Elections in Upper Silesia in 1871, the first under the German Empire and its universal male suffrage, resulted in the shocking victory of an obscure chaplain over one of the regions richest and most powerful magnates – and brought together Anti-Catholicism, antisemitism, and social conflict in a way previously invisible. The Reichstag, in cashiering the election, refused to acknowledge these issues – ones that would bedevil Germany's future in fateful ways.