0 Paolo Cambridge Paper

Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association
Revolutionary Moment: Interpreting the Peasants' War in the Third Reich and in the German Democratic Republic Author(s): Laurenz Mller Source: Central European History, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Jun., 2007), pp. 193-218 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Conference Group for Central European
History of the American Historical Association
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Copyright DOI:
Central European History 40 (2007), 193-218. (? Conference Group forCentral European History of theAmerican Historical Association 10.1017/S0008938907000258 Printed in theUSA
Moment: Interpreting the Revolutionary Peasants' War in the ThirdReich and in the GermanDemocratic Republic
LaurenzMuiller
-H T
ISTORY textbooks speak of an American, an English, a French, and a Russian revolution, but historians do not recognize a "German Revo lution." For this reason the formation of a German national statewas
or excep long described as an aspect of a German "divergent path" (Sonderweg) tionalism.While this concept established itself in post-1945 West Germany, German historical scholarship had even earlier insisted on a uniquely German transition from theOld Regime to themodern state, fundamentally different fromwhat took place in the other western European countries. Still earlier, idealist thinkers had declared the national state (Reich) to be the German people's historical objective. Around 1900 theReich was understood German to be not a rational community based on a contract between independent indi viduals, aswere France and England, but a national community of destiny.The German ideal was not a republic split up into political parties but an organic community between the Reich's people and its rulers. This iswhy German history had never known a successful revolution frombelow. During the nine teenth and the early twentieth century, this alleged unitywas seen in a positive light,but after1945 it inspired an explanation, which quickly became canonical, of why German history had led to a catastrophe. German exceptionalism was now understood, especially by German social historians, as a one-way street toward theNational Socialist regime.1
This essaywas edited and translated by Thomas A. Brady, Jr.,who requested from Dr. Laurenz an overview of his work suitable for translation into English. His dissertation, written under the direction of Peter Blickle, was submitted to the University of Bern in the autumn of 2003. Some months later,Dr. M?ller, a native of Bern, was killed in a climbing accident in the
M?ller
Valais.
Eine Kritik der traditionellen See Georg G. Iggers,Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft. Geschichtsauffassung von Herder bis zur Gegenwart, 2nd ed. (Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar: B?hlau, 1997), 11-18; in Reich-Nation Herfried M?nkler, "Das Reich als politische Macht und politischer Mythos," (Weinheim: Beltz Athenaeum, 1996), Europa. Modele politischerOrdnung, ed. Herfried M?nkler 11-59.
Itwas therefore not possible for him to revise his text or review this translation. His disser tation has been published under the titleDictator und Revolution. Reformation und Bauernkrieg in der und Forschungen zur Agrar Quellen Geschichtsschreibung des "Dritten Reiches" und der DDR, geschichte, vol. 50 (Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius, 2004).
193
194
LAURENZMULLER
The National Socialists' understanding of history derived from an entirely differentkind of argument. They saw their own seizure of power on January 30, 1933, not as the high point in an unbroken development but as a people's revolution, a final, radical break from the bourgeois era.2 Especially early years,when the power seized needed to be stabilized,National in the Socialist
propaganda depended on the sense of a revolutionary pathos. The National Socialist revolution, having overcome both the hated political order dictated by the Peace of Versailles and the threat of an individualistic society, was leading theGerman people back into theReich. After World War II, a comparable positioning of the revolutionary idea came to shape political discourse in theGerman Democratic Republic (GDR). The Marxist-Leninist dictatorship, too, presented itselfas a finalbreakwith thebour geois era, towhich it generously consigned theNational Socialist dictatorship. Despite their mutual ideological antipathies, therefore,on this issue the two German dictatorships operated on common ground. They declared their commitment to the revolutionary principle-respectively national community and socialist community-the German people had longed to realize. For each
of them, the concept of "revolution" served to integrate fuindamental ideas. Each drew direct lhnesof political tradition and influence to the failed revolu tions of 1848, 1918, and (for the National Socialists) 1923. As a rule, the greater its temporal distance from a historical event, themore freelya polhtical movement can connect itself to that event. An especially good illustration of this rule is the historical event thatstands at the center of this study,thePeasants' War of 1525.3 The goals proclaimed by the rebels of 1525, though they varied relatively considerably from region to region, nevertheless contained two common features.First, nearly all grievances and programs were connected to the ideas of Luther's Reformation. This is seen, first, in the rebels' demand for free elections of pastors and the conduct of rites according to the Gospel alone. Second, as a thoroughly political movement, the Peasants' War sought in itsprograms not only to defend communal rights against feudal power but also to present alternative social models. Their general tendency was to strengthen both local communal and Imperial governance. Evangelical ideas provided a powerful legitimacy for the political programs inwhich the idea of the godly law proved an especially powerful argument. The Peasants' War thus became a militant movement that completely challenged the dominant
Wurzeln des Revolution. ?ber diegeistigen Nationalsozialismus (Frank George L. Mosse, Die v?lkische furt am Main: Anton Hain, 1991), 8; Frank-Lothar Kroll, Utopie als Ideologie. Geschichtsdenken und Handeln im Dritten Reich (Paderborn: Sch?ningh, 1998), 32-38, 41. politisches On the Peasants' War as a revolution, see Peter Blickle, Die Revolution von 1525, 3rd ed. (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1993), 295-97.
REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT
religious, political, and legal structures.4
195
social structures and that undertook to discuss radically new approaches to The very fact that thePeasants'War ended in a total military defeatmade itan ideal projection screen for latergenerations, for its failureprompted the peren nial question, "What would have happened if" the conflict in 1525 had ended in a victory of the common man? For generations, therefore, the Peasants' War became an ideal source of new social models. Contemporary goals could be sited parallel to those of 1525; contemporary ideals could be presented as a program thatbroad sectors of the population had espoused for centuries. Pre
it a potential cisely becausethe Peasants' War hadbeendefeated, offered legitimacy

to latergenerations' ideas for transforming Germany. These characteristicsallow us to construct a comparison between the two dictatorships' historical visions. Since scholarship is always undertakenwithin a specific socio-political context, I ask whether the two dictatorships prescribed or at least promoted specific interpretations of theReformation era.Of course the dictatorshipsdifferedradi cally in theuse of historical scholarship in theirpolitical systems,in the role of his and also in the degrees of torical argument in their political self-justifications, freedom theyallowed historical research.The subject of thisarticle isnot political suppressionand censorship of historical studiesbut the argumentsemployed under their sponsorships. The question of the Peasants' War's reception in the Third
thusbecomes a question about the relationshipof dicta Reich and in theGDR torship to revolution. In order to present clearly the interpretations of history in the two dictatorships, thisstudy follows an essentiallychronological order, begin ning with themost importantnineteenth-centuryworks.
A long time lapsed between the Peasants'War's defeat and itsclaiming a place in German history.Only in the revolutionary atmosphere of the late eighteenth century did it become recognized as not just a destructive insurrectionbut also a social revolt, even a revolution.5 Somewhat later the liberals and democrats of 1848 saw in it a historical model and gave especially great attention to the programmatic statementknown as the "Constitution for theGerman Empire," also called "the Heilbronn program."6 On the eve of the liberal revolution of
the Peasants' War's goals, see ibid., part 2. See Georg Friedrich Sartorius, Versuch einerGeschichte des Deutschen Bauernkrieges (n.p., 1795); in historischer Perspektive," in Der deutsche Horst Buszello, "Deutungsmuster des Bauernkrieges Bauernkrieg, 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 a moderate reform agenda com On Wendel Hipler (ca. 1465-1526). The document was prepared for May 1525, presumably by posed in an assembly of representatives from the various peasants' armies of southwestern Germany who were called toHeilbronn.
