In this revised dissertation, von Weyhe presents an insightful and accessible biography of a leading member of the Westphalian Catholic nobility, Franz Graf von Galen, whose primary historical importance lay in the years of the Weimar Republic. Beyond a strict biography, Weyhe places Galen in his historical context and uses him to make broader points about Catholic conservatives. She uses Galen's life in his community to further undermine the notion of a coherent, unified Catholic milieu. Instead, she shows that deep divisions existed even among the Westphalian Catholic nobility. Weyhe identifies Galen's Catholic faith, the standards and responsibility of the nobility, and membership in the German nation as determinative for Galen's views and behaviour. What distinguished different groups in the Westphalian Catholic nobility was the emphasis on each of those three elements. For Galen, all three were important, but faith and noble consciousness were primary.
Galen's parents imbued all of their children with the values that governed Galen's life. While the Galen family was one of the wealthiest landowning families in Westphalia, primogeniture meant that most family members lived much more frugally. Galen's parents turned this frugality into a virtue. With daily mass and public displays of piety, the frugal household was intended to serve as a model for the community's peasants. Galen himself was always short of money. Changing economic conditions combined with Germany's increasing democratisation, even before the revolution, left Galen sceptical of the Weimar Republic. Not only democratisation and the nobility's decreasing political and social influence alienated Galen, but perceived moral decay and secularisation concerned him.
However, unlike many of his peers, Galen did not actively undermine or reject the republic. He did not join the Catholic group of the right-wing German Nationalist People's Party (DNVP), nor, unlike his friend Franz von Papen, did he actively seek to undermine the Weimar Republic. He rejected National Socialism for its anti-Christian values. Weyhe describes Galen as pragmatic. The religious imperative to be constructive, to serve whatever government existed as long as it did not turn against Christian morality, created a good measure of flexibility. While Weyhe could have made more of this, Galen shared his pragmatism with many members of the German Catholic elite.
This flexibility permitted Franz von Galen to remain in the Catholic German Centre Party until its end in July 1933. He even served in the lower house of the Prussian parliament until he resigned in protest before the passage of the Prussian Enabling Act in spring 1933. During the years of the National Socialist regime, Galen avoided political activity and regime-sponsored organisations. Despite his patriotism, Galen saw little future in Germany for his sons, so he organised the emigration of two of them to Brazil. In World War II, he lost two of his sons and his son-in-law. After the 20 July 1944 attempt on Hitler's life, the Gestapo arrested Galen in a nationwide sweep of politicians from before 1933. From the later summer of 1944 until the arrival of the Red Army in April 1945, Galen was an inmate in Sachsenhausen concentration camp north of Berlin.
After the war, Galen hoped and believed the time had come for a religious renewal of German society and a restored leadership role for the German nobility. Like many Germans seeking to imagine a robust anti-Communist West in which Germany would again play a role, Galen promoted the concept of a recreated Christian occident standing strong against Soviet Communism. In contrast to his readiness to promote a broader Christian occident, he only slowly found his way to the Christian Democratic Union, led by Adenauer. Galen feared the inclusion of German Protestants. Socially, he lamented what he perceived to be the immodest fashions of the post-war years and the general decline in manners among the young. In the last years of his life, he increasingly withdrew from regional and national public life in favour of local leadership roles as a Westphalian notable in the greater Münster area.
Franz and his brother Clemens August were extremely close from childhood, until Clemens August died in 1946. Even after Clemens August moved to the Sankt-Matthias Church in Berlin, a diaspora parish traditionally staffed by diocesan clergy from Münster, and subsequently became bishop of Münster, the brothers corresponded frequently. Their correspondence is extensive and detailed, making it a rich source for understanding both brothers. (Any historian willing to tackle this source, especially the letters by Clemens August, is to be pitied for the horrible handwriting of the two.) Weyhe demonstrates that Clemens August was an useful sounding board for Franz, especially in the early 1930s when the two were debating the risks of remaining in the German Centre Party and of supporting party chair Monsignor Ludwig Kaas and Reich Chancellor Heinrich Brüning. Bishop von Galen proved to be one of the greatest thorns in the side of the National Socialist regime as a fierce critic of euthanasia and the secularisation of public education.
While Weyhe is careful not to overextend her analysis, her biography of Galen provides scholars with a much more differentiated understanding of the German Catholic nobility in the twentieth century. Weyhe paints a picture of Franz von Galen as a profoundly moral, duty-driven individual devoted to his wife and children and his noble status. Weyhe also differentiates between Galen's loyalty to his sovereign, the Prussian king, and his dream of a Germany reunited with Austria under a Hapsburg emperor. While Weyhe is sympathetic to Galen, she maintains a critical perspective that permits her to highlight the strengths of his character and behaviour but also to see the increasing alienation from the reality of a secularised German state and society. Finally, as she notes, her work further undermines the already questioned concept of a coherent and homogeneous Catholic milieu. This work is a valuable volume for scholars of German political Catholicism and the German Catholic nobility.
