Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-l4ctd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-22T05:45:29.489Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Alsatian Catholics Against the State, 1918–25

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

Jena M. Gaines
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The years that followed the return of Alsace and Lorraine to France after World War I proved that reunion was a complicated and painful process. The potential for misunderstanding, if not outright conflict, between Alsatians and French policy-makers was from the outset grossly underestimated by virtually everyone on both sides. Alsatians saw no incompatibility between the wish to preserve their regional cultural personality, or particularism, and their loyalty to France. The believers in the ‘Republic one and indivisible’, however, did. The preservation of Alsatian particularism, especially in language and religion, was regarded by French politicians as the perpetuation of German cultural and political influence. The end of the armistice celebrations and the introduction of a transitional administration brought the realisation that the cultural gulf between France and Alsace, widened by years of separation following the Treaty of Frankfurt of 1871, could not be legislated away. With few exceptions, the people on both sides of the Rhine who welcomed the end of the annexation had assumed that the commitment to reunion was sufficient to make it a success.1 This belief was nowhere more rapidly disproven than in the matter of religion. The enforcement of French legislation ending the role of the state in overseeing the congregations became the flash-point between the Catholic majority in Alsace and the Third Republic.

Type
Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , November 1993 , pp. 207 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Alsace–Lorraine was a geopolitical unit created by the annexation of 1871. Alsace and Lorraine were and remain historically distinct territories that are home to different ethnic groups. German nationalists had for most of the nineteenth century insisted upon the inclusion of Alsace in any German national state on the grounds that Alsatians were part of the German cultural sphere. The annexation of the department of Moselle, one-third of Lorraine, was based upon strategic and industrial considerations. Much of the information in this article applies to Lorrainers as well as to Alsatians, but it would be inaccurate to assume that Lorrainers and Alsatians experienced the annexation and the reunion in identical ways. Both Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin, the departments which comprised the historic province of Alsace, were ceded to the German Reich; in contrast, only part of Lorraine, the department of Moselle, was annexed. Lorrainers, moreover, were not ethnic Germans. As a German minority in France after 1918, Alsatians had special concerns that Lorrainers did not.

2 UPR programme, in Dreyfus, François G., La vie politique en Alsace, 1919–1936 (thereafter Dreyfus, La vie) (Paris: Armand Colin, 1969), 36–8.Google Scholar

3 Evans, Ellen Lovell, The German Center Party 1870–1933: A Study in Political Catholicism (Carbondale/Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981), 164.Google Scholar

4 Karl, Bachem, Vorgeschichte, Geschichte und Politik der Deutschen Zentrumspartei (Cologne: Scientia Verlag, 1967), iii. 191.Google Scholar

5 Report of 24 Feb. 1919, File AJ 30, Archives Nationales, Paris.Google Scholar

6 René, Viviani, at the opening session of the Conférence d'Alsace et de Lorraine, as quoted in Procès-Verbaux de la Conférence d'Alsace-Lorraine (thereafter Procès-Verbaux) (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1917–1919), i. 1–2.Google Scholar

7 Geneviève, BaasLe malaise alsacien (Strasbourg: Développement et Communauté, 1972), 29.Google Scholar

8 Comité alsacien d'études et d'information, L'Alsace depuis son retour à la France (thereafter L'Alsace depuis son retour) (Strasbourg: Comité Alsacien d'Études et d'Information, 1932), i. 165.Google Scholar

9 René, Gillouin, De l'Alsace à la Flandre: le mysticisme linguistique (Paris: Éditions Promethée, 1930), 66.Google Scholar

10 Camille, Dahlet, ‘Les revenants’, La Républiaue (Saverne) 11 09 1919Google Scholar; Jean, Keppi, ‘Weg mit dem Ballast,’ in Joseph, Rossé et al. , Das Elsass von 1870–1932 (thereafter Rossé, Das Elsass) (Colmar: Alsatia, 1936), Vol. IV, Doc. 60.Google Scholar

11 UPR statement, in Malcolm, Anderson, ‘Regional Identity and Political Change: The Case of Alsace from the Third to the Fifth Republic’ (thereafter Anderson, ‘Identity’), Political Studies, Vol. 20 (1972), 24.Google Scholar

12 Father Émile, Wetterlé, ‘Culte catholique’ (thereafter Wetterlé, ‘Culte’), Procès–Verbaux, i. 164.Google Scholar

13 ibid.

14 ibid.

15 Session of 5 July 1915, in Procès–Verbaux, 170–1.Google Scholar

16 Wetterlé, , ‘Culte catholique’, 164.Google Scholar

17 Session of 5 July 1915, in Procès-Verbaux, 172.Google Scholar

18 Report of Félix de Wendel, not dated, in ibid., 282.

19 ibid.