196
LAURENZMULLER
1848, thehistorian Wilhelm Zimmermann saw in thePeasants'War not only "the microcosm.7 This positive beginnings of theEuropean revolutions" but also their reception soon peaked in Friedrich Engels' The German Peasants' War, inwhich Karl Marx's associate argued that theReformation and its "culmination" in the Peasants' War was a social revolution in theMarxist sense.8At their core, he thought, both theReformation and the Peasants' War had opposed the feudal as a struggle in the Empire's greatest feudal lord-and Peasants' War as revolts against the princes. Engels understood these early sixteenth-centurystrugglesas class conflicts thathad erupted out ofmaterial con against the Roman church-the According ditions and social antagonisms.He baptized them an "early bourgeois revolution." toMarxist theory, a feudal society must always be supplanted by a order. Their opposition had expressed itself in the Reformation
bourgeois 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' concrete political goal to be overcoming the fragmented Imperial structures,and he con ceived thePeasants'War as amovement in favorof a centralizedGerman nation. mid-nineteenth Engels' national interpretationcorresponded perfectly to the century Zeitgeist.Even though at this time national unity dominated German political discourse, Engels' national interpretation found a favorable hearing only among his own political comrades. The guild of academic historians ignored his analysis.Their master narrative focused above all on the creative spiri tual and political power of "greatmen," and theyhardly regarded the people as a political actor at all. Itwas not Engels but Leopold von Ranke who composed the standard work on the age of theReformation.9 Ranke saw thePeasants'War not as the Reformation's high point but merely as an ultimately inexplicable peripheral event, which he called "the greatest natural event of the German state."l0Of far greater interest to him was Luther's Reformation, which he took to have been the central "idea" of the entireGerman nation and a defining German characteristic. Ranke thussaw the reformer's condemnation ofthe rebels in a positive light, and he saw in theReformation not the cause of Germany's confessional division but the spiritual foundation of itsnational unification. Both Engels and Ranke emphasized the national significanceof theReforma tion era, though in other respects theirapproaches differedso fundamentally that we may see in theirviews something like ideal typesof the long-term historio graphical development. This applies not only to theirconcrete evaluations of the
Wilhelm Zimmermann, Der grosse deutscheBauernkrieg, Volksausgabe von 1891, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Dietz, 1952), 8. Friedrich Engels, Der deutsche (Berlin: Dietz, 1989), 42. Bauernkrieg, 3. Ausgabe von 1975,16thed. See Leopold von Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte imZeitalter derReformation, ed. Paul Joachimsen, 6 vols. (Munich: Drei Masken 10Ibid., 180-81. Verlag, 1926; first ed., 1839-47).
REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT
197
Peasants'War but also to their respectiveunderstanding of revolutions. Whereas Engels describes the Peasants' War as a revolution borne by the broad mass of thedisadvantaged ranksof society, Ranke sees the Reformation as a spiritualrevo lution thatarose from the thoughtand faith of an individual. InRanke's interpreta we can see an early formof the thesisof German exceptionalism. tion, therefore, of historical scale are to be attributednot to rebellious For him, transformations masses but to the spiritof a few greatmen. Luther and Bismarck became national monuments, the common man-the German people-played a role only of a statisticalkind. In contrast to the Rankean historicist tradition, in later times German social historians saw this role in a positive rather than a negative light.11 During the following decades, interpretationsscarcely advanced beyond these two nineteenth-century positions. In the intellectualworld of the authoritarian Second Empire, the Peasants' War led an entirely marginalized existence. Only the labor movement, which guarded the dream of revolution, celebrated the revolutionary tradition. German academic history, by contrast, which was oriented to Prussia and Protestantism, saw the country's history as free from the "blemish" of social revolution. The historicist tradition followed Ranke in focusing on Luther and his spiritual revolution. In 1871 Heinrich von Treitschke called Luther the "leader of the German nation," "blood of our blood.",12 This heroizing tendency rose to a new level during World War I. Now Luther was no longer merely a spiritual ancestor of the German people, he was also the supreme field commander, and the struggleon thebattle field became a fight for the "German spirit" he had awakened.13 The German defeat inWorld War I burst asunder the old framework of political institutions. Traditional social structures dissolved, state boundaries shifted,and the Second Empire, theGerman national homeland, disappeared into history.The revolution of 1918 brought about a collapse of the pillars of authority and revealed the instabilityof the ground on which they had been built. With Philipp Scheidemann's proclamation of the Republic and the Weimar constitution in 1919, Germany created for itselfa inauguration of the new form of state.Yet the new state drew criticism from various sides, and broad sectors of the population, embittered by the dictated peace of Versailles, saw thispolitical development as a journey into ruin. This disruptionmade it impossible to continue representing theReformation in the prewar fashion. In a collection of his studies pubhshed in 1920, the
469-86, here 484. For other examples, see Hans-Heinz Krill, Die Rankerenaissance. Max Lenz und ErichMarcks. Ein Denken in Deutschland 1880-1935 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1962), 32-41. Beitrag zum historisch-politischen
Note from Thomas A. Brady, Jr.: Inmy opinion, the author's comments on Ranke attribute to him the views of Treitschke and the neo-Rankeans of the 1880s (e.g.,Max Lenz, see note 15) more thanwhat the historian actually wrote in the 1840s about the German Reformation. 12Heinrich von Treitschke, "Luther und die deutsche Nation," Preu?ische Jahrb?cher 52 (1883):
198
Prussian historian Max
LAURENZMULLER
Lenz wrote thatwith the collapse of the "Protestant the two great men," he 1918
Empire of theGerman Nation," on which Luther and Bismarck had labored, an "epoch of integration" had ended. "These were of which appears today all the more wrote, "who stand at the opening and at the ending of an era, the inner unity clearly, because since November the political and moral defeat of our people has created a breach between it 14 Once the war and itsaftermathhad shattered the foundations and thepresent." of itsnational view of theReformation, theRanke-Treitschke tradition fell into a deep crisis, and research on the history of theReformation plunged into a
steep decline.15
The Reformation nonetheless continued to be regarded by some as a decisive event in German history and to be still relevant to the present. This was especially true of historianswho inclined, as Gerhard Ritter did, to conserva He allowed his dissatisfaction with the tism. Weimar system fullplay in thebiog raphyof Luther he published in 1925. Itwas owing to Luther, he asserted, that theGerman nation firstrecognized itselfand its idea of a national state.Ritter held the Reformation to have been unquestionably a revolution, though he employed this concept in the historicist sense as a transformationborne by the spiritof an individual personality.He used the concept of theReformation
to distinguish thedevelopment of theGerman state from the Western idea of the state. The Reformation thus became an alternative to the rationalistRenais sance, which allowed him to cast the German nature and the spirit of the Enlightenment as absolute contraries. Martin Luther became for Gerhard Ritter the historical proof that theRepublic's current path was moving in a direction, contrary to his own ideal, toward an authoritarian statemodeled on Prussia. Correspondingly negative was Ritter's evaluation of the Peasants' War in which he sawmerely an abuse of the idea ofReformation. The Reformation, not the Peasants' War, had been the foundational event of German history and ought to serve as the lodestar of theGerman present.16 Many of his contemporaries rejected the restorationist element in Ritter's interpretationof the past, because they believed that the Second Empire's pol icies had obviously led the country to catastrophe, and that the conflicts of the Weimar yearswere preventing theRepublic frombecoming a state that could lead Germany to political stabilityand prosperity. In this situation, some histo rians found it instructive to examine German history for other kinds of clues. They searched, in Heinrich 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, and Republicanism?The Legacy of Hans Baron," inHistorische Anst??e. Festschrift f?r Wolfgang Reinhard zum 65. Geburtstag am 10. April 2002, ed. Peter Burschel, et al. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2002), 40-54, here 40-41. 16GerhardRitter, Luther. Gestalt und Symbol (Munich: F. Br?ckman, 1925).
REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT
the German people's nature." The jurist Otto von Gierke, who search's direction, believed that the catastrophe ofWorld War
199
defined this I could be over
come only by means of "a national rebirth" centered on "the German idea of the state." The "organically constructed" community could then be ruled by Gierke "an authority independent of everyday currents and party interests."'17 understood the liberal idea of the state,which went back to Enlightenment origins and rested on a Roman legal concept of the individual, as contrary to theGerman state's original form.Of nineteenth-century origin, his basic idea World War I. He argued that under spread widely and became popular after the influenceofRoman law,post-medieval Germany had moved in a falsedirec tion that robbed itof its inherentstrengthand turned it from a community into a society of individuals. His Republic: instead of harking back argument also supported a critique of the new to its populist-communitarian roots, political corset of aWestern
Germany was being strapped into theWeimar
type.Gierke was by no means alone in favoring the idea of an organic community Weimar societypromoted by party as an alternative model to a fragmented
interests and ideologies.

