Away from Rome!
The Los -von- Rom movement was a substantial portions politically motivated flow in Austria in 1900, which had the promotion of denominational change from the Roman Catholic or the Protestant Old Catholic denomination to the destination. It was worn by German national forces. The slogan " Away from Rome " was issued by medical students Theodor Georg Rakus (late Dr. Theodor Georg Rakns, physician and royal Swedish vice-consul in Salzburg ), a companion of George of Schönerer coined.
The background: large German and German national ideas
Since the time of the Counter -Reformation under the Habsburg Austria was an almost exclusively Roman Catholic country. The Protestants accounted for only a tiny minority. Only since the tolerance patent of Emperor Joseph II of 1781 Reformed and Lutheran religious practice had been allowed by the government again. After German unification in 1871 and thus completed " Lesser German solution ", ie the unification of Germany under Prussia's leadership to the exclusion of Austria remained many Austrians still " Greater Germany " associated ideas. The German National sought a close political connections to the German Reich and to some extent even the complete dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy and the connection of the parts populated by Germans to the German Reich. A leading representative of this political direction was Georg Ritter von Schönerer. In Linz Program of 1882 the German National featured the slogan " not liberal, not clerical, but nationally " and turned against both the Jews and against the political and social influence of the Catholic Church.
The trigger: the bathing niches language ordinances
The break with the Catholic Church promoted the language ordinances adopted in 1897 by the Prime Minister Count Badeni. These provided that officials in the Crown Lands of Bohemia and Moravia always bilingual ( German / Czech) should be. This Regulation was strongly opposed by the German National, but was supported by the Austrian " Catholic People's Party " as well as many Czech Catholic priest. A barred by the German National in Vienna " German People's Day " then called on to resign from the Catholic Church, and Schönerer and his associates coined the slogan " Away from Rome! ". The conversion movement was supported by evangelical organizations from Germany, especially from the Gustav -Adolf -Verein and the Evangelical Confederation ( to stop supporting 1905). From January 1898 to March 1900 came from about 10,000 Austrians left the Catholic Church and to the beginning of World War I in 1914 65,000 conversions to the Protestant denomination and more than 20,000 crossings to the Old Catholic Church have been registered so many new Protestant pastors had to be set up. Sure, not all crossings of the " Los von Rom" were attributable to campaign, but there was also dissatisfaction with the Roman Catholic Church in general. The countermeasures of the Catholic Church took place only slowly, from 1902 made larger -scale press campaigns and administrative measures to curb the conversion movement.
The Los -von- Rom movement also had the consequence that the Evangelical Church in Austria was a certain German national impact. Even before that, many Austrian Protestants had strongly oriented towards the Protestant Prussian -dominated German Empire. This tendency was reinforced by the conversion movement.