20 Pierre, Zind, Elsass-Lothringenl Alsace-Lorraine: une nation interdite 1870–1940 (Paris: Copernic, 1979), 91.Google Scholar

21 Letter from the National Council to Clemenceau, 19 Dec. 1918, in Rossé, Das Elsass, Vol. 4, Doc. 34A.Google Scholar

22 ibid.

23 Letter from Clemenceau to Pierre Maringer, 14 Jan. 1919, in ibid., Doc. 34B.

24 Contemporary observers noted the existence of a comparable phenomenon in the region formerly known as German Lorraine. Some claimed that the ‘malaise lorrain’ was exacerbated by French immigrants who expected the Lorrainers to speak better French than Alsatians, who were considered ‘German’. Jean de, Pange, Les libertés rhénanes (thereafter de Pange, Les libertés) (Paris: Perrin et cie., 1922), 289–90.Google Scholar

25 Quoted in Karl-Heinz, Rothenberger, Die elsass-lothringische Heimat- und Autonomiebewegung zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen (Frankfurt, Munich: Peter Lang, 1976), 48.Google Scholar

26 General Joffre, as quoted in ibid., 36.

27 Charles, Spindler, L'Alsace pendant la guerre (thereafter Spindler, L'Alsace), (Strasbourg: Treuttel et Würtz, 1925), 700.Google Scholar

28 Jean-Claude, Richez, ‘La révolution de novembre 1918 en Alsace dans les petites villes et les campagnes’, Revue d'Alsace, Vol. 107 (1981), 165.Google Scholar

29 Rossé, , Das Elsass, i. 527–9.Google Scholar

30 Pierre, Maugué, Le particularisme alsacien 1918–1967 (Paris: Presses d'Europe, 1970), 32. Spindler, L'Alsace, 761–2Google Scholar. Edmond, Herber, Elsässisches Lust- und Leidbuch: Erinnerungen und Eindrücke seit 1918 (Haguenau, 1926), 47–8.Google Scholar

31 Bernard, Vogler, ‘Comment l'Alsace est devenue française’. Histoire, Vol. 45 (1982), 17.Google Scholar

32 Christian, Baechler, Le parti catholique alsacien, 1890–1939 (thereafter Baechler, Le parti) (Paris: Ophrys, 1985), 240.Google Scholar

33 ibid., 241.

34 ibid., ‘L'abbé Xavier Haegy (1870–1932): une politique au service de l'Église et du peuple alsacien’ (thereafter Baechler, L'abbé), Archives de l'Église d'Alsace, Vol. 32 (1984), 297.Google Scholar

35 Baechler, , Le parti, 241.Google Scholar

36 ibid., 240.

37 Joseph, Pfleger, as quoted in Rossé, Das Elsass, i. 197Google Scholar.

38 Baechler, , Le parti, 241.Google Scholar

39 Nicolas, Delsor, in Elsässische Volksbote, April 1919, as quoted in Baechler, Le parti, 241.Google Scholar

40 ibid.. 242.

41 de Pange, , Les libertés, 309–10Google Scholar; Phillips, Eugène, Les luttes linguistiques en Alsace jusqu'en 1945 (Strasbourg: Culture Alsacienne, 1975), 186–7.Google Scholar

42 de Pange, , Les libertés, 310.Google Scholar

43 ibid., 310.

44 de Férenzy, Oscar, La vérité sur l'Alsace (Paris: Librairie Bloud et Gay, 1930), 283–5.Google Scholar

45 , Haegy, as quoted in Baechler, ‘L'abbé’, 305.Google Scholar

46 , Baechler, Le parti, 170.Google Scholar

47 L'Alsace depuis son retour, i. 25.Google Scholar

48 Herriot, Edouard, as quoted in de Férenzy, La vérité, 268.Google Scholar

49 Ruch, Mgr, as quoted in Dreyfus, La vie, 307.Google Scholar

50 As quoted in ibid., 273.

51 UPR statement, as quoted in Anderson, ‘Regional Identity’, 24.

52 Craig, John E., Scholarship and Nation-Building: The Universities of Strasbourg and Alsatian Society 1870–1939 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 292.Google Scholar

53 ibid.., 293. Georges Weill claimed that he and a handful of Alsatian deputies conveyed to Herriot the opinion of the majority of Alsatian voters. Dreyfus, La vie, 307.

54 Report of 18 Oct. 1927, File F7 13386, Archives Nationales, Paris.Google Scholar

55 Journal Officiel. Chamber of Deputies, Session of 22 Jan. 1925.Google Scholar