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From the Sacral Community to the Common Man: Reflections on German Reformation Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Thomas A. Brady Jr
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Type
Symposium Reformation and Revolution: From the Sacral Community to the Common Man
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Central European History , Volume 20 , Issue 3-4 , September 1987 , pp. 229 - 245
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Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1987

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References

1. Gogarty, Oliver John St, It Isn't This Time of Year at All: An Unpremeditated Autobiography (Garden City, N.Y., 1954), 17.Google Scholar

2. The neophyte has easy access to the field through two recent publications: Ozment, Steven, ed., Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research (St. Louis, 1982)Google Scholar; and Dickens, A. G. and Tonkin, John, The Reformation in Historical Thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1986).Google Scholar

3. Almost nothing produced by the older Troeltsch reception in America can be relied upon today. In West Germany there is a “Troeltsch Renaissance” underway, which is producing at last detailed information on his biography. See Renz, Horst and Graf, Friedrich Wilhelm, eds., Troeltsch-Studien: Untersuchungen zur Biographic und Werkgeschichte (Gütersloh, 1982)Google Scholar. In English one may begin with Rubanowice, Robert J., Crisis in Consciousness: The Thought of Ernst Troeltsch (Tallahassee, Fla., 1982)Google Scholar; and Morgan, Robert and Pye, Michael, trans. and eds., Ernst Troeltsch: Writings on Theology and Religion (Atlanta, 1977), which provides on pp. 253–55Google Scholar a useful bibliography of Troeltsch's writings in English.

4. The main instrument of this argument was his distinction between Old and New Protestantism, which Christoph Weber detects in his thought as early as 1900. Weber, Christoph, Der “Fall Spahn” (1901): Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschafis- und Kulturdiskussion im ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert (Rome, 1980), 25, n. 82.Google Scholar

5. Troeltsch, Ernst, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (Tübingen, 1912, 1922)Google Scholar, translated by Wyon, Olive as The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (New York, 1930).Google Scholar

6. Soziallehren, 681–82, 752, 773–74, 812 (English: Social Teachings, 626, 669, 677–78, 703).

7. Developed most fully in the essays collected in Deutscher Geist und Westeuropa: Gesammelte kulturpolitische Aufsätze und Reden, ed. Baron, Hans (Tübingen, 1925; reprint, Aalen, 1966)Google Scholar; its flavor may be sampled in English in Troeltsch, Ernst, “The Ideas of Natural Law and Humanity in World Politics,” in Otto Gierke, Natural Law and the Theory of Society, 1300–1800, trans. Barker, Ernest (Cambridge, 1934, 1950), 201–22.Google Scholar

8. Bofinger, Wilhelm, “Oberdeutschtum und württembergische Reformation: Die Sozialgestalt der Kirche als Problem der Theologie- und Kirchengeschichte der Reformationszeit” (unpublished diss., Tübingen, 1957)Google Scholar. Part of it has been published in Bofinger, Wilhelm, “Kirche und werdender Territorialstaat: Eine Untersuchung zur Kirchenreform Herzog Ulrichs von Württemberg,” Blätter für württembergische Kirchengeschichte 65 (1965): 75–149.Google Scholar

9. Moeller, Bernd, Reichsstadt und Reformation, Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte, 180 (Gütersloh, 1962), 76Google Scholar; “In den modernen angelsächsischen Demokratie aber ist, nach vielen Wandlungen und neben manchem anderen Gedankenelement, auch ein Stück mittelalterlichen deutschen Städtewesen nach Deutschland zurückgekehrt.” This sentence is missing from the French and English translations.

10. Quoted by Weber, Wolfgang, Priester der Clio: Historisch-sozialwissenschaftliche Studien zur Herkunft und Karriere deutscher Historiker und zur Geschichte der Geschichtswissenschaft 1800–1970, Europäische Hochschulschriften, ser. III, vol. 216 (Frankfurt a.M., Bern, and New York, 1984), 218.Google Scholar

11. Dickens, and Tonkin, , The Reformation in Historical Thought, 167–75.Google Scholar

12. Krieger, Leonard, Ranke: The Meaning of History (Chicago, 1977), 158–77, and esp. 162Google Scholar, where he says of Ranke's German History in the Age of the Reformation, “But to understand both Ranke's purpose and execution aright, this national emphasis should be construed in apposition rather than opposition to his universal theme.”