For Gierke's way of thinking, thePeasants'War offered amuch better histori cal referencepoint than did Luther's Reformation. As the four-hundredth anni versaryof the events of 1525 approached, in addition to celebrations organized by labor organizations, the academic historians began to give the Peasants' War significantattention.18Among themwas Gunther Franz, whose firstscholarly work on this subject enjoyed an especially durable influence. In 1925Wilhelm Mommsen asked Franz, a recent Ph.D. at age twenty-four, to compile a small volume of Peasants' War sources for the Deutsche Buchgemeinschaft. Franz produced the collection in one year. Itsbrief introduc tions to the individual documents, though not directly political, clearlymirror the popular discussion of what form of state was suitable to the German people's nature. Franz developed his interpretation in two directions. First, he argued that the Peasants' War had been caused by political inequality between the peasant estate and the restof latemedieval society.The marginalization of the peasants derived from their legal insecurity, not from their economic situation. Because of the increasingly common application of Roman law,
Deutschland und Frankreich, cited byAnna 17Heinrich Mitteis, Rechtspflege und Staatsentwicklung in L?bbe, "Die deutsche Verfassungsgeschichtsschreibung unter dem Einflu? der nationalsozialistischen Nationalsozialismus. Beitr?ge zur Geschichte einer Disziplin, ed. Machtergreifung," inRechtsgeschichte im Stolleis and Dieter Simon (T?bingen: J. C. B. Mohr, Michael 1989), 63-78, here 66. Otto von Gierke, Der Rechtsgeschichte
"Deutsche germanische Staatsgedanke (1919), 6, 26, cited by Dietmar Willoweit, Das Beispiel Hans und 'nationalsozialistische Weltanschauung.' Frank," in Nationalsozialismus, ed. Stolleis and Simon 25-42, here 39. Rechtsgeschichte im 18The tempo of research on the Peasants' War can be traced by titles appearing in the annual surveys of research in theJahresberichten f?r deutscheGeschichte. In 1925 a total of nine appeared; in 1926 twelve, a peak; in 1927 six; in 1929 and 1930 each four; in 1931 one; and in 1932 none.
200
LAURENZMULLER
Second,
many lords began to regard the land as property and to restrictcorrespondingly the village community's rights to the commons, pasture, and woods. Franz pointed out that in the fifteenth century, rural revoltshad already displayed which Reformation ideas lent a new legitimacybased on a revolutionary mood, to Reformation Franz saw, to be sure,not a new kind of appeal to godly law.19In the the cause of the Peasants'War but an important impetus for the growth ofmere revolts into a true revolution.20 Not only did the defeated peasants fail to secure liberty and equality, they were also "pushed down" even more deeply in As a consequence, thepeasant was "alienated from the nation's political society.21 life,"and the nineteenth-century emancipation did not recallhim to "active par ticipation" in it. "Seen as awhole," Franz mused, "I think that the consequences are not yet surmounted today,"implying that today,as yesterday,"the time is ripe how closely he linked the contem fora revolution."22Franz's argument illustrates of the Peasants' War. Or, conversely, the porary social crisis to his interpretation on German society contributed public discussion ofRoman law's historical effect in a fundamentalway to Franz's new interpretation of the Peasants'War. no the historian Franz was means who connected the late Gunther by only medieval reception of Roman law to the Peasants' War. Both Willy Andreas explained the late medieval revolts known as "the Bundschuh" as reactions against this invasion of Germany by Roman law.23 and Albert Rosenkranz Increasingly, thePeasants' War was coming to be seen as having created a funda mental weakness in Germany's legal and political development. This idea implied a parallel between the current struggle against theWeimar Republic and the peasants' struggle in 1525 against innovations based on Roman law. It thus provided a historical basis foropposition to parliamentary democracy.
Public discussion of the relationship between Roman law and German law, between society and community, found itsway into a document that later became quite famous. On May 19, 1920, a membership meeting of the National Roman
G?nther Deutsche
Socialist law, which

Franz, Der
Party Article
(NSDAP) 19
approved
an
"unalterable"
party
program, of which
stated: "We
demand
a replacement of a German
(Berlin:
promotes
the materialist worldview, with
deutsche Bauernkrieg. Herausgegeben 1926), 8-11.
in zeitgen?ssischen Zeugnissen
Buch-Gemeinschaft, 20Ibid., 53. 21Ibid., 306. 22Ibid., 17.
See Willy Andreas, "Der Bundschuh. Eine Studie zur Vorgeschichte des deutschen Bauern krieges," Archiv f?r Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 60 (1928): 508-41; Andreas, Deutschland vor der Reformation. Eine Zeitenwende (Stuttgart and Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1932); Albert Rosenkranz, Der Bundschuh. Die Erhebungen des s?ddeutschen Bauernstandes in den Jahren 1493? 1517, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1927).
REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT
201
common law."24At the time, of course, the NSDAP was an insignificant, quite local formation composed of political marginals. As the party grew stronger, to be sure, it by no means program. Yet Roman The
which
felt bound by the "inalterable" party its harsh criticism of "materialistic"
the party retained
law and its demand for pristine German or Germanic legal norms. demand became characteristic of the party's romantic-agrarian wing,
was led by Richard Walter Darre.25 After the "seizure of
when
legitimizing the National-Socialist
revolution became
an important
power,"
task,Darre often hnked current events to the Peasants' War. The National Socialists, he said, should give their revolution and its pohcies a historical make the profound social transformationcomprehen foundation and thereby sible by means of reference to a historical model.26 In the party's wing around Reichsbauernfuhrer Darre, which was still strong in 1933, the Peasants' War served as both a social model and an argument for National-Socialist
policy.
which A signal example of this usage is the Reichserbhofgesetz of October 1, 1933, introduced impartible inheritance. Peasant-owned farms above a
certain size could only be inherited intact, so that that the peasants would be bound to their land-the "blood" tied to the "soil."27 In this way, Darre argued at a propaganda meeting in October 1933, a Germanic ideal, which the invasion of Roman law had progressively destroyed,would be restored. In "Roman 1525 the central question of the Peasants' War of 1525 had been whether law would protect the German peasants, as was the custom, or
whether-under
the cloak of the so-called Roman law-a law of lawyers and Jewish peddlers could challenge the peasant's possession of his own land. In
Cited by Peter Landau, "R?misches Recht und deutsches Gemeinrecht. Zur rechtspolitischen im nationalsozialistischen Parteiprogramm," inRechtsgeschichte im Nationalsozialismus, ed.
Simon, 11-24, here 11. Weimar years, an obscure graduate in agriculture named Richard Walter the end of the in a short period of time to the status of an ideologue of populism. He developed in various writings a cluster of romantic agrarian ideas under the formula of "Blood and Soil." Its funda mental aim was to recover the strengthof theNordic race through a strengthening of the peasantry,
Zielsetzung Stolleis and Toward Darr? rose
Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1990), 15-27. Major social change is almost always accompanied by the need to explain it as corresponding to a historical pattern and thereby give it legitimacy. In every political system, historiography encounters the expectation of discovering traditions. See Eric Hobsbawm, "Inventing Traditions," in Eric ? Hobsbawm, The Invention ofTradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 1 14. see and the ideology of "blood and soil," Gustavo Corni and Horst On theReichserbhofgesetz " Gies, "Blut und Boden. Rassenideologie und Agrarpolitik im Staat Hitlers (Idstein: Schulz-Kirchner, " NS-Staat (Paderborn: 1994); Uwe Mai, "Rasse undRaum. Agrarpolitik, Sozial- undRaumplanung im Sch?ningh, 2002).
