ABSTRACT
The Zentrum or Centre Party was founded in the late autumn of 1870 in the field of tension between, on the one side, the founding of the Kleindeutsches Reich along Prussian-Protestant lines, and on the other, the first Vatican Council’s protective wall against Zeitgeist and modernity built in 1869-70.1 With this context in mind, Golo Mann once characterized the party as a ‘remarkable product both of German history and the European political climate around 1870’. The party appeared to him to be a product of German history, since Catholics had not represented such a strong minority in any European country other than the German Kaiserreich. In his opinion the Zentrum was determined by Europe, as the Protestant Prussians were able to triumph within a few years over the Catholic powers Austria and France and because it simultaneously came to revolutionary upheaval in Catholic Spain.2 It was understandable to him that the Catholic Church felt threatened by such a development, as well as that the liberal state was scared of the reaction of a militant Church that appeared to be renewing its demands from its ‘distant grey past’.3