13. As it had been in his earlier History of the Popes. See ibid., 161. For a different view, which serves up once again the wearisome and false characterization of Ranke as positivist and nationalist, see White, Hayden, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, 1973), 174.Google Scholar

14. Krieger, , Ranke, 178.Google Scholar

15. Weber, , Priester der Clio, 208–9Google Scholar. Weber is able to connect an astounding 57% of all professors of history in the German-speaking world, 1800–1970, to Ranke's school. On its confessional character, see ibid., 291–92, 326–33.

16. See Kupisch, Karl, “‘Von Luther zu Bismarck’: Zur Kritik einer historischen Idee,” in his “Von Luther zu Bismarck”: Zur Kritik einer historischen Idee—Heinrich von Treitschke (Berlin and Bielefeld, 1949), 1–47Google Scholar. Kupisch elsewhere characterizes this mentality as follows: “Die Linie von Luther zu Bismarck bezeichnete den providentiellen Geschichtsweg der Deutschen, der in Worms 1521 begonnen hatte und in Versailles 1871 zum Abschluss gekommen war.” Kupisch, Karl, Durch den Zaun der Geschichte: Beobachtungen und Erkenntnisse (Berlin, 1964), 261Google Scholar. Note, however, the judgment of Fischer, Fritz, “Der deutsche Protestantismus und die Politik im 19. Jahrhundert,” Historische Zeitschrift 171 (1951); 473–518CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here at 494, that church circles regarded the war of 1870 with caution. As for Bismarck and Luther, see the assessment by von Thadden, Rudolf, “Bismarck—ein Lutheraner?” in Luther in der Neuzeit: Wissenschaftliches Symposion des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte, Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte, 192 (Gütersloh, 1983), 104–20.Google Scholar

17. Vintage examples of jubilee addresses are von Treitschke's, Heinrich “Luther und die deutsche Nation,” accessible in English as “Luther and the German Nation,” in Heinrich von Treitschke, Germany, Frame, Russia, and Islam (New York, 1915)Google Scholar; and Ritschl's, Albrecht “Festrede,” trans. Lotz, David W., Ritschl & Luther: A Fresh Perspective on Albrecht Ritschl's Theology in the Light of His Luther Study (Nashville and New York, 1974), 187–202.Google Scholar

18. Weber, , Priester der Clio, 331Google Scholar, quoting Hermann Oncken. For Lenz and the confessional character of academic history, see Weber, Christoph, Der “Fall Spahn,” 33–41Google Scholar; and on the neo-Rankeans, see Schleier, Hans, “Die Ranke-Renaissance,” in Streisand, Joachim, ed., Studien über die deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1965), 2: 99–135, esp. 115.Google Scholar

19. Kupisch, Karl, Die Hieroglyphe Gottes: Grosse Historiker der bürgerlichen Epoche von Ranke bis Meinecke (Munich, 1967), 17Google Scholar. This is a second, less well developed side of the argument of Weber, , Priester der Clio, 332–33.Google Scholar

20. Iggers, Georg G., The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present, rev. ed. (Middletown, Conn., 1983), 3.Google Scholar

21. Thomas Nipperdey has recently testified to the idea's enduring power: “Wer wie ich protestantisch geboren ist und das nicht nur als Zufall, sonder bewusst aufnimmt, neigt dazu, die weltgestaltende Bedeutung Luthers und des Luthertums für die Geschichte der Modernität in Deutschland, für Persönlichkeit und Verhaltensweisen wie für die Gestaltung von Gesellschaft und Kultur hoch und positiv einzuschätzen. Das muss man heute laut sagen, weil es für lauter Selbstzweifel und Kritik unterzugehen droht.” Nipperdey, Thomas, “Luther und die Bildung der Deutschen,” in Löwe, Hartmut and Roepke, Claus-Jürgen, eds., Luther und die Folgen: Beiträge zur sozialgeschichtlichen Bedeutung der lutherischen Reformation (Munich, 1983), 13–27, here at 27.Google Scholar

22. That the apocalyptic image of Luther was well founded in his own view of the world has recently received powerful support from Oberman, Heiko A., Luther: Mensch zwischen Gott und dent Teufel (Berlin, 1983)Google Scholar, soon to appear in English. See above all the writings of Scribner, R. W., especially “Luther Myth: A Popular Historiography of the Reformer,” London German Studies 3 (1986): 1–21Google Scholar; and “Incombustible Luther: The Image of the Reformer in Early Modern Germany,” Past and Present no. no (1986): 36–68. Both studies are now accessible in Scribner's Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London and Ronceverte, W. Va., 1987), 301–22, 323–54.