to which end he proposed to bring the peasants out of their political marginalization, raise their social standing, and lead them into an economically better future. Following the seizure of power, Darr? in the became "Reichsbauernfuhrer," and in June 1933, he replaced Alfred Hugenberg Ministry for inDie Agriculture. See Gustavo Corni, "Richard Walther Darre. Der 'Blut-und-Boden'-Ideologe," Elite. 22 biographische braune Skizzen, ed. Ronald Smelser andRainer Zitelmann, 2nd ed. (Darmstadt:
202
LAURENZMULLER
these peasant wars we discern one of the fundamental rebellions of the old Germanic consciousness of freedom against domination by racially alien legal concepts."28 This argument made National-Socialist agrarian policy part of a centuries-old German struggle for freedom, which had been expressed with special profundity 400 years before. At the assemblies known as Reichsbauerntage, between thePeasants'War and the National speakers alleged an essential affinity Socialist revolution. Wilhelm Kinkelin, forexample, called theNational-Socialist "National Peasant Assembly" the "successor in law and in nature" to thePeasant Parliament of 1525 atHeilbronn, National ized by theFiihrer,Adolf Hitler, in theNational-Socialist Peasants' War the program ofwhich was at lastbeing "real At the second state."29
Peasants' Assembly, Reichsfuihrer SS Heinrich Himmiler called the a tragic event. A "resounding affirmation" by the best peasant
minds met with great "disorder, fragmentation, and lack of discipline," so that in the end nothing was leftbut "the bloody corpses of irreformably foolish and a hope that "the grandchildren would fight better."30 Like Himmler, Darre pointed out that in 1933, thanks to discipline and loyalty to Adolf Hitler, the "outrage" and "blind fury" of the peasants did not lead to chaos, as it had in 1525. Instead, the "legal implementation of the revolution Germans" could be guaranteed and our Fatherland therebyguarded from indescribable suf We see clearly inboth Darre and Himmiler not only amisleading view fering."31 of the past but also National Socialism's ambiguous relationship to the Peasants' War. The movement from below was illuminating, to be sure, as a popular struggleof the peasants forGermanic law, yet, lacking the revolutionary disci pline of 1933, it had led to "fragmentation" and "chaos." In the past, for a long time the labor movement alone had looked positively upon the Peasants' War; now, theNational-Socialist revolution could be portrayed as the realization of its goals. 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 legitimizing National-Socialist agrarian policy. At least three parallels can be drawn between this propagandistic picture associated with the Reichsnahrstand and Gunther Franz's interpretation described above: first, the stylized ideological pictures presented to the
Richard Walter Darre, "Vom Friedenswillen der deutschen Bauern. Rede vom 22. Oktober 1933," an undated manuscript. The text contains, however, a reference to Germany's withdrawal from the League of Nations 14, 1933. Bundesarchiv eight days before, that is, on October (BArch), R 16 I, 2057. 29Wilhelm Kinkelin, "Bauernkrieg," Odal. Monatsschrift f?r Blut und Boden S, no. 1 (1936): 24-30. Wilhelm Kinkelin was vice president of the SS-Studiengesellschaft Ahnenerbe.
Heinrich Himmler, "Die Schutzstaffel als antibolschewistische Kampforganisation. Rede auf in Goslar," Archiv des Reichsn?hrstandes 2 (1934): 45-60. dem 2. Reichsbauerntag Richard Walther Darre, Rede auf dem ersten Deutschen Reichsbauerntag. Weimar 1. Januar 1934 (Berlin: Stabsamt des Reichsbauernfuhrers, 1934).
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Reichsnahrstand portray 1525 as thehigh point of a struggleagainst foreign legal principles; second, they see in the struggle's failure-far more pointedly than Franz does-a consequence of failed leadership of the people; and, third, they derive from this a negative evaluation of the Thuringian Peasants' War's protagonist, Thomas Miintzer, who was portrayed as not a popular leader but a seducer of the people. How did these interpretationschange after theNational Socialists' "seizure of power"? From the beginning, the universities underwent considerable pressure to adjust themselves to the new regime. The new regime initiallyunleashed an attack on Jews and-to the degree thatany existed at all-leftist members of the university.Yet the greatmajority of full professors in the history departments could continue their activities as before, because they were national conservatives who did not regard theWeimar Republic as a state worth defending. Consequently, the call for a new, political, and combative discipline of history, supportive of the new regime, provoked little resistance.Many historians accommodated themselves and their scholarship toNational-Socialist ideology during the years of theThird Reich. Whether and how fara historian might conform to the new ruler's thoughtwas amatter for individual decision. A correct orientation could accelerate careers, though scholarswho held to a traditional,historicist view of history had no serious penalties to fear.32 In the fallof 1933, Gunther Franz published an expanded version of hisHabi litation thesis,in thenew forewordofwhich he clearlyoutlined his political posi tion.Now, "at the end of the first victorious German revolution, . . . the peasant in theThird Reich finallyhas won the place in national life thathe strove for
In recent years the relationship of German historical scholarship toNational Socialism has been pretense of completeness, the following can be mentioned: Karen hotly debated. Without Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt amMain Sch?nw?lder, Historiker und Politik. Geschichtswissenschaftim and New York: Campus, 1992); Willi Oberkrome, Volksgeschichte. Methodische Innovation und v?lkische & (G?ttingen: Vandenhoeck Ideologisierung in der deutschen Geschichtswissenschaft 1918?1945 1993); Peter Sch?ttler, ed., Geschichtsschreibungals Legitimationswissenschaft 1918?1945 Ruprecht, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997); Frank-Lothar Kroll, Utopie als Ideologie. Geschichtsdenken und politischesHandeln imDritten Reich (Zurich: Sch?ningh, 1998); Winfried Schulze and Otto Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt amMain: Fischer, 1999); Gerhard Oexle, eds., Deutsche Historiker im Fahlbusch, Wissenschaft imDienst der nationalsozialistischen Politik (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1999); Bernd Faulenbach, "Deformation der Geschichtswissenschaft unter Hider und Stalin," in Im Dschungel derMacht. Intellektuelle Professionen unter Stalin und Hitler, ed. Dietrich Beyrau Nationalsozialismus. Ingo Haar, Historiker im (G?ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 260-74; & Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaftund der "Volkstumskampf" im Osten (G?ttingen: Vandenhoeck
Michael
Ruprecht, 2000); Michael Gr?ttner, "Machtergreifung als Generationenkonflikt. Die Krise der inWissenschaften und Wissenschaftspolitik. und der Aufstieg des Nationalsozialismus," Hochschulen Deutschland des 20. Jahrhunderts,ed. Bestandsaufnahmen zu Formationen, Br?chen und Kontinuit?ten im R?diger vom Bruch and Brigitte Kaderas (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 2002), 339-53; Thomas Welskopp,
zwischen den drei?iger und den siebziger "Grenz?berschreitungen. Deutsche Sozialgeschichte Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts," inDie Nation schreiben. Geschichtswissenschaftim internationalen Vergleich, & Ruprecht, ed. Christoph Conrad and Sebastian Conrad 2002), (G?ttingen: Vandenhoeck 296-332.
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back in 1525." For the firsttime, therefore, itwas possible to engage, "undis turbed by the views of the day," thisquestion about the nature of this "greatest The apparent timeliness of his publication dis natural event of our history."33 guises the fact that Franz's research for this monograph had been conducted in the late 1920s, also that the entiremanuscript, except for the foreword, con siderably predated the beginning of the Third Reich. The book thus portrays the events of 1525 inmuch the same colors as its author had already done in his edited source collection of 1926. The same can be said of the agreement of his view with images of the Peasants' War fashioned to legitimate the Reichsnahrstand. Even so, in this laterwork Franz did distance the Peasants' War more Martin Luther's Reformation. He anchored the than before from medi struggle foran ideal stateof law no longer inReformation thoughtbut in This is especially true of the peasants' argument for the eval peasant religiosity.
godly law,which Franz no longer connected to Luther's Reformation.34 In the new version, thePeasants'War is amovement sprung initiallyfrom thepeasantry itself,that is, "a revolution . . . whose moving forcewas theGerman peasant."35 From 1933 on, Franz began increasingly to emphasize precisely thiselement. In a lecture he gave in 1934 and 1935 on "the idea of theEmpire in theGerman peasants' movements," Franz declared the Peasants' War to have been a homo geneous, purposeful movement in favorof a German Empire. He spoke of the "eternal struggle for theReich," a formula he meant to tie the Peasants' War explicitly to the National-Socialist movement. He thereby declared the "struggle for the Reich" to be a trans-historical task of the German people, albeit one that had little in common with the late medieval concept of the Empire. In the final analysis, Franz projected an ideological targetpattern of National Socialism onto an historical event, his object being to justify the new order politically.36 Since 1935 Franz strove to cultivate good relationswith theReichsnahrstand and its leader,Richard Walter Darre, to whom, as the leadingNational-Socialist historian of the Peasants' War, he addressed his portrayal of the Peasants' War.37 Franz hoped for better financial and political support for his research on the history of the peasants.38 His plan to institutionalize his work on the peasants and the Peasants' War nevertheless enjoyed only modest success. Undeterred, over the course of the 1930s, Franz steered his interpretationof the Peasants'
33G?nther Franz, Der deutscheBauernkrieg (Munich and Berlin: Oldenbourg, 1933), v [the final words are silently quoted fromRanke?Thomas A. Brady, Jr.]. 34Franz referred chiefly to the teachings of JohnWiclif and JanHus. See ibid., 48.
35Ibid., 470. in Volk im in der deutschen Bauernbewegung," Werden 3 36G?nther Franz, "Der Reichsgedanke (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 interest attached above all to the Forschungsdienst furLandbauwissenschaften, which lay under Darr?'s influence.
