Abstract

Everyday Life between Conflict and Tolerance. Observations concerning the Confessional Policy of Brandenburg-Prussia in the 18th Century

Since the 19th century, the idea that Prussia is a benchmark for confessional freedom has been a major narrative in Prussian historiography. After World War II it became even more important because of its use in counterbalancing the negative narrative of Prussian militarism. Only recently has historiography challenged these all-to-easy stereotypes and unveiled Prussian tolerance as a specific variant of confessionalization. Both friends and foes of the tolerance-topos, however, lay the focus of their argument on the role of the Hohenzollern dynasty for the confessional destiny of their subjects. Other historical agents, such as the intermediate church bureaucracy, pastors and preachers, as well as the subjects themselves are hardly taken into consideration. By looking at records produced by the Evangelical-reformed church directory, the article argues that church bureaucracy indeed fostered the idea of mutual tolerance, for reasons of confessional peace. In cases of conflict, clerks and subjects frequently accused their contraries of violating the principles of tolerance, thereby threatening peaceful interaction on a local level. Moreover, such cases of conflict and the way they were managed by members of the church bureaucracy clarify that subjects in Brandenburg villages and small towns took a rather pragmatic approach towards confessional difference. The church bureaucracy, however, engaged in avoiding ambiguity and dividing subjects along clearly defined confessional lines thereby perpetuating social constellations that produced confessional conflict. The article argues that in the light of recent discussion of transconfessional conviviality in Europe, the essentialist question whether Prussia was tolerant or not is no longer appropriate. Instead, more efforts should be made in investigating the pluralism and conviviality of confessional life in Brandenburg-Prussia without neglecting the multifaceted policy of church bureaucracy.