<P> For some Germans, the definition of nation did not include pluralism, and Catholics in particular came under scrutiny; some Germans, and especially Bismarck, feared that the Catholics' connection to the papacy might make them less loyal to the nation . As chancellor, Bismarck tried without much success to limit the influence of the Roman Catholic Church and of its party - political arm, the Catholic Center Party, in schools and education and language - related policies . The Catholic Center Party remained particularly well entrenched in the Catholic strongholds of Bavaria and southern Baden, and in urban areas that held high populations of displaced rural workers seeking jobs in the heavy industry, and sought to protect the rights not only of Catholics, but other minorities, including the Poles, and the French minorities in the Alsatian lands . The May Laws of 1873 brought the appointment of priests, and their education, under the control of the state, resulting in the closure of many seminaries, and a shortage of priests . The Congregations Law of 1875 abolished religious orders, ended state subsidies to the Catholic Church, and removed religious protections from the Prussian constitution . </P> <P> The Germanized Jews remained another vulnerable population in the new German nation - state . Since 1780, after emancipation by the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, Jews in the former Habsburg territories had enjoyed considerable economic and legal privileges that their counterparts in other German - speaking territories did not: they could own land, for example, and they did not have to live in a Jewish quarter (also called the Judengasse, or "Jews' alley"). They could also attend universities and enter the professions . During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, many of the previously strong barriers between Jews and Christians broke down . Napoleon had ordered the emancipation of Jews throughout territories under French hegemony . Like their French counterparts, wealthy German Jews sponsored salons; in particular, several Jewish salonnières held important gatherings in Frankfurt and Berlin during which German intellectuals developed their own form of republican intellectualism . Throughout the subsequent decades, beginning almost immediately after the defeat of the French, reaction against the mixing of Jews and Christians limited the intellectual impact of these salons . Beyond the salons, Jews continued a process of Germanization in which they intentionally adopted German modes of dress and speech, working to insert themselves into the emerging 19th - century German public sphere . The religious reform movement among German Jews reflected this effort . </P> <P> By the years of unification, German Jews played an important role in the intellectual underpinnings of the German professional, intellectual, and social life . The expulsion of Jews from Russia in the 1880s and 1890s complicated integration into the German public sphere . Russian Jews arrived in north German cities in the thousands; considerably less educated and less affluent, their often dismal poverty dismayed many of the Germanized Jews . Many of the problems related to poverty (such as illness, overcrowded housing, unemployment, school absenteeism, refusal to learn German, etc .) emphasized their distinctiveness for not only the Christian Germans, but for the local Jewish populations as well . </P> <P> Another important element in nation - building, the story of the heroic past, fell to such nationalist German historians as the liberal constitutionalist Friedrich Dahlmann (1785--1860), his conservative student Heinrich von Treitschke (1834--1896), and others less conservative, such as Theodor Mommsen (1817--1903) and Heinrich von Sybel (1817--1895), to name two . Dahlmann himself died before unification, but he laid the groundwork for the nationalist histories to come through his histories of the English and French revolutions, by casting these revolutions as fundamental to the construction of a nation, and Dahlmann himself viewed Prussia as the logical agent of unification . </P>

Which actions on the part of germany and italy created conflict