We turn to the conservative elements of the German Reich with the following appeal for united work towards the great common goals: 1. We aim, on the basis of the Imperial Constitution, to strengthen and consolidate the unity won for our Fatherland along national lines. Within this unity, we want the legitimate independence and characteristics of the individual states, provinces, and tribes [Stämme] to be preserved.
2. We can only recognize as beneficial such a development of our public and civil legal systems which, based on factual and historical foundations, meets the requirements of the present time and thus ensures the constancy of our entire political, social, and intellectual development.
3. We ascribe decisive significance to the monarchical foundations of our national life and to a strong state authority. We want a full, legally guaranteed degree of civic freedom for everyone and the effective participation of the nation in the legislative process. In the provinces, districts, and municipalities, we advocate a type of self-administration not based on universal suffrage but on the natural groups and organic divisions of the people.
4. We regard the following principles as the basis of any healthy development and as a guarantee against the increasing degeneration of the masses and the progressive erosion of all social bonds: the religious life of our people, the preservation and refortification of the Christian and ecclesiastical institutions that support it, and, above all, the confessional Christian elementary school. We regard the state-church conflict exploited by liberalism as a Kulturkampf [cultural struggle] against Christianity as a calamity for the Reich and the people, and we are prepared to cooperate in ending it. On the one hand, we grant the state the right to order its relations with the church by virtue of its sovereignty, and we will support state authority against any opposing claims by the Roman Curia. On the other hand, we are opposed to any religious despotism and thus to any infringement, through state legislation, on the sphere of internal ecclesiastical life. In that respect, we are prepared for a revision of the laws passed in the course of this struggle. In that same respect, we will also champion the legal rights of the Protestant church to organize its internal institutions independently.