ABSTRACT
Scholarship devoted to the history of Catholics in modern Germany demonstrates that Catholics from across the social spectrum desired inclusion in the nation as equal participants. Notably overlooked in this rich analysis of integration is an assessment of Catholics’ relationship to Wissenschaft or systematic research science, especially as it pertained to nature, for natural science and its promotion were important themes in German national discourse. In German lands more specifically, Protestant and increasingly secular intellectuals took this hostility for granted in elaborating master narratives of national development. Events in Catholic history did little to recommend the church to its German critics. The historiography of German nationalism has benefited from recent work on nationalism’s conceptual origins. The maturity of Germany in historical time, then, depended upon a confessional homogeneity that rejected, absolutely and permanently, the shackling disciplines of the Roman Church.
