Adalbert Falk

Adalbert Falk (born August 10, 1827, Metschkau, Prussia—died July 7, 1900, Hamm, Germany) was a Prussian bureaucrat who as state minister of ecclesiastical affairs in the 1870s aggressively headed German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf against the Roman Catholic Church.

Appointed Prussian minister of ecclesiastical affairs and education in January 1872, he was commissioned by Bismarck to direct the Kulturkampf—or, in the Chancellor’s words, “to re-establish the rights of the state in relation to the church.” Falk’s subsequent legislative program, culminating in the May laws (1873), introduced mandatory civil marriage, undercut clerical influence in educational matters, and enforced various disabilities on the Catholic clergy and laity. In 1878, however, his ministerial position was rendered practically untenable by Bismarck’s split with the National Liberal Party, the strongest supporter of the Kulturkampf, as well as by the prospects of improved German–papal relations. In September 1879 Falk finally resigned. From 1882 he served as president of the Court of Appeals at Hamm.