Defunct
125-548: Defunct The German Conservative Party ( German : Deutschkonservative Partei , DkP ) was a right-wing political party of the German Empire founded in 1876. It largely represented the wealthy landowning German nobility and the Prussian Junker class. The party was a response to German unification , universal and equal franchise in national elections and rapid industrialization . It changed from
250-465: A de facto official language of Namibia after the end of German colonial rule alongside English and Afrikaans , and had de jure co-official status from 1984 until its independence from South Africa in 1990. However, the Namibian government perceived Afrikaans and German as symbols of apartheid and colonialism, and decided English would be the sole official language upon independence, stating that it
375-402: A second language , and 75–100 million as a foreign language . This would imply the existence of approximately 175–220 million German speakers worldwide. German sociolinguist Ulrich Ammon estimated a number of 289 million German foreign language speakers without clarifying the criteria by which he classified a speaker. As of 2012 , about 90 million people, or 16% of
500-550: A "commonly used" language and the Pan South African Language Board is obligated to promote and ensure respect for it. Cameroon was also a colony of the German Empire from the same period (1884 to 1916). However, German was replaced by French and English, the languages of the two successor colonial powers, after its loss in World War I . Nevertheless, since the 21st century, German has become
625-704: A diffuse party of broad ideology into an interest party in Bismarckian Germany. In the early 1870s, Otto von Bismarck formed his majority with the base in the National Liberal Party which emphasized free trade and anti-Catholicism . Bismarck broke with them in the late 1870s, by which time the German Conservative Party and the Free Conservative Party had brought together the landed Junkers in
750-559: A greater need for regularity in written conventions. While the major changes of the MHG period were socio-cultural, High German was still undergoing significant linguistic changes in syntax, phonetics, and morphology as well (e.g. diphthongization of certain vowel sounds: hus (OHG & MHG "house") → haus (regionally in later MHG)→ Haus (NHG), and weakening of unstressed short vowels to schwa [ə]: taga (OHG "days")→ tage (MHG)). A great wealth of texts survives from
875-622: A letter to the German emperor on the very day of his election, followed by a second letter in a similar vein that same year. Bismarck and the Pope entered into direct negotiations without the participation of the Church or the Reichstag , yet initially without much success. It came to pass that Falk, vehemently resented by Catholics, resigned on 14 July 1879, which could be read as a peace offering to
1000-522: A major setback for Bismarck although never publicly conceded. Yet, in spite of strong Catholic representation in the Reichstag, the political power and influence of the Church in the public sphere and its political power was greatly reduced. Although Germany and the Vatican were officially at peace after 1878, religious conflicts and tensions continued. At the turn of the century, Pope Pius X announced
1125-458: A native tongue today, mostly descendants of German colonial settlers . The period of German colonialism in Namibia also led to the evolution of a Standard German-based pidgin language called " Namibian Black German ", which became a second language for parts of the indigenous population. Although it is nearly extinct today, some older Namibians still have some knowledge of it. German remained
1250-696: A popular foreign language among pupils and students, with 300,000 people learning or speaking German in Cameroon in 2010 and over 230,000 in 2020. Today Cameroon is one of the African countries outside Namibia with the highest number of people learning German. In the United States, German is the fifth most spoken language in terms of native and second language speakers after English, Spanish , French , and Chinese (with figures for Cantonese and Mandarin combined), with over 1 million total speakers. In
1375-483: A result, the surviving texts are written in highly disparate regional dialects and exhibit significant Latin influence, particularly in vocabulary. At this point monasteries, where most written works were produced, were dominated by Latin, and German saw only occasional use in official and ecclesiastical writing. While there is no complete agreement over the dates of the Middle High German (MHG) period, it
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#17327660676301500-717: Is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family , mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe . It is the most spoken native language within the European Union . It is the most widely spoken and official (or co-official) language in Germany , Austria , Switzerland , Liechtenstein , and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol . It is also an official language of Luxembourg , Belgium and
1625-601: Is a recognized minority language in the following countries: In France, the High German varieties of Alsatian and Moselle Franconian are identified as " regional languages ", but the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 1998 has not yet been ratified by the government. Namibia also was a colony of the German Empire, from 1884 to 1915. About 30,000 people still speak German as
1750-612: Is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects , with many varieties existing in Europe and other parts of the world. Some of these non-standard varieties have become recognized and protected by regional or national governments. Since 2004, heads of state of the German-speaking countries have met every year, and the Council for German Orthography has been the main international body regulating German orthography . German
1875-558: Is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages . The Germanic languages are traditionally subdivided into three branches: North Germanic , East Germanic , and West Germanic . The first of these branches survives in modern Danish , Swedish , Norwegian , Faroese , and Icelandic , all of which are descended from Old Norse . The East Germanic languages are now extinct, and Gothic
2000-478: Is called the "German Sprachraum ". German is the official language of the following countries: German is a co-official language of the following countries: Although expulsions and (forced) assimilation after the two World wars greatly diminished them, minority communities of mostly bilingual German native speakers exist in areas both adjacent to and detached from the Sprachraum. Within Europe, German
2125-430: Is complicated by the existence of several varieties whose status as separate "languages" or "dialects" is disputed for political and linguistic reasons, including quantitatively strong varieties like certain forms of Alemannic and Low German . With the inclusion or exclusion of certain varieties, it is estimated that approximately 90–95 million people speak German as a first language , 10–25 million speak it as
2250-535: Is generally seen as ending when the 1346–53 Black Death decimated Europe's population. Modern High German begins with the Early New High German (ENHG) period, which Wilhelm Scherer dates 1350–1650, terminating with the end of the Thirty Years' War . This period saw the further displacement of Latin by German as the primary language of courtly proceedings and, increasingly, of literature in
