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Revolutionary Moment: Interpreting the Peasants' War in the Third Reich and in the GermanDemocratic RepublicAuthor(s): Laurenz MllerSource: Central European History, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Jun., 2007), pp. 193-218

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Central European History 40 (2007), 193-218.Copyright (? Conference Group forCentral European History of theAmericanHistorical AssociationDOI: 10.1017/S0008938907000258 Printed in theUSA

Revolutionaryoment: InterpretinghePeasants'War in the hirdReich and in theGermanDemocratic epublicLaurenzMuiller

H T ISTORY textbooks speak of anAmerican, an English, a French, and aRussian revolution,but historians do not recognize a "German Revolution." For this reason the formation of a German national statewas

long described as an aspect of a German "divergent path" (Sonderweg) r exceptionalism.While this concept established itself in post-1945 West Germany,German historical scholarship had even earlier insistedon a uniquely Germantransitionfrom theOld Regime to themodern state, fundamentallydifferentfromwhat took place in the other western European countries. Still earlier,German idealist thinkers had declared the national state (Reich) to be theGerman people's historical objective. Around 1900 theReich was understoodto be not a rational community based on a contractbetween independent individuals, aswere France and England, but a national community of destiny.TheGerman ideal was not a republic split up into political parties but an organiccommunity between the Reich's people and its rulers.This iswhy Germanhistory had never known a successful revolution frombelow. During the nineteenth and the early twentiethcentury, thisalleged unitywas seen in a positivelight, ut after1945 it inspiredan explanation,which quickly became canonical,ofwhy German historyhad led to a catastrophe.German exceptionalism wasnow understood, especially by German social historians, as a one-way streettoward theNational Socialist regime.1

This essaywas edited and translated by Thomas A. Brady, Jr.,who requested from Dr. LaurenzM?ller an overview of his work suitable for translation into English. His dissertation, writtenunder the direction of Peter Blickle, was submitted to theUniversity of Bern in the autumn of2003. Some months later,Dr. M?ller, a native of Bern, was killed in a climbing accident in theValais. Itwas therefore not possible forhim to revise his text or review this translation.His dissertation has been published under the titleDictator und Revolution. Reformation und Bauernkrieg in derGeschichtsschreibungdes "DrittenReiches" und derDDR, Quellen und Forschungen zur Agrargeschichte, vol. 50 (Stuttgart:Lucius & Lucius, 2004).See Georg G. Iggers,Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft.ine Kritik der traditionellenGeschichtsauffassungvonHerder bis zur Gegenwart, 2nd ed. (Vienna, Cologne, andWeimar: B?hlau, 1997), 11-18;Herfried M?nkler, "Das Reich als politische Macht und politischer Mythos," in Reich-NationEuropa. Modele politischerOrdnung, ed. Herfried M?nkler (Weinheim: Beltz Athenaeum, 1996),11-59.

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REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT 195social structures and thatundertook to discuss radically new approaches toreligious, political, and legal structures.4

The very fact that thePeasants'War ended in a totalmilitary defeatmade it anideal projection screen for later generations, for its failureprompted the perennial question, "What would have happened if" theconflict in1525 had ended ina victory of the common man? For generations, therefore,the Peasants' Warbecame an ideal source of new social models. Contemporary goals could besited parallel to those of 1525; contemporary ideals could be presented as aprogram thatbroad sectorsof the population had espoused for centuries. Precisely ecause he easants' ar hadbeendefeated,t fferedpotentialegitimacyto latergenerations' ideas for transforming ermany. These characteristics llow usto construct a comparison between the two dictatorships' historical visions.

Since scholarship isalwaysundertakenwithin a specific socio-political context,I ask whether the two dictatorships prescribed or at least promoted specificinterpretations f theReformation era.Of course the dictatorshipsdifferedradically in theuse of historical scholarship in theirpolitical systems, n the role of historical argument in theirpolitical self-justifications, nd also in the degrees offreedom they llowed historical research.The subjectof this rticle isnot politicalsuppression and censorshipof historical studiesbut the argumentsemployed undertheir sponsorships.The question of thePeasants' War's reception in theThird

Reich and in theGDR thusbecomes a question about the relationshipof dictatorshipto revolution. In order topresent clearly the interpretations f history inthe two dictatorships, this tudyfollows an essentially hronological order, beginning with themost importantnineteenth-centuryworks.

A long time lapsed between the Peasants' War's defeat and its laiming a place inGerman history.Only in the revolutionary atmosphere of the late eighteenthcenturydid itbecome recognized as not just a destructive insurrectionbut alsoa social revolt,even a revolution.5Somewhat later the liberalsand democrats of1848 saw in it a historical model and gave especially great attention to theprogrammatic statementknown as the "Constitution for theGerman Empire,"also called "the Heilbronn program."6On the eve of the liberal revolution of

On the Peasants' War's goals, see ibid., part 2.See Georg Friedrich Sartorius, Versuch einerGeschichte des Deutschen Bauernkrieges (n.p., 1795);Horst Buszello, "Deutungsmuster des Bauernkrieges in historischer Perspektive," in Der deutscheBauernkrieg, ed. Horst Buszello, Peter Blickle, and Rudolf Endres, 2nd ed. (Paderborn, Munich,Vienna, and Zurich: Sch?ningh, 1991), 11-22, esp. 13.Note from Thomas A. Brady, Jr.:The Heilbronn Program was amoderate reform agenda composed inMay 1525, presumably byWendel Hipler (ca. 1465-1526). The document was prepared foran assembly of representatives from thevarious peasants' armies of southwestern Germany who werecalled toHeilbronn.



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196 LAURENZMULLER1848, thehistorianWilhelm Zimmermann saw in thePeasants'War not only "thebeginnings of theEuropean revolutions" but also theirmicrocosm.7 This positivereception soon peaked inFriedrich Engels' The German Peasants'War, inwhichKarl Marx's associate argued that theReformation and its "culmination" in thePeasants' War was a social revolution in theMarxist sense.8At their core, hethought, both theReformation and the Peasants' War had opposed the feudalorder. Their opposition had expressed itself n theReformation as a struggleagainst the Roman church-the Empire's greatest feudal lord-and in thePeasants' War as revolts against the princes. Engels understood these earlysixteenth-century truggles s class conflicts thathad erupted out ofmaterial conditions and social antagonisms.He baptized them an "early bourgeois revolution."According toMarxist theory, a feudal society must always be supplanted by abourgeois one, and revolution against a feudal order had to occur "objectively"in the form of a bourgeois revolution,which formed a necessary stage on the

way to history'sultimate goal, a classless society.Engels saw the rebels' concretepolitical goal tobe overcoming the fragmented mperial structures, nd he conceived the Peasants'War as a movement in favor f a centralized German nation.

Engels' national interpretationcorresponded perfectlyto themid-nineteenthcentury Zeitgeist.Even though at this time national unity dominated Germanpolitical discourse, Engels' national interpretation found a favorable hearingonly among his own political comrades. The guild of academic historiansignored his analysis.Their master narrativefocused above allon thecreative spiritual and political power of "greatmen," and theyhardly regarded thepeople as apolitical actor at all. Itwas notEngels butLeopold vonRanke who composed thestandardwork on theage of theReformation.9 Ranke saw thePeasants'War notas the Reformation's high point but merely as an ultimately inexplicableperipheral event,which he called "the greatest natural event of the Germanstate."l0Of fargreater interest to him was Luther's Reformation, which hetook to have been the central "idea" of the entireGerman nation and a definingGerman characteristic.Ranke thus saw the reformer's ondemnation ofthe rebelsin a positive light,and he saw in theReformation not the cause ofGermany'sconfessional division but the spiritual foundation of itsnational unification.

Both Engels and Ranke emphasized the national significanceof theReformation era, though in other respectstheir pproaches differed o fundamentally that

we may see in theirviews something like ideal typesof the long-term historiographical development. This applies not only to their oncrete evaluations of the

Wilhelm Zimmermann, Der grosse deutscheBauernkrieg, Volksausgabe von 1891, 2nd ed. (Berlin:Dietz, 1952), 8.Friedrich Engels, Der deutscheBauernkrieg,3. Ausgabe von 1975,16thed. (Berlin:Dietz, 1989), 42.See Leopold von Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im eitalter derReformation, ed. Paul Joachimsen, 6vols. (Munich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1926; first ed., 1839-47).10Ibid., 180-81.



