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The Political Alignment of the Centre Party in Wilhelmine Germany: A Study of the Party's Emergence in Nineteenth-Century Württemberg

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

David Blackbourn
David Blackbourn
Affiliation:
Jesus College, Cambridge
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Extract

Less than a month before Bismarck's dismissal as German chancellor, the Reichstag elections of February 1890 destroyed the parliamentary majority of the Kartell parties - National Liberals and Conservatives - with whose support he had governed. The number of Reichstag seats held by diese parties fell from 221 to 140, out of the total of 397; they never again achieved more than 169. To the multitude of problems left by Bismarck to his successors was therefore added one of parliamentary arithmetic: how was the chancellor to organize a Reichstag majority when the traditional governmental parties by themselves were no longer large enough, and the intransigently anti-governmental SPD was constantly increasing its representation? It was in this situation that the role of the Centre party in Wilhelmine politics became decisive, for between 1890 and 1914 the party possessed a quarter of the seats in the Reichstag, and thus held the balance of power between Left and Right.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , December 1975 , pp. 821 - 850
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

1 Cf. Rosenberg, A., Imperial Germany, translated by I. Morrow, F. D. (London, 1931), p. 18.Google Scholar The possibility of such a coalition was regarded as a major danger by Bismarck, and by his successors, like Hohenlohe. Hohenlohe, C. zu, Denkwürdigkeiten der Reichskanzlcrzeit, ed. von Müller, K. A. (Stuttgart, 1931), p. 451 ff.Google Scholar

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8 Morsey, Die deutschen Katholiken, p. 45.

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10 Kreuzzeitung, 31 Dec. 1906,Google Scholar cited in Crothers, G. D., The German Elections of 1907 (New York, 1941), p. 122.Google Scholar Bismarck complained in the 1880s of the ‘constant flirtation’ of the Kreuzzeitung with the Centre. The Holstein Papers, ed. Rich, N. and Fisher, M. H., 4 vols (Cambridge, 1955–63). II, 191.Google Scholar

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14 There was a considerable contemporary literature on the problem of ‘Catholic backwardness’, some hostile but much written from the Catholic side, giving detailed information from official statistical returns on the relative under-representation of Catholics in industry and commerce, in the free professions, in state bureaucracies, in universities and technical colleges. Catholic incomes, measured by tax returns, were also considerably lower on average than Protestant and Jewish incomes. See Rost, J., Die wirtschaftliche und kulturelle Lage der deutschen Katholiken (Cologne, 1911);Google Scholar Neher, A., Die wirtschaftliche und soziale Lage der Katholiken im westlichen Deutschland (Rottweil, 1927);Google Scholar Forberger, J., Die wirtschaftliche und kulturelle Rückständigkeit der Katholiken und ihre Ursachen. Flugschriften des Evangelischen Bundes, Heft 263/4 (Leipzig, 1908).Google Scholar See also Naumann, F., Demokratie und Kaisertum (Berlin, 1900), p. 122.Google Scholar A good example of the struggle between Protestant towns, with their industry, commerce and bureaucracies, and the Catholic countryside, is to be found in Baden. Cf. Dor, F., Jacob Lindau, Badischer Politifker und Volksmann (Freiburg/Breisgau, 1909).Google Scholar

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18 Adolph Gröber, born Riedlingen/Württemberg, II February 1854, son of a prosperous goldsmith and engraver. Graduated from Stuttgart Gymnasium 1872, studied law at Tübingen, Leipzig and Strassburg, entering state judiciary 1877. He had reached position of state prosecutor in Ravensburg when political activity interrupted his legal career. Entered Reichstag for XV Württemberg constituency 1887, and Lower House of Landtag 1889, representing his home town. In Württemberg he was unchalleged leader of local Centre party until death in 1919. In Berlin he quickly became a confidant of Windthorst, and from the 1890s was regarded as one of the most important southern German leaders of the national Centre.

19 See map, pp. 828–9.

20 Bauer, C., Politischer Katholizismus in Württemberg bis zum Jahr 1848 (Freiburg/Breisgau, 1929), p. 19.Google Scholar

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23 Between 1802 and 1842 alone the Church Council published 377 ordinances, almost twice as many as the episcopal authorities. Bauer, Politischer Katholizismus, p. 14.

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31 The accounts of the Centre party given in the sources noted above (fn. 30) are representative in making this judgement.