2375-611: Is generally seen as lasting from 1050 to 1350. This was a period of significant expansion of the geographical territory occupied by Germanic tribes, and consequently of the number of German speakers. Whereas during the Old High German period the Germanic tribes extended only as far east as the Elbe and Saale rivers, the MHG period saw a number of these tribes expanding beyond this eastern boundary into Slavic territory (known as
2500-565: Is less closely related to languages based on Low Franconian dialects (e.g., Dutch and Afrikaans), Low German or Low Saxon dialects (spoken in northern Germany and southern Denmark ), neither of which underwent the High German consonant shift. As has been noted, the former of these dialect types is Istvaeonic and the latter Ingvaeonic, whereas the High German dialects are all Irminonic; the differences between these languages and standard German are therefore considerable. Also related to German are
2625-435: Is one of the major languages of the world . German is the second-most widely spoken Germanic language , after English, both as a first and as a second language . German is also widely taught as a foreign language , especially in continental Europe (where it is the third most taught foreign language after English and French), and in the United States. Overall, German is the fourth most commonly learned second language, and
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#17327660676302750-597: Is one of the three biggest newspapers in Namibia and the only German-language daily in Africa. An estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa, mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the largest communities consists of the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", a variety of Low German concentrated in and around Wartburg . The South African constitution identifies German as
2875-401: Is partly derived from Latin and Greek , along with fewer words borrowed from French and Modern English . English, however, is the main source of more recent loanwords . German is a pluricentric language ; the three standardized variants are German , Austrian , and Swiss Standard German . Standard German is sometimes called High German , which refers to its regional origin. German
3000-525: Is the Sachsenspiegel , the first book of laws written in Middle Low German ( c. 1220 ). The abundance and especially the secular character of the literature of the MHG period demonstrate the beginnings of a standardized written form of German, as well as the desire of poets and authors to be understood by individuals on supra-dialectal terms. The Middle High German period
3125-578: Is the only language in this branch which survives in written texts. The West Germanic languages, however, have undergone extensive dialectal subdivision and are now represented in modern languages such as English, German, Dutch , Yiddish , Afrikaans , and others. Within the West Germanic language dialect continuum, the Benrath and Uerdingen lines (running through Düsseldorf - Benrath and Krefeld - Uerdingen , respectively) serve to distinguish
3250-690: Is the question of the Infallibility of the Pope. This pretension once become a dogma, will have a wider scope than the purely spiritual spheres, and will become evidently a political question: for it will raise the power of the Sovereign Pontiff, even in temporal matters, above all the princes and peoples of Christendom." The liberal majorities in the Imperial Diet and the Prussian parliament as well as liberals in general regarded
3375-485: Is understood in all areas where German is spoken. Approximate distribution of native German speakers (assuming a rounded total of 95 million) worldwide: As a result of the German diaspora , as well as the popularity of German taught as a foreign language , the geographical distribution of German speakers (or "Germanophones") spans all inhabited continents. However, an exact, global number of native German speakers
3500-689: The Ostsiedlung ). With the increasing wealth and geographic spread of the Germanic groups came greater use of German in the courts of nobles as the standard language of official proceedings and literature. A clear example of this is the mittelhochdeutsche Dichtersprache employed in the Hohenstaufen court in Swabia as a standardized supra-dialectal written language. While these efforts were still regionally bound, German began to be used in place of Latin for certain official purposes, leading to
3625-604: The Kulturkampf , suggests that the liberals wanted to do more than prevent Catholicism from becoming a political force. They wanted victory over Catholicism itself, the long-delayed conclusion of the Reformation. At least since 1847 and in line with the Liberals, Bismarck had also been of the professed opinion, that state and church should be completely separated and "the sphere of the state had to be made secure against
3750-680: The Deutsche Rechtspartei founded in 1946, which used the name Deutsche Konservative Partei (German Conservative Party) in parts of West Germany . Members were for example Wilhelm von Rauchhaupt , Otto von Manteuffel , Ernst von Heydebrand und der Lasa , Kuno von Westarp , Hans Hugo von Kleist-Retzow , Philipp von Nathusius-Ludom , Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau , Hans von Kanitz , Heinrich von Salisch , Georg Oertel , Gustav von Goßler or Wilhelm Joachim von Hammerstein . German language German (German: Deutsch , pronounced [dɔʏtʃ] )
3875-639: The Alamanni , Bavarian, and Thuringian groups, all belonging to the Elbe Germanic group ( Irminones ), which had settled in what is now southern-central Germany and Austria between the second and sixth centuries, during the great migration. In general, the surviving texts of Old High German (OHG) show a wide range of dialectal diversity with very little written uniformity. The early written tradition of OHG survived mostly through monasteries and scriptoria as local translations of Latin originals; as
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4000-515: The Concordat of 1855 , and then cancelled the Concordat altogether in 1870. Saxony and Bavaria withheld approval to publish the papal infallibility dogma; Hesse and Baden even denied it any legal validity. France refused to publish the doctrines altogether; Spain forbade publication of Syllabus Errorum in 1864. By the mid-19th century, liberal policies had also come to dominate Germany and
4125-537: The Early Middle Ages . German is an inflected language , with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative); three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two numbers (singular, plural). It has strong and weak verbs . The majority of its vocabulary derives from the ancient Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, while a smaller share
4250-417: The European Union 's population, spoke German as their mother tongue, making it the second most widely spoken language on the continent after Russian and the second biggest language in terms of overall speakers (after English), as well as the most spoken native language. The area in central Europe where the majority of the population speaks German as a first language and has German as a (co-)official language
