Studio portrait of Hans S. Krakauer as a baby; Landau in der Pfalz, Germany.

Digital Image

Summer home of Bianca and Julius Rosenbaum; Glinicke, Berlin Portraits Men

Verso: handwritten correspondence

Fritz Gottschalk and his children boating on a mountain lake; Titisee, Germany.

From left to right: Ursula, Walter, Hal, Kurt, Fritz, and Elizabeth Gottschalk; the lake is probably the Titisee near the Swiss border in the Black Forest, Germany

Grave of Josef Molling; Germany.

Josef Molling committed suicide. He had financial problems, either embezzelment from the Prussian State Lottery or over an aircraft plant.

The six Gottschalk children Ursula, Elizabeth, Hal, Kurt, Freddy and Walter seated in a Strandkorb (roofed wicker beach chair); Nordeney, Germany. Portraits Children

Front row Walter (left) and Freddy; middle row Kurt (left) and Hal; back row Ursula (left) and Elizabeth

Three Gottschalk children digging in the sand; Nordeney, Germany. Portraits; Children

Digital Image

Gottschalk children on vacation at a mountain lake; Titisee, Germany.

Front left to right: Ursula and Walter; back left to right: Kurt, Elizabeth, and Hal

Fritz Gottschalk and his children boating on a mountain lake; Titisee, Germany.

From left to right: Ursula, Walter, Hal, Kurt, Fritz, and Elizabeth Gottschalk; the lake is probably the Titisee near the Swiss border in the Black Forest, Germany

Gottschalk family on vacation; Norderney, Germany.

Left to right: two unidentified women, Kurt Gottschalk, Therese Gottschalk nee Molling, Fritz Gottschalk, unidentified woman (the maid?), and Elizabeth Gottschalk

Gottschalk family on vacation in front of Kurhaus Brunig; Norderney, Germany.

From left to right: man with camera: Karl Gottschalk; sitting on stairs: Fritz Gottschalk, unidentified woman, Therese Gottschalk nee Molling, Hans Ludwig, Kurt Gottschalk, unidentified woman (maid?) and Elizabeth Gottschalk

Henny Molling nee Meyerhof, Therese Gottschalk nee Molling, Kurt, Elizabeth and Hal Gottschalk on the beach; Norderney, Germany.

Sitting in the Strandkorb (beach chair) at Norderney are Henny Molling and Therese Gottschalk; sitting in the sand are Kurt, Elizabeth and Hal Gottschalk

Studio portrait of Hans S. Krakauer as a baby; Landau in der Pfalz, Germany.

Digital Image

Salon with door open to garden; Mosse family residence; Berlin Architecture; Residences; Interior

Digital Image

A European Culture War in the Twentieth Century? Antic-Catholicism and Anti-Bolshevism between Moscow, Berlin, and the Vatican 1922 to 1933

The term “culture war” has become a generic expression for secular-catholic conflicts across nineteenth-century Europe. Yet, if measured by acts of violence, anticlericalism peaked in the years between 1927 and 1939, when thousands of Catholic priests and believers were imprisoned or executed and hundreds of churches razed in Mexico, Spain and Russia. This essay argues that not only in these three countries, but indeed across Europe a culture war raged in the interwar period. It takes, as a case study, the interaction of communist and Catholic actors located in the Vatican, the Soviet Union, and Germany in the period between the beginning of the Pontificate of Pius XI in 1922 and Hitler’s appointment as chancellor of Germany in 1933. Using correspondence and reports from the Vatican archives, this essay shows how Papal officials and communist leaders each sought to mobilize the German populace to achieve their own diplomatic ends. German Catholics and communists gladly responded to the call to arms that sounded from Rome and Moscow in 1930, but they did so also to further their own domestic goals. The case study shows how national contexts inflected the transnational dynamics of radical anti-Catholicism in interwar Europe. In the end, agitation against “godlessness” did not lead to the return of a “Christian State” desired by many conservative Christians. Instead, the culture war further destabilized the republic and added a religious dimension to a landscape well suited to National Socialist efforts to reach a Christian population otherwise mistrustful of its völkisch and anticlerical elements.