The Order of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent De Paul Motherhouse Freiburg, in the Archdiocese Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany), 1846-1945
Inspired by Claude Langlois‘ ground-breaking 1984 work Le Catholicisme au féminin, this thesis explores a Roman Catholic female religious order during its first one hundred years, starting in 1846. Although Langlois set the example with French congregations in the nineteenth century and many scholars all over the world followed in his footsteps, the echo in Germany was by far shorter. This study fills the gap for a specific German region by taking a specific order as a model. The Order of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul was historically and geographically not only the oldest and biggest of that part of Germany but it was also attributed the label ‘conservative’ as a characteristic feature. On the background of the great political and social upheavals of the turbulent and eventful German history of the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth history, this thesis will focus on the role of the Order in the world, and it will explore its sisters as being agents or instruments in their respective fields of work. It will also show if and what the archival material reveals as a possible tension between conservative order and female agency. This study argues that although the Order grew over time into a major player in the social field, and the sisters became indispensable helpers in the parishes, so much so that the people saw them as female representatives of the Catholic Church, the sisters never acted on their own behalf but for the greater good of their motherhouse in Freiburg, for the Church and for the souls of the believers. The present thesis set out to find the Order and its sisters in action in the files of archives in Freiburg, Strasbourg and Karlsruhe.
National University of Ireland - Maynooth
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