4375-522: The German states . While these states were still part of the Holy Roman Empire , and far from any form of unification, the desire for a cohesive written language that would be understandable across the many German-speaking principalities and kingdoms was stronger than ever. As a spoken language German remained highly fractured throughout this period, with a vast number of often mutually incomprehensible regional dialects being spoken throughout
4500-746: The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I , and the other being Meißner Deutsch , used in the Electorate of Saxony in the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg . Alongside these courtly written standards, the invention of the printing press led to the development of a number of printers' languages ( Druckersprachen ) aimed at making printed material readable and understandable across as many diverse dialects of German as possible. The greater ease of production and increased availability of written texts brought about increased standardisation in
4625-747: The Jesuits . As in many European countries, Jesuits were being banned or heavily restricted in many of the German states e.g. in Saxony (1831) or Württemberg (1862), and even in Catholic ones such as Bavaria (1851) and Baden (1860). Not to be left out, the German areas to the west of the Rhine had already gone through a process of separation of church and state in line with a radical secularization after annexation by revolutionary and Napoleonic France in 1794. After their return to Germany in 1814, many if not most of
4750-658: The Liberals and the Conservatives representing orthodox Protestants found the Centre Party 's support of the pope highly provocative. Many Catholics shared these sentiments, especially against the pope's declared infallibility and the majority of Catholic German bishops deemed the definition of the dogma as "'unpropitious' in light of the situation in Germany". While most Catholics eventually reconciled themselves to
4875-666: The Old High German language in several Elder Futhark inscriptions from as early as the sixth century AD (such as the Pforzen buckle ), the Old High German period is generally seen as beginning with the Abrogans (written c. 765–775 ), a Latin-German glossary supplying over 3,000 Old High German words with their Latin equivalents. After the Abrogans , the first coherent works written in Old High German appear in
5000-676: The Sprachraum in Europe. German is used in a wide variety of spheres throughout the country, especially in business, tourism, and public signage, as well as in education, churches (most notably the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (GELK) ), other cultural spheres such as music, and media (such as German language radio programs by the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation ). The Allgemeine Zeitung
5125-550: The Standard German language in its written form, and the Duden Handbook was declared its standard definition. Punctuation and compound spelling (joined or isolated compounds) were not standardized in the process. The Deutsche Bühnensprache ( lit. ' German stage language ' ) by Theodor Siebs had established conventions for German pronunciation in theatres , three years earlier; however, this
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5250-513: The Upper German dialects spoken in the southern German-speaking countries , such as Swiss German ( Alemannic dialects ) and the various Germanic dialects spoken in the French region of Grand Est , such as Alsatian (mainly Alemannic, but also Central–and Upper Franconian dialects) and Lorraine Franconian (Central Franconian). After these High German dialects, standard German
5375-469: The pagan Germanic tradition. Of particular interest to scholars, however, has been the Hildebrandslied , a secular epic poem telling the tale of an estranged father and son unknowingly meeting each other in battle. Linguistically, this text is highly interesting due to the mixed use of Old Saxon and Old High German dialects in its composition. The written works of this period stem mainly from
5500-483: The 1837 Kölner Wirren ( 'Cologne Confusion' [ de ] ) of legal and policy issues regarding the children of mixed Protestant-Catholic marriages, Prussia's final settlement was considered a defeat for the state as it had given in to demands of the Catholic Church. In 1850, Prussia again had a dispute with the church about civil marriage and primary schools and in 1852, it issued decrees against
5625-448: The 1871 unification of Germany —unlike the Free Conservative Party , a national conservative split-off dominated by business magnates unrestrictedly supporting the policies of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck . The policies of Old Conservatives like Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke or Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau generally embraced support for the powers of the monarchy and opposition to economic liberalism and democratization ,
5750-579: The Age of Reason in the 17th and the 18th centuries, the European Kulturkampf principally occurred in the regional and local politics of a society, especially in cities and towns where the educated populations were politically Liberal and practised the politics of anti-clericalism and of anti-Catholicism . The Catholic Church resisted such intellectual progress, which was portrayed as an attack on religion in an effort to maintain and strengthen
5875-484: The Catholic Church as a powerful force of reaction and anti-modernity, especially after the proclamation of papal infallibility in 1870 and the tightening control of the Vatican over the local bishops. The renewed vitality of Catholicism in Germany with its mass gatherings also attracted Protestants – even the heir to the Prussian throne, with the king's approval, attended one. Anti-liberalism , anti-clericalism , and anti-Catholicism became powerful intellectual forces of
6000-403: The Catholic Church had opposed, produced no democratic reforms and attempts to radically disentangle state-church relationships failed. In the revolutionary parliament , many prominent representatives of political Catholicism took the side of the extreme right-wingers. In the years following the revolution, Catholicism became increasingly politicized due to rising liberal ideologies contrasted with
6125-630: The Catholic Church was to lose its good standing which it had enjoyed for centuries in the Catholic-dominated Holy Roman Empire and which it would have continued to enjoy in a German empire united under Austrian auspices. Thus, in 1870, on the eve of unification, the Center Party was explicitly founded to defend the position of the church in the new empire. Bismarck was highly concerned that many major members and supporters of this new party were not in sympathy with
6250-520: The Catholic section in the Ministry of Culture was not reintroduced). The respective opposing parties in the Reichstag harshly criticized the concessions made by the Vatican and the Prussian government. Windthorst and the Centre Party were dismayed at being sidelined and not being consulted about the concessions the pope made, e.g. about the ban on Jesuits or the civil registry of clerics. None of