32 Report on census returns by Gustav Schmoller, in Württembergische Jahrbücher (WJbb) (1862), p. 283 ff.Google Scholar

33 WJbb (1863), p. 40 ff.; Das Königreich Württemberg. Eine Beschreibung von Land Volk und Staat. Herausgegeben von dem Königlichen Statistisch-topographischen Bureau (Stuttgart, 1863), p. 551. (Henceforth: Das Königreich, edition cited.)Google Scholar

34 Gehring, P., ‘Von List bis Steinbeis’, Zeitschrift für württembergische Landesgeschichte, VII (1943). 435.Google Scholar

35 Dessauer, L., Die Industrialisierung von Gross-Stuttgart, Diss. (Tübingen, 1916), p. 198.Google Scholar

36 Das Königreich (1863), p. 429. In the Allgäu, the consolidation of common land into farms had been taking place from as early as the end of the sixteenth century. Cf. Hoffmann, H., Landwirtschaft und Industrie in Württemberg (Berlin, 1935), pp. 139–40.Google Scholar

37 WJbb (1847), p. 179 ff.

38 Hainlen, K. C., Gemeinjassliche natürliche Beschreibung Württembergs. Mit besonderer Beziehung auf die Landwirtschajt (Stuttgart, 1867), p. 94.Google Scholar

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40 Bios, W., Benkwürdigkeiten eines Sozialdemokjaten, 2 vols. (Munich, 1914–19), II, 74.Google Scholar

41 Das Königreich (1863), p. 349.

42 Beschreibung des Oberamts Ellwangen, Herausgegeben von dem Königlichen Statistisch topographischen Bureau (Stuttgart, 1886), pp. 202, 267.Google Scholar

43 Das Königreich (1907), VI, 14.

44 Wbb, 1 (1898), 206–7. Miller, Max, in his Eugen Bolz, Staatsmann und Bekenner (Stuttgart, 1951), has a good description of Rottenburg in the last decades of the nineteenth century; a ‘stilles Landstädtchen’ while industrialization was beginning in the surrounding areas.Google Scholar

45 Cited by Dehlinger, G., ‘Ein Uberblick über die Entwicklung der Landwirtschaft in Württemberg seit der Mitte des 18 Jahrhunderts’, WJbb, I (1897), 71.Google Scholar

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48 WJbb, II (1896), 122.Google Scholar

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51 A declining rate of infant mortality also, of course, played a part, for it had earlier been highest in the Catholic areas. A Heimatsroman set in Oberschwaben, Meine Steinauer (Stuttgart/Leipzig, 1908), and written by Wilhelm Schussen, a school friend of Matthias Erzberger, confirms the widespread use of family labour on the farm, and discouragement of those children who preferred to leave the land to seek employment.Google Scholar

52 WJbb, I (1897), 74 Insurance premiums were especially severe in agricultural insurance, because the returns to the companies were smaller and much less reliable. In life insurance, for example, only 50 per cent of income was returned in claims, in agricultural insurance 80 per cent. At a time when land was losing its profitability, the companies were naturally concerned also about fraudulent claims.

53 Over the three periods 1880–84, 1885–9 and 1890–94, the fall in land values was actually levelling off in the state as a whole; in the Donaukreis the loss of saleable value was still increasing, from 9·7 per cent in 1880–84 to I2·3 Per cent in 1890–94. WJbb, II (1895), 21.

54 In the 1820s interest rates were usually 4 per cent, after mid-century 51/2 per cent. WJbb, I (1897), 70 In the second half of the century agricultural co-operative banks, after Raiffeisen's model, were established, but they too had to reckon with the vicissitudes to which agriculture was peculiarly prone, and the consequent unreliability of the peasant as a debtor. Stockmayer, an Agrarian deputy in the Wiirttemberg Lower House, spoke of one such association with an interest rate of 6 per cent ‘to encourage prompt repayment’. Verhandlungen der Württembergischen Kammer der Abgeordneten auf dem 33 Landtag. Protokoll Band 1, 120, 10 Sitzung, 8.3.1895 (henceforth: 33 LT, PB 1, 120., 10 Sitz., 8.3.1895).

55 WJbb, II (1895), 9, 14.

56 WJbb, I (1893), 133 ff.

57 Rottenburger Zeitung und Neckarbote, 16 Sept. 1911.Google Scholar

58 Cardauns, H., Adolph Gröber (M-Gladbach, 1921), p. 26.Google Scholar

59 ‘Hopelessness and dependence on the factory owner, the destruction of family life and the spreading of immorality’ would attend industrialization. WJbb (1839), p. 71 ff. Cf. the remarks of Minister von Weckherlin, retorting to Friedrich List's demand for government-sponsored industry, that ‘factories are the greatest danger, for they bring men up to become either beggars or agitators’. Marquand, Geschichte Württembergs, p. 335; Gehring, Von List bis Steinbeis, p. 414.Google Scholar

