Red Secularism is the first substantive investigation into one of the key sources of radicalism in modern German, the subculture that arose at the intersection of secularism and socialism in the late nineteenth-century. It explores the organizations that promoted their humanistic-monistic worldview through popular science and asks how this worldview shaped the biographies of ambitious self-educated workers and early feminists. Todd H. Weir shows how generations of secularist intellectuals staked out leading positions in the Social Democratic Party, but often lost them due to their penchant for dissent. Moving between local and national developments, this book examines the crucial role of red secularism in the political struggles over religion that rocked Germany and fed into the National Socialist dictatorship of 1933. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Finalist, 2025 David Barclay Book Prize, German Studies Association

‘In a work of remarkable ambition and scope, Weir explores the complex relationship between socialism and secularism at a time when many workers retained ties to organized religion. Exposing the rifts within the German socialist movement over whether to pursue a radical secularist agenda, Weir’s meticulous scholarship will be indispensable for all future scholars probing this relationship.’

Mark Edward Ruff - author of The Battle for the Catholic Past in Germany, 1945–1980

‘Red Secularism offers a panoramic history of the evolving relationship between socialism and secularism situated in one of the most complex sites and periods in modern European history: Germany between 1890 and 1933. Out of this dense, thorny context, Weir tells a story that allows the reader to put the historical concepts and actors in conversation. Red Secularism will be of great value not just for historians, but for anyone interested in religious-secular-political conflicts and their manifestations in contemporary life.’

Victoria Smolkin - author of A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism

‘A must-read for scholars of (German)secularism, but also for those interested in the history and the historiography of social democracy, and for scholars of the history of modern Germany in general.’

Katharina Neef Source: Secular Studies

‘… a well-crafted 'thick description' of nuanced and multifaceted relations between secularism and socialist fellowship at the most crucial period of German history, when the organized Left in that country reached the peak of its development.’

Andrei Znamenski Source: American Historical Review

‘This deeply-researched and well-argued book makes an important contribution to the political and the religious history of Germany in the years between the accession of Wilhelm II to the imperial throne and the appointment of Hitler asChancellor.’

Hugh Mcleod Source: Journal of Ecclesiastical History

'Weir's account suggests new paths for thinking about intellectual history on a mass scale. It encourages us to focus not on popular belief or on intellectuals in isolation, but on their interactions. This has at least two benefits. First, when firsthand sources are in short supply, we gain a privileged perspective on the diversity of a worldview by critically examining how intellectuals responded to popular ideas, especially in moments of thwarted expectation. This allows a more fine-grained account than a simple reliance on class, which can homogenize popular belief, and in the case of Marxism can lead us ironically back to the views held by intellectuals. Second, attending to these interactions helps us avoid the errors of what Antonio Gramsci labeled 'folklorism'; that is, a purely descriptive study. ... In undertaking such a study, we need not accept the hierarchies within which many intellectuals at the time framed those differences.' as Weir's book shows, the broader public were by no means passive recipients of ideas developed elsewhere, and the way in which they picked up and transformed a worldview directly informed debates between intellectuals about what that worldview should be.'

Edward Baring Source: Modern Intellectual History

‘The book evokes a world in which many German socialists found personal and ethical meaning in a scientific account of reality, to an extent now quite distant from contemporary experience, whether believing or unbelieving.'

Joshua Bennett Source: English Historical Review