The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany)

"A lucid, innovative work of top-flight scholarship.Gross shows us the depths of anti-Catholicism in nineteenth-century Germany; he explains why the German Kulturkampf had such force and why prominent liberals imagined it as a turning point not only in Germany but in world history."---Helmut Walser Smith, Vanderbilt University"A marvelously original account of how the Kulturkampf emerged from the cultural, social, and gendered worlds of German liberalism.While not neglecting the 1870s, Gross's analysis directs historians' attention to the under-researched 1850s and 1860s-decades in which liberals' anti-Catholic arguments were formulated against a backdrop of religious revival, democratic innovation, national ambition, and the articulation of new roles for women in society, politics, and the church.The drama of these decades resonates in every chapter of Gross's fine study."---James Retallack, University of Toronto"Michael Gross has put the culture back into the Kulturkampf!Integrating