William Immanuel, Baron von Ketteler, had been for twenty years a powerful and impressive figure in the public life of Germany. His high rank, social and ecclesiastical, his immense energy, his weight of character, his personal disinterestedness of purpose, and his intellectual vigour and acuteness, had combined to give him great importance both in Church and State. Born in 1811, of an ancient Westphalian family, he was trained in law and politics for the public service, and actually entered upon it, but resigned his post in 1838, in consequence of the dispute about the Cologne bishopric, and resolved to give himself to the work of the Church. After studying theology at Munich and Münster, he was ordained priest in 1844, and became soon afterwards pastor at Hopster, in Westphalia. Being sent as member for Langerich to the German National Assembly at Frankfort in 1848, he at once made his mark by the vigour with which he strove for the spiritual independence of the Church, by the lectures and sermons he delivered on questions of the day, and especially by a bold and generous oration he pronounced at the grave of the assassinated deputy, Prince Lichnowsky. This oration excited sensation all over Germany, and Ketteler was promoted, in 1849, to the Hedwigsburg Church, in Berlin, and in 1850 to the Bishopric of Mayence. In this position he found scope for all his powers. He founded a theological seminary at Mayence, erected orphan-houses and reformatories, introduced various religious orders and congregationist schools, and entering energetically into the disputes in Baden regarding the place and rights of the Catholic Church, he succeeded in establishing an understanding whereby the State gave up much of its patronage, its supervision of theological seminaries, its veto on ecclesiastical arrangements, restored episcopal courts, and assigned the Church extensive influence over popular education. He was one of the bishops who authorized the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, but he belonged to the opposition at the Vatican Council of 1870. He wrote a pamphlet strongly deprecating the promulgation of the dogma of infallibility, and went, even at the last moment, to the Pope personally, and implored him to abandon the idea of promulgating it; but as his objection respected its opportuneness and not its truth, he did not secede with Döllinger when his opposition failed, but accepted the dogma himself and demanded the submission of his clergy to it. Bishop Ketteler was returned to the German Imperial Diet in 1871, and led the Clerical Faction in opposing the ecclesiastical policy of the Government. He died at Binghausen, in Bavaria, in 1877, and is buried in Mayence Cathedral. Ketteler had always been penetrated with the ambition of making the Catholic Church a factor of practical importance in the political and social life of Germany, and with the conviction that the clergy ought to make themselves masters of social and political science