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War inDarre's ideological direction. This is especially evident in the articles he des Forschungsdienstes and Odal. Monatsschrift published in two journals, Zeitschrift furBlut und Boden. In them Franz continued to designate the Peasants' War a "political revolution" but ascribed to it a more reactionary character.He still saw 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 law isnot created bymen but established by God and thereforecan only be discov ered by men. The latemedieval princes, aiming to create a state with uniform law, had gone back to thewritten Roman law,which the peasants regarded as not only an incomprehensibly alien law but also a truly "non-law or anti law." In thisview, thePeasants'War could function as a "remembering" of orig inalGerman legal ideas. The peasants' effortto defend the people against alien movement and led it to its law lacked only a leaderwho could have unified the goal.39With such leadership, Franz belheved, the common man possessed the capability ofmaking a revolution on his own. By the end of the 1930s, thisperspective of thepeople's traditions-came theGerman peasantry as guardians to dominate Franz'swork on thePeasants'War.
reflects vision.It His two-volume collection ofsources, Deutsches this Bauerntum,

assembles documents from 2,000 years of agrarian history from "the first evidence of agriculture among the ancient Germans" through the Peasants' War down to the law of 1933 that introduced impartible inheritance of farms.40 Gunther Franz was by no means the only historian of thiserawho interpreted Germanic legal principles orwho argued for a thePeasants'War as a struggle for continuous peasant tradition from the ancient Germans to the Third Reich. Others who could be mentioned include the Jena jurist Johannes von Leers, Willy Andreas, and Hermann Wopfner.41 Beyond doubt, however, Franz was the most important,best known, andmost politically engaged agrarian historian who worked under National Socialism. His project and research plan nonethe less came to an abrupt halt at the end of the 1930s, and this for reasons political war not rather thanpersonal. Intensive preparations forand thebeginning of the only curtailed the financial assistance available to historians but also brought a within National Socialhsm political reorientation.The romantic agrarian current gave way to technocratic forces, and in 1940 came Darre's "demonstrative
of theReich's Office forAgrarianPolicy (Reichsamt fur 'relinquishment'
G?nther Franz, "F?r Reich und Recht. Der deutsche Bauernkrieg?eine politische Revolu tion," Odal. Monatsschrift f?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). 41 hatte recht?" See, for example, Johannes von Leers, "Der gro?e deutsche Bauernkrieg?Wer Odal. Monatsschriftf?r Blut und Boden, 3, no. 1 (1934): 162-71; Willy Andreas, "Der deutsche 1937: 325-37; Hermann Wopfner, Bauernkrieg," Deutsches Volkstum. Eine Monatsschrift, May "Die Forschung nach den Ursachen des Bauernkrieges und ihre F?rderung durch die geschichtliche Volkskunde," Historische Zeitschrift 153 (1936): 89-106.
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The cult of ancient Germanism, to be sure,was by no means Agrarpolitik)."42 limited to his milieu, for this ideological strand also enjoyed favor inReichs fLihrerSS Heinrich Himmler's circle. Yet in contrast to Darre's model, envisaged not a sedentary peasantry bound by "Blood and Soil" but, in tunewith wartime events, amilitarized peasantry (Wehrbauer) conquering eastern Europe. This shiftdeprived agrarian history of institutional support. During thewar years,Gunther Franz worked as a scholar for various SS insti Himmler tutions, and the Reformation Only era no longer played a role in his writings.43 era-the one element of Franz's interpretation of the Reformation
into thewar years. struggle for theReich-survived History never enjoyed a dominant place in the Third Reich's legitimizing ideology, a situation even theGerman attack on Poland did not alter. In contrast to World War I, propaganda occasionally drew upon history in general and the Reformation era in particular. The most comprehensive attempt to legitimize theGerman war effort historicallywas an exhibition named "German Greatness . Explicitly planned as a cultural contribution to thewar, the (Deutsche GroJ3e) exhibition surveyed German history from the ancient Germans to the "pan German Reich ofAdolf Hitler." Gunther Franz was entrustedwith the scholarly preparation of the section on theReformation, which combined the Peasants' War, theKnight's Revolt (1522), and the Smalkaldic League (1531-47) in an attempt "to bring to victory the Reformation, which was ultimately a German revolution."45According to Franz, not just the Peasants' War but the entireReformation era had been a "struggle for theReich." The exposition, "German Greatness," employed the same racially oriented concept of theReich. Such historical interpretationsconveyed a grand political idea thatnourished amental climate favorable to preparing for the coming war. The idea implied the German people's historic aim to realize an idea of the Reich, which finally took concrete form through the National Socialists' annexation policy in the east. National This concept of theReich illustrateshow fluid the zone was between the Socialist and a nationalist conservative point of view. The NSDAP and its subsidiary institutionspursed no unified policy toward the past, and at
Corni
and Gies, "Blut und Boden," 33. See esp.Wolfgang Behringer, "Bauern-Franz und Rassen-G?nther. Die politische Geschichte des Agrarhistorikers G?nther Franz (1902-1992)," in Deutsche Historiker imNationalsozialismus, ed.Winfried Schulze und Otto Gerhard Oexle (Frankfurt amMain: Fischer, 1999), 114-41. The exhibition opened inNovember 1940 in Munich and then traveled toBrussels and Prague. itwas sponsored by the Amt fur Schrifttumspflege und die by the Amt Rosenberg, Organized
Schirmherrschaft under the sponsorship of Hitler's deputy, Reichsminister Rudolf He?. 45According to the exhibition's catalog, G?nther Franz was one of themany scholarly contribu were not explicitly ascribed to particular authors, the sections on tors.Although the individual texts era bore G?nther Franz's unmistakable hand and were a brief version of an early theReformation in der deutschen Bauernbewegung," article by him. See Franz, "Der Reichsgedanke "Deutsche Gr??e." Ausstellungskatalog (n.p., 1940-41), 140-42. 332-42; and
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Gunther Franz's case shows clearly, however, how the Peasants' War
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could
no point was there the National Socialist interpretationof the Peasants' War. become a historical argument in favorof the new dictatorship. It also demon strates that historians deliberately employed the revolutionary moment as a political motive. Yet itmust not be forgotten that out of a discourse about people, Reich, and law, Franz also developed a new scholarly approach to the discovered the peasants' gravamina as important early sixteenth century. He
historical source, and he was the first historian outside the labormovement to take the Peasants' War seriously as a popular revolution.
In the midst of World War II,working farfrom German archives, theSoviet his torianMoisej the Reformation Smirin took up the defense of Engels' Marxist interpretationof era against the new National-Socialist view. He aimed to
oppose the "falsification of earlierGerman history by theThird Reich's fascist historians."By "falsification"he meant Guinther Franz'smonograph on thePeas ants'War, which Smirin regarded as nothing less than a "historical justification for theHitler regime."46 It isuncertain how precisely Smirin was able to follow historical scholarship inNational-Socialist Germany, though he clearly saw in Franz'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 is why Smirin was determined not to surren der its interpretation to "fascism" without a struggle. Smirin's Habilitation thesison the Peasants'War appeared inRussian in 1947 and inGerman translation in 1952. Faithful to Engels' legacy,he portrayed the Peasants' War as a class conflict,which he explained in termsof the economic and political conditions of the early sixteenth century.Smirin nonetheless con cerned himself less with the revolution's causes than with itscourse, at the center of which he placed Thomas Miintzer, whose theology he interpreted as the revolutionary doctrine of the common man. Smirin investigated in some detail the intellectual origins ofMiintzer's thought, seeking to explain why it could become so explosive in the concrete conditions of 1525. He also isolated Miintzer's theology from the subject of religion by characterizing it as a pure ideology of class warfare in contemporary dress, a manifesto of the impover ished, sufferingpopulation against the feudal lords and in favor of national centralization. In contrast to earlier treatmentsby German historians, Smirin assigned 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, in Universit?tsarchiv (UA) Leipzig, Nachlass des Thomas M?nzer Steinmetz, 3/105, Blatt 13-17. Also see M. M. Smirin, Die Volksreformation und dergrosse Bauernkrieg, trans.Hans Nichtweiss, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Dietz, 1956), 55-62.
