Many causes have, within the present century, helped to strengthen the national feeling in Germany. [pg 292] The terrible outrages and humiliations inflicted upon her by the pitiless soldiers of the first Napoleon made it evident that the common safety required that the bonds of brotherhood among the peoples of the different German states should be drawn tighter. The development of a national literature also helped to foster a longing for national unity. In the XVIIth, and even down to nearly the end of the XVIIIth, century, French influence, extending from the courts of princes to the closets of the learned, gave tone to both literature and politics.
Leibnitz wrote in French or Latin, and Frederick the Great strove to forget his own tongue, that he might learn to speak French with idiomatic purity—an accomplishment which he never acquired.
As there was no German literature, the national feeling lacked one of its most powerful stimulants. But in the latter half of the XVIIIth century, and during the first half of the XIXth, a literature rich, profound, thoroughly German, the creation of some of the highest names in the world of letters, came into existence, and was both a cause and an effect of the national awakening. Goethe especially did much, by the absolute ascendency which he acquired in the literature of his country, to unify and harmonize the national mind.
Still, a thousand interests and jealousies, local and dynastic, old prescriptive rights, and a constitutional slowness and sluggishness in the Germanic temperament, stood in the way of a united fatherland, and had to be got rid of or overcome by force before the dream of the nationalists could become a reality.
Prussia, founded by rapine, built up and strengthened by war and conquest, has always been a heartless, self-seeking state. The youngest of the great European states, and for a long time one of the most inconsiderable, she has gradually grown to be the first military power of the world. Already, in the time of Frederick the Great, she was the formidable rival of Austria in the contest for the hegemony of the other German states. This struggle ended, in 1866, in the utter defeat of Austria on the field of Sadowa. Hanover, Saxony, Hesse-Cassel, and other minor principalities were at once absorbed by Prussia, who, besides greatly increasing her strength, thus became the champion of German unity. But German unity was a menace to France, who could not possibly maintain her preponderance in European affairs in the presence of a united Germany. Hence the irrepressible conflict between France and Prussia, which ended in the catastrophe of Sedan.
The King of Prussia became the Emperor of Germany, and German national pride and enthusiasm reached a degree bordering on frenzy.
By a remarkable coincidence the Franco-Prussian war broke out at the very moment when the dogma of Papal infallibility was defined, and immediately after the capitulation of Sedan, Victor Emanuel took possession of Rome. The Pope was without temporal power—a prisoner indeed. The feeling against the newly-defined dogma was especially strong in Germany, where the systematic warfare carried on by the Janus party against the Vatican Council had warped the public mind. France, the eldest daughter of the church, was lying, bleeding and crushed, at the feet of [pg 293] the conqueror. The time seemed to have arrived when the bond which united the Catholics of Germany with the Pope, and through him with the church universal, might easily be broken.
The defection of Döllinger and other rationalistic professors, as well as the attitude of many of the German bishops in the council, and the views which they had expressed with regard to the probable results of a definition of the infallibility of the Pope, tended to confirm those who controlled the policy of the new empire in the opinion that there would be no great difficulty in forming the Catholics of Germany into a kind of national religious body wholly subject to the state, even in matters of faith. If we add to this the fact that the infidels of our day have a kind of superstition which leads them to think that all religious faith has grown weak, and that those who believe are for the most part hypocritical, insincere, and by no means anxious to suffer for conscience's sake, we shall be able to understand how Bismarck, who is utterly indifferent to all religion, and who believes in nothing except the omnipotence of the state, should have persuaded himself to destroy the religious freedom which had come to be considered the common property of Christendom. Already, in the month of August immediately following the close of the war with France, we find the Northern German press, which obsequiously obeys his orders, beginning to throw out hints that Rome had always been the enemy of Germany; that her claims were incompatible with the rights of the state and hurtful to the national development; and that, in presence of the newly-defined dogma of Papal infallibility, the necessity of resisting her ever-increasing encroachments upon the domain of the civil authority had become imperative. The watchword given by the official press was everywhere re-echoed by the organs of both infidel and Protestant opinion, and it at once became evident that the German Empire intended to make war on the Catholic Church.
There was yet another end to be subserved by the persecution of the church. Bismarck made no secret of his fears of a democratic movement in Germany after the excitement of the French campaign had died away, and he hoped to avert this danger by inflaming the religious prejudices of the infidel and Protestant population.
On the 8th of July, 1871, the Catholic department in the Ministry of Public Worship was abolished, and the government openly lent its influence to the Old Catholic movement.