theconfes-sionalizationmodel, this hardening ccurred sa resultof the social-discipliningmeasures f therising,and ncreasingly bsolutist, erritorialtate.ButForster, isanalysis ocusedon a weakstate,discernsa similarhardening, otbeforebut after1648, and not so much state-drivens fueled by the identification f the villagecommunewith the revivalof traditionalCatholicreligiosity: his,in otherwords,is the intolerance f the Catholichometown. mpressively ocumented sa seriesof confessional onflictsaswell as theunwillingness f Catholic illagers oacceptProtestantmmigrants,t was also an intolerancehat welledup from below, itspace acceleratingn the late seventeenth ndearlyeighteenth enturies.45The pace and geographical atternof confessionalhardeningwill remainanobjectof scholarlydebate-perhaps theinevitable esultof thevastlyvariegatedsocial andpoliticalcontextsof theold regime.Yet t seems clearthatby theearlyeighteenthcenturymuch of what WilhelmHeinrichRiehlonce calledthe thirdGermanywas divided,as Forsterputs it, "into two confessionalcultures."46uthere, on the culturalcusp of the divide,the historiographyemainsunderdevel-oped.As R. Po-chiaHsiawritesof the seventeenth ndeighteenth enturies: Thegreatgapinourknowledge s the socialhistoryof culture:hequestions f literacy,book ownership,he sociologyof reading,patronage, nd thehistoryof meaningdo not as yethavedefiniteanswers. 7 Yet researchnto"thehistoryof meaning"is preciselywhatwe need to establish he links between heearlymodernprocessof confessionalizationndthe social significanceof confessional dentityduringtheeighteenth ndnineteenth enturies.AsFrangois rguesnthe conclusionof hiswork:"Onlybecause heconfessionalbordershadbecome(firstly)an internalizedborder-and therefore argely ndependentf the institutional reconditionshatled to their formation-could theysurvive the radicalstructuralhangesof theearlynineteenth entury dissolutionof theReichskirche,he carryingout of theprincipleof religiousparityandreligiousfreedom, herise of multiconfessional,religiouslyneutral tateson the rubbleof theEmpire)andcontinue o exist in a

45 See esp. Forster,p. 232.46 Ibid., p. 214. Riehlhimselfofferedpoignantcomments on confessionalcooperationand con-flict. See, e.g., Wilhelm HeinrichRiehl, Die Pfalzer: Ein Rheinisches Volksbild StuttgartandAugsburg, 1857), pp. 369-408, and,moregenerally,ReligioseStudieneines WeltkindesStuttgart,1894), pp. 225-40.47Hsia,SocialDiscipline (n. 10above),pp.89-90. Fora start n thisdirection,see KlausGarber,"Zentraleuropaischeralvinismusund deutsche 'Barock' Literatur:Zu den konfessionpolitischenUrsprungenderdeutschenNationalliteratur,"n Schilling, ed., Die reformierteKonfessionalisier-ung (n. I1 above), pp. 317-48; DieterBreuer,"DeutscheNationalliteraturnd katholischerKul-turkreis,"n Nation und Literatur n Europain der FruhenNeuzeit,ed. Klaus Garber Tlibingen,1989).



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92 Harringtonand Smithcompletelyalteredcontext."'48hus by focusingon the internalization f confes-sionalculturewe canbegintosketch hecontinuities nddiscontinuitiescross helate eighteenth ndearlynineteenth enturies.

The problem emains,however,hat orthe eighteenth nd nineteenthenturiesthe research n theconfessionaldimensionof whatHsia calls the "socialhistoryof meaning"s still in its infancy.Thuswe haveonly scatterednformationn thetopographyf confessional eading n thenineteenth entury, venthougha num-ber of historianshaveconvincinglyargued hat confessionallynformedreadingcontinued o dominateGerman rint ulture.49imilarly,we have ew serious tud-ies of religiouspublishers,uch as Herder,ortheCatholicworld.50he degree owhich confessionallydeterminedulturalworldsstill determined orizons here-fore remainsan openquestion.Hsia suggeststhat n the earlymodemperiod hemost dramatic plit was betweenthe bilingualBaroquecultureof Catholicism,which drew considerablentellectual ustenance rom Spanishsources,and theProtestant orldof learning,whichwas ideologically entered n the interests ndreadingof the urbanmiddleclasses, was more dependenton the vernacular fLuther'sBible, andwas moreopen to intellectualnfluences rom EnglandandHolland.5' ccordingo Hsia,the creation f confessionally omogeneousulturescontributed ecisively to thegeneralprocessof confessionalizationhought o becentral o the emergenceof earlymodemterritorialtates.52IIIDid thesedeep culturaldivisionsalsocripple heemergenceof a unifiedGermannation, as nineteenth-centuryationalists tridentlynsisted?The answer o thisquestiondepends,n part,on how it is posed.If we followErnestGellner'snsightthatnationalistsmakenations,andnotthereverse, henreligionmustbe seen as apersistentandaggravatingourceof contentionamongcompatriots f the newly

