Noel Cary. The Path to Christian Democracy: German Catholics and the Party System from Windthorst to Adenauer. Cambridge, Mass and London: Harvard University Press, 1996. xi + 355 pp. $49.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-674-65783-0.

Reviewed by Jonathan Sperber

Published on H-German (April, 1996)

If, as Ecclesiastes tells us, there is nothing tion. By the early years of the twentieth century, new under the sun, then we must wonder how he suggests, a number of Center politicians were the words of the preacher are to be reconciled growing increasingly disenchanted with the Ger‐ with the founding of the CDU. Here, surely, was a man party system and its proliferation of politi‐ genuine novelty: a party that broke down the con‐ cally infexible parties based on abstract ideas-- fessional barrier characteristic of German elec‐ Weltanschauungsparteien was the phrase they toral politics since the introduction of universal used. They sought a political realignment, leading manhood sufrage, attracting large numbers of to a British-style system with two main parties, Catholic and Protestant voters as no predecessor one in government, one in opposition, each en‐ ever could. This transformed the central Euro‐ compassing supporters with diferent cultural pean political universe and made the CDU the and religious ideals, each politically fexible and dominant force in the Federal Republic of Ger‐ promoting concrete economic and social interests. many, a position it retains to this day. In The Path The Center, they suggested, could be the agent to Christian Democracy, Noel Cary asserts that the for such a political realignment, but in order to do Christian Democratic Union was not quite so nov‐ so, it would have to attract Protestant voters by el as it may appear at frst glance and that its giving up something of its Catholic- confessional post-1945 founding and remarkable success aura, perhaps even by taking the drastic step of should be seen in the context of a four-decades- ceasing to advocate confessionally segregated long efort to reform the German party system. public education. The interconfessional (if pre‐ As the book's subtitle indicates, Cary sees this dominantly Catholic) Christian labor movement efort and the intellectual debate accompanying it always played a major role in such considera‐ as occurring primarily among supporters of the tions, since the envisaged reformed Center was Center Party, before 1933 the main political repre‐ generally understood as a party that would pro‐ sentative of 's Roman Catholic popula‐ mote social-welfare ideals with an anti-laissez H-Net Reviews faire slant, thus enabling it to obtain a broad spec‐ portrait of the reformers' social and economic trum of working-class support. Cary traces the programs remains vague. fortunes of this idea beginning with Julius Even taken on its own terms, though, I have Bachem's celebrated "Wir muessen aus dem Turm to wonder if the book's argument is entirely con‐ heraus!" article of 1906, through the eforts dur‐ vincing--whether the diferences between the ing the of Christian trade-union post-1945 CDU and the politics of the Federal Re‐ leader Adam Stegerwald and those of Joseph public and pre-1933 Catholic visions of political Wirth, the dominant fgure in the Center Party's reform do not outweigh the similarities. Contrary left wing. It was this viewpoint, the author sug‐ to the reformers' plans, the Federal Republic has gests, that motivated the founders of the CDU af‐ not had a two-party system. The labor movement, ter 1945, but also (and this is one of the most in‐ although formally non-partisan, has in fact been teresting points of the book) their rivals, who re‐ closely afliated with the SPD, something that the founded the Center Party, which, in the newly cre‐ pre-1933 Catholic politicians' realignment plans ated political entity North-Rhine Westphalia, was were designed to prevent. As Maria Mitchell has able to ofer the CDU a few years of spirited com‐ shown in an impressive article in the June 1995 petition. Ultimately, the CDU proved the more ap‐ Journal of Modern History, the early CDU was propriate heir to this political tradition and very much a Weltanschauungspartei, energetical‐ helped shape the West German polity and party ly denouncing secularism and materialism while system in the direction that past Center politicians promoting the Christian values of the "West." Per‐ had wished to go. haps most important, supporting the interconfes‐ This book is best understood as a history of sional CDU did not mean that Catholics had to political ideas, in which the author traces the per‐ give up political markers of their distinct cultural sistent notion of reform of the party system identity, as earlier reformers had suggested. They through quite diferent political situations, often could continue to support confessional public ed‐ abstracting from the diferent and specifc con‐ ucation (Cary distortingly downplays the great im‐ texts in which the same idea was repeatedly em‐ portance of this issue for the early CDU); take a phasized. Consequently, some of the literature distanced and polemical attitude toward Protes‐ dealing in detail with particular situations, such tants; and, above all, follow the political lead of as Winfried Becker's history of the founding of the clergy (and it is odd that a book on German the CDU, or Ute Schmidt's account of its confict Catholics and the party system has virtually noth‐ with the refounded Center after 1945, is men‐ ing to say about clerical attitudes toward poli‐ tioned only briefy in the book; other works, such tics)--that is, they could continue to live in a dis‐ as Karsten Ruppert's Im Dienst am Staat von tinct, separate Catholic subculture while voting Weimar, a history of the Center in the years for an interconfessional party. 1923-30, do not appear at all. Ruppert's book, for A book that culminates in the successes of the instance, shows that Stegerwald's and Wirth's ini‐ CDU must consider , yet Cary tiatives were by no means coordinated, but sepa‐ can show nothing in Adenauer's extensive rate, diferent, and more mutually contradictory pre-1933 career to connect him to the earlier re‐ than complementary. Ruppert also delineates the form initiatives. In a similar way, the pro-free specifc conficts of economic interests out of market ideas of Ludwig Erhard, another crucial which some of these initiatives developed, an is‐ fgure for the CDU, seem quite diferent from the sue that Cary does not address, and the author's statist or corporate economic conceptions ad‐ vanced by earlier Catholic political fgures. Adam

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Stegerwald died unexpectedly in 1945, but his bright young man from the 1920s, Heinrich Bru‐ ening, played no role in the CDU, as was the case with the other prominent 1920s reformer, . There is thus not much evidence for a per‐ sonal continuity in these reform policies, and the occasional fgures Cary can produce in support of such a notion, such as the ex-Christian unionist Karl Arnold, the long-term Minister-President of North-Rhine Westphalia and advocate of a CDU- SPD coalition, were not in the political main‐ stream of the postwar Christian Democrats. In sum, after reading this intellectually stimu‐ lating, elegantly written, and carefully researched book, the best and in many ways the only English- language treatment of the subject, I came away unconvinced by its main thesis. The CDU was something new under the sun; Noel Cary underes‐ timates the political innovations of Konrad Ade‐ nauer and the specifc post-1945 political circum‐ stances --including the memory of the Nazi regime, the division of Germany and onset of the Cold War, and the long postwar economic boom-- that brought his ideas to fruition. Copyright (c) 1996 by H-Net, all rights re‐ served. This work may be copied for non-proft educational use if proper credit is given to the au‐ thor and the list. For other permission, please con‐ tact [email protected].

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Citation: Jonathan Sperber. Review of Cary, Noel. The Path to Christian Democracy: German Catholics and the Party System from Windthorst to Adenauer. H-German, H-Net Reviews. April, 1996.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=423

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