PIUSVEREIN. — Association founded in Mainz in 1848 by A. F. Lenning, a canon of the Cathedral, and G. Riffel, to organize the Catholics of Germany in defence of their religious freedom and civil rights. It was named after Pope Pius IX, then reigning.
The Association, according to the first article of its statutes, proposed “to prevent, while remaining faithful to the foundations of liberty and absolute equality in religious matters, this liberty and equality from being diminished in any way or by anyone to the detriment of the Catholic religion.” It was also approved that an analogous association should be established in every German city and village where Catholics resided, and that the P. of Mainz, in view of the city’s particular importance and the number of Catholics residing there, should become the national headquarters of all the various local associations. The P. of Mainz provided the model for the formation of the other associations spread throughout Germany. From Hesse to Silesia, from Württemberg to Baden, from Tyrol to the Baltic and from the Rhine to Poland, Catholic Germany joined together in numerous associations, whose representatives met in Oct. 1848 at a general congress in Mainz and established the Catholic Association of Germany (Katholischer Verein Deutschlands). This was the first national organization of Catholics, who from then on met periodically in congress at the Katholikentage. In Switzerland, too, the P. was founded at Beckenried in 1857, with the same aims as its German counterpart; it spread throughout all the cantons and in 1904, together with other organizations, established the Schweizerische Katholisches Volksverein in Lucerne. In Austria it took the name of P. zur Förderung der katholischen Presse, the Association founded in 1905 by Fr. Kolb, which in 1920 merged into the Volksbund der Katholiken Österreichs.