48 Francois,Die unsichtbareGrenze,p. 242.49Forconfessionalreading n the earlymodemperiod,see the comments of EtienneFrancois,"Del'uniformit6a la tolerance:Confessionet soci6t6urbaineenAllemagne,1650-1800,"AnnalesE. S. C. 37, no. 4 (1982): 793-94, and "Buchhandelund Buchgewerbein Augsburgim 17. und18. Jahrhundert,"nAugsburg nderFriihenNeuzeit:BeitrdgezueinemForschungsprogramm,d.JochenBruningand FriedrichNiewohner(Berlin, 1995), pp. 332-42. For Protestantreadinginthe nineteenthcentury, ee KlausMiiller-Salget,Erzdhlungfiirdas Volk:EvangelischePfarreralsVolksschriftstellerm Deutschland des 19. JahrhundertsBerlin, 1948);for Catholic reading,nocomparable tudyexists.50Onthepublishing ndustrygenerally, ee, fora convenientstartingpoint,ReinhardWittmann,Buchmarkt ndLektiirem18. und19.Jahrhundert:Beitrdgezum iterarischenLeben,1750-1880(Tuibingen, 982).Fora recentexampleof thefruitfulnessof thisapproach,althoughconcentratedon liberalProtestantpublishingatthe end of thenineteenthcentury, ee Gangolf Hubinger,Kultur-protestantismusundPolitik (Tuibingen, 994), pp. 190-218. On Catholicpublishingwe are stillquiteuninformed,butsee theexemplary reatmentof one of the mostimportantCatholicpublish-ers, Joseph Bachem,in ThomasMergel,ZwischenKlasse undKonfession:KatholischesBurger-tumim Rheinland1794-1914 (Gottingen,1994),pp. 195-2 10.5' Hsia,Social Discipline, pp. 89-12 1.52 Ibid.



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Confessionalization in Germany 93imagined nation.53This is, in fact, the line of argumentpursued in Wolfgang Alt-geld's complex and impressive study on religion and nationalism in nineteenth-century Germany.54n this work, a revised Habilitationsschrift and the first partof a projected two-volume study on confessional division and modem Germannationalism, Altgeld pursues the complex relationship between an emergent Ger-man nationalism and the persistence of religious division in the period from thelate Enlightenment to the Revolution of 1848. Specifically, he focuses on the im-pact of "national religious ideas" on two aspects of German nationalism: modemanti-Catholicism and modem anti-Semitism. Altgeld does not argue that these twosentiments are the same, but rather that they share an important common root inthe nationalist vision of Germansas a chosen people.55This vision, argues Altgeld,flourished in Protestant more than in Catholic thinking, in liberal more than inorthodox milieus, and represented an aspect of the larger process of secularization.Moreover,the idea of Germans as "chosen" accompanied Germannationalist ideasfrom the start.56Accordingly, Altgeld unearths the importance of national-religiousassumptions in the thinking of Herder and Nicolai, von Dohm and Schleiermacher,Fichte andArndt, as well as in a number of lesser-known figures.National-religious ideas hadthree essential components, which, given the legacyof cuius regio eius religio, necessarily led to conflict: the assumption that Protes-tantism defined what it was to be German, the belief that a perfect nation would bereligiously homogeneous, and the projection of a future German utopia in whichnation and religion would be one. This set of ideas necessarily excluded the com-plex, if imperfect, confessional arrangementsthat marked the old regime. More-over, following a line of emerging literatureon nationalism, Altgeld argues thatthedrive for religious homogeneity was essentially a modernizing drive. He offers theexample of FriedrichNicolai, whose travelsthroughoutGermanyin the 1780s wereintended to help create a nation defined by cultural cohesion.57Far from celebratingGermany's religious plurality,Nicolai was first shocked, then dismayed by whathe considered the sheer backwardness of Catholic culture in southem Germany, abackwardness all the more evident when seen against the light of an emerging,enlightened Protestant culture increasingly coterminous with the nation itself. Es-pecially irked by the Byzantine set of rules that characterizedparitycities such asAugsburg, Nicolai considered such arrangementsoutdated and no longer befittingan enlightened age. Altgeld argues that a confessionally determined constructionof national identity underlayNicolai's insights and thatthis way of perceiving Ger-manness became more pronounced still in the process of the reconfessionalizationof German life after the Wars of Liberation and after the tricentennial of Luther's

