A Short History of the Peasants’ War

In June of 1524, the Landgraviate of Stühlingen, just south of the Black Forest, played host to the first of the German peasants’ rebellions. Supposedly, the catalyst for these revolts was that the count’s wife wanted to have the peasants gather snail shells for winding her yarn. For those affected, this was an outrage. First of all, peasants did not generally gather snail shells; secondly, during the harvest season, the hated corvée was not among their duties. “Even if the story is only supposed to be taken as a metaphor”, writes the historian Peter Blicke, “it was crafted with rustic wit.”[1]  

In the following months, this uprising would swell into the biggest rebellion in the early modern history of Europe. It began with local peasant uprisings in southern Germany and Switzerland, then developed the following year into a revolution against the feudal authorities throughout much of the Holy Roman Empire, from Harz to Tyrol, and from Alsace to Thuringia. Enormous uprisings of tens of thousands of peasants (as well as many city folk and townspeople) occurred in opposition to the social grievances that had accumulated during the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era. 

The years around 1500, at the dawn of the early modern era, mark a turning point in world history. It is the time of the European voyages of discovery and the beginnings of colonialism, the accelerated development of the cities and early merchant capitalism, and the Reformation movement, all of which lay the groundwork for the emergence of the modern state.

It was no coincidence that Friedrich Engels interpreted the Peasants’ War as an early-bourgeois revolution.[2] Yet this characterization is quite bold given that there was still hardly any modern bourgeoisie at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and it was peasants in the feudal system who formed the backbone of the revolution, not city dwellers.

The Feudal Order

Be that as it may, the peasants’ rebellion was directed against the feudal lords and the feudal mode of production, or rather, the “Christian-feudal Occident”.[3] It is well known that feudalism, the economic and social order of the Middle Ages, was based on the fact that landowners — in other words, nobility and the clergy — lived off of the labour of peasants in bondage (i.e. “serfs”) by appropriating for themselves the surplus product that the peasants had produced. Feudalism’s social structure was based on a series of complicated and dynamic relationships of dependency, but its fundamental structure was based on the “fiefdom pyramid”. Here the king distributes sections of land to the nobility as a fief; in turn, the peasants working the land are then subordinated to these vassals. 

The historical beginnings of feudalism go back to the Rome of late Antiquity, when the increasing lack of slaves led to the colonate system, whereby estates were divided into parcels. In the centuries following the fall of Rome, various forms of peasant labour initially continued to exist. Eventually, however, the landowners were able to impose their authority on the peasants, who up until the middle of the ninth century had remained free from bondage, yet this freedom was shattered by increasing internal power struggles and raids by Scandinavian seafarers and Hungarian horsemen following the fall of the Frankish Empire.

As a result, the power of the landowners grew in the provinces. In light of the king’s weakness, their rule within their territory — for instance in the administration of justice — became practically limitless. In the so-called “manorial system”, the feudal lords worked a part of the land themselves, while another part was left to the peasants to work. As part of this arrangement, the latter gave up a portion of their harvest and were obliged to labour for the fief lord. In addition to this, the peasants also had to pay the church tithe and various special taxes.

At the turn of the sixteenth century, class antagonism between the feudal lords and the peasantry comes to a head.

Despite what is commonly assumed, the society of the Middle Ages was in no way static. On the contrary, in the eleventh century it began to undergo a period of quite dramatic change sparked by the development of its productive forces. Alongside the use of new, improved ploughs and horses as draft animals, it is primarily the replacement of the two-field system with the three-field system that substantially increases agricultural yields. This agrarian revolution causes a veritable population explosion, which led to a peasant settlement movement. The princes must then compete with the peasant settlements and offer better conditions as a concession,[4] such as dispensing with compulsory labour. With this, serfdom gradually begins to dissolve.

The agrarian revolution also leads to the rapid growth of the cities, which in turn results in an expansion of the monetary economy. More and more often, the landowners now lease all of their land against taxes and withdraw from the villages. As a result, the peasants can now manage their affairs on their own. They do this in the village community, in regular meetings of the heads of families. They determine the framework for village life, administer justice, and elect village officials. Decisions are made democratically, although it is important to note: not by everyone, but by the male heads of the families. The women, as property of their husbands, are allowed no more say than the servants.

The flourishing of the peasantry in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was followed by its precipitous collapse as the plague began to rage throughout Europe in the middle of the fourteenth century. This leads to a demographic collapse, and the pervasive lack of workers can be felt in both the villages and cities. There is a boomerang effect produced by landowners becoming mere receivers of money, as their income from leasing plummets. As a result, a large portion of the minor nobility becomes impoverished, and robber baronry thrives.