60 Losch's overriding interest in the social problems of industrial society put him on close personal and political terms with Friedrich Naumann's ‘Social Liberal’ group, for whom he contested a Württemberg Reichstag election against a Bauernbund Agrarian. See Miller, M. and Uhland, R. (eds.), Lebensbilder aus Schwaben und Franken, ix (Stuttgart, 1963), 403, 406–7.Google Scholar

61 WJbb, II (1895), 20 ff.

62 Drill, R., Soil Deutschland seinen ganzen Getreidebedarf selbst produzieren? (Stuttgart, 1895), PP. 23 36 ff.;Google Scholar Rosenberg, H., ‘Zur sozialen Funktion der Agrarpolitik im Zweiten Reich’, Probleme der deutschen Sozialgeschichte (Frankfurt/M., 1969), p. 60.Google Scholar

63 Bartens, A., Die wirtschajtliche Entwicklung des Königreichs Wurttemberg mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Handelsverlräge (Frankfurt/M., 1901), p. 35Google Scholar ff. Milling technology in Germany was initially incapable of dealing with the hard wheat from the great plains of Central Europe and North America, but by the 1880s new techniques developed in the U.S.A. by millers using prairie wheat had been introduced into Germany, and from that time the remaining advantage of domestic grain was destroyed. Cf. Hardach, K. W., Die Bedeutung wirtschaftlicher Faktoren bei der Wiedereinführung der Eisen- und Getreidezölle in Deutschland 1879 (Berlin, 1969), p. 76.Google Scholar

64 Hainlen, Gemeinfassliche natürliche Beschreibung Württembergs, pp. 86–7.

65 On this subject, see especially Gerschenkron, A., Bread and Democracy in Germany (Berkeley, 1943),Google Scholar who argues at length the Junker deception practised on animal-breeding and dairying producers; and Krohn, H.-B., Die Futtergetreidewirtschaft der Welt 1900–1954 (Hamburg/Berlin, 1957), especially p. 37.Google Scholar On the adverse effect of the maize tariff on the medium-sized producer, see Teichmann, U., Die Tolitik der Agrarpreisstutzung (Cologne, 1955), p. 203.Google Scholar

66 Bühler, Die Stellung Württembergs, pp. 12, 47–8; Hardach, Die Bedeutung wirtschaftlicher Faktoren, pp. 120–1.

67 Beschreibung des Oberamts Gmünd, Herausgegeben von dem Königlichen Statistisch- topo graphischen Bureau (Stuttgart, 1870), p. 354.Google Scholar

68 Gmünder Tagblatt, 15 Apr. 1902.Google Scholar

69 WJbb, II (1895), 25.Google Scholar

70 WJbb, II (1895), 14, 25; WJbb, I (1897), 74. Horse-raisers also feared a flood of foreign imports: the number of horses imported in 1860 was 35,000, in 1874 67,000, in 1898 122,000. For reactions to this, cf. Ipf-Zeitung, 14 Sept. 1899.

71 Schwab, E., Weiss, P., Haltermann, K. et al. , 100 Jahre Oberschwäbische Industrie und Handelskammer (Ravensburg, 1957), pp. 58–9. The Centre party supported the 1887 ‘margarine law’; demanded heavier taxation on margarine and supported legislation to ban its sale in places where butter was sold; was a moving spirit behind the Reichstag committee motion to make mar garine unpopular by dyeing it ‘the (colour) of the oaken wainscoting of the Reichstag building’; and was a cosignatory along with the Conservatives and Anti-Semites of the 1896 draft bill (June 1897 law) to subject margarine to even more stringent public health investigations (controls over milk and butter were negligible).Google Scholar

72 Teichmann, Die Politik der Agrarpreisstützung, p. 638. Stuttgart was a major centre both for the chemical industry and the manufacture of sophisticated brewery equipment which could make the use of surrogates like rice possible.

73 Spelt prices in 1894 were at only II M./dz. WJbb, II (1896), 122.

74 Lindeboom, K., ‘Das Privatversicherungswesen’, Bruns, V. (ed.), Wüirttemberg unter der Regierung König Wilhelms II (Stuttgart, 1916), p. 911; WJbb, 1 (1897), 73.Google Scholar

75 WJbb, II (1895), 14, 25. The case of one fraudulent Jewish cattle-dealer in Ravensburg was much discussed in the press, and even carried into the Lower House in 1895 by the energetically anti-semitic Centre deputy for the area, Theophil Egger. Cf. also Friedrich Payer's description of his Agrarian opponent at a by-election in Besigheim at the same period: ‘His campaign was not delicate, and portrayals of the lawyer (i.e. Payer - DGB) having the mortgaged cow taken away from the despairing peasant family at the bidding of the Jew played a major part’. Payer, F., Mein Lebenslauf, typed MS (Stuttgart, 1932), pp. 35–6.Google Scholar

