Catholicism, Popular Culture, and the Arts in Germany, 1880-1933 [Hardcover]

Margaret Stieg Dalton offers a comprehensive study of the German Catholic cultural movement that lasted from the late nineteenth century until 1933. Rapidly advancing industrialization, higher literacy rates, rising real income, and increased leisure time created a demand for intellectually accessible entertainment. Technological developments not only gave rise to new forms of entertainment, but also to the means by which they were marketed and disseminated. At the same time, the effects of modernism were being felt in all areas of high culture. Daltons book examines the encounter of clergy and lay Catholics with both high culture and popular culture in Germany.

German Catholic culture was more than the product of an individual who happened to be Catholic; it was intellectual and artistic activity with a specifically Catholic stamp, a unique blend that offered distinctive variants of art, literature, and music. In response to the predominant Protestant, nationalistic culture, German Catholics attempted to create an alternative cultural universe that would insulate them from a world that seemed to threaten their faith. Daltons book provides detailed insight into the manner in which Catholics and other Germans tried to determine to what extent the new world could be accepted while still holding on to traditional values.

Catholicism, Popular Culture, and the Arts in Germany, 1880-1933will be welcomed by anyone interested in European intellectual and cultural history.

Margaret Stieg Dalton is a historian and professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama.

The conflict between organized religion and the emergence of modernist thought is not new. This study particularizes one important chapter in that conflict: the disparity between the Catholic cultural movement and its secular counterpart in Germany during the period of the Kulterkampf and the years preceding the ascent of the Nazi party. At