Dhe look back at the negotiations on the Concordat between the Holy See and Bavaria takes us back to the initial and formative phase of the Free State of Bavaria, and at the same time to the early and fateful years of the first all-German Republic of Weimar. For the young Free State, the Concordat was a fundamental decision that not only determined the shape of the new religious law in the Weimar Constitution, but also the relationship between Bavarian federalism and Berlin unitarism as well as the relationship between the state, civil society freedom and plurality.
Reorganisation in the Weimar Republic
The revolution of 1918 had not only overthrown the monarchy, but also abolished the clerical supervision of elementary schools and made it easier to deregister from religious education. Further fears that Bavaria was on the verge of being de-Christianised acted as a spectre to mobilise the founding of the Bavarian People's Party (BVP) in particular. The problem immediately arose as to whether the old concordat from 1817 would remain in force after the fall of the monarchy: after all, the numerous parishes for which the government had the right of appointment had to be filled. Sooner or later, this would also apply to bishoprics. Kurt Eisner's government (1867-1919) assumed that the royal presentation rights had been transferred to them and the Bavarian bishops also initially wanted to at least tacitly tolerate this. However, the imperial constitution passed in August 1919 then stipulated in Article 137 that each religious community would administer its own affairs. Both the state and the church were now convinced that a new concordat had to be negotiated. After an initial exploratory meeting on 30 October 1919 with Johannes Hoffmann (1867-1930), the Social Democratic Minister President from the Palatinate and a decidedly anti-clerical former primary school teacher, the Apostolic Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli (1876-1958, Pope Pius XII from 1939) drew up ten points of demand from the Church. At the end of 1919, he officially invited the Bavarian government to concordat negotiations; on 20 January 1920, the state parliament agreed to accept this invitation. Pacelli expanded the church's catalogue of demands once again to 19 points. He handed over this Punktation II on 4 February 1920.
For the Church, namely the nuncio, a unique opportunity presented itself: in the 19th century, the bishops had fought against what they criticised as "state churchism", namely against state control and supervision of the Church. According to the constitution, in particular the religious edict published as an appendix to the constitution, the state felt it had to exercise this out of Christian responsibility for its Christian subjects. Now that the state had withdrawn, the church was able to make maximum demands - which the Free State was quite negative about:
a) Instead of the royal right of presentation, appointment of bishops by the pope and of the majority of parish priests by the bishop; likewise of cathedral canons.
b) Establishment of the denominational primary schools and religious instruction in schools; reintroduction of clerical school supervision.
c) Safeguarding the theological university and college faculties (initially even demanding the episcopal appointment of professors) and denominational worldview professorships as well as the church's obligation to approve and the possibility to object to
their sponsors.
d) Replacement of state payments by endowment in real estate (forest or gold).
e) State-funded pastoral care in the military, in hospitals and in prisons.
These ecclesiastical maximum demands were at the same time decidedly Roman or at least centralist maximum demands. They corresponded to the canonical regulations provided for in the Codex Iuris Canonici, which was promulgated in 1917. Traditionally, not only the states but also the local churches had had much greater rights of participation, particularly with regard to the election or nomination of bishops. In earlier times, ecclesiastical income was also generally linked to the individual ministry in a decentralised manner and was not paid centrally by the diocese.
State and church negotiate: three problem areas
The state was fundamentally interested in concluding a concordat: It was important that the state-church relationship was reliably regulated; at the same time, the state wanted to preserve a remnant of independence against the unitarist tendency of the imperial constitution, according to Articles 6 and 78 of which the empire alone was responsible for foreign policy treaties and relations. Cult and culture remained a matter for the states and in these matters treaties could be concluded with foreign states, although these required the approval of the Reich. The
The Bavarian People's Party, the largest party, which initially supported the Hoffmann government and then provided so-called "civil servant minister presidents" itself, without - until 1924 - fully accepting the new conditions, wanted to interpret or reform the constitution in the direction of greater federalism if possible.
Thus there were three problem areas that were particularly controversial between church and state and which prolonged the negotiations: 1) The relationship with the empire; 2) The rights of participation of the local churches; 3) The question of state benefits and the denominational school.
Ad 1) On 22 June 1920, Pacelli was also accredited as nuncio to the Reich in Berlin. Could the state-church relationship be resolved in a way that was favourable to the Church by means of a Reich Concordat, even for all German states, so that the Bavarian negotiations should be postponed? However, the nuncio's attempts in Berlin failed due to the majority in the Reichstag. There, the solution to the school issue in favour of confessional denominational schools could not be implemented due to the resistance of the liberal and left-wing parties; they were also fundamentally critical of the concordat idea, as they did not interpret the Catholic Church or the Holy See as an equal subject under international law.
