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Founded in 1870 to protect Catholic minority rights in the new Germany, the party gained strength in the 1870s in reaction against Bismarck's Kulturkampf, or "cultural struggle" against the Catholic Church. In addition to supporting Church interests, the Centre Party generally supported representative government and minority rights. The party was notable for the mixture of class interests it represented, ranging from Catholic workers to aristocrats.
After the end of the Kulturkampf, the Centre Party made its peace with the government and frequently formed a part of the coalitions which gave the various German governments a majority in the Reichstag. Although the party supported the government upon the outbreak of World War I, many of the leaders of its left wing, particularly Matthias Erzberger, came to support a negotiated settlement, and Erzberger was key in the passage of the Reichstag Peace Resolution of 1917.
The Centre Party, whose pragmatic principles generally left it open to supporting either a monarchical or republican form of government, proved one of the mainstays of the Weimar Republic participating in every Weimar government between 1919 and 1932, despite the defection of its Bavarian wing in 1919 to form the Bavarian People's Party. Its electorate also proved less susceptible to the allure of Nazism than most other bourgeois parties, largely due to its strong ties to the Church.
The Centre Party entered the opposition from the first time following the dismissal of its leader, Heinrich Brüning, as Chancellor in 1932. It proved ineffectual in opposing the Nazi takeover, with most of its delegates voting for Hitler's Enabling ActThe Enabling Act (in German: Ermachtigungsgesetz was passed by the Reichstag on March 23, 1933. It was the second major step after the Reichstag Fire Decree through which the Nazis legally established Nazi Germany by giving the Chancellor (then Adolf Hitl in March of 1933Centuries: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s Years: 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 See also 1933 in aviation 1933 in film 1933 in literature 1933 in mu. The party was dissolved by the Nazis shortly thereafter.
The Centre Party was refounded following World War IIWorld War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the world's nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. The war was fough, but soon the majority of its members merged with other confessional parties to form the Christian Democratic UnionThe Christian Democratic Union (CDU Christlich Demokratische Union is a political party in Germany, founded after World War II by Konrad Adenauer among others. The CDU is a moderate Christian and also the biggest conservative, right-of-center party in Ger.