Politics and Culture During Cantor's Time


Since Cantor mostly published papers, made large mathematical insights and continued to work on mathematics for the majority of his life starting around 1869, a cultural and historical look at Germany from 1871-1918 will suffice, since Cantor died in 1918. On January 18,1871, the German Empire was founded. This was due to three successful wars that were won by the North German state of Prussia. Within seven years, Denmark and France were destroyed in very brief conflicts. The Germanic empire was not created through nationalism of the people, but through traditional diplomacy and agreement by the leaders of the states of the North German Confederation which was headed by Prussia. Prussia was so prevalent and the most obvious choice of the leader because it had more than three-fifths of the area of Germany as well as about three-fifths of the population, so it was the dominant force. It remained so until the empire’s demise at the end of yet another war in 1918.

In the aspect of religion, Germany was 63 percent Protestant, 36 percent Roman Catholic and 1 percent Jewish. Ethnically, everyone was homogeneous except for the modest size of the Polish minority and the even smaller Danish, French and Sorbian populations. About 67 percent of German citizens lived in villages whereas the rest lived in towns and cities. Literacy was abundant due to the compulsory education laws that started in the 1820s and 1830s.

During this time period, there were some domestic concerns arising. The empire was governed under a constitution that was designed by Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian prime minister for the North German Confederation and when it was founded in 1867, it’s nature was more focused on the rural aspect of Germany as well as the authoritarian beliefs of Bismarck (who happened to be part of the landowning elite). The government was separated by two houses, Reichstag and Bundesrat, which represented the people and the 25 states respectively. Reichstag had 397 members elected by men and a secret ballot. Since the constitution did not allow room to be altered for population shifts, rural areas had a huge, disproportionate share of power once Germany started its urbanization period. The large problems that Germany had to deal with in the realm of their political system was the disparity between the Prussian and the imperial political systems. This often created issues where people who wanted power (namely the executives) needed to have majorities in two separate legislatures which were both elected by radically different people of different beliefs. Another problem is that the government ministers were often selected from the civil service or military, meaning that they had little to no parliamentary experience or foreign affairs.

In 1871, Bismarck launched the Kulturkampf (which in translation is known as cultural struggle), a which was a campaign with German liberals against political Catholicism. Bismarck and the liberals did not trust the Catholic population. So, in Prussia, the minister of ecclesiastical affairs and education, Adalbert Falk, introduced a series of bills establishing civil marriage, which limited the movement of the clergy and dissolved all religious orders. The Kulturkampf failed in its goals and convinced the Roman Catholic minority that their fear of persecution was true. In the late 1870s, Bismarck stopped the campaign as a failure and launched a new one against the SPD with allegiance with conservatives. In the 1880s, Bismarck also wanted workers to stray away from Socialism. He did this by giving them great pensions, insurance and medical coverage. The campaign against the SPD was a failure. So Bismarck wanted to draw up a new constitution. The new emperor, WIlliam II didn’t want to start any trouble and asked Bismarck to resign as chancellor. What Bismarck left behind was a rapid social and economic modernization that avoided reform of the authoritarian political system. That set up an atmosphere for crisis.

Sources: Schleunes K.A. et. al. (2018) Germany from 1871 to 1918. Retrieved from: https://www.britannica.com/place/Germany/Germany-from-1871-to-1918

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