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and economic system and a bourgeois society,which would have ended the Smirin's portrayalof the peasantry as the chief agent of a bourgeois revolution proved, in the context of German history,a central point of theLeninist theory of revolution. Lenin had concluded in his analysis of theRussian Revolution of 1905 that this"bourgeois" revolution had foundered on thebourgeoisie's unrea diness for revolution. An analogous failureof theGerman bourgeoisie in 1525 forced the peasants to assume the leading role on behalf of the lower classes.48 This idea enabled Smirin to explain in Marxist-Leninist terms why the German "bourgeois revolution" of the early sixteenth century had not been led by thebourgeoisie. He made Thomas Miintzer to be implicitlya revolution ary leader of theLeninist type.For Soviet historical studies it was important that the Peasants' War as a popular revolution not be surrendered to interpretations formulated inNational-Socialist Germany but reconquered in order to build a Marxist tradition. Smirin's achievement did not come to light in the non-Soviet world until it surfaced, some years after World War II, in theGDR. During the immediate postwar years, a negative appraisal of German history prevailed. West and east, to Alexander Abusch, it was and Friedrich Meinecke taggedwith the formula, "From Luther toHitler."49 Abusch's book, A Nation Gone Wrong (Irrveg einer Nation), inwhich he drew a causal connection from from Thomas Mann peasant armies' defeat in 1525 via the failed revolutions of 1848 and 1918 to the Third Reich, appeared in 1946. In the Soviet zone of occupation, where Abusch's book also firstappeared in 1946, thisperspective soon came into use under the name of the "misery theory."50 Behind this phrase lay in fact an early version of the (West) German thesis of German exceptionalism, which held that because the German people appeared incapable of revolution, the authoritarian structures of German society had been responsible for the belated formation of a national state. The deepening tensions of theCold War and the founding of twoGermanies quickly found resonance in historicalwriting. In the Soviet zone theCommu nist rulers increasingly strove to escape from a picture of German history shared between east and west. They declared the Soviet Zone and then theGDR to be
West Berlin appeared in 1947.
Die deutscheKatastrophe (Wiesbaden: E. Brockhaus, for Thomas Meinecke, 1946). Revealing Mann's views is especially his 1945 lecture, "Germany and the Germans," which he delivered in the Library of Congress on his seventieth birthday. See Thomas Mann, Reden und Aufs?tze, vol. 3 (GesammelteWerke, vol. 11), (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1960), 1126-48. Nation (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1946). A separate edition in Alexander Abusch, Der Irrweg einer
341-47. 47Smirin, Volksreformation, Vladimir Ilyid Lenin, Zwei Taktiken der Sozialdemokratie in der demokratischen Revolution, 16th ed. (Berlin: Dietz, 1982 [firsted., 1905]), esp. 54. In 1946 Meinecke published a study that is to some degree parallel to Abusch's. See Friedrich
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a bulwark of "antifascism."At the same time, they strove to reclaim a positive self-image for the newly founded East German state by drawing on hitherto marginalized social idealswithin theGerman labor movement and by making a qualitatively comparable connection to the peasant rebels of 1525. As early as the fallof 1945, theCommunist leader Wilhelm Pieck sought to incorporate the Peasants' War into the framework of an alternative tradition. Introducing agrarian reform in the Soviet zone, he declared in a speech to agricultural workers that the expropriation of about 7,000 owners of large estateswould at lasta central demand of the rebelsof 1525.51 In thisattempt to legitimize fulfill the Communist agrarian reform by means of a constructed continuity, Pieck broached a subject that theGerman labormovement had long acknowledged, though he did notmention thathe was employing the same historical argument that Richard Walter Darre had used, twelve years before, to justify theReichs erbhofgesetz. Already during the war years, Marxist historical studies had been concerned not to allow theGerman revolutionary tradition to be surren dered to National Socialism. After thewar, the recovery of this traditionwas elevated to a central theme of East Germany historical studies, though before this aim could be realized, the universities had to be rebuilt as functioning institutionsof teaching and research. Even before the end of the National-Socialist regime, theCentral Committee
of theGerman Communist Party, then in Soviet exile, formed aworking group charged with draftingplans for the future teaching of history and for a new scheme of periodizing German history.The importance of historical argumen Marxism-Leninism meant thathistory and historical pedagogy assumed tation in from the beginning a prominent place in socialist planning for after thewar. Fairly soon after the German surrender, the East German universities were were reopened and chairs reoccupied, rebuilt on the Soviet model; institutes when possible with Marxist scholars. Denazification and sovietization went hand in hand.52 A centrally organized structureof scholarship and a historical discipline that stood under the eye of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) soon appeared. In the 1950s, historical materialism became the only acceptable approach to history,based ideologically on theworks ofMarx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. The Museum forGermany History and the Institute forHistory in
Bauernhand. Rede zur demokratischen Wilhelm Pieck, Junkerland in Bodenreform(Krytz, 2. September 1945) (Berlin: Dietz, 1955), 18. See Werner Berthold, Marxistisches Geschichtsbild?Volksfront und antifaschistisch-demokratische und zur Konzeption derGeschichte des derDDR Revolution. Zur VorgeschichtederGeschichtswissenschaft deutschenVolkes (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1970), 122-32; Heike Christina M?tzing, Geschichte im Zeichen des historischen Materialismus. Untersuchungen zu Geschichtswissenschaft und Geschichtsunterricht in derDDR (Hannover: Hahn, 1999), 75-76; Alexander Fischer, "Der Weg zur Gleichschaltung in der SBZ in Geschichtswissenschaft in der DDR, der Geschichtswissenschaft ed. 1945-1949," 2 vols. (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, Alexander Fischer and G?nther Heydemann, 1988-90), vol. 1, 45-75.
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theGerman Academy of Sciences now began to function as nodal points for the supervision and ideological guidance of historical studies. "In theGDR," Georg G. Iggers estimated in 1995, "party and state exercised amore nearly totalcontrol over historical studies than had been the case under National Socialism."53 Even so, scholarship on thePeasants'War shows thata new history thatemphasized the revolutionary traditioncould not be simply created by party decree. In thewinter semester of 1947/48, AlfredMeusel was named to the chair for modern history inBerlin's Humboldt University.Meusel, who had held a profes sorship for national economy and sociology in the Technical University of Aachen from 1930 to 1934, had already begun to study Thomas Miintzer in English exile. From thisbeginning came a new evaluation of theReformation era in the GDR. Meusel's strongly national interpretation differedmarkedly fromAbusch's formula "from Luther to Hitler." This iswhy the book could not be published until 1952, at which point the "misery theory" of German history had been abandoned as the young GDR began to search for its own Meusel national identity. focused not on the "negative" but on the "positive" tra ditions thatcame down from the sixteenth century,and he placed Miintzer rather
thanLuther at the inception of thenational development. Although he depended verymuch on Engels' book on thePeasants'War, Meusel described it less as a class conflict than as a struggle for a national state against theRoman church and the universal Holy Roman Empire. Because Luther sided with the princes and opposed the rebels during the Peasants' War, he became a reactionary and enemy of the nation, whereas Meusel chose in Thomas Miintzer to see a fighterfor a German national state. Such a state, if ithad emerged at that time, would have produced in his view "by itself" a bourgeois society.This argument led Meusel to designate theyears fromLuther's posting of the Ninety-five Theses in 1517 to the Peasants' War of 1525 as an "early bourgeois revolution."54 In thisformula Meusel created a symbol that rapidlybecame a central concept in the for research GDR on theReformation and the Peasants' War, though at this timeMarxist research on the early sixteenth centurywas not yet an estab lished enterprise. Meusel himself, burdened by overwork and declining health, could not further develop the concept of the early bourgeois revolution, and his own scholarly trainingunsuited him for this task.Still, theyoung histori cal discipline in theGDR had no alternative to were no Meusel, for as yet there Marxist historians of theReformation era.
fur die Geschichtswissenschaft heute. Fritz Georg G. Iggers, "Die Bedeutung des Marxismus Klein zum 70. Geburtstag," Zeitschrift 43 (1995): 485-95, here 485. See f?r Geschichtswissenschaft also the most comprehensive study of the development and functions of historical studies under
the state socialism of the DDR: Martin Sabrow, Das Diktat des Konsenses (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2001). Alfred Meusel, Thomas M?ntzer und seine Zeit. Mit einerAuswahl derDokumente des grossen deutschenBauernkrieges, ed. Heinz Kamnitzer (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1952), 26-28, 41.
