The Conversion of Elisabeth Gnauck-Kühne to
Catholicism at the Beginning of the 20th Century
The main focus of the article lies on the conversion of Elisabeth
Gnauck-Kühne (1850-1917) from Protestantism to Catholicism in the year
1900. The Catholic Church’s confrontation with individuality, in particular,
demanded answers to the questions of how modern people can reconcile their
roles as believers, family members, workers and citizens.
To answer the question what a change of faith means for the converts,
the article looks not only at the reasons of the conversion, but also at the
lifestyle, activities and networks before, during and after the conversion. As
the example of the convert Elisabeth Gnauck-Kühne shows, the strong
arguments provoked in Germany by conversions to Catholicism even near the
end of the 19th century did not necessarily lead to a clear demarcation from
their former religious community, the Protestants. While the reactions to the
conversion of Gnauck-Kühne revealed the explicit separation of the German
society into a Protestant and a Catholic camp, Gnauck-Kühne, in her life and
struggle for a more equitable world and for a better social position for
women, tried to connect the reform agenda which she had developed in the
context of Protestantism, with the needs of the Catholic world which seemed
more attractive for her around the turn of the century.