Catholic South Germany

Bavaria, Swabia and the Rhineland - Catholic, particularist, and the part of Germany that most resisted being governed from Berlin. The south stayed Catholic after 1555 because its princes did, under the principle that the ruler's religion determined the territory's, and that decision set a cultural boundary still visible in architecture, festivals, dialect and voting. Baroque church building, pilgrimage traditions and a dense network of prince-bishoprics and abbeys followed, all of which Napoleon's secularisation swept away in 1803. Bavaria was raised to a kingdom for backing him and kept a strong separate identity afterwards, entering the German Empire in 1871 with its own army, railways and diplomatic service. Bismarck's Kulturkampf against Catholic institutions in the 1870s deepened the sense of a Catholic Germany governed by a Protestant Prussia, and produced a political Catholicism that became the Centre Party and eventually the CSU. The region industrialised late and now holds much of German manufacturing - cars at Munich and Stuttgart, chemicals on the Rhine. Wurzburg, Bamberg and the Wieskirche are World Heritage sites. Oktoberfest began as a royal wedding in 1810. The region covers Bavaria, Baden-Wurttemberg and the Catholic Rhineland, with around thirty million people. Munich and Stuttgart are its largest cities. The Alps form its southern edge. Bavarian and Swabian dialects differ enough from standard German to be difficult for northerners. Neuschwanstein was built by a king who nearly bankrupted himself doing it. Cologne cathedral took over six hundred years to complete. The region holds most of Germany’s vineyards.

• Existed: 950 CE – present
• Type: Entity