Adolf Stoecker (December 11, 1835 – February 2, 1909) was a German court chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm I, a politician and a Lutheran theologian who founded the Christian Social Party to lure members away from the Social Democratic Party.
Early life Stoecker was born in Halberstadt, Province of Saxony, in the Kingdom of Prussia. Stoecker's father was a blacksmith turned prison guard, and despite his poverty, Stoecker was able to attend university, which was unusual for a working-class man in the 19th century.Telman, Jeffrey "Adolf Stoecker: Anti-Semite with a Christian Mission" pp. 93–112 from Jewish History, Volume 9, Issue # 2. Fall 1995 p. 99. An energetic and hardworking Protestant pastor who wrote widely on various social and political issues, Stoecker had a charismatic personality which made him one of Germany's best loved and most respected Lutheran clergymen.Green Harold "Adolf Stoecker: Portrait of a Demagogue" pp. 106–129 from Politics and Policy, Volume 31, Issue # 1, March 2003 p. 108. As a theology student at the University of Halberstadt, Stoecker was already known as the "second Luther" as his writings and speeches defending the Lutheran faith were considered outstanding.
After his ordination as a minister, Stoecker joined the Prussian Army as a chaplain. Stoecker came to national attention after delivering a sermon after the Siege of Metz in 1870, where he argued that Prussia's victories over France were the doing of God, and in 1874, Emperor Wilhelm I, who had been moved by Stoecker's sermons, had him appointed court chaplain in Berlin. Stoecker's position as a court chaplain gave him more power and prominence than his title of pastor would indicate, as everything Stoecker said was seen as expressing the opinion of Wilhelm. As early as 1875, Stoecker began to attack Jews in racial terms in his sermons. As a good Lutheran, Stoecker was impressed with Martin Luther's 1543 book On the Jews and their Lies, and throughout his life, Stoecker always held that to be a good Christian meant hating the Jews.Green Harold "Adolf Stoecker: Portrait of a Demagogue" pp. 106–129 from Politics and Policy, Volume 31, Issue # 1, March 2003 p. 123.
Founding of CSP
Besides working as a court chaplain, Stoecker also served as the head of a church mission in central Berlin that offered aid to the poorest families of the city. Stoecker was shocked by the extent to which the German poor and working classes had become estranged from Lutheranism and later wrote with horror: "During the years 1874–78, eighty percent of all marriages took place outside the church and forty-five percent of all children were not baptized". Furthermore, the staunchly-conservative Stoecker was worried about the way that the poor and the working class were voting for the "godless" Social Democratic Party (SPD), and to counter the growth of the SPD, he founded the Christian Social Worker's Party (CSP) in 1878. Though strongly critical of capitalism and demanding some social reforms like an income tax and reducing working hours, Stoecker was hostile to unions and supported the existing social structure in which the Junkers dominated Prussian society. Stoecker was not a Junker, but he always had the most profound admiration for them. The purpose of the CSP was to win over the working classes to a Christian conservatism in which ordinary people would learn to accept that God had created an ordered society with the Junkers on top, and that to challenge the ordered society was to challenge God. Stoecker believed that the capitalist system alienated workers from the proper, God-intended course, and what was needed were social reforms to hold off revolution.
Through Stoecker advocated social reforms, the main emphasis of the CSP was on winning workers over to loyalty to "the throne and altar", as Stoecker argued that misery of the workers was caused by a materialistic, atheist world view that had torn the working class from its proper reverence for God and the social order created. The message was rejected by most German workers as not addressing their main concerns.Levy, Richard "Our Demands on Modern Jewry" pp. 525–526 from Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, Volume 1 edited by Richard Levy, Santa Monica: ABC-Clio, 2005 p. 525. The German working class mostly wanted a higher standard of living and democracy, not to be told that it was their duty as Christians to accept their lot. Stoecker's hostility to unions and strikes limited his appeal to the working class. Stoecker called unions "the threatening danger which moves through our time like a flood between weak dykes". Stoecker believed that workers should not fight for higher wages and improve working conditions through strikes, but should deferentially ask "throne and altar" to improve working conditions and wages, a message that strongly limited his appeal to the working class. Stoecker's platform sounded very left-wing with its demand for an income tax, banning children and married women from working, making Sunday a holiday; subsidies for widows and those too injured to work, taxes on luxury goods and a government-supported health system for all.Telman, Jeffrey "Adolf Stoecker: Anti-Semite with a Christian Mission" pp. 93–112 from Jewish History, Volume 9, Issue # 2. Fall 1995 pp. 95 & 109. However, at same time, Stoecker's platform called for bringing unions under state control, as Stoecker viewed the purpose of unions was to teach their members to be loyal to "throne and altar", not to improve the lives of their members.Telman, Jeffrey "Adolf Stoecker: Anti-Semite with a Christian Mission" pp. 93–112 from Jewish History, Volume 9, Issue # 2. Fall 1995 p. 100.