6375-465: The Centre Party and as far as separation of state and church was concerned, he had achieved more than he wanted. In order to garner support for his Anti-Socialist Laws and protective trade tariffs, Bismarck turned his back on the liberals in search of new alliances. The death of Pius IX on 7 February 1878 opened the door for a settlement with the Catholic Church. The new pope, Leo XIII , was pragmatic and conciliatory. He expressed his wish for peace in
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#17327660676306500-455: The Church as backward, a hotbed for reactionaries , enemies of progress and cast monastic life as the epitome of a backward Catholic medievalism. They were alarmed by the dramatic rise in the numbers of monasteries, convents and clerical religious groups in an era of widespread religious revival. The Diocese of Cologne , for example, saw a tenfold increase of monks and nuns between 1850 and 1872. Prussian authorities were particularly suspicious of
6625-581: The Church condemned as false some 80 philosophical and political statements, mainly the foundations of the modern nation-state. It rejected outright such concepts as freedom of religion , separation of church and state , civil marriage , sovereignty of the people , liberalism and socialism , reason as the sole base of human action , and in general condemned the idea of conciliation with progress . The announcements included an index of forbidden books. The Church gradually re-organized and began to use mass media expansively to promote its messages. In addition,
6750-411: The Church's strong political role in the affairs of the state and society. With the growing influence of enlightenment and after having lost much of its wealth, power, and influence in the course of the mediatization and secularization of the early 19th century, the Church had been in a state of decline. The papacy was at a weak point in its history, having lost all its territories to Italy , with
6875-524: The East and the rapidly growing industrial leadership in the major cities. They now became the main base of Bismarck's support and successive Chancellors down to 1918. According to Robert M. Berdahl, this redirection illustrated "the slow and painful process by which the landed aristocracy adjusted to its new position in the capitalist 'class' system that had come to replace the precapitalist 'Estate' structure of Prussian society". The German Conservative Party
7000-723: The Empire. Its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Prague (German: Prag ) and Budapest ( Buda , German: Ofen ), to name two examples, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain; others, like Pressburg ( Pozsony , now Bratislava), were originally settled during the Habsburg period and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, and cities like Zagreb (German: Agram ) or Ljubljana (German: Laibach ), contained significant German minorities. In
7125-748: The Frisian languages— North Frisian (spoken in Nordfriesland ), Saterland Frisian (spoken in Saterland ), and West Frisian (spoken in Friesland )—as well as the Anglic languages of English and Scots. These Anglo-Frisian dialects did not take part in the High German consonant shift, and the Anglic languages also adopted much vocabulary from both Old Norse and the Norman language . The history of
7250-417: The German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the Migration Period , which separated Old High German dialects from Old Saxon . This sound shift involved a drastic change in the pronunciation of both voiced and voiceless stop consonants ( b , d , g , and p , t , k , respectively). The primary effects of the shift were the following below. While there is written evidence of
7375-399: The German states; the invention of the printing press c. 1440 and the publication of Luther's vernacular translation of the Bible in 1534, however, had an immense effect on standardizing German as a supra-dialectal written language. The ENHG period saw the rise of several important cross-regional forms of chancery German, one being gemeine tiutsch , used in the court of
7500-623: The Germanic dialects that were affected by the High German consonant shift (south of Benrath) from those that were not (north of Uerdingen). The various regional dialects spoken south of these lines are grouped as High German dialects, while those spoken to the north comprise the Low German and Low Franconian dialects. As members of the West Germanic language family, High German, Low German, and Low Franconian have been proposed to be further distinguished historically as Irminonic , Ingvaeonic , and Istvaeonic , respectively. This classification indicates their historical descent from dialects spoken by
7625-416: The Gospel and the Church. The pope's teaching was promoted as absolutely authoritative and binding on all the faithful. Secular politicians wondered whether "Catholicism and allegiance to the modern liberal state were not mutually exclusive". British Prime Minister Gladstone wrote in 1874 that the teaching on papal infallibility compromised the allegiance of faithful English Catholics. For European liberalism,
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#17327660676307750-547: The Irminones (also known as the Elbe group), Ingvaeones (or North Sea Germanic group), and Istvaeones (or Weser–Rhine group). Standard German is based on a combination of Thuringian - Upper Saxon and Upper Franconian dialects, which are Central German and Upper German dialects belonging to the High German dialect group. German is therefore closely related to the other languages based on High German dialects, such as Luxembourgish (based on Central Franconian dialects ) and Yiddish . Also closely related to Standard German are
7875-644: The Italian autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia , as well as a recognized national language in Namibia . There are also notable German-speaking communities in France ( Alsace ), the Czech Republic ( North Bohemia ), Poland ( Upper Silesia ), Slovakia ( Košice Region , Spiš , and Hauerland ), Denmark ( North Schleswig ), Romania and Hungary ( Sopron ). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in Brazil ( Blumenau and Pomerode ), South Africa ( Kroondal ), Namibia , among others, some communities have decidedly Austrian German or Swiss German characters (e.g. Pozuzo , Peru). German
8000-408: The MHG period. Significantly, these texts include a number of impressive secular works, such as the Nibelungenlied , an epic poem telling the story of the dragon -slayer Siegfried ( c. thirteenth century ), and the Iwein , an Arthurian verse poem by Hartmann von Aue ( c. 1203 ), lyric poems , and courtly romances such as Parzival and Tristan . Also noteworthy
8125-494: The Protestant church, I have to go via Rome." In August 1871, at Bad Ems , Bismarck revealed his intention to fight against the Centre Party, to separate state and church, to transfer school inspection to laymen, to abolish religious instruction from schools and to transfer religious affairs to the minister of justice. On 22 January 1872, liberal Adalbert Falk replaced conservative Heinrich von Mühler as Prussian minister for religion, education and health. In Bismarck's mind, Falk
8250-407: The Prussian state parliament and the federal legislature ( Reichstag ), both with liberal majorities, enacted 22 laws in the context of the Kulturkampf . They were mainly directed against clerics: bishops, priests and religious orders ( anti-clerical ) and enforced the supremacy of the state over the church. While several laws were specific to the Catholic Church (Jesuits, congregations etc.)