23. Bornkamm, Heinrich, Luther im Spiegel der deutschen Geistesgeschichte, 2d ed. (Göttingen, 1970), 220.Google Scholar

24. Ibid, 216, from a letter dated 22 Aug. 1817.

25. von Treitschke, Heinrich, “Luther und die deutsche Nation,” quoted by Bornkamm, , Luther im Spiegel der deutschen Geistesgeschichte, 261–63.Google Scholar

26. Quoted by Haering, Hermann, “Über Treitschke und seine Religion,” in Aus Politik und Geschichte: Gedächtnisschrift für Georg von Below (Berlin, 1928), 218–79, here at 249Google Scholar. For Treitschke's confessionalism, see von Pastor, Ludwig Freiherr, Tagebücher—Briefe—Erinnerungen, ed. Wühr, Wilhelm (Heidelberg, 1950), 94–96, 100–1.Google Scholar

27. Bornkamm, Heinrich, Luther und der deutsche Geist, Sammlung gemeinverständlicher Vorträge und Schriften aus dem Gebiet der Theologie und Religionsgeschichte, 170 (Tübingen, 1934), 20Google Scholar. Compare the resigned comment of Georg Wünsch in 1921: “Luther war ein Volksmann, aber er ist keiner mehr und kann auch mit alien Anstrengungen nicht mehr dazu gemacht werden.” Wünsch, Georg, Der Zusammenbruch des Luthertums als Sozialgestaltung (Tübingen, 1921), 6.Google Scholar

28. That the modern Luther cult served primarily the need for a sense of continuity of the German past with the events of 1871 and 1918 is the view of Kupisch, Durch den Zaun der Geschichte, 337–41.

29. Dickens, and Tonkin, , The Reformation in Historical Thought, 180Google Scholar; Bornkamm, , Luther im Spiegel der deutschen Geistesgeschichte, 331.Google Scholar

30. Quoted by Bornkamm, , Luther im Spiegel der deutschen Geistesgeschichte, 328Google Scholar, from Der Katholik 15 (1825): 279, though Bornkamm's own exposition (85) characteristically emphasizes the more negative judgment in Görres's 1821 essay, “Europa und die Revolution.”

31. Quoted by Bornkamm, , Luther im Spiegel der deutschen Geistesgeschichte, 339Google Scholar, from an address of 1883. See Schwaiger, Georg, “Luther im Urteil Ignaz Döllingers,” in Moeller, , ed., Luther in der Neuzeit, 70–83Google Scholar; and, more generally, Dickens, and Tonkin, , The Reformation in Historical Thought, 181–83.Google Scholar

32. Janssen, Johannes, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters, 8 vols. (Freiburg i. Br., 1876–1894)Google Scholar(English: History of the German People at the Close of the Middle Ages, trans. Mitchell, M. A. and Christie, A. M., 17 vols. [London, 1896–1910]Google Scholar). See Dickens, and Tonkin, , The Reformation in Historical Thought, 183–84Google Scholar, which is too brief to be very helpful. For the literature, see Weber, C., Der “Fall Spahn,” 17, n.47.Google Scholar

33. Janssen collects these epithets in his rebuttal, An meine Kritiker (Freiburg i. Br., 1884), 2. The term “ultramontane” was used by historians who should have known better, such as Gooch, G. P., History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1913; reprint, Boston, 1959), 513–16.Google Scholar

34. Ritter von Srbik, Heinrich, Geist und Geschichte vom deutschen Humanismus bis zur Gegenwart, 2 vols. (Munich and Salzburg, 1951), 2: 57–58.Google Scholar

35. Janssen, Johannes, History, 1:1.Google Scholar

36. See Janssen, , An meine Kritiker, 116–22Google Scholar. The two volumes of Janssen apology for his History are structurally very different from the work itself. His critics focused very heavily on his irreverent portrait of Luther, and it is this running battle, not the History itself, which has fixed Janssen's historiographical place. Contemporary authors are all the more vulnerable to this distortion, because the History is so long and so prolix, hence there is no accessible, adequate, modern evaluation of Janssen's work and its historiographical and cultural-political significance. The treatments in English are all derivative and conventional.