53 ErnestGellner,Nationsand Nationalism(Oxford,1983), p. 1.54 WolfgangAltgeld, Katholizismus,Protestantismus,udentum:Uber religios begriindeteGeg-ensdtzeundnationalreligioseIdeeninder Geschichtedes deutschenNationalismus Mainz, 1992).55Ibid., pp. 47-76.56 Forimportant eflectionson this issue, as well as suggestionsfor periodization,see HartmutLehmann,"TheGermansas a Chosen People: Old TestamentThemes in GermanNationalism,"GermanStudiesReview 14, no. 2 (May 1992):261-73.57 Altgeld, p. 58.



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94 Harringtonand Smiththeses in 1817. As Altgeld puts it, "thebeginning reconfessionalization of religionat the start of the nineteenth century also meant . .. the confessionalization of Ger-man national thought.?'58

This is an importantinsight. Moreover, the confessionalization of German na-tional thought had, according to Altgeld, a number of profound consequences forthe course of German history in the nineteenth century. First, to the Protestant-informed versions of Germannationalism, the new confessionalization impartedacertain missionary zeal to German nationalism. More specifically, Altgeld arguesthat national-religious ideas, which sought to overcome confessional division byerasing ultramontaneinfluence, ultimately served to radicalize German national-ism. Thus nationalism, far from being an ersatz religion, drew some of its mostvolatile substance from Germany'shistory of confessional polemic.59Second, theappropriationof this messianic traditionby enlightened Protestantsmeant that Ger-man Catholic understandingsof the nation were very different from the visions ofnationalism to be found across the confessional divide. Indeed, Altgeld writes of anational consciousness, but not an ideologically driven nationalism, among Ger-man Catholics in nineteenth-century Germany. Here the argument concerns lessthe degree of nationalistenthusiasm, and still less its antiforeign impetus (comparethe anti-Frenchpolemics of the Catholic publicist Joseph G6rres), than the specificinternal logic behind confessionally determined nationalist visions. Third,Altgeldinsists on the importance of confessional division for understandingthe tangledtraditionof anti-Judaism in Germany, and specifically for understandingthat partof the traditionthatculminated in modern anti-Semitism. He shows how "nationalreligious" assumptions led GermanProtestants to see Jews not as just another reli-gious group but also, and more portentously,as anotherpeople-another Volk.Hethus locates arguments for a "utopiaof a Germanworld without Jews" in the earlynineteenthcentury andmaintains that this utopia was all the more dangerousfor itsappeal to a Germanic-Christian religion shorn of Old Testament immoralityand unenlightened popular religiosity-in short, for its appeal to a religion ofreason.60Altgeld's arguments imply that Germany's three-hundred-year-old tradition ofreligious division imparted a considerable burden to nineteenth-centuryattemptsto create an imagined community. But this burden is less to be found in the every-day reality of religious division than in its ideological instrumentation. In thissense, the legacy was extremely volatile and unsettling. Yet Altgeld's study, pre-cisely because it is the first to address these issues squarely,raises as many ques-

58Ibid., p. 162.59 Ibid., p. 22. Ontherelationshipof confessionaldivisionto modemGermannationalism,albeitin a laterperiod,see HelmutWalserSmith,GermanNationalismandReligiousConflict:Culture,Ideology,Politics, 1870-1914 (Princeton,N.J., 1995).60On this particular"utopia,"ee Altgeld, p. 50. Thoughwe havenot, in this article,addressedthe problem of anti-Semitism,Altgeld'swork shows that the terms of inter-Christianivalryanddebate also had profoundeffects on the specific trajectoryof anti-Semitism n modem Germanhistory.For a brilliantanalysisof this issue, sheddinga greatdeal of new light on the relation ofLiberalsin Baden to Jewish emancipation,see now DagmarHerzog, Intimacyand Exclusion:ReligiousPolitics in Pre-Revolutionary aden (Princeton,N.J., 1996),pp. 53-84.