8375-473: The Vatican. A decisive boost only came in February 1880, when the Vatican unexpectedly agreed to the civic registry of clerics. As the Kulturkampf slowly wound down the talks lead to a number of so-called mitigation and peace laws which were passed until 1887. On 29 September 1885, as another sign of peace, Bismarck proposed the Pope as arbiter in a dispute with Spain about the Caroline Islands and accepted his verdict in favour of Spain. In gratitude but to
8500-439: The anti-modernist and anti-liberal policies of the Vatican. In the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and Franco-Prussian War of 1870 the Catholic Church sided against Prussia and it was an outspoken opponent of German unification under Prussia (as well as of Italy's unification). The Catholic dogmas and doctrines announced in 1854, 1864 and 1870 were perceived in Germany as direct attacks on the modern nation state. Thus, Bismarck,
8625-459: The changes were kept in place. In the Vormärz period, Catholic publications usually portrayed revolutions as negative and dangerous to the existing order as well as to the interests of the Catholic Church. Most of them considered a viable Catholicism to be necessary for the very health of society and state and to be the only true and effective protection against the scourge of revolution. The unsuccessful German revolutions of 1848–49 , which
8750-442: The church and was of no good to the state is now over". The Mitigation and Peace Laws restored the inner autonomy of the Catholic church while leaving key regulations and the laws concerning separation of church and state in place (civic marriage, civic registry, religious disaffiliation, government school supervision, civic registry of clerics, ban of Jesuits, pulpit law, state supervision of church assets, constitutional amendments and
8875-436: The church's opposition to enlightenment, liberal reforms, and the revolutions of the 18th/19th centuries, these dogmas and the church's expressed insistence on papal primacy angered the liberal-minded across Europe, even among some Catholics. Debates were heated. The dogmas were perceived as threatening the secularized state, as they reaffirmed that the fundamental allegiance of Catholics was not to their nation-state, but to
9000-482: The development of non-local forms of language and exposed all speakers to forms of German from outside their own area. With Luther's rendering of the Bible in the vernacular, German asserted itself against the dominance of Latin as a legitimate language for courtly, literary, and now ecclesiastical subject-matter. His Bible was ubiquitous in the German states: nearly every household possessed a copy. Nevertheless, even with
9125-456: The dialect so as to make the work as natural and accessible to German speakers as possible. Copies of Luther's Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region, translating words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Luther said the following concerning his translation method: One who would talk German does not ask the Latin how he shall do it; he must ask the mother in
9250-720: The doctrine, some founded the small breakaway Old Catholic Church . According to the Bavarian head of government, Hohenlohe , the dogma of infallibility compromised the Catholic's loyalty to the state. He sent a circular to all the diplomatic representatives of the Bavarian Kingdom saying, "The only dogmatic thesis which Rome desires to have decided by the Council, and which the Jesuits in Italy and Germany are now agitating,
9375-441: The dogmas were perceived as a declaration of war against the modern state, science, and spiritual freedom. The pope's handling of dissent from the dogmas, e.g. by excommunication of critics or demanding their removal from schools and universities, was considered as the "epitome of papal authoritarianism". In direct response to the Vatican's announcements, Austria passed the so-called May Laws for Cisleithania in 1868, restricting
9500-519: The eastern provinces of Banat , Bukovina , and Transylvania (German: Banat, Buchenland, Siebenbürgen ), German was the predominant language not only in the larger towns—like Temeschburg ( Timișoara ), Hermannstadt ( Sibiu ), and Kronstadt ( Brașov )—but also in many smaller localities in the surrounding areas. In 1901, the Second Orthographic Conference ended with a (nearly) complete standardization of
9625-399: The empire, Catholics were the majority in the states of Bavaria , Baden , and Alsace-Lorraine as well as in the four Prussian Provinces of West Prussia , Posen , Rhineland , Westphalia and in the Prussian region of Upper Silesia . Since the Thirty Years' War the population was generally segregated along religious lines and rural areas or towns were overwhelmingly if not entirely of
9750-448: The encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis , mounting new attacks on historical criticism of biblical texts and any accommodation of Catholicism to modern philosophy, sociology or literature. As of 1910, clerics had to take an oath against all forms of modernism, a requirement later extended to teachers of Catholic religion at schools and professors of Catholic theology resulting in intense political and public debates and new conflicts with
9875-590: The federal states and the leading actor of the Kulturkampf was Prussia , Germany's largest state. However, some of the laws were also passed by the Reichstag and applied to all of Germany. In general, the laws did not affect the press and associations including Catholic ones. The Falk Laws , or 'May Laws' ( Maigesetze ), were a set of laws passed by the Prussian parliament in the years 1873, 1874, and 1875. Four laws passed in 1873 were enacted on 11–14 May that year: The last two laws passed in 1876 were of no practical importance: The political situation in Europe
10000-598: The first steps in secularisation well before unification. Predominantly Catholic Baden was at the forefront of curbing the power of the Catholic Church, as in the Baden Church Dispute (1852–1854) and the Kulturkampf Baden [ de ] (1864–1876). Other examples are Prussia (1830s, 1850, 1859, and 1969), Württemberg (1859/1862), Bavaria ( Bayerischer Kulturkampf [ de ] , 1867), Hesse-Nassau or Hesse-Darmstadt . In