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of Max
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Toward the end of the 1950s, this gap began slowly to be filled by the rise Steinmetz. As a former student of Gerhard Ritter, he knew the Reformation era, and he had turned toMarxism-Leninism while a prisoner in Soviet POW camps. In 1954 he was called to theUniversity of Jena, and for the 400th anniversaryof the soon thereafterthe plan to publish a Festschr!ft university presented him with an opportunity to explore the topos of the earlybourgeois revolution. Steinmetz's research stood under continuous surveil lance from the university's party apparatus, which overlooked some alleged weaknesses to give the project its approval.55 Shortly thereafter,the State Sec retariat forHigher Education das Hoch- und Fachschulwesen) (Staatssekretariatfur named Steinmetz's instituteas theCentral Institute for theHistory of the Refor die Geschichteder mation and thePeasants'War (Leitinstitutfur Reformation und des He was then charged by theGerman Historical Society (Deutsche Bauernkrieges). with the preparation of theses on the early bourgeois revo Historikergesellschaft) for lution a conference at Wernigerode in January 1960.56 Steinmetz's paper, quickly dubbed the "Wernigerode Theses," formed the true beginning of researchon the earlybourgeois revolution.Although hardlyoriginal in concept, his theses did bring together several existing notions and marked off the areawithin which Reformation historianswould operate for almost thirty years. Steinmetz also combined the recently formed consensus among Soviet historians, according towhich theReformation and Peasants' War constituted a bourgeois revolution,with the thesisof Engels andMeusel that the revolution was provoked by a fully national crisis.57Thus formulated, the thesis corre Walter Ulbricht sponded precisely to the taskof historical research formulatedby in 1958. He had called upon thehistorians to pay great attention to "the national concept of theworking class." Steinmetz's theses thus supported the effort to would present history develop a new kind of national approach to history that from a perspective fundamentally at odds with what was being taught in West Germany. In the Federal Republic (FRG), the Peasants' War lay faroutside the reigningpicture ofGerman history,just as the idea of a German popular revolu tion stood beyond thebounds of an academic history thatstillheld verymuch to the old historicism.The Wernigerode Theses, by contrast,accepted thePeasants' War as a historical subject stillrelevant to thepresent day.Historical writing in the
Steinmetz, UA Leipzig, PA 3995. 56Protokolle der Historikergesellschaft, SAPMO BArch, DY 30/IV 2/9.04, 120; Max Steinmetz, 1,11. "Manuskript f?r ein Referat an der Konferenz der Fachkommission Geschichte der Neuzeit "Personalakte
Februar 1985," UA Leipzig, Nachlass Steinmetz, 2/141. a time when littlework was being done in the GDR on the early bourgeois In 1956-1957, revolution, a debate flared up among Soviet historians?A. D. Epstein, V. M. Grigorjan, M. M. the historical character of theRefor Smirin, Solomon M. Stam, and Olga Tschaikowskaja?about mation and the Peasants' War. Following an exchange of opinions, the view won out that theRefor mation and Peasants' War were to be seen as two phases of aweakly developed bourgeois revolution. See Laurenz M?ller, Diktatur und Revolution, 102?8.
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GDR now began to interpret 1525 as a revolutionary transformation,just as National Socialist historians had done earlier. The concept of the early bourgeois revolutionmet its first major political test in 1967, the 450th anniversary of Luther's Ninety-five Theses. From the political point of view, itwas clear that this moment should not be allowed to pass by unexploited. The Reformation national tradition of theGDR should at last be integrated into the to the "reactionary" and in the guild of and no longer conceded
enemy in theWest. For three years, the jubilee's celebration was prepared by various working groups in the ministries, in the SED, historians. Steinmetz, who played a central role in these preparations, saw the anniversary as an ideal opportunity to repulse the "reactionaryWest German ideologues and makers of opinion." The timewas also ripe forattacking West German church circles thatchose to 1917" pit "1517 against (theOctober Revolution inRussia). Their aim, Stein metz wrote, was to "underpin theiranti-Communist and anti-democratic ideas of a 'common Europe' and of the 'defense of the West,' and to justify, by reach ing back to theReformation, the clerical-military system inBonn as a divinely willed order."58Both the contributions to the official Festschrift and the cer with a national emotionalism prompted by the emonies of 1967 were suffused SED's two-Germanies policy. The GDR, which possessed on its soil-from of the important sitesof Luther's Reformation, the Wartburg to Wittenberg-all praised itselfas the guardian of theReformation heritage, a peace-loving state in which Christians and non-Christians could live democratically together.Even though this formula leftno space for theological questions, it presented the early bourgeois revolution in a way that accommodated the churches. Martin Luther, who had long been handled very negatively in historical writing in theGDR, suddenly vaulted into the center. The official state celebration took place in the Wartburg, and the Leipzig historian Gerhard Zschabitz published the first part of his biography of Luther. In politicians' speeches and historians' writings, theReformation nevertheless remained an event of limited importance.Max Steinmetz, forexample, tirelessly emphasized that the Reformation was ultimately the "product of a popular movement," ofwhich Luther was but a temporary "representative."He explic warned against allowing the raising of Luther's reputation to lead to a low itly ering ofMiintzer's "or even to a defamation of the revolutionary forces" as a whole.59 The Reformation jubilee made one thing above all clear: East German historians still found it difficult to explain in historical materialist terms 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 Stein metz, 2/090, Blatt 4-74; Max Steinmetz, Radiovortrag 22, "Lebendige Geschichte," October 1967, Manuskript, UA Leipzig, Nachlass Steinmetz, 5/78.
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lacked an interface with Marxist historicalmethod.
213
meaning forGerman history. In 1967 the new focus on national identity still In the following years, a younger generation of historians strove to supply this lack. The work of the Berlin historian Giinter Vogler proved of prin cipal importance with regard to the ruling concept. In a series of articles published between 1969 and 1974, he developed an entirely new perspective on the early sixteenth century, in which historical materialism served no longer as mere ideological dress but as a true historical method. Vogler argued, firstof all, that the chief importance of the early bourgeois revolu tion should no longer be sought in its national aspect. Second, he empha sized that alongside Thomas Miintzer's agenda and the Peasants' War itself, which one must also acknowledge the revolutionary character of Luther's activities, resulted in a "shift of the political power relationships in favor of the temporal princes and the urban magistrates." From the social-revolutionary interpretation of the Christian gospel in 1525 arose an ideology that sup ported a general oppositional movement reaching far beyond local and par ticular programs. In this respect the Reformation and Peasants' War formed the gateway to a European phase of bourgeois revolutions. In contrast to the later revolutions in the Netherlands, England, and France, however, the initiative for the essential class alliance between peasants and burghers in Germany came from the peasants. Their attack aimed not at a centralized state but 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 revolutions in terms of socio-economic structures.He cited the original accumulation of capital, the rise of capitalist manufactures, the formation of global markets, the presence of centralized monarchies, and the existence of bour geois ideologies and culture as essential prerequisites. Since the end of the fifteenthcentury, he argued, all Europe, not just Germany, entered this tran sition era from feudalism to capitalism.61 this step Vogler not only achieved a logical distinction between With structure and event but also fashioned a compelling and self-sustained interpretation 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 bour
an independent Vogler of German history. interpretation geois revolution,
in einer fr?hb?rgerlichen Revolution 60G?nter Vogler, "Marx, Engels und die Konzeption Deutschland," Zeitschrift f?r Geschichtswissenschaft17 (1969): 704-17. See G?nter Vogler, "Friedrich Engels zur internationalen Stellung der deutschen fr?hb?rger and G?nter Vogler, lichen Revolution," Zeitschrift f?r Geschichtswissenschaft20 (1972): 444-57, "Revolution?re Bewegungen und fr?hb?rgerliche Revolution. Betrachtungen zum Verh?ltnis von sozialen und politischen Bewegungen und deutscher fr?hb?rgerlicher Revolution," 22 (1974): 394-411. Geschichtswissenschaft f?r Zeitschrift
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LAURENZMULLER
portrayed German history as an integral part of European history at the very time the thesis of German exceptionalism was coming into vogue in the FRG. Against West German tradition. This laments about the "belated" German nation, he offered a portrait of a progressive nation possessing its own revolutionary in the territoryof which held interpretation neatly fit the official self-image of the GDR, lay the most important sites of the Reformation
and of the most radical actions in the Peasants' War. The GDR, which to represent a continuation of fascism by other means, the FRG thus reclaimed for itself a tradition that was progressive in the historical to this view, a bourgeois society succeeded a feudal one and became itself the prerequisite for the next, revolutionary the early bourgeois phase of bourgeois came revolution of revolutions. as the driving force of that era's to victory through
materialist sense. According
leap to the socialist society. Uncovering 1517-1525 The authenticated East Germany history and the vanguard of the European next revolutionary step, Russia leadership and Lenin's
in 1917,
world. The GDR, fascist system.