Ad 2) When it became clear at the end of 1921 that a Reich Concordat could not be enforced and that an agreement with Bavaria would be more favourable for the Church, a new dynamic emerged in the negotiations. In January 1922, the Bavarian Minister of Culture Franz Matt (1860-1929) from the BVP submitted an official response to the nuncio's point of view. The negotiations were conducted intensively between summer 1922 and summer 1923. Even at the insistence of the Bavarian cathedral chapters, the Bavarian government did not want to accept the papal appointment of the bishops. The chapters, the clergy of the Episcopal Church, should be allowed to elect their bishop - as was the practice of the Church before the 19th century. Here, however, the nuncio and Rome remained firm; as desired, the papal secretariat of state confirmed to Pacelli that Rome would allow the negotiations to fail if the Free State did not accept the papal appointment of bishops. As a result, the state finally gave in: Although the chapters and the bishops are allowed to send lists of nominations, the extent to which the Pope then takes these into consideration depends solely on his free decision. The government itself can only veto them if there are political concerns.
Ad 3) Neuralgic points were also the school and financial issues. For the BVP, the church's demands - denominational primary schools, denominational teacher training, state-guaranteed denominational religious education and church co-determination and supervisory rights - were acceptable in principle. However, it alone did not have a majority in the state parliament and the liberals, socialists and nationalist bloc rejected the confessional school in particular. Finally, the national-conservative, Protestant-orientated Centre Party was won as an alliance partner, which in return managed to conclude church treaties with the two Protestant churches on the left and right bank of the Rhine and, above all, to regulate the financial state benefits in a largely parallel manner. Nevertheless, the financial issues proved to be difficult, especially in the final phase of negotiations: in addition to guaranteeing church assets and church taxes, Pacelli wanted to achieve the redemption of state benefits through the reinvestment of property assets. The government was not in a position to do this in difficult economic times. However, the nuncio achieved the continuation and dynamic adjustment of the previous state benefits to the new requirements until the redemption.
In response to the Bavarian enquiry, Reich Chancellor Wilhelm Marx (1863-1946) had already declared in March 1923 that the concordat did not contradict the Reich constitution. As most of the Church-Roman demands had been met, Pope Pius XI (1857-1939, Pope since 1922) spoke of a "very good concordat" on 8 December 1923. It was signed on 29 March 1924; after a heated debate in parliament, it was adopted there by 73:52 votes on 15 January 1925, so that it could be ratified on 24 January 1925.
For the nuncio and the Church, it was a model concordat: if the Pope could no longer make concessions for the majority Catholic Bavarians, then certainly not for the other German states, so the line of argument went. While negotiations with Hesse and Württemberg failed in the following years, a concordat was concluded with Prussia in 1929 and with Baden in 1932. However, the nuncio had to leave out the school issue in each case and the rest of the voting rights - the chapter was allowed to choose from a papal proposal of three - had to be conceded by the Roman side. Nevertheless, the Bavarian Concordat also acted as a model concordat to a certain extent, exerting a significant influence on the organisation of the state-church relationship following the Weimar Constitution.
The Bavarian Concordat had a pioneering function
In the end, the question is whether Bavaria allowed itself to be ripped off here. The desire to secure a remnant of Bavarian independence against a Berlin unitarism, as well as the church-friendly attitude of the BVP politicians at the time, led to many of the church's wishes being incorporated into the concordat. Was the price
too high for this?
It should be borne in mind that the self-image of the Free State, its relationship with the imperial government, first had to be shaped on the basis of the new imperial constitution. The same applies to the relationship with the churches. The Bavarian Concordat thus had a certain pioneering function for Germany as a whole, as it was the first to spell out and concretise the separation of state and church, but also the friendly cooperation with the churches. A path was established here in which the state took a step back in favour of the free right of self-determination of the churches (civil society) and recognised their contribution as valuable to the community. Despite all the changes, such as the abolition of the denominational school in favour of the Christian community school in 1968, this interplay is still intact today.
The Concordat paved the way for the BVP, as a conservative Christian people's party of the centre, to bind the middle-class voters in Bavaria in particular to the Weimar Republic, despite its ambivalence, under Heinrich Held (1868-1938); an independent Bavarian course was developed and the Concordat acted as a catalyst for this. The Bavarian Concordat therefore played a pioneering role in establishing a partnership between the state and religious communities, not only within Bavaria, but in the medium term for the entire Reich.
