ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on southern Germany, since the rural Catholic bourgeoisie of this region provides a striking contrast to its counterparts in western Germany. In Bavaria, a Catholic bourgeois cultural formation crystallized in Catholic cities and towns in the years following 1848, the period of the New Era and the age of liberalism leading up to the unification of Germany. The cultural trend was decidedly secular, and the Enlightenment in northern Germany provided them with a model for emulation. During the 1860s, the majority of local residents seem to have supported the bourgeois goals of the town of Konstanz. The bourgeoisie employed strategies which were diversified in the extreme, making skilful use of the press and visiting tourists, as well as convening evening meetings in taverns as civic evenings. Unlike in Bavaria, however, "the Liberal spring" in Konstanz proved to be short-lived.