37. Along with Karl Lamprecht, Janssen is one of the fathers of Kulturgeschichte in Germany. Weber, Christoph notes that there “lag auch schon bei Janssen ein, wenn auch unsichtbarer, Übergang zu kulturgeschichtlichen Kriterien in der Religionsgeschichte vor.” Der “Fall Spahn,” 18.Google Scholar

38. Brady, Thomas A. Jr, “From Prussia via Luther to Hitler: A Rejoinder,” in Harris, James F., ed., German-American Interrelations, Heritage and Challenge: Joint Conference held at the University of Maryland, April 2 — April 5, 1984 (Tübingen, 1985), 89–94.Google Scholar

39. On Karl Marx's early assessments of Luther and the Reformation, see Vogler, Günter, “Martin Luther und die Reformation im Frühwerk von Karl Marx,” in Moeller, , ed., Luther und die Neuzeit, 84–103Google Scholar. The literature on the interpretation of the German Reformation in the light of historical materialism principles is easily accessible through Dickens, and Tonkin, , The Reformation in Historical Thought, 234–63Google Scholar; Dorpalen, Andreas, German History in Marxist Perspective: The East German Approach (Detroit, 1985), 99–123.Google Scholar

40. The similarities between Catholic and socialist interpretations of the Reformation, and especially of its connections with the Peasants' War, have been noted many times, though never studied. See Friesen, Abraham, Reformation and Utopia: The Marxist Interpretation of the Reformation and Its Antecedents, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz, 71 (Wiesbaden, 1974), 169–70, 249–50.Google Scholar

41. See Dickens, and Tonkin, , The Reformation in Historical Thought, 264–76.Google Scholar

42. Kupisch, Karl, “The ‘Luther Renaissance,’” Journal of Contemporary History 2, no. 4 (Oct. 1967): 39–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For other references, see Brady, Thomas A. Jr, “Luther's Social Teaching and the Social Order of His Age,” in Dünnhaupt, Gerhard, ed., Martin Luther Quincentennial (Detroit, 1985), 270–90, here at 285, n. 6.Google Scholar

43. Dickens, and Tonkin, , The Reformation in Historical Thought, 256–62Google Scholar; Dorpalen, , German History, 99–123.Google Scholar

44. Steinmetz, Max, “Die frühbürgerliche Revolution in Deutschland (1476–1535)—Thesen,” in Brendler, Gerhard, ed., Die frühbürgerliche Revolution in Deutschland: Referate und Diskussion zum Thema Probleme der frühbürgerliche Revolution in Deutschland 1476–1535 (Berlin, 1961), 7–16Google Scholar(English: “Theses on the Early Bourgeois Revolution in Germany (1476–1535),” in Scribner, R. W. and Benecke, Gerhard, eds., The German Peasant War of 1525—New Viewpoints [London, 1979], 9–19).Google Scholar

45. See Peterson, Brent O., “‘Workers of the world unite—for God's sake!’ Recent Luther Scholarship in the German Democratic Republic,” in Tracy, James D., ed., Luther and the Modern State in Germany, Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, 7 (Kirksville, Mo., 1986), 77–100.Google Scholar

46. Brendler, Gerhard, Martin Luther: Theologie und Revolution (Berlin, 1983).Google Scholar

47. Schmidt, Walter, “Zur Entwicklung des Erbe- und Traditionsverständnisses in der Geschichtsschreibung der DDR,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 33 (1985): 195–212, here at 196.Google Scholar

48. See the programatic statement by Blickle, Peter, “Thesen zum Thema—Der ‘Bauernkrieg’ als Revolution des ‘Gemeinen Mannes,’” in Blickle, Peter, ed., Revolte und Revolution in Europa: Referate und Protokolle des internationalen Symposiums zur Erinnerung an den Bauernkrieg 1525 (Memmingen 24.–25. März 1975), Beiheft 4 der Historischen Zeitschrift (Munich, 1975), 127–31Google Scholar (English: “The ‘Peasant War’ as the Revolution of the Common Man—Theses,” in Scribner, and Benecke, , eds., The German Peasant War of 1525, 19–22).Google Scholar

49. See Brady, Thomas A. Jr, “The Reformation's Fate in America: A Reflection,” in Marshall, Sherrin and Bebb, Phillip N., eds., The Process of Change in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Miriam Usher Chrisman (Athens, Ohio, 1988), 17–31Google Scholar. See, in general, von Greyerz, Kaspar, “Stadt und Reformation: Stand und Aufgaben der Forschung,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 76 (1985): 6–63.Google Scholar

