In short, the German Kulturkamp of the 1870s was a cultural schism between the Catholic Church and the State within the Prussian-dominated territories in Western Europe. With the rise of nationalism and imperialism across the West, nations looked skeptically towards foreign influences. To Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, arguably the most powerful man in Prussia, the Vatican in Rome was such a foreign influence.
When the Pope wrote the Syllabus Errorum, he attacked popular ideas like popular sovereignty, liberalism, socialism, and freedom of religion. The First Vatican Council of 1870 then reaffirmed the policy of papal infallibility, giving support to the Syllabus Errorum. This move by the Vatican was likely an attempt to regain its lost political influence on the West. Since the Enlightenment, human reason became the basis of sovereignty, and the Catholic Church and Christianity as a whole had lost much of its former political influence.
Whatever the Catholic Church’s motives, however, Bismarck interpreted its actions as an attack on German nationalism and launched a crusade against the Vatican. Together with the classical liberals in Prussia, Bismarck took priests off the State’s payroll and purged Catholic control over the educational system, putting it directly under the supervision of the State. Marriages were also forbidden from being initiated by a pastor or priest, and the State was given a monopoly on matrimony. Additionally, the long-standing Jesuit, Dominican, and Franciscan orders were expelled from Prussia, and the May Laws gave the State sole authority to supervise and govern seminary training and the sole authority to give clerical permits. In all matters pertaining to the Church—and the Catholic Church, especially—governmental control was expanded under Bismarck, and the pulpit became an arm of the State.
However, the Kulturkampf would come to an end when the Centre Party won massive victories in the 1877 elections. Throughout the government, the Centre Party won seats of influence. With the death of Pope Pius IX in 1878 and the rise of the more diplomatic Pope Leo XIII, Bismarck and the German nationalists were willing to make concessions, bringing an end to the German Kulturkampf, a long cultural struggle between the Catholic Church and the Prussian State.
Asher Sisneros 