Because of the political union of Germany and its protective commercial policy from 1879, German economic life was greatly strengthened.
The draft of a constitution, which Windthorst wrote while ill, was adopted at the meeting held on 24 October 1890, for the establishment of the union at the Hotel Ernst in Cologne.
Notwithstanding his illness, Windthorst attended this meeting; on the evening of the same day, the name having been agreed upon, the Volksverein for Catholic Germany was founded.
On 22 November 1890, the committee issued the first appeal "To the Catholic People", which set forth the aims of the society and invited to membership.
According to paragraph 1 of its by-laws the object of the Volksverein was the opposition of heresy and revolutionary tendencies in the social-economic world as well as the defence of the Christian order in society.
Every grown German Catholic who paid one mark annually to the society was a member of the union and entitled to a vote.
The central bureau issued fly-sheets and appeals on suitable occasions; they were circulated throughout Germany to the number of many millions.
After the German Revolution of 1918, the Volksverein took another upturn during the struggle against the anti-clerical rulings of SPD minister Adolph Hoffmann.
Subsequently, the influence it had wielded during German Empire declined, only to gain strength again during the crisis years of the Weimar Republic.