50. See Schilling, Heinz, Konfessionskonflikt und Staatsbildung: Eine Fallstudie über das Verhältnis von religiösem und sozialem Wandel in der Frühneuzeit am Beispiel der Grafschaft Lippe, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte, 48 (Gütersloh, 1981).Google Scholar

51. Po–chia, R. Hsia, Society and Religion in Münster, 1535–1618 (New Haven and London, 1984).Google Scholar

52. Schilling, Heinz, “Die deutsche Gemeindereformation: Ein oberdeutsch–zwinglianisches Ereignis vor der ‘reformatorischen Wende’ des Jahres 1525?” Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 14 (1987): 325–32Google Scholar. This is not to deny the international importance of Dutch republicanism, though this subject is but broached by Polisensky, J. V., The Thirty Years' War, trans. Evans, Robert (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971), 21–23, 264–65Google Scholar. The criticial, rural component in the Swiss model is missing from the Dutch one, which corresponds to the weakness of communal elements in northern Netherlandish agriculture. See De Vries, Jan, The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age (New Haven and London, 1974), 55–67.Google Scholar

53. Blickle, Peter, Die Gemeindereformation: Die Menschen des 16. Jahrhunderts auf dem Weg zum Heil (Munich, 1985).Google Scholar

54. Rublack, Hans-Christoph, “Forschungsbericht Stadt und Reformation,” in Moeller, Bernd, ed., Stadt und Kirche im 16. Jahrhundert, Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte, no. 190 (Gütersloh, 1978), 9–26.Google Scholar

55. See especially Blickle, Peter, Landschaften im alten Reich: Die staatliche Funktion des gemeinen Mannes in Oberdeutschland (Munich, 1973)Google Scholar; idem, Die Revolution von 1525, rev. ed. (Munich, 1981) (English: The Revolution of 1525: The German Peasants' War from a New Perspective, trans. Brady, Thomas A. Jr and Erik, H. C. Midelfort [Baltimore, 1981]Google Scholar); idem, Die Reformation im Reich, Uni—Taschenbücher, no. 1181 (Stuttgart, 1982); idem, “Social Protest and Reformation Theology,” in Blickle, Peter, Rublack, Hans-Christoph and Schulze, Winfried, Religion, Politics and Social Protest: Three Studies on Early Modern Germany, ed. von Greyerz, Kaspar, Publications of the German Historical Institute London (London, 1984), 1–23.Google Scholar

56. See Conrad, Franziska, Reformation in der bäuerlichen Gesellschaft: Zur Rezeption reformatorischer Theologie im Elsass, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz, 116 (Wiesbaden, 1984)Google Scholar; Blickle, Peter, ed., Zugänge zur bäuerlichen Reformation, Bauer und Reformation, 1 (Zurich, 1987).Google Scholar

57. See, for example, Rublack, Hans-Christoph, “Is There a ‘New History’ of the Urban Reformation?” in Kouri, E. I. and Scott, Tom, eds., Politics and Society in Reformation Europe: Essays for Sir Geoffrey Elton on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (London, 1987), 121–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here at 122: “the Reformation … was also much more than an urban event.” This is not to say that Blickle's interweaving of urban and rural movements has gained general assent, least of all from Scott, Tom, Freiburg and the Breisgau: Town-Country Relations in the Age of Reformation and Peasants' War (Oxford, 1986), 229–35Google Scholar. Dickens's comment—“the Reformation was an urban event”—comes from his The German Nation and Martin Luther (New York, 1974), 182.

58. Blickle, Peter, “Communalism, Parliamentarism, Republicanism,” trans. Brady, Thomas A. Jr, Parliaments, Estates and Representation 6 (1986): 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59. And debatable not only for Germany. See Blackbourn, David, “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie: Reappraising German History in the Nineteenth Century,” in Blackbourn, David and Eley, Geoff, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford and New York, 1984), 173–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60. Its starting point should be Scribner, R. W., “Cosmic Order and Daily Life: Sacred and Secular in Pre-Industrial German Society,” in von Greyerz, Kaspar, ed., Religion and Society in Early Modem Europe, 1500–1800 (London, 1984), 17–33Google Scholar, now reprinted in Scribner's, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany, 1–16.Google Scholar

61. Sieglerschmidt, Jörn, Territorialstaat und Kirchenregiment: Studien zur Rechtsdogmatik des Kirchenpatronatsrechts im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, Forschungen zur kirchlichen Rechtsgeschichte und zum Kirchenrecht, 15 (Cologne and Vienna, 1987), 1–36.Google Scholar