Rebecca Ayako Bennette makes an important contribution to scholarship on the German Kulturkampf through careful analysis of Catholic constructions of German identity during the 1870s. In the process, she offers a spirited defense of two claims, both of which challenge conventional wisdom. First, she argues that the most important development for German Catholics in the Kaiserreich was their integration into the national community rather than their marginalization and formation of a distinct subculture. Second, she maintains that integration began during—not after—the Kulturkampf. She supports these claims with a range of sources that include popular novels, private correspondence, reports from annual Katholikentage and, above all, Catholic newspapers and periodicals like Germania and the Kölnische Volkszeitung.

Bennette notes that initial Catholic responses to German unification included not only expressions of concern over Prussian leadership and the minority status of Catholics, but also expressions of enthusiasm for the new nation (24). Given their disdain for Bismarck and his disdain for them, they found the emperor to be more suitable as a trans-confessional symbol of the Reich (34). However, anti-Catholic policies between 1873 and 1875 tested the limits of Catholic loyalty, as expressions of affection for the emperor dropped off and Catholics drew parallels between their own situation and the “Babylonian captivity” or the persecution of Christians in ancient Rome (46–51). As the conflict intensified, German Catholics looked for ways to reframe the struggle as one between Christians of both confessions and various others such as liberals, Jews, and socialists, imagined by many Catholics to be the “true” enemies of the Reich. This led to a brief but intense wave of antisemitic rhetoric in the Catholic press, soon to be replaced by anti-socialist rhetoric that relied on essentially the same tropes (53–63).

Much of the rest of the book explores Catholic constructions of German identity based on alternative geographies and histories, feminine imagery, a defense of Catholic Bildung, and emphasis on Germany's mission in the world. Bennette explains that Berlin was too secular and too closely associated with Protestant Prussia to serve as a center for the Germany Catholics imagined (77). Instead, they presented regional diversity as a core element of German national identity rather than a challenge to it. Seen in that light, aggressive moves toward centralization were “un-German” (92). Among the regions where Catholics were a majority, the Catholic press chose to focus most often on the Rhineland and Westphalia because levels of urbanization, industrialization, prosperity, and literacy in those regions served as an effective challenge to Protestant stereotyping of Catholics. Alsace-Lorraine and Silesia, on the other hand, were more problematic due to uncertain loyalties or ethnic diversity. Downgrading the importance of Berlin, emphasizing regionalism, and highlighting the most “modern” and “authentically German” of Catholic regions were strategies with which the Catholic press “countered constructions of the nation that marginalized or actively excluded Catholics” (95).

Alongside this Catholic geography, Bennette identifies patterns in the way Catholics imagined Germany's past, present, and future. They tended to stress continuities between the new Reich and the Holy Roman Empire, which they claimed was guided by deep religious and moral traditions rather than power politics (100). During the 1870s, they also tended to code the nation and Catholicism as feminine victims of Protestant-liberal aggression, though feminine imagery for the nation was less common as the conflict subsided at the end of the decade (117–120). They accused liberal academics like Rudolf Virchow and Heinrich von Sybel of sacrificing Wissenschaft in favor of their ideological agendas, arguing that “academic freedom and truth through scholarship, both ideals claimed by liberals, were actually the preserve of Catholics” (153). This argument was part of a larger story in which liberal Kulturkämpfer were undermining Germany's ability to fulfill its mission in the world—a mission that included leadership in Europe, “benevolent” rule in overseas colonies, and defense of Europe from eastern “barbarism” represented by the Russian Empire (180–182).

Bennette's study reveals some fascinating patterns in German Catholic mentalities during the 1870s, and her sources allow her to observe important shifts at specific moments in time. She presents German Catholics as active agents during the Kulturkampf rather than reactive and one-dimensional victims of marginalization. To her credit, she also addresses the problematic issues of Catholic anti-Semitism, ethnocentrism, and support for imperialism. Perhaps most important, she makes a distinction between Catholic opposition to Bismarck and the liberal Kulturkämpfer and alienation from the national community. At the same time, the book raises some important questions that remain unanswered. What made it possible for Catholic anti-Semitism to flare up so dramatically in 1875, and to what extent should we be reassured by the fact that it receded just as suddenly? How did Catholics in the Center Party reconcile their antipathy to socialism with their opposition to the anti-socialist legislation after 1878? Why was the feminine coding of the nation by German Catholics just a temporary phenomenon, given that Catholics elsewhere in Europe exhibited some of the same preferences for feminine imagery?

Finally, Bennette seems to assign a positive value to the integration of German Catholics into the national community, implying that it would have been odd or inappropriate for them to seek a moral reference point somewhere else than the Reich (51). Fortunately, the argument goes, the Kulturkampf turned out to be “good practice” for the long-term integration of Catholics into German society (193). Yet one cannot help but note that during the Nazi era, these relatively well-integrated Catholics were more likely to be complicit than groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses, whose world view made close identification with a national community problematic. Perhaps it is worth asking, despite the hold nations continue to have on the imagination, whether the integration of a faith community into a national community is always “good practice.”