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REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT 197Peasants'War but also to theirrespective understandingof revolutions.WhereasEngels describes the Peasants' War as a revolution borne by the broad mass ofthedisadvantaged ranks f society, anke sees theReformation as a spiritualrevolution that rose from the thought nd faith f an individual. InRanke's interpretation, therefore, e can see an earlyformof the thesis fGerman exceptionalism.For him, transformationsf historical scale are tobe attributednot to rebelliousmasses but to thespirit f a fewgreatmen. Luther andBismarck became nationalmonuments, the common man-the German people-played a role only of astatisticalkind. In contrast to theRankean historicist tradition, in later timesGerman social historians saw thisrole in a positive rather than a negative light.11During the following decades, interpretations carcely advanced beyond thesetwonineteenth-century positions. In the intellectualworld of theauthoritarianSecond Empire, the Peasants' War led an entirelymarginalized existence.Onlythe labormovement, which guarded the dream of revolution, celebrated therevolutionary tradition. German academic history, by contrast, which wasoriented to Prussia and Protestantism, saw the country's history as free fromthe "blemish" of social revolution. The historicist tradition followed Rankein focusing on Luther and his spiritual revolution. In 1871 Heinrich vonTreitschke called Luther the "leader of theGerman nation," "blood of ourblood.",12 This heroizing tendency rose to a new level duringWorld WarI. Now Luther was no longer merely a spiritual ancestor of the Germanpeople, he was also thesupreme fieldcommander, and thestruggleon thebattlefieldbecame a fightfor the "German spirit"he had awakened.13The German defeat inWorld War I burst asunder the old frameworkofpolitical institutions. Traditional social structuresdissolved, state boundariesshifted,and the Second Empire, theGerman national homeland, disappearedinto history.The revolution of 1918 brought about a collapse of the pillars ofauthority and revealed the instability f the ground on which theyhad beenbuilt.With Philipp Scheidemann's proclamation of the Republic and theinaugurationof theWeimar constitution in 1919, Germany created for itselfnew form of state. Yet the new state drew criticism fromvarious sides, andbroad sectorsof thepopulation, embittered by the dictated peace ofVersailles,saw thispolitical development as a journey into ruin.This disruptionmade it impossible tocontinue representingtheReformationin the prewar fashion. In a collection of his studies pubhshed in 1920, the

Note from Thomas A. Brady, Jr.: Inmy opinion, the author's comments onRanke attribute tohim theviews of Treitschke and theneo-Rankeans of the 1880s (e.g.,Max Lenz,see note 15)morethanwhat the historian actuallywrote in the 1840s about the German Reformation.12Heinrich von Treitschke, "Luther und die deutsche Nation," Preu?ische Jahrb?cher52 (1883):469-86, here 484.For other examples, seeHans-Heinz Krill, Die Rankerenaissance.Max Lenz und ErichMarcks. EinBeitragzum historisch-politischenenken in eutschland 1880-1935 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1962), 32-41.



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198 LAURENZMULLERPrussian historian Max Lenz wrote thatwith the collapse of the "ProtestantEmpire of theGerman Nation," on which Luther and Bismarck had labored,an "epoch of integration" had ended. "These were the two great men," hewrote, "who stand at the opening and at the ending of an era, the inner unityof which appears today all themore clearly, because since November 1918the political and moral defeat of our people has created a breach between itand thepresent."4 Once thewar and its ftermathhad shattered the foundationsof itsnational view of theReformation, theRanke-Treitschke tradition fell intoa deep crisis, and research on the historyof theReformation plunged into asteep ecline.15The Reformation nonetheless continued to be regarded by some as a decisiveevent in German history and to be still relevant to the present. This wasespecially trueof historians who inclined, as Gerhard Ritter did, to conservatism.He allowed his dissatisfactionwith theWeimar systemfullplay in thebiographyof Luther he published in 1925. Itwas owing toLuther, he asserted, thattheGerman nation first ecognized itself nd its idea of a national state.Ritterheld theReformation to have been unquestionably a revolution, though heemployed this concept in the historicist sense as a transformationborne bythe spiritof an individual personality.He used the concept of theReformationtodistinguish thedevelopment of theGerman statefrom theWestern idea of thestate.The Reformation thusbecame an alternative to the rationalistRenaissance, which allowed him to cast theGerman nature and the spirit of theEnlightenment as absolute contraries. Martin Luther became for GerhardRitter the historical proof that theRepublic's current path was moving in adirection, contrary to his own ideal, toward an authoritarian statemodeled onPrussia. Correspondingly negative was Ritter's evaluation of the Peasants' Warinwhich he sawmerely an abuse of the idea ofReformation. The Reformation,not the Peasants'War, had been the foundational event of German history andought to serve as the lodestarof theGerman present.16Many of his contemporaries rejected the restorationist element inRitter'sinterpretationof thepast, because theybelieved that the Second Empire's policies had obviously led the country to catastrophe, and that the conflicts of the

Weimar yearswere preventing theRepublic frombecoming a state that couldleadGermany topolitical stability nd prosperity. In thissituation, some historians found it instructive to examine German history forother kinds of clues.They searched, inHeinrich Mitteis' words, for "a form of state thatmirrors

Max Lenz, Von Luther zu Bismarck. Kleine historischeSchriften,vol. 2 (Munich: Oldenbourg,1920), v.Thomas A. Brady, "German Imperial Cities, Reformation, andRepublicanism?The Legacy ofHans Baron," inHistorische Anst??e. Festschrift?rWolfgangReinhard zum 65. Geburtstag am 10.April2002, ed. Peter Burschel, et al. (Berlin:Akademie-Verlag, 2002), 40-54, here 40-41.16GerhardRitter, Luther. Gestalt und Symbol (Munich: F. Br?ckman, 1925).



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REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT 199the German people's nature." The jurist Otto von Gierke, who defined thissearch's direction, believed that the catastrophe ofWorld War I could be overcome only by means of "a national rebirth" centered on "the German idea ofthe state."The "organically constructed" community could thenbe ruled by"an authority independent of everyday currents and party interests."'17ierkeunderstood the liberal idea of the state,which went back to Enlightenmentorigins and restedon a Roman legal concept of the individual, as contrary totheGerman state's original form.Of nineteenth-century origin, his basic ideaspread widely and became popular afterWorld War I. He argued thatunderthe influenceofRoman law,post-medieval Germany had moved in a falsedirection that robbed it f its nherentstrength nd turned itfroma community into asociety of individuals. His argument also supported a critique of the newRepublic: instead of harking back to its populist-communitarian roots,Germany was being strapped into theWeimar political corset of aWesterntype.Gierke was byno means alone in favoringthe idea of an organic communityas an alternative model to a fragmentedWeimar society romoted by partyinterestsndideologies.For Gierke's way of thinking,thePeasants' War offeredamuch better historical referencepoint than did Luther's Reformation. As the four-hundredth anniversaryof the events of 1525 approached, in addition to celebrations organizedby labor organizations, the academic historiansbegan to give thePeasants' Warsignificantattention.18Among them was Gunther Franz, whose first cholarlywork on thissubject enjoyed an especially durable influence.In 1925Wilhelm Mommsen asked Franz, a recentPh.D. at age twenty-four,to compile a small volume of Peasants' War sources for the DeutscheBuchgemeinschaft. Franz produced the collection inone year. Itsbrief introductions to the individual documents, though not directly political, clearlymirrorthe popular discussion of what form of state was suitable to the Germanpeople's nature. Franz developed his interpretation in two directions. First,heargued that the Peasants'War had been caused by political inequality betweenthepeasant estate and the restof latemedieval society.The marginalization ofthe peasants derived from their legal insecurity,not from their economicsituation. Because of the increasingly common application of Roman law,

17HeinrichMitteis, Rechtspflegeund Staatsentwicklung in eutschland und Frankreich,cited byAnnaL?bbe, "Die deutsche Verfassungsgeschichtsschreibung unter dem Einflu? der nationalsozialistischenMachtergreifung," inRechtsgeschichte m ationalsozialismus. Beitr?gezur Geschichte einerDisziplin, ed.Michael Stolleis and Dieter Simon (T?bingen: J.C. B. Mohr, 1989), 63-78, here 66. Otto vonGierke, Der germanische Staatsgedanke (1919), 6, 26, cited by Dietmar Willoweit, "DeutscheRechtsgeschichte und 'nationalsozialistische Weltanschauung.' Das Beispiel Hans Frank," inRechtsgeschichte mNationalsozialismus, ed. Stolleis and Simon 25-42, here 39.18The tempo of research on the Peasants' War can be traced by titles appearing in the annualsurveys of research in theJahresberichten?r deutscheGeschichte. In 1925 a total of nine appeared; in1926 twelve, a peak; in 1927 six; in 1929 and 1930 each four; in 1931 one; and in 1932 none.