10125-455: The general laws affected both Catholic and Protestant churches. In an attempt to overcome increasing resistance by the Catholic Church and its defiance of the laws, new regulations increasingly went beyond state matters referring to the purely internal affairs of the church. Even many liberals saw them as an encroachment on civil liberties, compromising their own credo. Constitutionally, education and regulation of religious affairs were vested in
10250-546: The great horror of Catholics, the Pope awarded Bismarck the Supreme Order of Christ , the highest order of chivalry to be granted by the Holy See. Bismarck was the only Protestant ever to receive this award. After further negotiations between Prussia and the Vatican, the Prussian parliament passed 2 additional laws amending some of the Kulturkampf laws. On 23 May 1887, the Pope declared "The struggle which damaged
10375-434: The hierarchy and the Centre Party and the liberals' demands to curb the power of the churches meshed well with Bismarck's main political objective to crush the Centre Party. According to historian Anthony J. Steinhoff: Bismarck's plan to disarm political Catholicism delighted liberal politicians, who provided the parliamentary backing for the crusade. Yet, the phrase the left-liberal Rudolf Virchow coined for this struggle,
10500-435: The home, the children on the streets, the common man in the market-place and note carefully how they talk, then translate accordingly. They will then understand what is said to them because it is German. When Christ says ' ex abundantia cordis os loquitur ,' I would translate, if I followed the papists, aus dem Überflusz des Herzens redet der Mund . But tell me is this talking German? What German understands such stuff? No,
10625-496: The increasing popularity of the socialists or more important such as questions of import duties. In these matters, he could either not rely on the support of the liberals to pursue his goals or they were not sufficient to form a majority. Bismarck had not been comfortable with the increasing ferocity of the Kulturkampf . Concerning the rise of the Centre Party, the laws had proven to be greatly ineffective and even counterproductive. He soon realized that they were of no help battling
10750-579: The incursions by the church", although his ideas were not as far-reaching as in the United States or in Great Britain. He had in mind the traditional position of the Protestant church in Prussia and provoked considerable resistance from conservative Protestants. This became clear in a heated debate with Prussian culture minister von Mühler in 1871 when Bismarck said: "Since you stopped my plans in
10875-481: The influence of Luther's Bible as an unofficial written standard, a widely accepted standard for written German did not appear until the middle of the eighteenth century. German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire , which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe . Until the mid-nineteenth century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of
11000-483: The intellectual and political roles of religion and the Catholic Church, which then was the established church of Europe. By way of the legislated separation of church and state , the Age of Reason reduced society's financial debts to the Church and rendered secular the public sphere of society, and established the state's supremacy concerning the content and administration of public education for all of society. During
11125-399: The interpretation of daily events, was promoted through local and national Catholic newspapers that were prominent in all western European nations. In addition, organized missions and groups were dedicated to producing pious literature. In the 19th century, the popes issued a series of encyclicals (such as Mirari vos (1832) by Pope Gregory XVI ) condemning liberalism and freedom of
11250-552: The introduction of electoral reform in Prussia, or true parliamentary government in Germany as a whole. Due to universal suffrage , on federal level the DKP had to face strikingly decreased significance. In the 1878 federal election , it gained 13.0% of the votes cast and entered the Reichstag parliament with 59 deputies. Afterwards, the party, which furthermore lost votes as Germans moved from rural areas to new industrial centers in
11375-677: The largest concentrations of German speakers are in the states of Rio Grande do Sul (where Riograndenser Hunsrückisch developed), Santa Catarina , and Espírito Santo . Kulturkampf In the history of Germany, the Kulturkampf (Cultural Struggle) was the seven-year political conflict (1871–1878) between the Catholic Church in Germany , led by Pope Pius IX ; and the Kingdom of Prussia , led by chancellor Otto von Bismarck . The Prussian church-and-state political conflict
11500-451: The monks and nuns had left Prussia, a third of the monasteries and convents were closed. Between 1872 and 1878, numerous Catholic newspapers were confiscated, Catholic associations and assemblies were dissolved, and Catholic civil servants were dismissed merely on the pretence of having Ultramontane sympathies. Thousands of laypeople were imprisoned for assisting priests to evade the punitive new laws. The general ideological enthusiasm among
11625-402: The mother in the home and the plain man would say, Wesz das Herz voll ist, des gehet der Mund über . Luther's translation of the Bible into High German was also decisive for the German language and its evolution from Early New High German to modern Standard German. The publication of Luther's Bible was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy in early modern Germany , and promoted
11750-462: The new Centre Party not only as an illegal mixup of politics and religion and the church's "long arm" but also as a unifying force for Catholic Germans and Poles and thus a threat to the consolidation of the empire. He feared that the Centre Party would frustrate his broader political agendas and he accused the Catholic priests of fostering Polish nationalism as had been done openly in the provinces of Posen and Upper Silesia. The Liberals regarded
11875-577: The new empire: the House of Hanover , the ethnic minority of the Poles, the southern German states. In 1871, the predominantly Catholic states of Southern Germany had only reluctantly joined the empire, increasing the overall share of the Catholic population to 36.5%. Among this Catholic share was Germany's largest ethnic minority, well over 2 million Poles in the east of Prussia, who under Prussia and Germany suffered discrimination and oppression. Bismarck regarded