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Confessionalizationn Germany 95tions as it answers. To what extent did the confessionalization of nationalist thoughtamong intellectuals reflect a broader confessionalization of national identityamong the wider public? Does confessionalization follow radicalization in thesphere of public discourse, as Altgeld sometimes suggests, or is this radicalizationitself the result of social and demographic changes? What is the relationship ofan ever-wider reading audience to the process of "reconfessionalization" in thenineteenth century? Here we come up against the limits of a methodological ap-proach confined to delineating the logic of nationalist arguments in selected pub-lished texts. Do these texts reflect local, popular antagonisms?Does Altgeld's peri-odization make sense when seen from the ground?The social history of the confessional division in the early nineteenth centuryremains, unfortunately,a seriously neglected field of inquiry.Social historians, forexample, have yet to consider the impact of long-term migrations on confessionalcityscapes. Yet, at least in some cities, these demographic changes were of consid-erable import. To take one case: Breslau, which in the seventeenth century wasalmost exclusively Lutheran (its conversion to Lutheranismwas accepted in theSchlesisches Majestdtsbrief of 1609), became, over the next three centuries, in-creasingly Catholic. In 1800, Breslau'spopulation of fifty-nine thousand consistedof 72 percent Protestants, 24 percent Catholics, and 4 percent Jews. By 1905, itspopulation (1,773,198) consisted of roughly 56 percent Protestants, 42 percentCatholics, and 2 percent Jews.6' When considered in the long term, such transfor-mations, complicated by changes in class and ethnic composition, no doubt had aprofound impact on the social and political life of the city, not to mention on therelationship between the two major religious groups. Yet we know far too littleabout the consequences of this religious sea change.Similarly, social historians have been slow to consider the impact of the Frenchoccupation on religious communities, as well as their reaction to it. This remainsthe case despite the thesis, based largely on scatteredand often anecdotal evidence,advanced over a decade ago in T. C. W. Blanning's The FrenchRevolution in Ger-many: namely, that "for Catholic and Protestant Rhinelandersalike, religious faithsupplied both the occasion and the justification for opposition to the French."62Blanning suggests that while confession as a general category cannot be seen as areliable indicator of whether a population welcomed or resisted Frenchoccupation,local confessional configurations were often decisive. He offers the examples ofBermersheim near Alzey (Hessen) and Worms: the former a mixed communityunderCatholic rule in which Catholics and Protestants shared the same church andwere, therefore, in constant strife; the latter a demographically mixed town inwhich Protestants(73 percent Lutheran,6 percent Calvinist) dominated Catholics(13 percent) and Jews (8 percent). In Bermersheim, local Protestantsperceived the

61 For suggestive commentson this problem generally,see Franqois,Die unsichtbareGrenze(n. 39 above), pp. 230-243. On Breslau specifically,see ibid., p. 233, n. 22; and H. A. Krose,KonfessionsstatistikDeutschlands(Freiburg,1904).62 T. C. W. Blanning, The French Revolution in Germany: Occupationand Resistance in theRhineland(Oxford, 1983), p. 247. See esp. his chapter"ReligionandNationalism,"n ibid., pp.207-54.