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REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT 201common law."24At the time, of course, the NSDAP was an insignificant,quite local formation composed of political marginals. As the party grewstronger, to be sure, it by no means feltbound by the "inalterable" partyprogram. Yet the party retained its harsh criticism of "materialistic"Roman law and itsdemand forpristine German or Germanic legal norms.The demand became characteristic of the party's romantic-agrarian wing,which was led by Richard Walter Darre.25 After the "seizure of power,"when legitimizing the National-Socialist revolution became an importanttask,Darre often hnked current events to the Peasants' War. The NationalSocialists, he said, should give their revolution and its pohcies a historicalfoundation and therebymake theprofound social transformation omprehensible by means of reference to a historical model.26 In the party's wingaround Reichsbauernfuhrerarre, which was still strong in 1933, the Peasants'

War served as both a social model and an argument forNational-Socialistpolicy.A signal example of thisusage is theReichserbhofgesetzfOctober 1, 1933,which introduced impartible inheritance. Peasant-owned farms above acertain size could only be inherited intact, so that that the peasants would bebound to their land-the "blood" tied to the "soil."27 In thisway, Darreargued at a propaganda meeting inOctober 1933, a Germanic ideal,whichthe invasion of Roman law had progressively destroyed,would be restored. In1525 the central question of the Peasants' War of 1525 had been whether"Roman law would protect the German peasants, as was the custom, orwhether-under the cloak of the so-called Roman law-a law of lawyersandJewish peddlers could challenge the peasant's possession of his own land. In

Cited by Peter Landau, "R?misches Recht und deutsches Gemeinrecht. Zur rechtspolitischenZielsetzung imnationalsozialistischen Parteiprogramm," inRechtsgeschichte m ationalsozialismus, ed.Stolleis and Simon, 11-24, here 11.Toward the end of theWeimar years, an obscure graduate in agriculture named Richard WalterDarr? rose in a short period of time to the status of an ideologue of populism. He developed invariouswritings a cluster of romantic agrarian ideas under the formula of "Blood and Soil." Itsfundamental aimwas to recover the strengthof theNordic race through a strengthening of the peasantry,towhich end he proposed tobring thepeasants out of theirpolitical marginalization, raise their socialstanding, and lead them into an economically better future. Following the seizure of power, Darr?became "Reichsbauernfuhrer," and inJune 1933, he replaced Alfred Hugenberg in theMinistry for

Agriculture. See Gustavo Corni, "Richard Walther Darre. Der 'Blut-und-Boden'-Ideologe," inDiebraune lite. 22 biographische kizzen, ed. Ronald Smelser and Rainer Zitelmann, 2nd ed. (Darmstadt:Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990), 15-27.Major social change isalmost always accompanied by theneed to explain itas corresponding to ahistorical pattern and thereby give it legitimacy. In every political system,historiography encountersthe expectation of discovering traditions. See Eric Hobsbawm, "Inventing Traditions," in EricHobsbawm, The Invention ofTradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 1 14.On theReichserbhofgesetz and the ideology of "blood and soil," seeGustavo Corni andHorstGies, "Blut und Boden. " Rassenideologie undAgrarpolitik im Staat Hitlers (Idstein: Schulz-Kirchner,1994); Uwe Mai, "Rasse und Raum. "Agrarpolitik, Sozial- undRaumplanung im S-Staat (Paderborn:

Sch?ningh, 2002).



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202 LAURENZMULLERthese peasant wars we discern one of the fundamental rebellions of the old

Germanic consciousness of freedom against domination by racially alien legalconcepts."28 This argument made National-Socialist agrarian policy part of acenturies-old German struggle for freedom,which had been expressed withspecial profundity 400 years before.At the assemblies known as Reichsbauerntage,speakers alleged an essential affinityetween thePeasants'War and theNationalSocialist revolution.Wilhelm Kinkelin, forexample, called theNational-Socialist"National Peasant Assembly" the "successor in law and innature" to thePeasantParliament of 1525 atHeilbronn, the program ofwhich was at lastbeing "realized by the Fiihrer,Adolf Hitler, in theNational-Socialist state."29 t the second

National Peasants' Assembly, Reichsfuihrer SS Heinrich Himmiler called thePeasants' War a tragic event. A "resounding affirmation"by the best peasantminds met with great "disorder, fragmentation,and lack of discipline," so thatin the end nothing was leftbut "the bloody corpses of irreformablyfoolishGermans" and a hope that "the grandchildren would fightbetter."30 LikeHimmler, Darre pointed out that in 1933, thanks to discipline and loyalty toAdolf Hitler, the "outrage" and "blind fury"of the peasants did not lead tochaos, as ithad in 1525. Instead, the "legal implementation of the revolutioncould be guaranteed and our Fatherland therebyguarded from indescribable suffering."31 e see clearly inboth Darre and Himmiler not only amisleading viewof thepast but also National Socialism's ambiguous relationship to the Peasants'

War. The movement from below was illuminating, to be sure, as a popularstruggle of thepeasants forGermanic law,yet, lacking the revolutionarydiscipline of 1933, it had led to "fragmentation" and "chaos." In the past, for along time the labormovement alone had looked positively upon thePeasants'

War; now, theNational-Socialist revolution could be portrayed as the realizationof itsgoals. In themilieu of what was called "the Reich's nourishing estate"(Reichsnahrstand)-the farmers-the distant event served as a quarry from

which individual stones could be broken for legitimizingNational-Socialistagrarian policy.At least three parallels can be drawn between thispropagandistic pictureassociated with the Reichsnahrstand and Gunther Franz's interpretation

described above: first, the stylized ideological pictures presented to theRichard Walter Darre, "Vom Friedenswillen der deutschen Bauern. Rede vom 22. Oktober

1933," an undated manuscript. The text contains, however, a reference toGermany's withdrawalfrom the League of Nations eight days before, that is, on October 14, 1933. Bundesarchiv(BArch), R 16 I, 2057.29Wilhelm Kinkelin, "Bauernkrieg," Odal. Monatsschrift ?r Blut undBoden S, no. 1 (1936): 24-30.Wilhelm Kinkelin was vice president of the SS-Studiengesellschaft Ahnenerbe.Heinrich Himmler, "Die Schutzstaffel als antibolschewistische Kampforganisation. Rede aufdem 2. Reichsbauerntag inGoslar," Archiv desReichsn?hrstandes2 (1934): 45-60.Richard Walther Darre, Rede auf dem ersten eutschen Reichsbauerntag.Weimar 1.Januar 1934(Berlin: Stabsamt des Reichsbauernfuhrers, 1934).



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REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT 203Reichsnahrstand portray 1525 as thehigh point of a struggle gainst foreign legalprinciples; second, they see in the struggle's failure-far more pointedly thanFranz does-a consequence of failed leadership of the people; and, third,theyderive from this a negative evaluation of the Thuringian Peasants' War'sprotagonist, Thomas Miintzer, who was portrayed as not a popular leader buta seducer of thepeople.

How did these interpretations hange after theNational Socialists' "seizure ofpower"? From thebeginning, theuniversitiesunderwent considerable pressureto adjust themselves to the new regime.The new regime initiallyunleashed anattackon Jews and-to thedegree that ny existed at all-leftist members of theuniversity.Yet the greatmajority of full professors in the history departmentscould continue their activities as before, because they were nationalconservatives who did not regard theWeimar Republic as a state worthdefending. Consequently, the call fora new, political, and combative disciplineof history, supportive of the new regime, provoked little resistance.Manyhistorians accommodated themselves and their scholarship toNational-Socialistideology during the yearsof theThird Reich. Whether and how far historian

might conform to thenew ruler's thoughtwas amatter for individual decision.A correct orientation could accelerate careers, though scholarswho held to atraditional,historicistview of historyhad no serious penalties to fear.32

In the fall f 1933, Gunther Franz published an expanded version ofhisHabilitation thesis, n thenew forewordofwhich he clearlyoutlined his political position.Now, "at the end of the first ictorious German revolution, . . . thepeasantin theThird Reich finallyhaswon theplace innational life that he strovefor

In recent years the relationship of German historical scholarship toNational Socialism has beenhotly debated. Without pretense of completeness, the following can be mentioned: KarenSch?nw?lder, Historiker und Politik. GeschichtswissenschaftmNationalsozialismus (FrankfurtamMainand New York: Campus, 1992);Willi Oberkrome, Volksgeschichte.ethodische Innovationund v?lkischeIdeologisierung in der deutschen Geschichtswissenschaft 1918?1945 (G?ttingen: Vandenhoeck &Ruprecht, 1993); Peter Sch?ttler, ed., Geschichtsschreibung ls Legitimationswissenschaft1918?1945(Frankfurt amMain: Suhrkamp, 1997); Frank-Lothar Kroll, Utopie als Ideologie. Geschichtsdenkenund politischesHandeln imDritten Reich (Zurich: Sch?ningh, 1998); Winfried Schulze and OttoGerhard Oexle, eds., Deutsche Historiker imNationalsozialismus (FrankfurtamMain: Fischer, 1999);Michael Fahlbusch, Wissenschaft imDienst der nationalsozialistischenPolitik (Baden-Baden: Nomos,1999); Bernd Faulenbach, "Deformation der Geschichtswissenschaft unter Hider und Stalin," inIm Dschungel derMacht. Intellektuelle Professionen unter Stalin und Hitler, ed. Dietrich Beyrau(G?ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 260-74; IngoHaar, Historiker im ationalsozialismus.Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaftund der "Volkstumskampf" imOsten (G?ttingen: Vandenhoeck &

