German Peasants' War
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Illustration: The image breakers, c.1566 –1568 by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder
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The Peasants' War (in German, der Deutsche Bauernkrieg) was a popular revolt in the Holy Roman Empire in the years 1524/1525. It consisted, like the preceding Bundschuh movement and the Hussite Wars, of a series of economic as well as religious revolts by peasants, townsfolk and nobles. The movement possessed no common program.
The conflict, which took place mostly in southern, western and central areas of modern Germany but also affected areas in neighboring modern Switzerland and Austria, involved at its height in the spring and summer of 1525 an estimated 300,000 peasant insurgents: contemporary estimates put the dead at 100,000. It was Europe's most massive and widespread popular uprising before the 1789 French Revolution.
Anabaptists
On December 27, 1521, three Zwickau prophets, both influenced by and influencing Thomas Müntzer, appeared in Wittenberg from Zwickau: Thomas Dreschel, Nicolas Storch and Mark Thomas Stübner. Luther's reform was not radical enough for them. Like the Roman Catholic Church, Luther practiced infant baptism, which the Anabaptists considered to be "neither scriptural nor primitive, nor fulfilling the chief conditions of admission into a visible brotherhood of saints, to wit, repentance, faith, spiritual illumination and free surrender of self to Christ."
The reformist theologian and associate of Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, who was powerless against the enthusiasts with whom his co-reformer Andreas Karlstadt sympathized, appealed to Luther, who was still hiding in the Wartburg. Luther was cautious in not condemning the new doctrine out of hand, but advised Melanchthon to treat its supporters gently and to test their spirits, in case they should be of God. There was confusion in Wittenberg, whose schools and university had sided with the "prophets" and were closed. From this arises the allegation that the Anabaptists were enemies of learning, which is contradicted by the fact that two of them, Haetzer and Denck, produced and printed the first German translation of the Hebrew prophets in 1527. The first leaders of the movement in Zürich—Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, Balthasar Hubmaier—were learned in Greek, Latin and Hebrew.
On March 6, 1522), Luther returned to Wittenberg, where he interviewed the prophets, scorned their "spirits", banished them from the city, and had their adherents ejected from Zwickau and Erfurt. Denied access to the churches, the latter preached and celebrated the sacrament in private houses. Having been driven from the cities, they swarmed across the countryside. Compelled to leave Zwickau, Müntzer visited Bohemia, lived for two years at Alltstedt in Thuringia, and in 1524 spent some time in Switzerland. During this period he proclaimed his revolutionary religious and political doctrines with increasing vehemence, and, so far as the lower orders were concerned, with growing success.
The Peasants' War began chiefly as a revolt against feudal oppression, but under the leadership of Müntzer it became a war against all constituted authorities in a forcible attempt to establish Müntzer's ideal of a Christian commonwealth based on absolute equality and the community of goods. The total defeat of the rebels at Frankenhausen (May 15, 1525), followed by the execution of Müntzer and several other leaders, proved to be a merely temporary check on the Anabaptist movement. Scattered throughout Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands were zealous propagandists whose teachings many were prepared to follow as soon as another leader emerged.