The landowners search desperately for new sources of income. Some reduce the amount of precious metal in coins, but that merely leads to inflation. In the end there remains only one way out: intensifying the exploitation. As a result, the feudal lords first aim to increase taxes, bring back compulsory labour, and restrict the autonomy of the village communities. These three points eventually become the chief grievances for the rebelling peasants at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

However, it is not only in rural areas that tensions threaten to boil over — this is also the case in towns and cities, where more and more new professions are developing toward the end of the Middle Ages. These new trades produce goods for markets in increasingly remote locations, and include weaving, needless to say, but also decorative arts such as metalwork with gold and silver, sculpting, copperplate engraving, wood turning, weapon making, and many others. The invention of gunpowder and the printing press intensifies the founding of new trades and the expansion of the cities, and with the increase in market relations there is a corresponding rise in social inequality.

On the Eve of the Rebellion

At the turn of the sixteenth century, class antagonism between the feudal lords and the peasantry comes to a head. The primary cause of this is the nobles’ growing need for funds, resulting from rising costs — for soldiers, weapons, and horses, for example — but also from the desire for luxury goods. Because of the privileged status of the cities, however, the feudal lords do not have nearly the wealth of the patricians, who flaunt their affluence in wealthy cities such as Augsburg and Nuremberg. For this reason, the full impact of the growing tax burden is felt by the peasantry — the so-called rusticorum vexatio. Whenever a peasant child is born, whenever a peasant gets married, or whenever he dies, this incurs a hefty tax that must be paid to the feudal lords. But that in itself is not enough: because the earnings obtained in this way are still inadequate, this leads to the discovery and refinement of new sources of income. These are for the most part purely arbitrary in nature, such as when feudal lords simply throw peasants into the dungeon in order to extort a ransom from them. Even trials prove to be a potential source of income — with many instances of miscarriages of justice, decided through the use of falsified documents.

The clerical feudal hierarchy, which one must distinguish from simple priests, takes this exploitation even further, or rather, is even more exacting. The high-level church officials do everything the nobles do, yet they also use their supposedly direct link to God to bleed the peasantry dry. In the selling of indulgences, there is the shameful practice of promising the forgiveness of sins in return for paying a certain amount of money. In order to bring delinquent peasants into line, they deny them absolution or even excommunicate them. At the same time, high-ranking clergy live in the lap of luxury.

For this reason, priests are repeatedly portrayed during this period as malicious creatures. The most famous example of this trend is the character of Till Eulenspiegel. He is supposed to have lived in the fourteenth century, yet the book that regales us with his mischievous escapades is first published in 1510. The targets of his jokes are primarily princes and the clergy, which is precisely why he becomes so popular during the years of the Peasants’ War.

The peasants see themselves and their complaints reflected in the sermons and scriptures of the Reformation. However, it quickly becomes apparent that there are two different conceptions of the Reformation.

The peasant’s resistance against their increasingly harsh exploitation spreads like wildfire. After major peasant uprisings occurred as early as the second half of the fourteenth century in France and England, large parts of Central Europe are also affected by them in the fifteenth century. In 1476, Hans Böheim von Niklashausen, who preaches social equality and asceticism, quickly acquires tens of thousands of followers before he is burned at the stake as a heretic. Peasant revolts then occur in the 1490s in the Upper Rhein, Allgäu, Holland, and Friesland. In the Upper Rhein, thousands of peasants pledge themselves to the Bundschuh (peasant’s boot) movement. The Bundschuh’s attempts at revolt are betrayed, but their leaders, most notably Joss Fritz, escape to Switzerland and re-establish the movement. 

The rebellions do not let up. In 1515, the peasants revolt in Switzerland and Hungary. Violent revolts occur in Württemberg through the “Armer Konrad” (Poor Conrad) movement, then the following year the peasants revolt in Carinthia, Carniola, and Styria. The fact that there are so many uprisings underscores the suffering of the rural population, a population that is groaning under the heavy tax burden.

Class conflicts also come to a head in the cities, where the patrician houses have money and influence. There is also a bourgeois opposition that wants to keep nepotism in check and gain power. In addition, there is the plebeian opposition — journeymen, public servants, peons, vagabonds, beggars, and jobless mercenaries — which does not enjoy civil liberties and cannot own property. The early proletarian opposition is therefore quite heterogeneous.