76 On the similarity of Hohenlohe and the Alb to Oberschwaben, see Schremmer, E., Die Bauernbefreiung in Hohenlohe (Stuttgart, 1963),Google Scholar and Konig, M., Die bäuerliche Kulturlandschaft der Hohen Schwabenalb (Tübingen, 1958). On the origins of the Bauernbund in these years, Oekonomierat Rudolph Schmid. Ein Lebensbild eines württembergischen Bauernführers (no author, Stuttgart, 1927).Google Scholar

77 For example, Xaver Rathgeb, landholder and mayor in Ellwangen; Johannes Schick, mayor of Laupheim; Theophil Egger, secretary of the Ravensburg Agricultural League; Franz-Xaver Krug, mayor of Biberach and chairman of the local agricultural loan bank.

78 Bartens, Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung des Königreichs Württemberg, p. 110.

79 In 1882, there were two large shoe factories in Württemberg; in 1895 twenty. By the time of the war, Jacob Sigle's Salamander factory in the Kornwestheim suburb of Stuttgart employed 3,400 workers.

80 See the petition of small millers, 34 LT, Beilage Band III, Beilage 167, 483.

81 WJbb, I (1893), 143; and cf. the speeches of the deputies Schmidt (Maulbronn) in 54 LT, PB IV, pp. 3529–30,113 Sitz, 10 May 1900, and Schumacher (Spaichingen) in 55 LT, PB IV, p. 2683, 123 Sitz, 8 Aug. 1902, on the chronic overcrowding in this sector.

82 WJbb, 1 (1893), 142–2.

83 See the lives of Volkspartei politicians, in Schmidt-Buhl, Schwäbische Volksmänner.

84 In Mein Lebenslauf, Payer calculated his annual income from such sources by 1917 as more than 40,000 M.

85 Conrad Haussmann, a true free-trade liberal, was characteristically interested in canal and railway projects, where many of his own advisory positions were. His role as intermediary between government and contractors in the Neckar Canal project can be followed in detail in his papers at the Stuttgart Hauptstaatsarchiv, Nachlass Haussmann, J47/104. These Volkspartei connections with big business and commerce were a powerful political weapon in the hands of Centre and Conservatives. Cf. the Bauernbund pamphlet An die Landtagswähler der Oberamtsbezirk Münsingen (n.d., 1906?); and Deutsches Volksblatt, 3 Dec. 1906.Google Scholar

86 Bosch was a close friend and political supporter of Conrad Haussmann. The entrepreneurial myth was especially strong in Wurttemberg, where so many dramatic personal case-histories seemed to prove the truth of it: Daimler, risen from Cannstatt baker's son; Sigle from shoemaker to head of Salamander; Ernst Junghans from master watchmaker to entrepreneur with world markets; Voith, expanding the family locksmith's shop in Heidenheim to an enterprise capable of supplying the turbine engines installed at Niagara Falls. See Zorn, W., ‘Typen und Entwicklungs kräfte deutschen Unternehmertums’, in Born, K. E. (ed.), Moderne deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Cologne/Berlin, 1966), pp. 36, 429;Google Scholar Ehmer, W., Südwestdeutschland ah Einheit und Wirtschaftsraum (Stuttgart, 1930), pp. 48–9, 53, 55.Google Scholar

87 Relations between liberals and government were by no means smooth in these years, but a combination of Payer's conciliatory gifts, and the flexibility of Prime Minister von Mittnacht and ministers like von Pischek, enabled a degree of co-operation between politicians and government unique in Wilhelmine Germany. Cf. Simon, Die württembergischen Demokraten, p. 49 ff.

88 Cf. Centre programme, Eckard, J. (ed.), Politische Zeitjragen in Württemberg, iv (Stuttgart, 1900), 1–6.Google Scholar

89 Complaints of this kind filled the local Centre press. One of the objects of the 1897 guild legislation in the Reich was to return more control over apprentices to the master.

90 An inquiry of 1904 showed that out of 300,000 children of school age, 70,000 worked in some form of paid agricultural employment, nearly half as domestic servants. When this is added to the number working unpaid, the universal pattern in Oberschwaben, it can be seen how powerful an interest the larger peasant proprietor had in restricting educational expansion.

