Original scientific paper
Church, State, and the “Habitus of Resistance” Power and weakness of the Catholic Church in Carinthia, especially in the Austrofascist Era 1933–1938
Johannes Thonhauser
Abstract
This article focuses on the role of the church in Carinthian history, especially in the Austrofascist Era 1933–1938. The Austrofascist Regime and its political elites in Vienna were very unpopular in Carinthia and National Socialism rose in the underground. For many Carinthians this regime was the return of the Counter Reformation. As by the time of 17th and 18th century, state and church built a union to control and discipline the “simple” people. For this reason, many people left the Catholic Church and converted to Protestantism. This was the culmination of a long–term development that formed a “habitus of resistance” against state and church authority, especially among land folks in Upper Carinthia. The first part of the article has the aim to explain these developments and gives a historical frame for the second part, which deals with the Austrofascist Era. To illustrate the anticlerical atmosphere of that time, secret reports from priests, who informed the bishop about illegal movements in their parishes, will be analyzed.
Keywords
Austrofascism; Catholic Church; anticlericalism; Carinthia; Counter Reformation; Nazi movement
Hrčak ID:
173533
URI
Publication date:
10.1.2017.
Visits: 1.001 *