The Role of the Reformation

There is yet another key factor — religion. This is because authority in feudal society draws legitimacy through the Christian religion, this order of things is regarded as God-given, and through the collaboration of the clergy in the exploitation of the peasantry, the church itself has a material interest in the feudal system of rule. More than that, the two have practically merged. For this reason, all attacks on feudalism are regarded as heresy. In fact, the revolutionary-religious opposition to feudalism spans centuries; especially important are the Bohemian Hussites of the early fourteenth century and the Anabaptists at the time of the Peasants’ War. To put it another way: religion is the ideological sphere in which the peasants wage their class war.

This being the case, Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses of 1517 lay the groundwork for an extensive critique of the clergy and the Church. At the same time, the Reformation benefitted from the change in theology’s status. This is because the power it had once held over intellectual activity had been gradually eroded by the founding of universities and the invention of printing. After that, the translation of the Bible into German and its mass distribution in book form also ended the clergy’s prerogative of interpretation for the holy scriptures.

The peasants see themselves and their complaints reflected in the sermons and scriptures of the Reformation. However, it quickly becomes apparent that there are two different conceptions of the Reformation. The moderates want to break the dependency on Rome and on the Catholic hierarchy. Then there are the radicals, whose desire it is that the Kingdom of God manifest itself in the here and now, and who understand the criticism of the Church as being a sign to revolt. Luther, the protégé of the Elector of Saxony, rejects this; for him, the Freyheyt eynes Christenmenschen (freedom of a Christian) is purely religious, not profane.[5] This makes him the representative of the bourgeois opposition. Opposing him is the egalitarian revolutionary Thomas Müntzer, who in the Thuringian town of Mühlhausen empowers the plebeian members of society and supports arming the peasants. The Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli adopts a middle ground in this debate.

The Great Uprising Begins

Before the great Peasants’ War begins, the lower nobility, which has for some time been at risk of losing its independence to the princes, instigates an uprising in 1522. Because the cities and the peasants expect little good to come of this, the knightly nobility remains dependent upon its own means, and the revolt is quickly put down. It is the last stand of the German knightly nobility; through this defeat it is permanently neutralized as an independent political class.

On the eve of the Peasants’ War there are three opposing camps. First, there is the Catholic-reactionary camp, which wishes to preserve or restore traditional relations. This group comprises the King, the high-ranking clergy, a portion of the secular princes, the wealthier nobility, and the urban patricians. Secondly, the Lutheran, bourgeois-reformist camp of the lower nobility, the urban citizenry, and a portion of the secular princes; and thirdly, the revolutionary camp of the peasants and plebeians. 

Today, the Twelve Articles are regarded as the first historical record of human and civil rights.

The chronology of events for the Peasants’ War can be roughly divided into four stages. Firstly, from summer to Christmas 1524: it is here that the peasants in South Württemberg and the High Rhine revolt. Secondly, January through Easter 1525, when the peasants’ movement in Upper Swabia develops its plan and spills over into Franconia, Thuringia, and Saxony. Thirdly, from Easter until mid-May 1525. This period covers the military skirmishes, from the beginning of the major uprising — as nearly the entire south of the Empire finds itself in the hands of the peasants — until its defeat in the major battles. In 1526 in the Salzburg region, the fourth stage of the War serves as a kind of epilogue.

As previously mentioned, it begins in the southern part of the Black Forest, where peasants mobilize a Haufen (an armed group) at the end of June 1524 and draft a complaint that they submit to the Imperial Chamber Court. In it, they complain about the hardships of serfdom, the high amount of dues, and the abuses within the legal system. At the beginning of October, hundreds of farmers from Hegau on Lake Constance join together to form a “confederacy”. The reference to the neighbouring Swiss is no coincidence, as its cantons had been self-governing under the Emperor (i.e. still subject to the rule of the Emperor) since the expulsion of the tyrannical nobility and the founding of the confederacy in the late thirteenth century.

By the end of the year, the peasants on the High Rhine, from Basel to Constance, have drawn up their demands in a “Letter of Articles”, and established organizations in which the members swear oaths of loyalty. The region’s landowners no longer receive any dues. Georg, Truchsess von Waldburg (known as “Bauernjörg”), is appointed field commander by Archduke Ferdinand, with the goal of subduing the rebellious peasants as quickly as possible. But the situation initially remains calm for the most part, as the princes simply do not have any soldiers at their disposal; they are all off in Italy fighting the French king’s troops.