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96 Harringtonand SmithFrench as liberators and, for this reason, were denounced by their Catholic towns-men as traitorsto the fatherland. In Worms, Lutherans embraced the Revolution,while Catholics and Calvinists opposed it.63Unwilling to hazard generalization,Blanning prudently observes that the "relationship between sectarian strife andresponse to the Revolution ... cries out for systematic investigation."4Part of this systematic investigation would examine the effects of redrawing po-litical boundaries on confessional communities; another would look at the demo-graphic rupturethat the Revolution and the Wars of Liberation caused; and stillanother would investigate the dialectic of secularization and religious revival thatmarked the early nineteenth century. The issue of secularization is, of course, cen-tral to an understanding of confession and community in the nineteenth century.But here too we are just beginning to see distinct interpretivecontours. For Protes-tants,historianswill have to await the publication of dataon religiosity and secular-ization compiled by Lucian Holscher and his coworkers at the University of Bo-chum, where a detailed database on the topographyof religious observance is beingcompiled. This will give us precise quantitative nformationon religious infrastruc-ture as well as on confessional geography and on the rate of adherence to standardreligious practices.65But quantitative material only brings us part of the way. AsH6lscher himself has pointed out, "What an enlightened Christianof 1800 under-stood as religious worship had hardly anything in common with what was under-stood by this term two generations later, and by 1900 Christian convictions wereexpressed in ways that were qualitatively different from half a century earlier."66H6lscher has convincingly argued that we should take into account not only stan-dardized measurements of religious practice and participationbut also subjectiveand historically changing perceptions of what it meant to be religious. This maycomplicate simple notions of a gradual long-term secularization (which he sees asbeing counterbalanced by tendencies toward sacralization), but it may also reinte-grate an analysis of changing patterns of religious behavior into a larger culturalhistory of German society.67The qualitative natureof these changes is, at present, better understood for theCatholic community, in large partbecause of a significant amount of new researchon the religious life of the Catholic middle and upper classes during the transitionfrom the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. In an impressive work entitledGlaubeundReligion nderSdkularisierung:ie katholische tadt-Koln, Aachen,Miinster- 1700-1840, Rudolf Schlogel has, for example, convincingly docu-mented the process of secularization among the middle and upper classes of three

63 Ibid.,pp. 245-46.64 Ibid., p. 245.65 The title of theproject s "Datenatlas urreligi8senGeographiem protestantischenDeutsch-land 1850-1940."66 LucianH61scher, Secularization ndUrbanizationn the NineteenthCentury:An InterpretiveModel," n HughMcLeod, ed., EuropeanReligionin theAge of GreatCities,1830-1930 (London,1994), p. 266.67 Forreflections,see LucianH81scher, Diereligi8seEntzweiung:Entwurfzu einer GeschichtederFrbmmigkeitm 19. Jahrhundert"unpublished naugural ecture at the Ruhr-UniversitatBo-chum,June26, 1992).



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Confessionalization in Germany 97Rhenish cities. Exploiting sources such as book ownership and reading patterns,testaments andobituaries (Totenzettel),he has shown that the process of seculariza-tion among the Catholic middle class preceded the onset of the Catholic enlighten-ment. In Schlogel's view, the Catholic enlightenment was therefore an answer tothe problem of secularization and not its cause.68Combining careful demographicanalysis with an ethnographic sensibility, Schlogel also provides an analytical vo-cabulary with which to reexamine the process of secularization and therefore thelarger dilemmas of nineteenth-century religion as well. Following Nikolas Luh-mann, Schlogel perceives secularization as part of the "evolutionary process ofdifferentiation within society."69Religion and religious ethics became, in this in-terpretation, a "second code," which was forced to coexist with other moral dis-courses as well as with other constituent factors of personal identity.70The "disen-chantment of the world," and the marginalization and aestheticization of religion,therefore followed the dissemination of knowledge, the rise of the idea of Bildung,and (closely connected) the cultivation of a civic (biirgerlich) idea of the individualpersonality. By 1830 religion remained only a part, and often a problematic part,of the identity of a Catholic BurgerThe subject of the relationship between religious identities and other identitieshas also been taken up by Thomas Mergel in his recently published Bielefeld dis-sertation,Zwischen Klasse und Konfession: Katholisches Biirgertum mRheinland,1794-1914. Mergel argues that between 1794 and 1848 a unified urban bourgeoi-sie existed as a liberal, enlightened, ruling elite and that the rise of ultramonta-nism-an antibourgeois movement supported by a clerically manipulated petitbourgeois and rural population-destroyed this unity. The consequences, heshows, were of considerable moment. Before 1848 one could be both Catholicand bourgeois; religion and world were separate spheres, not hardened milieus ofirreconcilable ideological systems. After 1848, and particularly by the late 1860s,this was no longer the case, and Catholic members of the urbanbourgeoisie wereforced to decide between two social milieus: that of ultramontaneCatholicism orthat of the local, bourgeois, liberal elite. Most chose the latter. For Mergel, thedecisive break came with the Kulturkampf,which marked the successful pairingof confessionalization with mass mobilization and mass politics.The motor of this transformationwas, according to Mergel, the rise of ultramon-tane piety, which he defines, not unproblematically, as "antirevolutionary deology,a process of immunization against political revolution and social modernity."'71Based on an extreme emphasis on clerical authority and direction, ultramontanepiety forced the process of differentiation vis-'a-vis other confessions and, as such,represented a "counterreality"to the world of Cologne's Catholic bourgeoisie,

