Election Day in the Mountains of Bavaria [Wahltag im Bayerischen Gebirge] (c. 1870)
From the early 1870s onward, the Catholic Center Party was the main political vehicle for the representation of Catholic interests in the Reichstag and in the parliaments of federal states where Catholics resided in larger numbers. But to be represented in Berlin or a state capital, Catholics first had to get their Center Party candidate elected, and that required adapting to the advent of mass politics in the age of universal male suffrage. Accordingly, we see a Bavarian Catholic priest campaigning in the foothills of Bavaria in an attempt to solicit support from rural voters on election day. Clearly, the pulpit alone was no longer enough to spread the Center’s message. Woodcut (c. 1870) after a drawing by Julius Noerr.
© Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz
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