German Catholics - Later Developments

Later Developments

A second council in Leipzig, which met in May 1850, had to be transferred to Köthen on account of the interference of the police. It proposed an alliance with the Free Congregations, which had formed themselves by secession from the Protestant churches, and the election of a joint executive committee from both denominations, which was to act as a presiding board until the meeting of a triennial diet, which was appointed for 1852, but it did not meet. In June 1859, the representatives of the German Catholics and Free Congregations met at Gotha, where a union between the two parties was effected under the name of Bund freireligiöser Gemeinden (Confederation of free religious congregations). It was proposed that the confederation admit all free Protestant and even Jewish congregations.

Legislation in the different states had become more tolerant, and the carrying out of the scheme of the council of Gotha seemed to be at least practicable. But the result proved otherwise. The confederation consisted of too heterogeneous elements. While some of the members receding further and further from orthodoxy proclaimed simple design as their religion and abolished baptism and the Lord's Supper, others on the contrary lost themselves in an exaggerated mysticism.

Many of the congregations which were formed in 1844 and the years immediately following dissolved, including that of Schneidemühl itself, which ceased to exist in 1857. The majority of the German Catholics joined the national Protestant church. As of 1911, there were only about two thousand strict German Catholics, all in Saxony. The movement was superseded by the Old Catholic Church.