68 RudolfSchlogel, GlaubeundReligion in der Sakularisierung:Die katholischeStadt-Koln,Aachen,Miinster-1700-1840 (Munich, 1995), p. 333.69 Ibid., p. 24.70 Ibid.,p.28.71 Mergel (n. 50 above), p. 169. The classic work on ultramontanepiety and its relationtonineteenth-centuryGermansociety is, of course, DavidBlackbourn,Marpingen:Apparitionsofthe VirginMaryin Nineteenth-CenturyGennany (New York, 1994).



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98 Harringtonand Smithwhichwas markedby a muchhigherdegreeof interconfessionalociability hanhistonanshavetraditionallyupposed.Thepicture hatemerges romthese newworks s of a reconfessionalizationfCatholic ife in mid-nineteenth-centuryermany-not simplya return o theoldreligionafter hebrief nterlude f the Catholic nlightenmentuta redefinitionfwhat t meant o be Catholic.Centralo this redefinitionwasthe clergy itself.Yetfor nineteenth-centuryermanyherehavebeen few serious attempts o under-standthe clergy as such, a fact all the moreastonishingwhenwe consider heirimportances shapersof religious deas,beliefs, andpractices.Thislacunahas now been filledfor Protestant astorsn Prussiaby OliverJanz'sBurgerbesondererArt, andforthe Catholicclergyby IrmtraudGotz von Olenhu-sen7s tudyof the priestsof theArchbishopricf Freiburg,Klerusundabweichen-des Verhalten.72n thecourseof thenineteenth entury, nd especiallyafter1850,the Protestant astorsof Prussiabecameincreasingly strangedrom the centralvaluesof the educatedGermanBiirgerJanz races heir ncreasingly istinct tatuswithin he GermanBiirgertumy delineating ot onlytheir deologybut alsotheirAlltag,by demonstratinghe gradual rosionof theirsocial statusas well as bypointing o apowerfulrend oward esacralizationf thespiritual ffice.The trans-formation f the Catholicclergyran apace.In her study,Gotz von Olenhusen r-guesthat nthecourseof thecenturyheclergybecame ncreasinglyuralnoriginand thattherise of ultramontanismorrespondedwith a drasticdecline in youngpriests romthe cities andfromthe middleandupperclasses.Yet thisprocesswasby no meansa natural ne-quite the contrary. heruralizationf the Badeneseclergyoccurredn inverseproportiono the moregeneralprocessof urbanizationand modernization.Moreover, trictdiscipliningandpolicingaccompaniedhisruralization,s Gotz von Olenhusenpointsout by showingthe myriadwaysinwhichclergyweredenounced, ited,anddisciplinedor nonconformist ehavior-in some casespolitical, n otherssexual.In this sense,her findingscomplementMergel'swork,which, in the end, at-tempts o illuminate he processby which theCatholicChurch ncreasinglymar-ginalizedmembersnotwilling to bend to its authority.Whobelonged,andwhodidnot,wastherefore efinedwithina complexdialecticof disciplining,margin-alization,andresistance-a processnotunfamiliaro historiansof earlymodemconfessionalization. ndeed, Mergel'sstudy maybe readas an examinationofthe processesandconsequencesof confessionalizationor a specific class in anineteenth-centuryontext.IVWhenconsidered ver he ong term,what s strikings thetenacityof confessionalidentities, he sheer resilienceof identitiesconstructed verthe course of three

72 OliverJanz,BurgerbesondererArt: evangelischerPfarrerin Preussen 1850-1914 (Berlin,1994);IrmtraudGotz von Olenhusen,Klerus undabweichendes Verhalten:ZurSozialgeschichtekatholischerPriesterim 19. Jahrhundert:Die ErzdiozeseFreiburg Gottingen,1994).For a more