Ruprecht, 2000); Michael Gr?ttner, "Machtergreifung als Generationenkonflikt. Die Krise derHochschulen und der Aufstieg des Nationalsozialismus," inWissenschaften undWissenschaftspolitik.Bestandsaufnahmenzu Formationen, Br?chen undKontinuit?ten im eutschland des 20. Jahrhunderts, d.R?diger vom Bruch and Brigitte Kaderas (Stuttgart:F. Steiner, 2002), 339-53; Thomas Welskopp,"Grenz?berschreitungen. Deutsche Sozialgeschichte zwischen den drei?iger und den siebzigerJahren des 20. Jahrhunderts," inDie Nation schreiben.Geschichtswissenschaftm internationalenVergleich,ed. Christoph Conrad and Sebastian Conrad (G?ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002),296-332.



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204 LAURENZ MULLERback in 1525." For the firsttime, therefore, twas possible to engage, "undisturbed by theviews of theday," thisquestion about the nature of this "greatestnatural event of our history."33 he apparent timeliness of his publication disguises the fact that Franz's research for thismonograph had been conductedin the late 1920s, also that the entiremanuscript, except for the foreword, considerably predated the beginning of theThird Reich. The book thus portraysthe events of 1525 inmuch the same colors as its author had already done inhis edited source collection of 1926. The same can be said of the agreementof his view with images of the Peasants' War fashioned to legitimate theReichsnahrstand. Even so, in this laterwork Franz did distance thePeasants'War more than before fromMartin Luther's Reformation. He anchored thestrugglefor an ideal stateof lawno longer inReformation thoughtbut inmedieval peasant religiosity. his is especially true of thepeasants' argument for thegodly law,which Franz no longer connected to Luther's Reformation.34 In thenew version, thePeasants'War is amovement sprung initiallyfrom thepeasantryitself, hat is,"a revolution . . .whose moving forcewas theGerman peasant."35

From 1933 on, Franz began increasingly to emphasize precisely thiselement.In a lecturehe gave in 1934 and 1935 on "the idea of theEmpire in theGermanpeasants' movements," Franz declared the Peasants'War to have been a homogeneous, purposefulmovement in favorof aGerman Empire. He spoke of the"eternal struggle for theReich," a formula he meant to tie thePeasants' Warexplicitly to the National-Socialist movement. He thereby declared the"struggle for the Reich" to be a trans-historical task of theGerman people,albeit one thathad little in common with the late medieval concept of theEmpire. In the final analysis, Franz projected an ideological target pattern ofNational Socialism onto an historical event, his object being to justify thenew order politically.36Since 1935 Franz strove to cultivate good relationswith theReichsnahrstandand its eader,Richard Walter Darre, towhom, as the leadingNational-Socialisthistorian of the Peasants'War, he addressed his portrayalof thePeasants'War.37Franz hoped for better financial and political support for his research on thehistory of the peasants.38His plan to institutionalize hiswork on the peasantsand the Peasants' War nevertheless enjoyed only modest success. Undeterred,over the course of the 1930s, Franz steered his interpretationof thePeasants'

33G?nther Franz, Der deutscheBauernkrieg (Munich and Berlin: Oldenbourg, 1933), v [the finalwords are silently quoted fromRanke?Thomas A. Brady, Jr.].34Franz referred chiefly to the teachings of JohnWiclif and JanHus. See ibid., 48.35Ibid., 470.36G?nther Franz, "Der Reichsgedanke in der deutschen Bauernbewegung," in Volk imWerden 3(Oldenburg: G. Stalling, 1932), ed. Ernst Krieck, 332-42.37See Universit?tsarchiv Hohenheim, N6, 1/2/5, 5/11/1, 5/11/5.Franz's interestattached above all to the Forschungsdienst fur andbauwissenschaften, which layunder Darr?'s influence.



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REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT 205War inDarre's ideological direction. This isespecially evident in the articles hepublished in two journals, ZeitschriftesForschungsdienstesnd Odal. Monatsschriftfur Blut und Boden. In themFranz continued to designate the Peasants' War a"political revolution" but ascribed to it amore reactionary character.He stillsaw in the argument based on godly law a decisive element of the Peasants'

War, but now he derived it from ancient Germanic law,which held that lawisnot created by men but established by God and therefore an only be discovered by men. The latemedieval princes, aiming to create a statewith uniformlaw, had gone back to thewritten Roman law,which the peasants regarded asnot only an incomprehensibly alien law but also a truly "non-law or antilaw." In thisview, thePeasants'War could functionas a "remembering" of originalGerman legal ideas.The peasants' effort o defend thepeople against alienlaw lacked only a leaderwho could have unified themovement and led it to itsgoal.39With such leadership, Franz belheved, the common man possessed thecapabilityofmaking a revolution on his own.

By the end of the 1930s, thisperspective theGerman peasantry as guardiansof thepeople's traditions-came todominate Franz'swork on the Peasants'War.His two-volumeollectionfsources,eutschesauerntum,eflectshisision. tassembles documents from 2,000 years of agrarian history from "the firstevidence of agriculture among the ancient Germans" through the Peasants'

War down to the law of 1933 that ntroduced impartible inheritanceof farms.40Gunther Franz was byno means theonly historianof thiserawho interpreted

thePeasants' War as a struggleforGermanic legal principles orwho argued foracontinuous peasant tradition from the ancient Germans to theThird Reich.Others who could be mentioned include theJena juristJohannes von Leers,Willy Andreas, and Hermann Wopfner.41 Beyond doubt, however, Franz wasthemost important,best known, andmost politically engaged agrarianhistorianwho worked under National Socialism. His project and researchplan nonetheless came to an abrupt halt at the end of the 1930s, and this for reasons politicalratherthanpersonal. Intensivepreparations for nd thebeginning of thewar notonly curtailed the financial assistance available to historians but also brought apolitical reorientation.The romanticagrarian currentwithin National Socialhsmgave way to technocratic forces, and in 1940 came Darre's "demonstrative'relinquishment'f theReich's Office forAgrarian olicy (Reichsamtur

G?nther Franz, "F?r Reich und Recht. Der deutsche Bauernkrieg?eine politische Revolution,"Odal. Monatsschrift ?r Blut und Boden 8 (1939): 327-37.40See G?nther Franz, Deutsches Bauerntum, 2 vols., vol. I,Mittelalter, vol. II,Neuzeit (Weimar:H. B?hlau, 1939-40).41See, for example, Johannes von Leers, "Der gro?e deutsche Bauernkrieg?Wer hatte recht?"Odal. Monatsschrift ?r Blut und Boden, 3, no. 1 (1934): 162-71; Willy Andreas, "Der deutscheBauernkrieg," Deutsches Volkstum. Eine Monatsschrift,May 1937: 325-37; Hermann Wopfner,"Die Forschung nach denUrsachen des Bauernkrieges und ihreF?rderung durch die geschichtlicheVolkskunde," Historische Zeitschrift153 (1936): 89-106.



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206 LAURENZMULLERAgrarpolitik)."42 he cult of ancient Germanism, to be sure,was by no meanslimited to his milieu, for this ideological strand also enjoyed favor inReichsfLihrerSS Heinrich Himmler's circle. Yet in contrast to Darre's model,Himmler envisaged not a sedentary peasantry bound by "Blood and Soil"but, in tunewith wartime events, amilitarized peasantry (Wehrbauer)onqueringeastern Europe. This shift deprived agrarian history of institutional support.During thewar years,Gunther Franz worked as a scholar for various SS institutions, and the Reformation era no longer played a role in his writings.43

Only one element of Franz's interpretation of the Reformation era-thestruggle for theReich-survived into thewar years.

History never enjoyed a dominant place in the Third Reich's legitimizingideology, a situation even theGerman attackon Poland did not alter. In contrasttoWorld War I, propaganda occasionally drew upon history ingeneral and the

Reformation era in particular.The most comprehensive attempt to legitimizetheGerman war effort istoricallywas an exhibition named "German Greatness(DeutscheGroJ3e) Explicitly planned as a cultural contribution to thewar, theexhibition surveyedGerman history from the ancient Germans to the "panGerman Reich ofAdolf Hitler." Gunther Franz was entrustedwith thescholarlypreparation of the section on theReformation, which combined thePeasants'War, theKnight's Revolt (1522), and the Smalkaldic League (1531-47) in anattempt "to bring to victory the Reformation, which was ultimately aGerman revolution."45According to Franz, not just thePeasants'War but theentireReformation era had been a "struggle for theReich."