12000-653: The ninth century, chief among them being the Muspilli , Merseburg charms , and Hildebrandslied , and other religious texts (the Georgslied , Ludwigslied , Evangelienbuch , and translated hymns and prayers). The Muspilli is a Christian poem written in a Bavarian dialect offering an account of the soul after the Last Judgment , and the Merseburg charms are transcriptions of spells and charms from
12125-402: The party's major demands were met. Instead, the pope even sided with Bismarck on non-religious issues and pressured the Centre Party to support Bismarck or at least abstain, e.g. in the matter of the hotly debated Septennat 1887 (7-year military budget). Many Liberals, especially Falk, objected to the concessions Bismarck made to the Church. The growth of the Centre Party has been considered
12250-838: The polls this element was de-emphasized. Stoecker finally revoked the alliance in 1896. Though predominantly Protestant , the DKP opposed the Kulturkampf , but supported Bismarck when during the Long Depression he began to implement protectionist policies by restricting grain imports from Russia and the United States . Following this, the DKP strongly opposed the New Course of his successor Leo von Caprivi . It also withdrew its confidence in Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow in 1909 when he tried to implement an inheritance tax reform; Bülow resigned following
12375-526: The pope a "prisoner" in the Vatican . The Church strove to regain its influence and to hold sway in such matters as marriage, family, and education. It initiated a Catholic revival by founding associations, papers, schools, social establishments and new orders, and encouraging religious practices such as pilgrimages , mass assemblies, devotion to the Virgin Mary or the Sacred Heart of Jesus , and
12500-433: The popes worked to increase their control of the Church. The Church centralized some functions and streamlined its hierarchy, which prompted strong criticism by European governments. The bishops sought direction from the Vatican, and the needs and views of the international church were given priority over the local ones. Opponents of the new hierarchical church organization pejoratively called it ultramontanism . In view of
12625-527: The press . These generated controversy in some quarters. Under the leadership of Gregory's successor, Pope Pius IX , the church proclaimed Mary's Immaculate Conception in 1854. In 1864, Pius published the encyclical Quanta cura with its appended Syllabus Errorum (" Syllabus of Errors "), and in 1870 convened the First Vatican Council . The Council, in turn, proclaimed the dogma of papal infallibility . In Syllabus Errorum ,
12750-462: The pronunciation of the ending -ig as [ɪk] instead of [ɪç]. In Northern Germany, High German was a foreign language to most inhabitants, whose native dialects were subsets of Low German. It was usually encountered only in writing or formal speech; in fact, most of High German was a written language, not identical to any spoken dialect, throughout the German-speaking area until well into the 19th century. However, wider standardization of pronunciation
12875-742: The reform's failure. The party supported Kaiser Wilhelm II 's naval policies and Germany's arms race with the United Kingdom but initially kept its distance towards colonialism and the activists of the Pan-German League . The party was dissolved following the fall of the monarchy in November 1918 and the German Revolution . Most of its supporters turned to the newly established German National People's Party . The Deutschkonservative Partei had no direct connection to
13000-467: The same religion. Education was also separate and usually in the hands of the churches. There was little mutual tolerance, interaction or intermarriage. Protestants in general were deeply distrustful of the Catholic Church. Unification had been achieved through many obstacles with strong opponents. These were the European powers of France and Austria, both Catholic nations, and the Catholic Church itself,
13125-422: The secular government and the religious authorities of a society. The term also describes the great and small culture wars among political factions who hold deeply opposing values and beliefs within a nation, a community, and a cultural group. The philosophic influences of The Enlightenment , Scientific realism , Positivism , Materialism , nationalism , secularism , and Liberalism impinged upon and ended
13250-424: The separation of church and state became a prominent issue. The Kulturkampf in Prussia is usually bracketed by the years 1871 and 1878 with the Catholic Church officially announcing its end in 1880 but the struggle in Germany had been an ongoing matter without definite beginning and the years 1871 to 1878 only mark its culmination in Prussia. In the wake of other European countries, most German states had taken
13375-530: The spread of monastic life among the Polish and French minorities. The Church, in turn, saw the National-Liberals as its worst enemy, accusing them of spearheading the war against Christianity and the Catholic Church. At unification in 1871, the new German Empire included 25.5 million Protestants (62% of the population) and 15 million Catholics (36.5% of the population). Although a minority in
13500-564: The state. The abolition of the Catholic section of the Prussian ministry of ecclesiastical and educational affairs deprived Catholics of their voice at the highest level. The system of strict government supervision of schools was applied only in Catholic areas; the Protestant schools were left alone. The school politics also alienated Protestant conservatives and churchmen. The British ambassador Odo Russell reported to London in October 1872 how Bismarck's plans were backfiring by strengthening
13625-546: The states of North Dakota and South Dakota , German is the most common language spoken at home after English. As a legacy of significant German immigration to the country , German geographical names can be found throughout the Midwest region , such as New Ulm and Bismarck (North Dakota's state capital), plus many other regions. A number of German varieties have developed in the country and are still spoken today, such as Pennsylvania Dutch and Texas German . In Brazil,
13750-408: The success of his laws and was unhappy with his lack of political tact and sensitivity. The differences in their attitudes concerning the Kulturkampf eventually put the two politicians at odds with each other. With this background and the determination of church and state, the Kulturkampf in Germany acquired an additional edge as it gathered in intensity and bitterness. From 1871 to 1876,
