In 1912 the Catholic lawyer, real estate speculator, and Center Party politician, Karl Trimborn wrote to his wife about a visit he had made to their Belgian relatives:
Their Catholicism, this demonstrative insistence on the Catholic point of view, this goingthrough thick and thin while excluding all criticism is not sympathetic to me. It encourages me to contradict them and to demonstrate my liberal point of view … In no way did we have an argument, but as we said good-bye, we knew: we are different people.