The exposition, "German Greatness," employed the same raciallyorientedconcept of theReich. Such historical interpretations onveyed a grand politicalidea thatnourished amental climate favorable topreparing for thecoming war.The idea implied theGerman people's historic aim to realize an idea of theReich, which finally took concrete form through the National Socialists'annexation policy in the east.This concept of theReich illustrateshow fluid the zone was between theNational Socialist and a nationalist conservative point of view. The NSDAPand itssubsidiary institutionspursed no unified policy toward the past, and at

Corni and Gies, "Blut undBoden," 33.See esp.Wolfgang Behringer, "Bauern-Franz und Rassen-G?nther. Die politische Geschichtedes Agrarhistorikers G?nther Franz (1902-1992)," inDeutsche Historiker imNationalsozialismus,ed.Winfried Schulze und Otto Gerhard Oexle (FrankfurtamMain: Fischer, 1999), 114-41.The exhibition opened inNovember 1940 inMunich and then traveled toBrussels and Prague.Organized by the Amt Rosenberg, itwas sponsored by the Amt fur Schrifttumspflege und dieSchirmherrschaft under the sponsorship ofHitler's deputy,Reichsminister Rudolf He?.45According to the exhibition's catalog, G?nther Franz was one of themany scholarly contributors.Although the individual textswere not explicitly ascribed toparticular authors, the sections ontheReformation era bore G?nther Franz's unmistakable hand and were a brief version of an earlyarticle by him. See Franz, "Der Reichsgedanke in der deutschen Bauernbewegung," 332-42; and"Deutsche Gr??e." Ausstellungskatalog (n.p., 1940-41), 140-42.



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REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT 207no point was there the ational Socialist interpretationof the Peasants' War.Gunther Franz's case shows clearly, however, how the Peasants' War couldbecome a historical argument in favorof thenew dictatorship. It also demonstrates that historians deliberately employed the revolutionarymoment as apolitical motive. Yet itmust not be forgotten that out of a discourse aboutpeople, Reich, and law,Franz also developed a new scholarly approach to theearly sixteenth century.He discovered the peasants' gravamina as importanthistorical source, and he was the first istorian outside the labor movement totake the Peasants' War seriously as a popular revolution.

In themidst ofWorld War II,working farfromGerman archives, the Soviet historianMoisej Smirin took up the defense of Engels' Marxist interpretationofthe Reformation era against the new National-Socialist view. He aimed tooppose the "falsification of earlierGerman history by theThird Reich's fascisthistorians."By "falsification"hemeant GuintherFranz'smonograph on thePeasants'War, which Smirin regarded as nothing less than a "historical justificationfor theHitler regime."46 It isuncertain how precisely Smirin was able to followhistorical scholarship inNational-Socialist Germany, though he clearly saw inFranz's work a danger to the socialist understanding of tradition.Since Engels'study, the Peasants' War had been an important point of orientation for the(German) labormovement, which iswhy Smirinwas determined not to surrender its interpretationto "fascism" without a struggle.

Smirin'sHabilitation thesison the Peasants' War appeared inRussian in 1947and inGerman translation n 1952. Faithful toEngels' legacy,he portrayed thePeasants' War as a class conflict,which he explained in termsof the economicand political conditions of the early sixteenthcentury.Smirin nonetheless concerned himself lesswith therevolution's causes thanwith its ourse, at the centerof which he placed Thomas Miintzer, whose theology he interpreted as therevolutionary doctrine of the common man. Smirin investigated in somedetail the intellectual origins ofMiintzer's thought, seeking to explain why itcould become so explosive in the concrete conditions of 1525. He also isolatedMiintzer's theology from the subject of religion by characterizing it as a pureideology of classwarfare in contemporary dress, amanifesto of the impoverished, sufferingpopulation against the feudal lords and in favor of nationalcentralization. In contrast to earlier treatmentsby German historians, Smirinassigned to national unity not a determinative but merely a functional role.Unity would have permitted the development of a unified commercial

46See Smirin's obituary in an undated typescript, inUniversit?tsarchiv (UA) Leipzig, NachlassSteinmetz, 3/105, Blatt 13-17. Also seeM. M. Smirin, Die Volksreformation es Thomas M?nzerund dergrosseBauernkrieg, trans.Hans Nichtweiss, 2nd ed. (Berlin:Dietz, 1956), 55-62.



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208 LAURENZMULLERand economic system and a bourgeois society,which would have ended thefeudal age.47

Smirin's portrayalof the peasantry as the chief agent of a bourgeois revolutionproved, in the context of German history,a central point of theLeninist theoryof revolution.Lenin had concluded in his analysisof theRussian Revolution of1905 that this bourgeois" revolution had foundered on thebourgeoisie's unreadiness for revolution.An analogous failure of theGerman bourgeoisie in 1525forced the peasants to assume the leading role on behalf of the lower classes.48This idea enabled Smirin to explain inMarxist-Leninist terms why theGerman "bourgeois revolution" of the early sixteenth century had not beenled by thebourgeoisie. He made Thomas Miintzer to be implicitly revolutionary leaderof theLeninist type.For Soviet historical studies itwas important thatthePeasants' War as a popular revolution not be surrendered to interpretationsformulated inNational-Socialist Germany but reconquered inorder tobuild a

Marxist tradition.Smirin's achievement did not come to light in the non-Soviet world until it

surfaced, some years afterWorld War II, in theGDR. During the immediatepostwar years, a negative appraisal ofGerman history prevailed.West and east,from Thomas Mann and Friedrich Meinecke toAlexander Abusch, itwastaggedwith the formula, "From Luther toHitler."49 Abusch's book, A NationGone Wrong (IrrvegeinerNation), inwhich he drew a causal connection frompeasant armies' defeat in 1525 via the failed revolutions of 1848 and 1918 totheThird Reich, appeared in 1946. In the Soviet zone of occupation, whereAbusch's book also first ppeared in 1946, thisperspective soon came into useunder the name of the "misery theory."50 ehind thisphrase lay in fact anearly version of the (West) German thesis of German exceptionalism, whichheld that because theGerman people appeared incapable of revolution, theauthoritarian structures of German society had been responsible for thebelated formationof a national state.The deepening tensionsof theCold War and thefoundingof twoGermaniesquickly found resonance in historicalwriting. In theSoviet zone theCommunist rulers increasinglystrove to escape from a picture ofGerman history sharedbetween east andwest. They declared theSoviet Zone and then theGDR to be

47Smirin, Volksreformation, 41-47.Vladimir Ilyid Lenin, Zwei Taktiken der Sozialdemokratie in derdemokratischen evolution, 16th ed.(Berlin: Dietz, 1982 [first d., 1905]), esp. 54.In 1946Meinecke published a study that is to some degree parallel toAbusch's. See FriedrichMeinecke, Die deutscheKatastrophe (Wiesbaden: E. Brockhaus, 1946). Revealing for ThomasMann's views is especially his 1945 lecture, "Germany and theGermans," which he delivered inthe Library of Congress on his seventieth birthday. See Thomas Mann, Reden undAufs?tze, vol. 3(GesammelteWerke, vol. 11), (Frankfurt:Fischer, 1960), 1126-48.Alexander Abusch, Der Irrwegeiner ation (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1946). A separate edition inWest Berlin appeared in 1947.