At the turn of the year, militant Haufen then begin to form throughout Upper Swabia; in February and March 1525 they grow into three armed groups: the Baltringer Haufen, the Seehaufen, and the Allgäuer Haufen. Each of these brings together several thousand peasants, as well as townspeople, clergy, miners, and mercenaries. Initially, however, these armed groups do not want to actually wage war, but rather obtain concessions through the threat of violence. For this reason, they focus on negotiations with the Swabian League, a regional alliance of imperial estates (i.e. of princes, nobles, clergy, and the free imperial cities) that was founded in 1488.

The Twelve Articles of the Peasantry

On 6 March 1525, some 50 representatives of the three Upper Swabian armed peasant groups meet in Memmingen in order to deliberate on a joint appearance before the Swabian League. The negotiations prove to be difficult, as the Baltringer Haufen still hope for reconciliation with the lords, while the Allgäuer Haufen are already readying themselves for a fight.

In mid-March, the farmers convene again in Memmingen and adopt two documents whose historical significance can hardly be overstated: a Federal Order, in which they stipulate the framework of their organization, and the famous “Twelve Articles” in which they list their demands. Thanks to the emergence of the printing press,[6] the latter is immediately printed and published under the title Die gründlichen und rechten Hauptartikel aller Bauernschaft und Hintersassen der geistlichen und weltlichen Obrigkeiten, von welchen sie sich beschwert vermeinen (The fundamental and correct chief articles of all the peasants and of those subject to ecclesiastical lords, relating to these matters in which they feel themselves aggrieved). This document appears in more than two dozen editions in quick succession and spreads like wildfire in and far beyond southern Germany.

The Twelve Articles read like a catalogue of reforms. In the context of their time, however, they signify a revolution. That is because the demands expressed as reforms strike at the heart of the Christian-feudal order.

Today, the Twelve Articles are regarded as the first historical record of human and civil rights. This is notable for two reasons: on the one hand, because the Twelve Articles emerged centuries before the declaration of human rights by the French National Assembly, and on the other hand, because they were decided upon not by highly-educated intellectuals, but by the peasants themselves.

The Twelve Articles are about human dignity — and freyheyt (freedom). In their field camps, the social broadness and intensity of the peasants’ discussions will never again be replicated. The third article states “dass wir frey seyen und wöllen sein” (that we are free and wish to be free). To this end, the peasants demand that serfdom be abolished and their taxes reduced. Furthermore, they demand access to wood, game, and fish for everyone as well as the restoration of communal ownership, or commons. Every congregation is to receive the right to choose their own priest. Punishments are to be administered by an independent judiciary and are no longer to be arbitrarily administered by the landowners.

Since the beginning of the uprisings, the peasants have been demanding the restoration of the “old law”, which had been repeatedly manipulated by the princes to the peasants’ detriment. The Twelve Articles go even further. Rather than the old law, handed down over generations, from now on the Gospel is the benchmark for a just social order.

 Like most simple clergymen, unlike the clerical authorities, Müntzer was in close contact with ordinary peasants and experienced first-hand how much they were suffering under the lack of freedom and the burden of taxes.

For the ruling class, the Twelve Articles represent an enormous provocation. This is because they instinctively recognize that meeting the demands would spell the end of their rule. That their subjects even dare to make demands in the first place is in their eyes an outrageous insolence that must immediately be quashed through military force. In Ulm, the Swabian League feverishly recruits mercenaries, and Archduke Ferdinand borrows money from the Augsburg Fugger and Welser merchant families in order to finance the efforts to muster an army. 

At the beginning of April 1525, tens of thousands of peasants have taken up arms. Cities join the rebels as well — some of their own accord, others under duress. Additional armed groups form, such as in the Neckar Valley and Odenwald, under Jäcklein Rohrbach and Margarete Renner, who is referred to as the Schwarze Hofmännin (Black Courtier) — one of the few women known by name who are actively involved in the rebellion.

On 17 April, there is great outcry when the hated Count Ludwig von Helfenstein and his knights are captured and killed by the Neckar Valley Haufen, who run them through with spears. The so-called “Weinsberg Massacre” alarms the nobility and prompts Luther, who had however already previously aligned himself with the rulers, to write his counter-revolutionary pamphlet “Wider die Mordischen und Reubischen Rotten der Bawren” (Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants). In it, Luther harshly rejects the peasants’ demands and requests their unconditional fealty to the authorities. According to Luther, the peasants wanted to “make Christian freedom entirely corporeal”, yet freedom is limited to the kingdom of God. As for the peasants, he calls them “faithless, perjurious, disobedient, seditious murderers, robbers, blasphemers”. Luther demands that one should “smite, strangle; and stab” the peasants, “secretly or publicly”, and states that one “should remember that there is nothing more poisonous, pernicious, and devilish than a rebellious man”.

