Background
During the Italian unification affecting the Papal State, Pope Pius IX in 1864 had published his Syllabus Errorum of 80 thesis statements denounced as false teaching and the encyclical Quanta Cura against freedom of religion and separation of church and state. In summer 1870 the First Vatican Council had affirmed the jurisdictional authority of the Pope and proclaimed his infallibility as a dogma. These developments were suspiciously viewed as "ultramontanism" by liberal circles in the newly established German Empire, dominated by the mainly Protestant Prussian state, while the forces of political catholicism organised themselves in the Centre Party. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck especially noted their patronage of the Catholic Polish population in the Prussian Province of Posen, in West Prussia and in Upper Silesia as well as of the French in Alsace-Lorraine.
In 1871 Bismarck had the Pulpit Law implemented into the German Strafgesetzbuch Penal Code, prohibiting any public statement of priests in political affairs. The Gniezno archbishop Mieczysław Halka Ledóchowski was sentenced to two years in prison for violation. The "Jesuits' Law" of 1872 banned any branch establishment of the Society of Jesus on the territory of the German Reich. On 11 March 1872, Minister Adalbert Falk by law abolished any Catholic or Protestant administration of schools in Prussia and assigned the supervision solely to the ministry of education. German relations with the Vatican were cut after Pope Pius IX had rejected the ambassador Gustav Adolf Hohenlohe, commented by Bismarck with his "We will not walk to Canossa" speech in the Reichstag parliament on March 14.
Read more about this topic: Falk Laws
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