Public School Reform in the Bavarian Kulturkampf: The Rise of the Bavarian Patriot Party as the Culmination of Conservative Identity Politics, 1825–71

This paper will examine the efforts undertaken by the Bavarian state between 1825 and 1871 to foster a conservative particularistic identity via the institutions of public education. Since 1825 the curriculum in the Volksschul, strove to foster a religiously –grounded, monarch-centered Bavarian identity  to insulate the population from the appeal of liberal-inspired reforms. Bavaria’s conservative elite were uncomfortable using modern state institutions to realize a conservative vision of society.  Hence, between 1825 and 1871, the Volksschule was in effect a hybrid institution where the state and the churches unhappily shared control. The regional and confessionalized nature of the revolt within Bavaria during the 1848 Revolution convinced many of the need to secularize administration of the Bavarian Volksschul system. This desire increased in the years that followed and culminated in the 1867 Elementary School Plan, which was designed to enable the state to more effectively control the institution of public elementary education without altering the fundamentally conservative purpose of the system itself. However, this attempt occurred after the Prussian defeat of Austria in 1866, and in this confessionally charged political environment, the effort to secularize public schooling, even though a fundamentally conservative government was pursuing it, contributed greatly to the outbreak of the Bavarian Kulturkampf. In response to the 1867 School Plan, the Catholic Church utilized its institutional structures and personnel to mobilize large numbers of Catholics against the state's efforts to further secularize the Volksschul system.  The Church's efforts were successful; the Plan was defeated, and by the late 1860's the "Bavarian Patriot Party" (a forerunner of the Catholic Center Party) had emerged. The Bavarian Patriot Party successfully mobilized large segments of the Catholic population throughout Bavaria to defend the Church's traditional role in the public school system and traditional political order from what the party perceived as liberal-inspired reform.