That All May Be One? Church Unity and the German National Idea, 1866–1883

摘要

ON January 18, 1871, King Wilhelm I of Prussia was crowned GermannEmperor. This event seemingly ended debate over the “GermannQuestion”—how to define the German nation and unite the disparatenGerman states—by unifying Germany under Prussian-Protestant hegemonynand excluding Catholic Austria from the new Reich. This “kleindeutsch”nsolution to the German Question effected political unification but left intactnthe longstanding confessional divide between German Catholics andnProtestants. Because confessional identity and difference were pivotal to howncontemporary Germans imagined a nation, the meaning of German nationalnidentity remained contested even after unification. But the formation ofnGerman national identity during this period was never neutral—confessionalnalterity and antagonism was used to imagine confessionally exclusivennotions of German national identity.