The Major Battles

After the Weinsberg Massacre, the Neckar Valley and Odenwald peasants join up with the Black Company led by the Franconian nobleman Florian Geyer to form the Heller Lichter Haufen. However, after naming the decorated mercenary Götz von Berlichingen (the “Knight with the Iron Hand”) as leader, the more radical members, Geyer among them, split off from the Haufen. The fickle Von Berlichingen ultimately betrays the peasants shortly before the decisive battle.

By April, commander Von Waldburg has more than 10,000 men at his disposal. His strategy is simple: to crush the poorly-armed Haufen by defeating them one by one in battle. When he faces the Seehaufen in mid-April he also resorts to a ruse. He dangles the prospect of negotiations in front of the peasants. The hopeful peasants accept the offer, and both sides agree to a truce.

Here the peasants’ twofold cardinal problem becomes clear: on the one hand, they are repeatedly ready to reach an agreement with the rulers provided that they are guaranteed concessions, even if these remain quite vague. On the other hand, the peasants’ worldview is highly provincial. One must not forget that the vast majority of them have not received any education, so they are unable to read or write; for them, their own farm and community form the centre of their worldview. They quickly overcome the nobles in their own regions, but they fight their battles separately — even if they sometimes coordinate — are restricted to their respective regions, and are unable to join forces with others elsewhere.

Then, out of the blue, Von Waldburg violates the truce which had been agreed, enabling him to surprise his enemy and guaranteeing his victory. Thousands of peasants die on the battlefield.

It then becomes apparent that the cruelty of the rulers far exceeds that of the peasants. Scores of peasants are massacred or executed. Florian Geyer is still able to offer resistance, but is killed on 9 June near Wurzburg. The peasants are demoralized, the city-dwellers falter in their resolve, and the princes gain the upper hand — even though the fighting continues on for a while in Palatinate and Alsace, and later in Salzburg and Tyrol.

The Revolution in Thuringia

Thomas Müntzer played an important role in the Peasants’ War — he was given a prominent position in East German historiography, probably also because he had been active in Thuringia. In the tradition of Engels, Müntzer was also repeatedly characterized as a social revolutionary. It is true that Müntzer supported the demands of the peasants and led the fight against the “godless”, i.e. the nobility and clergy. However, as Andrew Drummond proves in his biography of Müntzer, he never uttered the motto Omnia sunt communia (“Everything belongs to everyone”).[7] This does not make Müntzer any less radical, but it does prevent him from being appropriated for political purposes.

However, there was definitely a proto-socialist during the time of the peasant wars — not Müntzer, but Michael Gaismair, who led the Tyrolean uprising of 1526 and argued in favour of a “free peasant republic”.[8] Christian Pantle writes that “Gaismair’s programme can be described as a democratic constitution with socialist features or as an early communist manifesto — in the sense that it already contains many ideas that would again be found in communism and socialism from the nineteenth century onwards.”[9] 

But back to Thuringia, considered the heartland of the Reformation, not least because of Luther’s activities. It was here that the increasing disagreements between Lutherans and radicals came to a head. This is primarily due to Müntzer, whom Heinrich Heine called one of the “most heroic and unfortunate sons of the German fatherland”.

Müntzer, who is believed to have been born in the Harz Mountains in 1489, joined Luther and the Reformation movement after studying theology. Like most simple clergymen, unlike the clerical authorities, he was in close contact with ordinary peasants and experienced first-hand how much they were suffering under the lack of freedom and the burden of taxes. When Müntzer preached in Zwickau in 1520–21, where a small upper class of cloth makers and merchants were facing off against a large number of craftsmen and day labourers, he also experienced the social conflicts in the town. In 1523, he was given a parish in Allstedt. Müntzer marries and reforms the church service; he is the first pastor to ever hold a service in German. 

On 13 July 1524, Müntzer delivers his “Sermon to the Princes” about the biblical prophet Daniel to Duke Johann and his son. He speaks about the imminent apocalypse and the separation of humanity into believers and unbelievers and calls on the princes to defend the true Christians. If not, the “chosen ones” would turn against them. 