91 A meeting of the Catholic Teachers Association at Ravensburg, in 1901, was to pass a set of ‘Theses’ deploring the frustrations which attended the efforts of its members to rise in the profession. Politische Zeitfragen, 9, p. 144. Eight years later a Jagstkreis local meeting of the same body was so incensed by the ‘clerical block’ that it voted full support to the Volkspartei educational spokesman, Löchner - who was a freemason. Deutsches Volksblatt, 9 Jan. 1909.

92 Cardauns, Adolph Gröber, p. 65.

93 Bachem, , Vorgeschichte, Geschichte und Politik, VIII, 67.Google Scholar

94 Probst speech at Ochsenhausen, reported in Deutsches Volksblatt, 12 Jan. 1895.Google Scholar

95 Cardauns, Adolph Gröber, p. 67; Bachem, , Vorgeschichte, Geschichte und Politik, VIII, 75. The deputies Schick (Laupheim), Bueble (Waldsee), Kiene (Ehingen) and Haug (Ulm) helped to complete the core of the future Centre party - although Haug subsequently sat instead with the Bauernbund.Google Scholar

96 Cardauns, Adolph Gröber, p. 28.

97 Bishop Hefele, for example, wrote to Probst on 30 Oct. 1877, expressing his unwillingness to see a Centre group in the Lower House. Scheuerle, Der politische Katholizisrnus in Württemberg, Appendix III, p. 261; and cf. Miller, Eugen Bolz, p. 36. In the 1880s Hefele and his assistant (later Bishop) Reiser felt the founding of a Centre party would be ‘inopportune’. Bachem, , Vorgeschichte, Geschichte und Politik, VIII, 60–1. On Gröber's poor relations with Reiser's successor, Keppler, see Bachem, VIII, 74.Google Scholar

98 Cardauns, Adolph Gröber, pp. 104–5.

99 Spahn, M., Das deutsche Zentrum (Mainz/Munich, 1907), pp. 81–2;Google Scholar Nipperdey, T., Die Organisation der deutschen Parteien vor 1918 (Düsseldorf, 1961), pp. 281–2.Google Scholar

100 Bachem, , Vorgeschichte, Geschichte und Politik, VIII, 78–9.Google Scholar

101 At an electoral meeting in the Oehringen constituency, for example, Friedrich Haussmann told his audience that he was in favour of retaining duties on agricultural products at the Caprivi level. This was in flat contradiction to official party policy; Oehringen was nevertheless lost to the Bauernbund. On this, and the result at Crailsheim, where the Agrarians polled over 40 per cent of the vote at the first attempt, see Simon, Die württembergischen Demokraten, p. 42. The two seats were identical in social structure and type of agriculture practised to Centre seats in the same area, like Neresheim and Ellwangen.

102 Deutsches Volksblatt, 17 Jan. 1895.Google Scholar

103 A note on the margin of Centre party victories may be useful here. The electoral system allowed for two ballots, with a run-off between the top two candidates if no one candidate obtained an overall majority on the first ballot. Forty-four of the 70 elected seats to the Lower House were decided on the first ballot; 16 out of 18 Centre seats were won without a run-off. In the Oberschwaben seats the margin of first ballot wins was usually overwhelming: in Ehingen, the Centre deputy leader, Hans Kiene, polled 3,441 votes out of 3,511 cast. These results were achieved on an average turn-out throughout the state of 75 per cent, compared with only 44 per cent in 1889, when genuine party competition was much less.

104 Simon, Die württembergischen Demokraten, pp. 28–9.

105 In a 1900 Lower House division forced by the Centre on a motion to raise tariffs, six Vollkspartei deputies voted against their own party, Conrad Haussmann made an ambiguous defence of free trade, and only Carl Betz maintained the old liberal hostility to tariffs of any kind. In Geislingen and Göppingen, Volkspartei local councillors - one a businessman dealing in t agricultural implements - voted approval of even higher tariffs.

106 In Bavaria, where three-quarters of the total population was Catholic, Herding could still describe the Bavarian Centre as the party of ‘grain tariffs and compulsory guilds’: Herding, Erinnerungen, II, 54.

107 The social ideas of Franz Hitze, of the ‘realist’ left wing of the party, were straightforwardly corporatist: he foresaw a society organized into seven ‘estates’ (Stände), with production rigidly controlled. There would be no rootless proletariat, and every member of society would be ‘conservative and happy again’ within his own self-governing Stand. This, no less than the extreme right-wing Oberdorffer Programme of the 1890s, had its centre of gravity among the peasantry and Mittelstand, not in the working class. Cf. Jostock, P., ‘Der soziale Gedanke im deutschen Katholizismus’, Hebing, K. and Horst, M. (eds.), Volk im Glauben (Berlin, 1933), pp. 143–4.Google Scholar

108 Ibid. p. 147.