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REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT 209a bulwark of "antifascism."At the same time, they strove to reclaim a positiveself-image for the newly founded East German state by drawing on hithertomarginalized social idealswithin theGerman labor movement and by makinga qualitatively comparable connection to the peasant rebels of 1525. As earlyas the fall f 1945, theCommunist leaderWilhelm Pieck sought to incorporatethe Peasants'War into the framework of an alternative tradition. Introducingagrarian reform in the Soviet zone, he declared in a speech to agriculturalworkers that the expropriation of about 7,000 owners of large estateswouldfulfillt lasta central demand of the rebels of 1525.51 In this ttempt to legitimizetheCommunist agrarian reform bymeans of a constructed continuity,Pieckbroached a subject that theGerman labormovement had long acknowledged,thoughhe did not mention thathe was employing the same historical argumentthatRichard Walter Darre had used, twelveyears before, to justifytheReichserbhofgesetz. Already during the war years,Marxist historical studies hadbeen concerned not to allow theGerman revolutionary tradition to be surrendered to National Socialism. After thewar, the recoveryof this traditionwaselevated to a central theme of East Germany historical studies, though beforethis aim could be realized, the universities had to be rebuilt as functioninginstitutions f teaching and research.Even before theend of theNational-Socialist regime, theCentral Committeeof theGerman Communist Party, then inSoviet exile, formed aworking groupcharged with drafting plans for the future teaching of history and for a newscheme of periodizing German history.The importance of historical argumentation inMarxism-Leninism meant thathistoryand historical pedagogy assumedfrom the beginning a prominent place in socialist planning for after thewar.Fairly soon after the German surrender, the East German universities wererebuilt on the Soviet model; instituteswere reopened and chairs reoccupied,when possible with Marxist scholars. Denazification and sovietization wenthand in hand.52A centrally organized structure of scholarship and a historicaldiscipline that stood under the eye of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) soonappeared. In the 1950s, historical materialism became the only acceptableapproach to history,based ideologically on theworks ofMarx, Engels, Lenin,and Stalin. The Museum forGermany History and the InstituteforHistory in

Wilhelm Pieck, Junkerland in auernhand. Rede zur demokratischenBodenreform Krytz, 2. September1945) (Berlin:Dietz, 1955), 18.See Werner Berthold, Marxistisches Geschichtsbild?Volksfront und antifaschistisch-demokratischeRevolution. Zur Vorgeschichte erGeschichtswissenschaft er DR und zur Konzeption derGeschichte desdeutschenVolkes (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1970), 122-32; Heike Christina M?tzing, Geschichte imZeichen des historischenaterialismus. Untersuchungenzu Geschichtswissenschaftnd Geschichtsunterrichtin derDDR (Hannover: Hahn, 1999), 75-76; Alexander Fischer, "Der Weg zur Gleichschaltungder Geschichtswissenschaft in der SBZ 1945-1949," in Geschichtswissenschaftin derDDR, ed.Alexander Fischer and G?nther Heydemann, 2 vols. (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1988-90),vol. 1, 45-75.



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210 LAURENZMULLERtheGerman Academy of Sciences now began to function as nodal points for thesupervision and ideological guidance of historical studies. "In theGDR," GeorgG. Iggersestimated in 1995, "partyand state exercised amore nearly totalcontrolover historical studies than had been the case under National Socialism."53Evenso, scholarship on thePeasants'War shows that new history that mphasized therevolutionary traditioncould not be simplycreated by partydecree.

In thewinter semester of 1947/48, AlfredMeusel was named to thechair formodern history inBerlin's Humboldt University.Meusel, who had held aprofessorship for national economy and sociology in the Technical University ofAachen from 1930 to 1934, had already begun to studyThomas Miintzer inEnglish exile. From thisbeginning came a new evaluation of theReformationera in the GDR. Meusel's stronglynational interpretationdifferedmarkedlyfromAbusch's formula "from Luther to Hitler." This iswhy thebook couldnot be published until 1952, at which point the "misery theory" of Germanhistory had been abandoned as theyoung GDR began to search for its ownnational identity. eusel focused not on the"negative" but on the"positive" traditions that ame down fromthe sixteenthcentury, nd he placedMiintzer ratherthan uther at the inception of thenational development. Although he dependedverymuch on Engels' book on thePeasants'War,Meusel described it essas a classconflict than as a strugglefor a national stateagainst theRoman church and theuniversal Holy Roman Empire. Because Luther sided with the princes andopposed the rebels during the Peasants' War, he became a reactionary andenemy of the nation, whereas Meusel chose in Thomas Miintzer to see afighterforaGerman national state. Such a state, if ithad emerged at that time,would have produced inhis view "by itself"a bourgeois society.This argumentledMeusel todesignate theyears from uther's posting of theNinety-five Thesesin 1517 to the Peasants' War of 1525 as an "early bourgeois revolution."54In thisformulaMeusel created a symbol thatrapidlybecame a centralconceptfor research in theGDR on theReformation and thePeasants'War, though atthis timeMarxist research on the early sixteenth centurywas not yet an established enterprise. Meusel himself, burdened by overwork and declininghealth, could not further evelop theconcept of the early bourgeois revolution,and hisown scholarly training nsuited him forthis task.Still, theyoung historical discipline in theGDR had no alternative toMeusel, for asyet therewere noMarxist historians of theReformation era.

Georg G. Iggers, "Die Bedeutung desMarxismus fur die Geschichtswissenschaft heute. FritzKlein zum 70. Geburtstag," Zeitschrift ?r Geschichtswissenschaft3 (1995): 485-95, here 485. Seealso themost comprehensive study of the development and functions of historical studies underthe state socialism of theDDR: Martin Sabrow, Das Diktat des Konsenses (Munich: Oldenbourg,2001).Alfred Meusel, Thomas M?ntzer und seineZeit. Mit einerAuswahl derDokumente des grossendeutschenBauernkrieges, ed. Heinz Kamnitzer (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1952), 26-28, 41.



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REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT 211Toward the end of the 1950s, this gap began slowly to be filled by the rise

of Max Steinmetz. As a former student of Gerhard Ritter, he knew theReformation era, and he had turned toMarxism-Leninism while a prisonerin Soviet POW camps. In 1954 he was called to theUniversity of Jena, andsoon thereafter heplan to publish a Festschr ftor the 400th anniversaryof theuniversity presented him with an opportunity to explore the topos of theearly bourgeois revolution. Steinmetz's researchstood under continuous surveillance from the university's party apparatus,which overlooked some alleged

weaknesses to give theproject itsapproval.55 Shortly thereafter, he State SecretariatforHigher Education (Staatssekretariatfuras Hoch- und Fachschulwesen)named Steinmetz's institute s theCentral Institutefor theHistory of theRefor

mation and thePeasants' War (LeitinstitutfurieGeschichte erReformation nd desBauernkrieges). e was thencharged by theGerman Historical Society (DeutscheHistorikergesellschaft)ith the preparation of theseson the early bourgeois revolution fora conference atWernigerode inJanuary1960.56

Steinmetz's paper, quickly dubbed the"Wernigerode Theses," formed the truebeginning of research n theearlybourgeois revolution.Although hardly originalin concept, his thesesdid bring together several existingnotions and marked offthe area within which Reformation historianswould operate foralmost thirtyyears. Steinmetz also combined the recently formed consensus among Soviethistorians, according towhich theReformation and Peasants' War constituteda bourgeois revolution,with the thesis fEngels andMeusel that the revolutionwas provoked by a fullynational crisis.57Thus formulated, the thesis corresponded precisely to the task f historical research formulatedbyWalter Ulbrichtin1958. He had called upon thehistorians topay greatattention to "the nationalconcept of theworking class." Steinmetz's theses thus supported the efforttodevelop a new kind of national approach tohistory thatwould present historyfroma perspective fundamentallyat odds with what was being taught inWestGermany. In the Federal Republic (FRG), the Peasants' War layfar utside thereigningpicture of German history, ust as the idea of aGerman popular revolution stood beyond thebounds of an academic history that tillheld verymuch tothe old historicism.The Wernigerode Theses, by contrast, ccepted thePeasants'War as ahistorical subject stillrelevantto thepresentday.Historical writing in the

"Personalakte Steinmetz, UA Leipzig, PA 3995.56Protokolle derHistorikergesellschaft, SAPMO BArch, DY 30/IV 2/9.04, 120;Max Steinmetz,"Manuskript f?r einReferat an der Konferenz der Fachkommission Geschichte derNeuzeit 1,11.Februar 1985," UA Leipzig, Nachlass Steinmetz, 2/141.In 1956-1957, a timewhen littlework was being done in the GDR on the early bourgeoisrevolution, a debate flared up among Soviet historians?A. D. Epstein, V. M. Grigorjan, M. M.Smirin, Solomon M. Stam, andOlga Tschaikowskaja?about the historical character of theReformation and thePeasants'War. Following an exchange of opinions, theview won out that theReformation and Peasants'War were tobe seen as two phases of aweakly developed bourgeois revolution.See Laurenz M?ller, Diktatur undRevolution, 102?8.



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212 LAURENZMULLERGDR now began to interpret 1525 as a revolutionary transformation, ust asNational Socialist historians had done earlier.

The concept of the early bourgeois revolutionmet its first ajor political testin 1967, the 450th anniversary of Luther's Ninety-five Theses. From thepolitical point of view, itwas clear that thismoment should not be allowed topass by unexploited. The Reformation should at last be integrated into thenational traditionof theGDR and no longer conceded to the "reactionary"enemy in theWest. For threeyears, the jubilee's celebration was prepared byvarious working groups in the ministries, in the SED, and in the guild ofhistorians. Steinmetz, who played a central role in thesepreparations, saw theanniversary as an ideal opportunity to repulse the "reactionaryWest Germanideologues andmakers of opinion."

