Adolf Stoecker

Adolf Stoecker (December 11, 1835 – February 2, 1909) was the court chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm II, a politician, and a German Lutheran theologian who founded one of the first Christian Social Gospel political parties in Germany, the Christian Social Party.

Stoecker was born in Halberstadt, Province of Saxony in the Kingdom of Prussia. Stocker father was a blacksmith turned prison guard, and despite his poverty, Stoecker was able to attend university, which was unusual for a working class man in the 19th century. An energetic and hard-working Lutheran pastor who wrote widely on various social and political issues, Stoecker's charismatic personality made him one of Germany's best loved and most respected Lutheran clergyman. As a theology student at the University of Halberstadt, Stoecker was already known as the "second Luther" as his writings and speeches defending the Lutheran faith were considered outstanding. After his ordination as a minister, Stoecker joined the Prussian Army as a chaplain. Stoecker came to national attention after delivering a sermon after the siege of Metz in 1870, where he argued that Prussia's victories over France were the doing of God, and in 1874, the Emperor Wilhelm I, who had been moved by Stoecker's sermons had him appointed court chaplain in Berlin. Stoecker's position as a court chaplain gave more far more power and prominence than what his title as pastor would indicate, as everything Stoecker said was seen as expressing the opinion of Wilhelm. As early as 1875, Stoecker began to attack Jews in racial terms in his sermons. As a good Lutheran, Stoecker was impressed with Martin Luther's 1543 book On the Jews and their Lies, and throughout his life, Stoecker always held that to be a good Christian meant hating the Jews.

Besides working as a court chaplain, Stoecker also served as the head of a church mission in downtown Berlin that offered aid to the poorest families of Berlin. Stoecker was shocked by the extent to which the German poor and working classes had become estranged from the Lutheran church, later writing with horror: "During the years 1874-78, eighty percent of all marriages took place outside the church and forty-five percent of all children were not baptized". Furthermore, the staunchly conservative Stoecker was worried about the way that the poor and working class were voting for the "godless" Social Democratic Party (SPD), and to counter the growth of the SPD, founded the Christian Social Worker's Party (CSP) in 1878. Through strongly critical of capitalism, and demanding some social reforms like an income tax and reducing working hours, Stoecker was hostile to unions, and supported the existing social structure where the Junkers were the dominant element in Prussian society. Stoekcer was not a Junker himself, but he always had the most profound admiration for the Junkers. The purpose of the CSP was to win over the working classes to a Christian conservatism where ordinary people would learn to accept that God had created an ordered society with the Junkers on top, and that to challenge this ordered society was to challenge God. Stoecker believed that the capitalist system was alienating workers from the proper, God-intended course, and what was needed were some social reforms to hold off a revolution. Through Stoecker did advocate social reforms, the main emphasis of the CSP was on winning workers over to loyalty to "the throne and altar", as Stoecker argued that misery of the workers was due to a materialistic, atheist worldview that had torn the working class from their proper reverence for God and the social order He had created, a message that most German workers rejected as not addressing their main concerns. The German working class by and large wanted a higher standard of living and democracy, not to be told that it was their duty as Christians to accept their lot. Stoecker's hostility to unions and strikes limited his appeal to the working class. Stoecker called unions "the threatening danger which moves through our time like a flood between weak dykes". Stoecker believed that workers should not fight for higher wages and better working conditions via strikes, but rather should deferentially ask the "throne and altar" to improve working conditions and wages, a message that strongly limited his appeal to the working class. Stocker's platform sounded very left-wing with its demand for an income tax; banning children and married women from working; making Sunday a holiday; subsidies for widows and those too injured to work; taxes on luxury goods; and a government-supported health system for all. But at same time, Stoecker's platform called for bringing unions under state control, as Stoecker viewed the purpose of unions was to teach their members to be loyal to "the throne and altar", not to improve the lives of their members.

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