13875-500: The third most commonly learned second language in the United States in K-12 education. The language has been influential in the fields of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. It is the second most commonly used language in science and the third most widely used language on websites . The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one-tenth of all books (including e-books) in
14000-418: The three of which Bismarck perceived as "Coalition of Catholic Revenge". For Bismarck, the empire was very fragile and its consolidation was an important issue. Biographer Otto Pflanze notes that "all of these developments, real and imagined, reinforced Bismarck's belief in the existence of a widespread Catholic conspiracy that posed a threat to both his German and European policies." In a Protestant empire,
14125-426: The time and the antagonism between Liberals and Protestants on one side and the Catholic Church on the other was fought out through mud-slinging in the press. A wave of anti-Catholic, anticlerical and anti-monastic pamphleteering in the liberal press was answered by anti-liberal preaching and propaganda in Catholic newspapers and vice versa. For these reasons, the government sought to wean the Catholic masses away from
14250-413: The ultramontane (pro-papal) position inside German Catholicism: Nearly all German bishops, clergy and laymen rejected the legality of the new laws and were defiantly facing the increasingly heavy penalties, trials and imprisonments. As of 1878, only three of eight Prussian dioceses still had bishops, some 1,125 of 4,600 parishes were vacant, and nearly 1,800 priests ended up in jail or in exile, nearly half
14375-453: The veneration of relics ; the pope himself became an object of devotion. Apart from the growth in religious orders, the 19th century was a time when numerous Catholic associations and organisations were founded, especially in Germany and in France (In the United States, there was a comparable rise in fraternal organizations in the late nineteenth century.). Catholic propaganda , including
14500-555: The west ( Ostflucht ), forged an electoral alliance with the Christian Social Party under Adolf Stoecker , opportunistically embracing antisemitism . Thomas Childers stated that the Conservatives were the first major party in Germany to incorporate antisemitism into its platform. The 1892 party program denounced a "demoralizing Jewish influence", but when this attitude failed to halt the party's fall in
14625-555: The world being published in German. German is most closely related to other West Germanic languages, namely Afrikaans , Dutch , English , the Frisian languages , and Scots . It also contains close similarities in vocabulary to some languages in the North Germanic group , such as Danish , Norwegian , and Swedish . Modern German gradually developed from Old High German , which in turn developed from Proto-Germanic during
14750-600: The written form of German. One of the central events in the development of ENHG was the publication of Luther's translation of the Bible into High German (the New Testament was published in 1522; the Old Testament was published in parts and completed in 1534). Luther based his translation primarily on the Meißner Deutsch of Saxony , spending much time among the population of Saxony researching
14875-437: Was "to re-establish the rights of the state in relation to the church". Yet, unlike Bismarck, whose main motivation for the Kulturkampf was the political power struggle with the Centre Party, Falk, a lawyer, was a strong proponent of state authority having in mind the legal aspects of state-church relationships. Falk became the driving force behind the Kulturkampf laws. Although Bismarck publicly supported Falk, he doubted
15000-429: Was a "neutral" language as there were virtually no English native speakers in Namibia at that time. German, Afrikaans, and several indigenous languages thus became "national languages" by law, identifying them as elements of the cultural heritage of the nation and ensuring that the state acknowledged and supported their presence in the country. Today, Namibia is considered to be the only German-speaking country outside of
15125-509: Was about the Church's direct control over both education and ecclesiastical appointments in the Prussian kingdom as a Roman Catholic nation and country. Moreover, when compared to other church-and-state conflicts about political culture , the German Kulturkampf of Prussia also featured anti-Polish sentiment . In modern political usage, the German term Kulturkampf describes any conflict (political, ideological, social) between
15250-547: Was an artificial standard that did not correspond to any traditional spoken dialect. Rather, it was based on the pronunciation of German in Northern Germany, although it was subsequently regarded often as a general prescriptive norm, despite differing pronunciation traditions especially in the Upper-German-speaking regions that still characterise the dialect of the area today – especially
15375-492: Was established on the basis of public speaking in theatres and the media during the 20th century and documented in pronouncing dictionaries. Official revisions of some of the rules from 1901 were not issued until the controversial German orthography reform of 1996 was made the official standard by governments of all German-speaking countries. Media and written works are now almost all produced in Standard German which
15500-675: Was generally seen as representing the interests of the German nobility , the Junker landowners living east of the Elbe and the Evangelical Church of the Prussian Union and had its political stronghold in the Prussian Diet , where the three-class franchise gave rural elites and the wealthy disproportionate representation. Predominantly Prussian traditionalists , the party members had been skeptical at first about
15625-488: Was very volatile. Initially perceived as a possible enemy hostile to German unification under Prussian leadership, Austria and Germany very quickly became friends and formed the Dual Alliance in 1879. The possibility of a war with France or Russia also became more remote. Therefore, social and economic problems moved to the fore and Bismarck's attention gradually turned to other topics he deemed more threatening such as
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