Socialism and Secularism in Berlin 1890 to 1933

The proposed fellowship period will be used to substantially advance work on a monograph entitled: Socialism and Secularism in Berlin 1890 to 1933. This study investigates the relationship between secularism and the socialist movement in the period between the re-legalization of the Social Democratic Party in 1890 and the National Socialist suppression of socialism, communism and secularism in 1933.

Although referred to rather innocuously by contemporaries as the 'social question' and the 'religious question,' the conflicts over class and religion constituted two key axes along which the modern German political order was organized. While the socialist movement played an obvious role in the former, it was also decisively involved in the latter as well. During the period under investigation, socialism was publicly identified with a materialistic natural-scientific worldview and with political secularism.

When the conservative forces of the 'national revolution' coalesced in 1930, even groups as mutually hostile as the Catholic Church and the National Socialist Party concurred that godless communism was the most profound threat to the Christian order of Germany. Despite the conservative view that godlessness and revolution were two sides of the same socialist coin, this study will treat secularism and socialism as two distinct, yet interrelated movements, each with its own institutions, intellectuals and interests. In Germany as in Britain, secularism organized before the modern socialist parties. It first appeared in dissenting sects of rationalist Christians, then in Freethought, and finally in organizations such as Ethical Culture and the Monist League. After 1890, German secularism, particularly in Berlin, split over the issue of its relationship to socialism. With over 600,000 members in the late 1920s, the organizations of 'proletarian Freethought' towered over the other secularist organizations in dynamism and numbers.

The study undertakes three layers of analysis. First, it investigates the role of secularism in the cultural formation of the socialist milieu. Here the study examines the scope, quality, and transmission of secularist ideas in working class Berlin, with particular attention given to the way in which natural-scientific education shaped the biographies of socialist intellectuals and worker autodidacts.

The second level of analysis concerns the ways secularism inflected inner- and inter-party struggles. In the Wilhelmine period, secularists were prominent in both the revisionist and radical wings of the SPD, while they remained mistrusted by the party's centrist leadership. In the Weimar Republic, the proletarian Freethought organizations proved to be a key arena of struggle between radicals and moderates.

The third level of analysis treats the role of anticlericalism in the major political struggles of the era. I will examine how the church-leaving movement of 1910-14 made for unexpected alliances between socialist radicals and liberals before turning to the role of anticlericalism in the revolution of 1918 to 1920. Finally, I ask after the role of heightened socialist anticlericalism and conservative antisecularism in the demise of the Weimar Republic.

A stand-alone article will intervene in the current debate on Christian support of National Socialism. Recent studies have taken Nazi affirmations of the party's 'positive Christianity' at face value or shown the penetration of National Socialist propaganda into Protestant theology and organizations. Against this trend, the article will argue that rather than theological collusion, it was joint opposition to secularism that cemented the early cooperation of the Churches and the Nazis. The Nazis rose to power on the promise to eliminate left-wing secularism.

The following communities will benefit from this research project:

1. Scholars active in the fields of modern German history, religious history, the history of science and the history of secularism. This audience will be reached through two major publications, as well as through international lectures and the continuation of an on-going series of interdisciplinary collaborations of an international research network that I initiated in 2009 with a symposium on the history of naturalistic monism. This research network has already proven to be of economic benefit for the University and local economy, as the first symposium generated over £7000 in grants.
The research will also contribute to further developing UK strength in the history of religion in Germany. As the historian Helmut Walser Smith has noted, British-based and US-based scholars have taken the lead in reframing understandings of the critical role of religion in in the formation of the modern German political system.

2. Queen's University. This AHRC fellowship will contribute to two areas that the University is attempting to strengthen, the interdisciplinary study of religion and internationalisation. This research builds on the monism symposium, which was the School of History and Anthropology's largest international event of the 2009-2010 academic year. It will help develop the study of secularism as a key research focus of the University's new Religious Studies Research Forum and the on-going research group in Religion in Modernity. It will reinforce the new MA in 'Religion and Conflict' that my co-organizers and I hope will bring students to Queen's from outside Northern Ireland. By attracting international and GB students to a cutting-edge research-led MA programme, the fellowship will provide indirect economic benefit to the University and the local economy.

3. The public in Northern Ireland and the UK more widely. Studies of the history of secularism, such as the one proposed here, can make a vital contribution to the vigorous debates now taking place over the role of religion in national cultures by providing much needed comparative contextualization. I provided just such a perspective in Belfast by giving a keynote lecture to a gathering of evolutionary psychologists and by participating in a public debate with secularists and religious scholars. In addition to undertaking similar public events in the future, I plan to curate and design a modest exhibit on the role of anticlericalism in the demise of the general political crisis of early 1930s Europe. In conjunction with past historical exhibits that I designed, I gave interviews that were aired on television, radio and appeared in print in internet and press publications. I have cooperated with a local BBC presenter on the subject of secularism in the past and hope to interest him for this new research as well. I will also continue to use the university internet as a proven means of disseminating research findings to the general public.