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Confessionalizationn Germany 99centuries by dint of complex negotiations between rulerandruled,between officialand popular religion. In the nineteenth century, as Rudolf Schlogel has convinc-ingly shown, confessional identities and loyalties competed with other identitiesand other allegiances and, in certain historical configurations, confessional tiesproved the less powerful. Yet they were never absent, and, as Etienne Franqoismight argue, confession remained an important and determining factor in thelongue durie of modem Germanhistory.What, then, constituted the main lines ofcontinuity? Where can one discern rupture? What themes and periods remain tobe researched?Research on confessional identity has focused on three processes: the construc-tion of confessional identity as part of early modern state building; the internaliza-tion of confessional identity as part of the larger process of the constitution ofsubjects and citizens; and, in the final period, the instrumentalization of confes-sional identity andconfessional history in the service of a renewed confessionaliza-tion (in the case of Catholics) and of an incipient nationalist ideology (in the caseof Protestants).The first focus-the construction of confessional identity-represents a rela-tively advanced tradition of historical research:historiansworking on this problemhave undertaken a series of closely researched case studies, have hammered out aprecise conceptual apparatus,and have arrived at a considerable level of consensusconcerning the timing and implementationof confessionalization from above. But,taken together, these studies have often overemphasized the coercive power of thestate while underestimating the degree to which local traditions and popular cul-tures contributed to the process of confessionalization.73Here, again, Marc For-ster's study of the Bishopric of Speyer proves particularly revealing: In Speyer, astate with relatively weak tools of coercion, confessionalization occurred neverthe-less, owing not to the power of the state or to the vigor of post-TridentineCatholi-cism, but rather to indigenous traditions and communal experience. Similarly, inthe case of Augsburg, Franqois has demonstrated how local traditions of parityshaped the modalities of confessional formation and confessional conflict. Andfrom a different vantage, and in a later period, Thomas Mergel has shown how,in the case of Cologne, the communal traditions of the Cologne Biirgertumpro-foundly affected confessional loyalties, serving, quite often, as a countervailingforce against exclusive confessional positions. Such local studies, carriedout overthe long term and cutting across traditionalchronological boundaries, promise to

detailed review of these two works,see HelmutWalserSmith,"Priests,Pastors:The Transforma-tion of the ChristianClergyin Nineteenth-CenturyGermany,"Bulletinof the GermanHistoricalInstituteof London18,no. 1 (February1996):21-3 1.

73 Even Schilling,a pioneerin comparativeand interdisciplinary pproaches o the traditionalsubjectof ecclesiasticaldiscipline,has remainedconstrainedby his politicalemphasesto a para-digmof culturalchangefromabove.But, on this problem,see Heinz Schilling, ed., Kirchenzuchtund Sozialdisziplinierung n friihneuzeitlichenEuropa, Zeitschrift fuirHistorische Forschung,Beiheft 6 (Berlin, 1994), esp. the contributionsby HeinrichRichardSchmidt, Helga Schnabel-Schiile, and Hans-JurgenGoertz, all of whom emphasize social control and transformation"frombelow."



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100 Harringtonand Smithreshape he field of inquiry, hiftingthe focus fromadministrative raxis to thenegotiation f confessional dentity.74Confessionalexclusivityand the negotiationof confessional dentitydid not,however,occur withina simple space of dichotomouspossibilities-Catholic orProtestant, bedient ubjector resisting itizen.Rather,heformation s well as thedissolution fconfessional dentitiesookplacewithinacomplexarena f multipleloyalties,sometimescompeting,sometimesoverlapping.From the start,confes-sional identitywas intertwinedwith class or casteconsciousness,with economicinterest,with equallypowerful orcesof sociability, nd,not least,with local tradi-tions of negotiation cross he confessionaldivide.In oursearch or apreciseunderstandingf thecreation f confessional ommu-nities as well as of theongoingnegotiation f confessionaldentities,we are con-frontedwitha paucity, ather hananabundance,f historical tudies.Theseriouslacunaeare n theeighteenth ndnineteenth enturies; utevenfor the earlierpe-riod,theanswer o thequestionof howconfessional ommunitieswerecreatednolongerseems self-evident.Certainlynmany nstances tatecoercionwas decisive.Buthistoriansarenow beginning o understandhe localprocesses nvolvedandthat, o borrowaphrase romCliffordGeertz, he reachof thestate s notthe sameas its gra

confessionalization and state building in germany

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