WINDTHORST, LUDWIG. - German politician, b. 17 Jan. 1812 at the Caldenhof farm near Osterkappeln, d. 14 March 1891 in Berlin.
Of a traditionally Catholic family, his father, a lawyer, served the Counts Droste-Vischering. The young W., initially drawn to the ecclesiastical ministry, later decided to follow in his father’s footsteps. In 1830 he began legal studies at the University of Göttingen and then at Heidelberg; in 1836 he settled in Osnabrück to practice law. The equestrian order of the Principality of Osnabrück appointed him as its mayor, and in 1842 the Catholic Conventus awarded him the position of presiding councillor. He entered political life decisively as a deputy to the Second Chamber of Hanover in 1849, opposing in 1850 the elementary school bill in favor of educational and religious freedoms against state interference. Opposed to any reactionary tendencies, W. was elected in February 1851 president of the Second Chamber, and, following the death of King Ernest Augustus of Hanover in November, minister of justice. This allowed him to substantially reorganize the judiciary, making it independent of all other state administrations. Subsequent political difficulties, arising from the progressive strengthening of reactionary tendencies—culminating in demands for a genuinely aristocratic Upper House and a revision of the Constitution—forced W. and the entire Schele ministry to resign by the end of 1853. W. returned to practicing law in Osnabrück, continuing to serve in Parliament until 1856, in opposition to openly reactionary ministries. The 1857 ordinance, which barred former ministers from being deputies without prior royal permission, brought an end to his parliamentary activity. Nevertheless, he rendered notable service to the Church in 1858 by persuading King George V to restore the episcopal see of Osnabrück, which had been administered by an administrator since 1844. Reappointed minister of justice in 1862 following the fall of the Borries ministry, occasioned by the drafting of a new unified Protestant catechism for instruction, W. resolved disputes between Lutherans and the so-called Reformed, guaranteeing freedom for both through a new synodal constitution for the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Clashing with the sovereign over the latter’s opposition to reducing the census for voters in the Second Chamber, he resigned again in 1865. In May 1866 the king appointed him attorney general at the Higher Court of Appeal in Celle, but following the Austro-Prussian War, Hanover ceased to exist as a sovereign state and was incorporated into the Kingdom of Prussia. He then devoted himself entirely to politics, as this annexation posed a clear danger to Catholicism, given the altered balance of power between Catholics and Protestants to the latter’s advantage. The Prussian state offered no guarantees for Catholic freedoms, being a direct emanation of Protestant spirit, and the government seemed inclined to act with force rather than respect for constitutional-legislative norms. For these reasons, W. felt compelled to defend, in the upcoming Parliament, a viewpoint shared by broad segments of the population.
Thus, unlike some compatriots who adopted a wait-and-see stance, he was elected in 1867 as a deputy to the Constituent Assembly of the North German Confederation and to the Prussian House of Representatives. In Parliament, he soon realized that he and German Catholics in general were isolated; he therefore enthusiastically joined the founding of the Centre Party in December 1870. Events soon vindicated him. In Prussia and Germany, the *Kulturkampf* (q.v.) soon began—a relentless sequence of violence and legalized oppression against the Church and German Catholics. In both the Prussian Landtag and the Reichstag, W. became one of the Centre’s most eloquent and effective speakers, sparing Bismarck neither attacks nor criticism. Upon Mallinckrodt’s death in 1874, W. also became leader of the Centre group and the skillful tactician of parliamentary maneuvers. His efforts bore fruit: his firm opposition consistently yielded results with each renewal of the Chambers, and in the 1881 elections, the Centre became the strongest party in the Reichstag with 100 deputies out of 397. Yet as early as 1879, Bismarck, in a meeting he himself requested with W., had begun taking steps to end the *Kulturkampf*, from which he had derived outcomes quite different from those initially envisaged in his struggle against Catholics. Certainly, the conflict did not end abruptly, but W. died having witnessed a gradual abandonment by government authorities of repressive measures against Catholics and the Church (q.V. GALIMBERTI, LUIGI).