When Stoecker founded the Christian Social Party on 3 January 1878, he declared in his speech announcing his party:"I have in mind a peaceful organization of labor and the workers.... It is your misfortune, gentleman, that you only think of your Social State and scornfully reject the hand extended to you for reform and help; that you insist on saying "we will not settle for anything less than the Social State". This way makes you enemies of the other social classes. Yes, gentleman, you hate the Fatherland! Your press shockingly reflects this hatred... you also hate Christianity, you hate the gospel of God's mercy. They [the Social Democrats] teach you not to be believe. They teach you atheism and these false prophets".Green Harold "Adolf Stoecker: Portrait of a Demagogue" pp. 106–129 from Politics and Policy, Volume 31, Issue # 1, March 2003 p. 109. Stoecker followed his speech by presenting a former tailor who had been imprisoned for fraud, Emil Grüneberg, whom Stoecker had met while he was in prison, who proceeded to give a violently anti-Socialist speech. The American historian Harold Green commented that Stoecker associating with a disreputable individual like Grüneberg, a swindler and blackmailer showed the "demagogic and unsavory" character of Stoecker, who for his all self-righteousness often associated with disreputable people. Much to Stoecker's fury, a group of Social Democrats, led by Johann Most, showed up to hijack the meeting as Most gave a speech denouncing the Lutheran church for being subservient to the state and declared that only the Social Democrats represented the working class, which prompted loud cheers from the working-class audience. Most led the audience out of the meeting hall, all behind him, while Stoecker was left fuming, as his would be supporters had been taken away by Most. The German chancellor, Prince Otto von Bismarck, brought the first of the Anti-Socialist Laws later in 1878 with the aim of crushing the SPD, and Stoecker's foray into politics was secretly supported by the government, which hoped that Stoecker might be able to win the working class from the Social Democrats.Green Harold "Adolf Stoecker: Portrait of a Demagogue" pp. 106–129 from Politics and Policy, Volume 31, Issue # 1, March 2003 p. 110.
Antisemitic agitator In 1879, Stoecker gave speeches blaming all of Germany's problems on the Jewish minority. In his speech "Our Demands on Modern Jewry", delivered in Berlin on 19 September 1879, Stoecker in the words of the American historian Richard Levy "put antisemitism on the map in Germany", as his status as one of Germany most respected and best loved Lutheran clergymen made hatred for the Jews eminently respectable in a way that it never had been before. It was only after Stoecker started to attack the Jews that the meetings of the CSP began to be well attended, but most of Stoecker's followers came from the Mittelstand (lower middle class), rather than the working class and the poor. In September 1879, Stoecker's speech "Our Demands on Modern Jewry" caused a sensation and attracted much media attention, as it was widely assumed that Stoecker was speaking on behalf of Emperor Wilhelm I when he blamed all of Germany's problems on "Jewish capital" and the "Jewish press". Stoecker, in particular, complained that 45,000 Jews living in Berlin were "too large a figure" and that Germany was taking in far too many poor Jewish immigrants from Russia and Romania. He argued that Jewish immigrants from the Russian empire and Romania should be "sunk on the high seas", rather be allowed to settle in Germany.Green Harold "Adolf Stoecker: Portrait of a Demagogue" pp. 106–129 from Politics and Policy, Volume 31, Issue # 1, March 2003 p. 111. As early as 17 October 1879, the Board of Trustees of the Jewish community in Berlin had complained to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior that Stoecker should be silenced as his hate speeches were inciting violence against Jews, a request that was refused. Stoecker's denunciations of the changes wrought by industrialization and urbanization appealed to the lower middle class, as he offered up an idealized, nostalgic vision of an ordered, rural society, where local craftsmen and small merchants did not have to compete with factories and large stores, of a simpler, better time now sadly gone.James, Pierre The Murderous Paradise: German Nationalism and the Holocaust, Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001 p. 160. Stoecker's critique of modernity and of the capitalist system under the guise of very nationalist and antisemitic message appealed to the Mittelstand, which was suffering very badly from the economic changes caused by the Industrial Revolution and felt their interests to be ignored by all of the existing parties.