The Legend of Compulsory Unification: The Catholic Clergy and the Revival of Trade Unionism in West Germany after the Second World War

Patch, William L.

doi:10.1086/521067

Cited by 2 publications

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“…The KAB's position that no Catholic worker could remain a member of a DGB-affiliated union in good conscience lacked any clear theological rationale, and it was opposed by the Vatican because the DGB remained firmly anti-communist. 30 With great sadness, the eminent Jesuit social theorist Oswald von Nell-Breuning noted a revival among clerical colleagues of the "extremely dangerous" integralist tendency from the years before 1914 when he conferred with DGB leaders in March 1954. Nell-Breuning affirmed a simple truth forgotten by many bishops, that a variety of political programs are compatible with any set of ethical norms.…”

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confidence: 99%

Defending the “Peace of Sunday”: The Debate over Sunday Labor in the West German Steel Industry after the Second World War

Patch¹

2021

Cent Eur Hist

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Working hours were largely unregulated in nineteenth-century Germany, but a powerful alliance emerged in the 1890s between the Christian churches and the socialist labor movement to prohibit most industrial labor on Sunday, including most production of steel. In the 1950s steel management persuaded organized labor that it would be advantageous to produce steel continuously throughout the week, the prevalent system in other countries. The Evangelical Church retreated in this debate, but the Catholic Church waged a fierce and partly successful campaign from 1952 to 1961 to defend the old prohibition. Until the 1980s organized labor continued to cooperate with both major churches to keep Sunday industrial labor quite rare. Their influence declined suddenly after national reunification in 1990, however, and many Germans have come to prize individual freedom above the old principle, honored by Christians and the unchurched alike, that most people should have the same day of rest.

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confidence: 99%