In imperial Germany, Catholics and Jews were two religious
minorities in the midst of an intolerant majority society. Although
there were considerable differences in size (Catholics were about 35
percent of the German population and Jews about 1 percent), their
positions as minorities vis-è-vis the Protestant majority
had clear similarities. While they were officially free to integrate
themselves into the Protestant society surrounding them, they
were nevertheless targets of religious persecution and of social
and cultural discrimination. They were perceived by wide sectors
of the German society as “a state within a state,”
“a knife in the nation's back,” and as a group
of “betrayers” of the German national policy. Even
Germans who did not use such expressions, considered these minorities
“marginal groups” inasmuch as their religious principles
or their cultural heritages seemed outdated and unimportant and thus
easily cast off in the name of assimilation.