While the Peasants’ War and Thomas Müntzer in particular featured (and were also ideologically instrumentalized) in East German historiography, the Bonn Republic, which focused its attention primarily on Martin Luther and the Reformation, pushed this important event in German history to the wayside, so to speak.

The duke must have had little enthusiasm for Müntzer’s sermon. In his “Letter to the Princes of Saxony, Concerning the Rebellious Spirit”, Luther also takes the side of law and order and warns against Müntzer, whom he calls the “Satan of Allstedt”. For his part, Müntzer mocks Luther as “the spiritless, soft-living flesh of Wittenberg, which has so wickedly defiled wretched Christianity by stealing the Holy Scriptures”. 

After being forced to leave Allstedt, Müntzer travels to Mühlhausen. Here, he makes contact with Heinrich Pfeiffer and the rebellious lower classes, which is primarily made up of dispossessed individuals and craftsmen in the fabric, leather, and fur processing trades. Together they found the armed “Eternal League of God”, which soon swells to 200 men, but they are initially unable to overcome the city council.

Müntzer then travels to southern Germany and Switzerland, where he witnesses the preparations for the great uprising and sees how the peasants have risen up against the authorities. In spring, he returns to Mühlhausen to take over a parish. However, Müntzer not only wants to change the church, but also society. Based on the “Eternal Covenant of God”, the town revolts on 17 March 1525. The new city council proclaims the abolition of all administrative authority, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the confiscation of all ecclesiastical property.

Having already started a successful revolution in one of the largest cities in the region, Müntzer stirs up hatred of the tyrannical authorities among the peasants. In parallel to the battles in southern Germany, a clash also takes place in Thuringia in mid-May, in which the poorly-armed peasants led by Müntzer are almost completely wiped out. Of around 6,000 peasants, only 1,000 are said to have survived. Even today, the hill where the battle took place is called “Schlachtberg” (Slaughter Hill) and the hillside “Blutrinne” (Blood Chute).

Afterwards, Müntzer and all the priests who had supported the peasants, those who had been their “organic intellectuals”, are tortured and killed. By the summer, traditional rule has been reinstated, with the exception of the Salzburg region, where there is another uprising in 1526.

The Historical Significance of the Peasants’ War

There are several reasons for the failure of the revolution: the peasantry’s deep-seated local focus and local favouritism, which hampered close cooperation and enabled the princes to defeat the individual groups separately. There was the repeated and hasty trust in the vague promises of the authorities, who repeatedly deceived them. There was also a lack of military equipment and knowledge, and an urban bourgeoisie who were weak and vacillated in their attitudes to the revolution. 

The victory of the princely counter-revolution then led to the old system being reinstated. Feudal society was restored — and with it the fragmentation of Germany into hundreds of sovereign territories, which had far-reaching consequences. In East Prussia and Austria, the feudal lords even succeeded in introducing the so-called second serfdom through the old system of rural estates. This is where the roots of the despotic Prussian Junkertum lie, whose long arm of power extended into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — right up to Bismarck and Hindenburg.

This was accompanied by Luther’s victory over Müntzer, i.e. the victory of the moderates over the radical Reformation. One cannot help but think of Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”. What seems even more important to me, however, is the spirit of submission invoked by Luther. The fact that Luther (referring to Romans 13) categorically demands that the enslaved be unconditionally subject to the authorities has left a deep impression in the collective memory.[10] 

The feudal “victors” then immediately set about erasing any positive memory of the Peasants’ War — and were largely successful. But the uprisings had been too large, too powerful for them to be able to erase the memory completely from the collective memory. War and defeat were already being dealt with in contemporary art — for example, by Albrecht Dürer. The artistic memory of the events continues right up to Käthe Kollwitz and Werner Tübke’s Peasants’ War panorama in Bad Frankenhausen, which was created during the socialist era in East Germany.

However, while the Peasants’ War and Thomas Müntzer in particular featured (and were also ideologically instrumentalized) in East German historiography,[11] the Bonn Republic, which focused its attention primarily on Martin Luther and the Reformation, pushed this important event in German history to the wayside, so to speak. Today, however, it is high time to take a fresh look at Müntzer and this significant era — as an uprising against the feudal authorities and the first German revolution aiming to achieve Freyheyt.

This article was adapted from a chapter in the new book “Dran! Dran! Dran!” Thomas Müntzer, der Bauernkrieg und die Entblößung des falschen Glaubens (Alibiri, 2025), edited by Albert Scharenerg and Karsten Krampitz. Translated by Bradley Schmidt and Rowan Coupland for Gegensatz Translation Collective.