The Wayward Flock

"In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the western and southern regions of Germany were home to intensely devout Roman Catholic communities. By the late 1950s, however, this Catholic subculture, which had partially held out against the persecution of the National Socialist state, could not withstand the onslaught of a culture of consumption - of motorcycles, Hollywood films, and rock 'n' roll. Mark Edward Ruff examines the struggle of the Catholic community to maintain a nineteenth-century confessional identity hostile to modern society in the rapidly changing milieu of the Federal Republic. He analyzes, in particular, why the strategy of using modern means to fight modern society - which had worked so successfully from the 1870s to the 1920s - did not succeed in the postwar era." "Ruff examines the vast network of Catholic youth organizations in West Germany that had traditionally served as a source for future youth leaders and a means by which the church could resist the changes of modern society by offering its own entertainment and social activities."--Jacket.