The timewas also ripe for ttackingWest German church circles that hose topit "1517 against 1917" (theOctober Revolution inRussia). Their aim, Steinmetz wrote, was to "underpin their nti-Communist and anti-democratic ideasof a 'common Europe' and of the 'defense of theWest,' and to justify, y reachingback to theReformation, theclerical-military system inBonn as a divinely

willed order."58Both the contributions to the official Festschriftand the ceremonies of 1967 were suffused ith a national emotionalism prompted by theSED's two-Germanies policy. The GDR, which possessed on its soil-fromtheWartburg toWittenberg-all of the importantsites fLuther'sReformation,praised itself s theguardian of theReformation heritage, a peace-loving state inwhich Christians and non-Christians could live democratically together.Eventhough this formula leftno space for theological questions, itpresented theearly bourgeois revolution in away that accommodated the churches. MartinLuther, who had long been handled very negatively in historicalwriting intheGDR, suddenly vaulted into the center. The official state celebration tookplace in theWartburg, and theLeipzig historian Gerhard Zschabitz publishedthe first art of his biography of Luther.Inpoliticians' speeches and historians' writings, theReformation neverthelessremained an event of limited importance.Max Steinmetz, for xample, tirelesslyemphasized that the Reformation was ultimately the "product of a popularmovement," of which Luther was but a temporary "representative."He explicitlywarned against allowing the raisingof Luther's reputation to lead to a lowering ofMiintzer's "or even to a defamation of the revolutionary forces" as awhole.59 The Reformation jubilee made one thing above all clear: EastGerman historians still found it difficult to explain in historical materialistterms the connection between theReformation and the Peasants' War and its

Letter from Steinmetz to Smirin,March 1, 1966. UA Leipzig, Nachlass Steinmetz, 4/424.9Max Steinmetz, "Weltwirkung der Reformation, Manuskript," UA Leipzig, Nachlass Steinmetz, 2/090, Blatt 4-74; Max Steinmetz, Radiovortrag "Lebendige Geschichte," October 22,1967,Manuskript, UA Leipzig, Nachlass Steinmetz, 5/78.



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REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT 213meaning forGerman history. In 1967 the new focus on national identity stilllacked an interfacewith Marxist historical method.

In the following years, a younger generation of historians strove to supplythis lack. The work of the Berlin historian Giinter Vogler proved of principal importance with regard to the ruling concept. In a series of articlespublished between 1969 and 1974, he developed an entirelynew perspectiveon the early sixteenth century, in which historical materialism served nolonger as mere ideological dress but as a true historical method. Voglerargued, first f all, that the chief importance of the early bourgeois revolution should no longer be sought in itsnational aspect. Second, he emphasized that alongside Thomas Miintzer's agenda and the Peasants' War itself,one must also acknowledge the revolutionary character of Luther's activities,which resulted in a "shiftof the political power relationships in favorof thetemporal princes and the urban magistrates." From the social-revolutionaryinterpretation of the Christian gospel in 1525 arose an ideology that supported a general oppositional movement reaching farbeyond local and particularprograms. In this respect the Reformation and Peasants' War formedthe gateway to a European phase of bourgeois revolutions. In contrast to thelater revolutions in the Netherlands, England, and France, however, theinitiative for the essential class alliance between peasants and burghers inGermany came from the peasants. Their attack aimed not at a centralizedstatebut the feudal church. Based on this difference from later revolutions,the German revolution is to be considered an earlybourgeois revolution.60

Vogler explained the beginnings of Europe's phase of bourgeois revolutionsin terms of socio-economic structures.He cited the original accumulationof capital, the rise of capitalist manufactures, the formation of globalmarkets, the presence of centralizedmonarchies, and the existence of bourgeois ideologies and culture as essential prerequisites. Since the end of thefifteenth entury,he argued, all Europe, not just Germany, entered this transition era from feudalism to capitalism.61With this step Vogler not only achieved a logical distinction betweenstructure and event but also fashioned a compelling and self-sustainedinterpretation that could in all justice be called "Marxist." More importantly,he was also able to outline, with the help of the concept of an early bourgeois revolution,n independentnterpretationfGerman history.ogler

60G?nter Vogler, "Marx, Engels und die Konzeption einer fr?hb?rgerlichen Revolution inDeutschland," Zeitschrift?r Geschichtswissenschaft 7 (1969): 704-17.See G?nter Vogler, "Friedrich Engels zur internationalen Stellung der deutschen fr?hb?rgerlichen Revolution," Zeitschrift ?r Geschichtswissenschaft 0 (1972): 444-57, and G?nter Vogler,"Revolution?re Bewegungen und fr?hb?rgerliche Revolution. Betrachtungen zum Verh?ltnis vonsozialen und politischen Bewegungen und deutscher fr?hb?rgerlicher Revolution," Zeitschrift?rGeschichtswissenschaft2 (1974): 394-411.



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214 LAURENZMULLERportrayedGerman history as an integral part of European history at the verytime the thesis of German exceptionalism was coming into vogue in theFRG. Against West German laments about the "belated" German nation,he offered a portrait of a progressive nation possessing itsown revolutionarytradition. This interpretationneatly fit the official self-image of the GDR,in the territory f which lay the most important sites of the Reformationand of themost radical actions in the Peasants' War. The GDR, whichheld the FRG to represent a continuation of fascism by other means,thus reclaimed for itself a tradition thatwas progressive in the historical

materialist sense. According to this view, a bourgeois society succeeded afeudal one and became itself the prerequisite for the next, revolutionaryleap to the socialist society. Uncovering the early bourgeois revolution of1517-1525 authenticated East Germany as the driving force of that era'shistory and the vanguard of the European phase of bourgeois revolutions.The next revolutionary step, Russia in 1917, came to victory throughLenin's leadership and then expanded to Europe and the rest of theworld. The GDR, built on a progressive tradition, had joined theworldrevolution of communism; the FRG remained captive to the capitalistfascist system.

Giinter Vogler's interpretation f the early bourgeois revolution was not onlyconceptually more convincing than earlier efforts, ut it also made possible ahistorical explanation of theGerman-German split and a labeling of theFRGas reactionary" in termsof the popular thesis of German exceptionalism.Vogler himself avoided explicit references to current politics in his scholarlyarticles. In 1975, however, the450th anniversaryof the Peasants'War, contemporary and historical perspectives began tomerge once more into historicalpropaganda. The Cold War's apodictic scheme of friend-or-foe now gained newconfirmation from thePeasants' War. At one jubilee celebration,Kurt Hager,chief ideologue of the SED, declared that the "armed forces of theGDR" must take courage from "the military lessons of the Peasants' War"and defend the accomplishments of socialism "side by side with theRedArmy."62Most historians did not go so far, hough theydid draw an explicitparallel between theearlybourgeois revolution and the socialist present. This step isevident in the richly illustrated olume thatGunter Vogler,Max Steinmetz, andAdolf Laube of theGDR's Academy of Sciences wrote forthe 1975 jubilee. Thebook appeared from theDietz Verlag, a publisherwith close ties to the SED.Following a detailed account of the early bourgeois revolution that in themain followedGiinter Vogler's interpretation, thebook closed with a chapter

6Kurt Hager, Das Verm?chtnisvon 1525 wurde erf?llt. ede auf derFestveranstaltungdesZentralkomiteesderSED und desMinisterrates der DR zum 450. Jahrestagdes deutschenBauernkrieges in ?hlhausenam 15.M?rz 1975 (Berlin: Dietz, 1975), 53.



