The Gods of the City: Protestantism and Religious Culture in Strasbourg, 1870-1914

Abstract

The dawn of the twentieth century triggered much reflection on the changing role of religion in European society. In cities such as Berlin, London and Paris, ministers bemoaned what they perceived to be a growing disinterest in organized religion as the size of their congregations dwindled, growing numbers of young couples opted for civil marriage ceremonies, and Sundays were increasingly spent away from the church. Many of their worst fears that urbanization would spell the end of religious communities were not realized, however, as Anthony J. Steinhoff shows in The Gods of the City, a case study of urban Protestantism in late nineteenth-century Strasbourg. This rich analysis argues that far from destroying religious communities, the onset of urban modernity encouraged religious institutions and their members to transform religious life, thus adapting to the altered circumstances created by the emergence of big cities. The Alsatian city of Strasbourg represents an interesting case study to investigate such questions. As Steinhoff points out, it was not representative or typical of European or even German urbanization as it was ‘neither a great city like Berlin or Hamburg [n]or an industrial boom town like Bochum or Essen’ (p. 12). Nevertheless, it enjoyed a very particular situation that affords a glimpse into the interaction between religion and urban modernity at the end of the nineteenth century. Strasbourg became a big city after 1871, when Prussian victory in the Franco-Prussian triggered the transfer of Alsace from German to French rule, and Strasbourg was designated the capital of the new Reichsland. As migrants from other German states and the Alsatian countryside moved to the city, it became an administrative, commercial, cultural and military capital where members of the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish faiths lived and interacted. And Strasbourg’s symbolic status, as a formerly French city that now marked the frontier of the German Empire, meant that special attention was paid to urban development. As a result, Strasbourg offers the chance to analyse these interactions in a growing cultural centre located in a contested borderland.