Falk Laws

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Falk Laws" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Falk Laws or May Laws (German: Maigesetze^[1]) of 1873–1875 were legislative bills enacted in the German Kingdom of Prussia during the Kulturkampf conflict with the Catholic Church. They were named after Adalbert Falk, the Prussian Minister of Culture^{[note 1]} (1872–1879).

The May Laws had the fullest support of Imperial German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, though their actual author was Falk, who held state authority over the regulation of public worship as the Prussian Minister of Culture. Preliminary to the May Laws was the abolition of the Catholic department in the ministry of public worship (1871), the placing of the State in exclusive control of education, and the expulsion of the Jesuits from the empire (1873). A year later a like expulsion was decreed against the Redemptorists; Lazarists; Priests of the Holy Ghost, and Nuns of the Sacred Heart as being religious associations allied to the Jesuits.^{[citation needed]}

Cite error: There are <ref group=note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}} template (see the help page).