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REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT 215that fully supported current GDR policy. Its account of socialist traditioncombined a proud gaze upon the revolutionary pastwith praise for theEastGerman state of thepresent. Presented with portraits of Luther andMiintzer,Lenin and Ernst Thalmann, the readership took in themessage that the revolutionary and humanistic traditionsof theGerman people ... embodied in thepolitical, cultural, and military achievements of theGerman early bourgeoisrevolution" would liveon in theGDR.63

This firm, new demarcation against theWest did not prevent the Peasants'War jubilee of 1975 from becoming a basis for the first direct contactsbetween earlymodern historians from the twoGerman states. he "bourgeois"historians,who had long ignored the early bourgeois revolution,were by nowbeginning to show an interest in the concept, though theyhad earlier beeninclined to attack the entireMarxist discourse.64 In 1975 the first cholarlydialogue took place at a Leipzig conference organized byMax Steinmetz, the chiefoutcome of which was themovement ofWest German historians into researchon the Peasants' War. This was possible, Peter Blickle recalls, because "thecurrent political discussion of civil disobedience and resistance (the emergencylaws, atomic weapons, rearmament) needed historical comparisons," and thisneed brought thePeasants' War back into the fieldof view ofWest German historians.65 n his 1975monograph on the Peasants'War, Blickle himselfbroughtrevolution as an analytical category back intoWest German research on earlymodernhistory.66While the conversations of Peasants'War historians across the IronCurtain

did intensify uring the following years, themid-1970s remained thepoint atwhich the concept of theearlybourgeois revolution attained itsmost frillyeveloped form.The second halfof thedecade brought another turn inEast Germanhistoricalwriting, a shift toward the concept of "legacy and tradition."TheGDR was officially turning away from a narrow understanding of traditionbased on progressivism alone, because, obviously, an independent nation'shistorycould not consist of progressive elements alone.67 Historical scholarshipin theGDR showed increasingly less interest n socio-economic structures nd

Adolf Laube, Max Steinmetz, and G?nter Vogler, Illustrierte eschichte der deutschenfr?hb?rgerlichen evolution (Berlin: Dietz, 1974), 403.Thomas Nipperdey and Rainer Wohlfeil are especially significant for the beginnings of thisdevelopment. There is a good overview inRainer Wohlfeil, ed., Reformation oderfr?hb?rgerlicheevolution? (Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1972). The first detailed analysis of historicalwriting on the early bourgeois revolution was the dissertation of Josef Foschepoth, Reformationund Bauernkrieg imGeschichtsbildder DR. Zur Methodologie einesgewandeltenGeschichtsverst?ndnisses,Historische Forschungen, vol. 10 (Berlin: Dunker & Humblot, 1976).Peter Blickle, Der Bauernkrieg.Die Revolution desGemeinen Mannes (Munich: Beck, 1998), 125.66See Peter Blickle, Die Revolution von 1525 (Vienna and Munich: Oldenbourg, 1975).To thisday, there isvery littleclarityas towhether this shift as initiatedby theparty's cadres orby thehistorians. The best surveyof the theme is still elmut Meier andWalter Schmidt, eds., Erbeund Tradition in der DR. Die Diskussion der istoriker (Berlin:Akademie-Verlag, 1988).



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216 LAURENZ MULLERdirected its attention more to the deeds of the "great men," which brought itcloser to an historicist understanding of history.The first igns of thischangeappeared inwriting on a topic hitherto treated only in negative terms-thehistory of Prussia.68

This change formed part of the larger shift that inspired the ceremonies andpublications connected with the500th birthdayofMartin Luther in 1983. ErichHonecker now praised theWittenberg reformer as "one of thegreatest sons oftheGerman people."69 In "Theses on Martin Luther," edited in theAcademy ofSciences and approved by theCentral Committee of theSED, the social structures f Luther's era no longer appear as determinants of thehistorical development. Instead, the Reformation is seen as having been largely thework of

Martin Luther.70 To be sure,GDR historians continued to see theReformationas the first hase of the early bourgeois revolution, but little else remained of apopular revolution in theMarxist sense. Perhaps themost notable publication ofthe jubilee year, the Luther biography by Gerhard Brendler of the GDR

Academy of Sciences, devoted itself rincipally toReformation theology. Thebook is stronglyreminiscentofWestern interpretations, for it treatstheologyno longer as ideology in a theological husk but as an expression of faith.71

The turnof 1983 endured after theLuther jubilee. At the 500th birthdayofThomas Miintzer in 1990, to be sure, the focus shifted back from Luther toMiintzer. That year's "Theses on Thomas Miintzer," however, which wereframed parallel to those for theLuther jubilee, characterized the leader of theThuringian Peasants' War much more soberly than earlier publications had.

Miintzer now appeared less a protagonist of classwarfare than a theologian.At thispoint, the legitimizing function of the early bourgeois revolution hadmostly melted away.To sum up, formany years, theconcept of theearly bourgeois revolutionhadrepresented theGDR's distancing of itselffrom the FRG. This belligerent attitude determined the historians' labeling of currents in the sixteenth century aspositive or negative, progressive or reactionary,so that the new departure displayed itself n the new portrayalsof Luther andMiintzer. The party's searchfor the broadest possible basis for legitimacywas displacing the older stanceand thereby progressively eroding theMarxist interpretationof history. This

In 1978, a sophisticated biography of Frederick theGreat appeared, followed in themid-1980sby one of Bismarck. IngridMittenzwei, Friedrich II. vonPreu?en. Eine Biographie (Berlin: DeutscheVerlag derWissenschaften, 1979); Ernst Engelberg, Bismarck. Urpreu?e und Reichsgr?nder (Berlin:Siedler Verlag, 1985).Erich Honecker, "Unsere Zeit verlangt Parteinahme furFortschritt,Vernunft undMenschlichkeit," inMartin Luther und unsere eit. Konstituierung desMartin-Luther-Komitees der DR am 13.Juni1980 inBerlin (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1980), 11."Thesen ?ber Martin Luther," Zeitschrift ?r Geschichtswissenschaft9 (1981): 879-93, esp. thesesII and III.71See Gerhard Brendler,Martin Luther. Theologie undRevolution (Berlin:Akademie-Verlag, 1983).



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REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT 217tendencymounted to a firstpeak in 1983 and a second, lesser one in the

Miintzer jubilee of 1989. The connections were not merely coincidentalbetween this shift, therefore, and the demonstrations in Leipzig and Berlinagainst the SED's rule,which inspired thousands of citizens to chant "We arethe People" and which brought themoribund state to collapse. The events ofautumn 1989, which demonstrated the revolutionary potential of Germansociety, led to the truth that revolution serves not only to legitimize power,but also to question it.

This study has shown thathistorical argument played amuch weaker, legitimizing role under National Socialism than itdid under Marxist-Leninist rule. Thedeployments of thePeasants' War's history under the twodictatorshipsare nonethelesscomparable in some respects.Both interpretedthe event as a failed revolution. In National-Socialist versions, the Peasants'War had been a politicalrevolution for populist (volkisch) alues and for a political order suited to theGerman people's nature.Against this stood theMarxist historians,who saw in1525 the zenith of the early bourgeois revolution as a class struggle to overcomefeudal society.Each interpretationexpressed a fundamental characteristicof therespective dictatorship's understanding of history.While historicalmateriahsmassumes an evolutionary teleology, National Socialism conceived Germanhistory as a recurringstruggleagainst foreign influences and fora free,nationalorder. Powerfulmovements had arisen in theearly sixteenth century against thealien forces that stood in theGerman people's way forward-Roman law andtheRoman Church. Their chiefpolitical program aimed to replace theuniversalReich of Charles V with aGerman Reich. Itwas, inGunther Franz'swords, onebattled in "an eternal strugglefor theReich."

Franz's picture of the Peasants' War possessed obvious affinities ith theNational-Socialist revolution's self-fashioned image. Following the "seizure ofpower" in 1933, National Socialism transformedWeimar society, fragmentedinto classes, confessions, and political interest, into a national communityonce more. Interpretations f thePeasants'War during the1930s only occasionallyplaced it in its atemedieval context. Farmore often itwas treated in termsof an ideal populist state,theReich, an image that ecame an increasingly ttractive alternative to theRepublic during the interwaryears. The spread of thisimagemade itpossible tobridge the (National Socialist) present to the sixteenthcentury.

In theGDR, too, historians saw the Peasants' War as a people's revolution.Unlike National-Socialist views, however, for them itsrolewas merely to facilitate an intermediate stage-bourgeois society-on theway to socialism andeventually to communism. Its intended progressivemeaning stood, therefore,



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218 LAURENZMULLERin contrast to theNational-Socialist view. The concept of an early bourgeoisrevolution expressed a definitive faith in progress thatnegated theNationalSocialist idea of an eternal struggle for a populist order. For National-Socialistthought, the revolution was a step toward a timeless (and thus ahistorical)goal. For historicalmaterialism, revolution or class struggle accelerates historyby radically reshapingmaterial conditions and making the transition to thenext, higher stage of social formation possible. Each dictatorship thusorderedits vision of history to serve a utopian ideal, respectively the eternal populistcommunity and the classless society that stands at the end of an inexorablehistory.The contrast allows us to see clearlyhow both dictatorships distancedthemselves, though on entirely differenthistorical bases, from bourgeoissociety. For National Socialism the development of bourgeois societywas afatal journey in a false direction that had to be corrected. For the GDRunderMarxism-Leninism, the same development was a necessary, ifnow obsolete, stage of history'sprogressive development. Historical legitimacywas moreimportant inMarxism-Leninism than inNational Socialism, which focused noton the lawfulnessof historybut on (farmore vague) eternal populist values.

The two evaluations of thePeasants'War reveal not only fundamental differences between the twodictatorshipsbut also a common theme: the defeat of thePeasants'War in 1525 allowed them toportray their wn regimes as a realizationof theGerman people's age-old demands. By their appeals to the popularrevolution of 1525, each system sought legitimacy fromhistory as a kind ofplebiscite.

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