The National Apostolate: Social Work, Catholic Internationalism and the Care for German-Speaking Minorities in the Inter-War Period

This article examines how German-speaking Catholics used social work to bring about a simultaneous moral and national reconstruction of the German nation and of European society as a whole. Through the case study of Sister Hildegardis Wulff, a German nun who established social work institutions for German-speaking Catholics in the Romanian Banat, it demonstrates how Catholic activists conflated religion and German nationalism in their support for German-speaking minorities. Hildegardis exported the German Caritas Association’s model of modern social work, which weaponised the private sphere in an international competition with liberal, socialist and Protestant organisations. She was supported by the Reich Association for Catholic Germans Abroad, which defined social work as part of a specifically Catholic support for German speakers ‘abroad’ [ Auslanddeutsche ]. Her bottom-up Catholic internationalism bridged the gap between Catholicism and German nationalism in ways that would have been unthinkable before the First World War. This fusion of religious and national goals found legitimacy in international organisations such as Caritas Catholica , where German social work leaders advanced a Catholic internationalism that also promoted German nationalism. Hildegardis’s work exemplifies how a newly defined Catholic support for German-speaking minorities re-defined the boundaries between German nationalism, Catholicism and internationalism, seeking an alternative to the existing international order by combining all three.