Plück, Susanne: Das Badische Konkordat vom 12. Oktober 1932, Mainz 1984

Susanne Plück: Das Badische Konkordat vom 12. Oktober 1932.

The concordat with Baden was the third and final treaty that the Roman Curia concluded with a German province during the Weimar Republic. It came into effect literally at the 11th hour before the Nazis seized power and is still in effect today. The last remaining governing coalition of Center Party and Social Democrats broke apart over this concordat in November 1932.

Susanne Plück’s study, the first historical inquiry to employ all accessible state and church archival sources, provides a chronology of events leading to the concordat. Plück shows how each of the governing parties variously influenced the drafting of the treaty and outlines the differing conceptions of the Roman Curia, the Freiburg diocesan authorities, and the Baden Center Party.

The negotiations leading to the treaty, which dragged on for three years, reflected the problems faced by Baden’s Center Party and SPD governing coalition during the last years of the Weimar Republic.

Plück attempts to show that the concordat did not bring about the failure of the last centrist government in Germany but rather served merely as the occasion when long-simmering tensions came to a head. She locates the causes for the SPD’s withdrawal from governing responsibility within a deep split among the party’s voters on questions of church politics, as well as in the leadership’s inability to coordinate their own party.