don't tread on me

Talk about one cool group of people – the post-Kulturkamph Catholics in Germany had it going on. I was just amused during Anderson’s “The Kulturkamph and the Course of German History” that this supposedly ignorant, illiterate and un-autonomous group was able to repeatedly puzzle and anger the upper-class, educated, and politically savvy individuals attempting to control the outcomes of elections. I found it humorous that the more liberal parties, after advocating and receiving more universal suffrage, get angry when local Catholic majorities use their votes to outvote liberal sentiments. All of a sudden they no longer seem pleased with more universal suffrage. Angry at the Catholics’ densely uniform voting patterns, Wilhelm Wehrenpfennig attributes their success to their “dumbness.” What was really dumb, however, was the amount of attention and fear-mongering that rose up over this new Catholic threat. For example, Anderson mentions how in the elections of Upper Silesia in 1871 the Center Party (supported by Catholics) only “garnered a mere 27%” of the votes in a regency where Catholics made up more than 90% of the population.” All the attention of the election, however, went to one small district’s results, Pless-Rybnik, where little known esthetic Father Eduard Muller was able to defeat a much wealthier, cultured, incumbent, prince/duke. Round of applause ladies and gentlemen for Father Ed Muller. What I loved was that he beat the prince at his own game – pretend not to care about politics, let natural deference play the deciding factor, etc. He was essentially a hermit, and he beat the prince. Awesome. Further evidence for the coolness of this group of Catholics in Germany at this time is their non-loyalty to papal decision. No one, not even Bismarck (or the Pope apparently), can put a finger on these guys to control them – they flow in their own current.