German political party formed to support Roman Catholic interests.
It was active in the Second Reich from the 1870s, when it came into conflict with Otto von Bismarck in the Kulturkampf , to 1933, when it was dissolved by the Nazi-dominated government. It was the first party of imperial Germany to cut across class and state lines, but because it represented the Roman Catholics, who were concentrated in southern Germany, it never won a parliamentary majority.