In imperial Germany, Catholics and Jews were two religious minorities in the midst of an intolerant majority society. Although there were considerable differences in size (Catholics were about 35 percent of the German population and Jews about 1 percent), their positions as minorities vis-è-vis the Protestant majority had clear similarities. While they were officially free to integrate themselves into the Protestant society surrounding them, they were nevertheless targets of religious persecution and of social and cultural discrimination. They were perceived by wide sectors of the German society as “a state within a state,” “a knife in the nation's back,” and as a group of “betrayers” of the German national policy. Even Germans who did not use such expressions, considered these minorities “marginal groups” inasmuch as their religious principles or their cultural heritages seemed outdated and unimportant and thus easily cast off in the name of assimilation.