Falk Laws
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The Falk Laws, named after education minister Adalbert Falk, (or the May Laws) of 1873 were legislative bills enacted in the German Kingdom of Prussia during the Kulturkampf conflict with the Catholic Church.
Background
During the Italian unification affecting the Papal State, Pope Pius IX in 1864 had published his Syllabus Errorum of 80 thesis statements denounced as false teaching and the encyclical Quanta cura against freedom of religion and separation of church and state. In summer 1870 the First Vatican Council had affirmed the jurisdictional authority of the Pope and proclaimed his infallibility as a dogma. These developments were suspiciously viewed as "ultramontanism" by liberal circles in the newly established German Empire, dominated by the mainly Protestant Prussian state, while the forces of political catholicism organised themselves in the Centre Party. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck especially noted their patronage of the Catholic Polish population in the Prussian Province of Posen, in West Prussia and in Upper Silesia as well as of the French in Alsace-Lorraine.
In 1871 Bismarck had the Pulpit Law implemented into the German Strafgesetzbuch Penal Code, prohibiting any public statement of priests in political affairs. The Gniezno archbishop Mieczysław Halka Ledóchowski was sentenced to two years in prison for violation. The "Jesuits' Law" of 1872 banned any branch establishment of the Society of Jesus on the territory of the German Reich. On 11 March 1872, Minister Adalbert Falk by law abolished any Catholic or Protestant administration of schools in Prussia and assigned the supervision solely to the ministry of education. German relations with the Vatican were cut after Pope Pius IX had rejected the ambassador Gustav Adolf Hohenlohe, commented by Bismarck with his "We will not walk to Canossa" speech in the Reichstag parliament on March 14.
Regulation
In view of the Catholic resistance, the May Laws of 1873 gave responsibility for the training and appointment of clergy to the state, which resulted in the closing of nearly half of the seminaries in Prussia by 1878. Any cleric had to prove a university education and take a state examination. His appointment was subject to an obligation of diclosure to the Province's Oberpräsident (Upper President), who had the power to veto. During the reading in the Prussian Landtag in January, the Progressive deputy Rudolf Virchow had called the bill a Kulturkampf struggle for freedom from the church, a term soon adopted by both sides. The regulations translated into fewer seminarians and more parishes without priests, so that in many places half the parishes stood vacant, leaving hundreds of thousands of Catholics without regular spiritual care. In Trier, Catholics responded to the closing of the seminary by hosting seminarians in their homes and classes were conducted less formally. More commonly, seminarians were sent abroad for training, although such stop-gap measures did not nearly make up for the losses imposed by the May Laws.
At the same time a Prussian court for church matters was established. Those bishops acting contrary to the state laws were to be declared deposed. In October 1873 the Mainz bishop and Centre Party founder Wilhelm Emmanuel Freiherr von Ketteler, having publicly condemned the May Laws on a pilgrimage to Kevelaer, was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison, resulting in fierce protests. In March 1874 the Trier bishop Matthias Eberhard was put under arrest and died shortly after he was released from nine months of custody in 1876. Those assisting priests in contravention of the May Laws were subject to fines, arrest and imprisonment, and 210 people were convicted of such crimes in the first four months of 1875. On 13 July 1874 an assault on Bismarck's life by a Catholic journeyman at Bad Kissingen failed.
The May Law of 1874 even enabled the state administration to expatriate reluctant clergymen, one year later all congregations were dissolved except for those engaged in nursing. In April 1875 the Prussian Landtag passed the "Breadbasket Law", divesting clerics of any state support, as long as they did not officially acknowledge the primacy of the German Empire.
In January 1876 the Bavarian Pfaelzer Zeitung reported that the Bavarian Minister of War had been admonished to discontinue the exemptions from conscription previously accorded to priests and theological students.[1]
Aftermath
The May Laws succeeded in making life harder for the clerics, but the failure of the May Laws to cause the total collapse of Catholic resistance and allow for complete control of the Church by the state is one facet of the broader failure of the Kulturkampf. Bismarck ultimately precipitated the unification of the German Catholics—despite the split-off of the Old Catholic Church—and strengthened their ties with the Roman papacy. In the federal election of 1874, the Catholic Centre Party gained 27.9% of the votes cast, confirming their status as the second strongest parliamentary group in the Reichstag. Furthermore, the chancellor's measures offended several of his Protestant national liberal allies. Bismarck had spotted a new and more serious threat in the rise of the Social Democratic Party, and was aware that he could not go without the Catholics' support to enact his Anti-Socialist Laws.
Pope Pius IX died on 7 February 1878, and in the negotiations with his successoer Leo XIII the implications of the May Laws were attenuated. Diplomatic relations were resumed in 1882 and the Kulturkampf officially ended by the "Peace Laws" of 1886/87.