then expanded to Europe and the rest of the built on a progressive tradition, had joined the world remained captive to the capitalist revolution of communism; the FRG
Giinter Vogler's interpretationof the early bourgeois revolution was not only but it also made possible a conceptually more convincing than earlier efforts, historical explanation of theGerman-German split and a labeling of the FRG as reactionary" in terms of the popular thesis of German exceptionalism. Vogler himself avoided explicit references to current politics in his scholarly articles. In 1975, however, the 450th anniversaryof the Peasants' War, contem porary and historical perspectives began tomerge once more into historical pro paganda. The Cold War's apodictic scheme of friend-or-foe now gained new confirmation from the Peasants' War. At one jubilee celebration, Kurt Hager, chief ideologue of the SED, declared that the "armed forces of the GDR" must take courage from "the military lessons of the Peasants' War" and defend the accomplishments of socialism "side by side with the Red Most historians did not go so far,though theydid draw an explicit par Army."62 allel between the early bourgeois revolution and the socialist present. This step is evident in the richly illustratedvolume that Gunter Vogler, Max Steinmetz, and Adolf Laube of theGDR's Academy of Sciences wrote for the 1975 jubilee. The book appeared from theDietz Verlag, a publisher with close ties to the SED. Following a detailed account of the early bourgeois revolution that in the main followed Giinter Vogler's interpretation, the book closed with a chapter
6
Kurt Hager, Das Verm?chtnisvon 1525 wurde erf?llt. Rede auf derFestveranstaltungdes Zentralkomi zum 450. Jahrestag des deutschen teesderSED und des DDR M?hlhausen Ministerrates der Bauernkrieges in am 15.M?rz 1975 (Berlin: Dietz, 1975), 53.
REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT
215
that fully supported current GDR policy. Its account of socialist tradition combined a proud gaze upon the revolutionary past with praise for the East German state of the present. Presented with portraits of Luther andMiintzer, Lenin and Ernst Thalmann, the readership took in themessage that"the revolu tionary and humanistic traditionsof theGerman people ... embodied in the political, cultural, and military achievements of the German early bourgeois revolution" would live on in theGDR.63 This firm,new demarcation against the West did not prevent the Peasants' War from becoming a basis for the first direct contacts between early modern historians from the twoGerman states.The "bourgeois" jubilee of 1975
historians,who had long ignored the early bourgeois revolution,were by now beginning to show an interest in the concept, though they had earlier been Marxist discourse.64 In 1975 the firstscholarly dia inclined to attack the entire logue took place at a Leipzig conference organized byMax Steinmetz, the chief outcome ofwhich was themovement ofWest German historians into research on the Peasants' War. This was possible, Peter Blickle recalls, because "the current political discussion of civil disobedience and resistance (the emergency laws, atomic weapons, rearmament) needed historical comparisons," and this need brought thePeasants' War back into the fieldof view of West German his torians.65 In his 1975 monograph on the Peasants' War, Blickle himself brought revolution as an analytical category back intoWest German research on early
modernhistory.66
While the conversations of Peasants' War historians across the Iron Curtain remained the point at did intensify during the following years, themid-1970s
most frilly devel which the concept of the earlybourgeois revolution attained its oped form.The second half of the decade brought another turn inEast German historical writing, a shift toward the concept of "legacy and tradition." The GDR was officially turning away from a narrow understanding of tradition based on progressivism alone, because, obviously, an independent nation's history could not consist of progressive elements alone.67 Historical scholarship in theGDR showed increasingly less interest in socio-economic structuresand
Adolf Laube, Max Steinmetz, and G?nter Vogler, Illustrierte Geschichte der deutschen fr?hb?rger lichen Revolution (Berlin: Dietz, 1974), 403. Thomas Nipperdey and Rainer Wohlfeil are especially significant for the beginnings of this Revo Rainer Wohlfeil, ed., Reformation oder development. There is a good overview in fr?hb?rgerliche
lution? (Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1972). The first detailed analysis of historical writing on the early bourgeois revolution was the dissertation of Josef Foschepoth, Reformation Zur Methodologie einesgewandelten Geschichtsverst?ndnisses, DDR. und Bauernkrieg imGeschichtsbild der Historische Forschungen, vol. 10 (Berlin: Dunker & Humblot, 1976). Peter Blickle, Der Bauernkrieg.Die Revolution des Gemeinen Mannes (Munich: Beck, 1998), 125. 66See Peter Blickle, Die Revolution von 1525 (Vienna and Munich: Oldenbourg, 1975). was initiated by the party's cadres or To this day, there is very little clarity as towhether this shift Helmut Meier andWalter Schmidt, eds., Erbe by the historians. The best survey of the theme is still Historiker (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, und Tradition in derDDR. Die Diskussion der 1988).
216
LAURENZMULLER
directed its attentionmore to the deeds of the "great men," which brought it closer to an historicist understanding of history.The firstsigns of this change appeared in writing on a topic hitherto treated only in negative terms-the history of Prussia.68 This change formed part of the larger shift that inspired the ceremonies and publications connected with the 500th birthdayofMartin Luther in 1983. Erich Honecker now praised the Wittenberg reformer as "one of the greatest sons of theGerman people."69 In "Theses onMartin Luther," edited in theAcademy of Sciences and approved by theCentral Committee of the SED, the social struc turesof Luther's era no longer appear as determinants of the historical develop Instead, the Reformation is seen as having been largely the work of
ment.
Martin Luther.70 To be sure,GDR historians continued to see theReformation as the first phase of the early bourgeois revolution, but little else remained of a Marxist sense. Perhaps the most notable publication of popular revolution in the the jubilee year, the Luther biography by Gerhard Brendler of the GDR Academy of Sciences, devoted itselfprincipally toReformation theology. The book is strongly reminiscent ofWestern interpretations, for it treats theology no longer as ideology in a theological husk but as an expression of faith.71 The turnof 1983 endured after theLuther jubilee. At the 500th birthday of in 1990, to be sure, the focus shifted back fromLuther to Miintzer. That year's "Theses on Thomas Miintzer," however, which were Thomas Miintzer framed parallel to those for the Luther jubilee, characterized the leader of the Thuringian Peasants' War much more soberly than earlier publications had. Miintzer now appeared less a protagonist of class warfare than a theologian. At thispoint, the legitimizing function of the early bourgeois revolution had mostly melted away. To sum up, for many years, the concept of the early bourgeois revolution had represented theGDR's distancing of itselffrom the FRG. This belligerent atti tude determined the historians' labeling of currents in the sixteenth century as positive or negative, progressive or reactionary, so that the new departure dis played itself in the new portrayals of Luther and Miintzer. The party's search for the broadest possible basis for legitimacy was displacing the older stance and thereby progressively eroding theMarxist interpretation of history. This
In 1978, a sophisticated biography of Frederick the Great appeared, followed in themid-1980s by one of Bismarck. IngridMittenzwei, Friedrich II. von Preu?en. Eine Biographie (Berlin: Deutsche 1979); Ernst Engelberg, Bismarck. Urpreu?e und Reichsgr?nder (Berlin: Verlag der Wissenschaften, Siedler Verlag, 1985). Erich Honecker, "Unsere Zeit verlangt Parteinahme furFortschritt, Vernunft und Menschlich am 13.Juni Zeit. Konstituierung des Martin Luther und unsere DDR Martin-Luther-Komitees der keit," in
1980 inBerlin (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1980), 11. 29 (1981): 879-93, esp. theses "Thesen ?ber Martin Luther," Zeitschrift f?r Geschichtswissenschaft II and III. 71 See Gerhard Brendler, Martin Luther. Theologie und Revolution (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1983).
REVOLUTIONARYMOMENT
tendency mounted Miintzer jubilee of 1989. The
217
to a firstpeak in 1983 and a second, lesser one in the connections were not merely coincidental
between this shift, therefore, and the demonstrations in Leipzig and Berlin against the SED's rule,which inspired thousands of citizens to chant "We are the People" and which brought themoribund state to collapse. The events of autumn 1989, which but also to question it. demonstrated the revolutionary potential of German society, led to the truth that revolution serves not only to legitimize power,
This study has shown thathistorical argument played amuch weaker, legitimiz ing role under National Socialism than it did underMarxist-Leninist rule. The deployments of thePeasants'War's historyunder the two dictatorships are none thelesscomparable in some respects.Both interpreted the event as a failed revo lution. In National-Socialist versions, the Peasants' War had been a political revolution for populist (volkisch)values and for a political order suited to the Marxist historians,who saw in German people's nature. Against this stood the 1525 the zenith of the earlybourgeois revolution as a class struggle to overcome feudal society.Each interpretationexpressed a fundamental characteristic of the respective dictatorship's understanding of history. While historical materiahsm assumes an evolutionary teleology, National Socialism conceived German history as a recurring struggle against foreign influences and for a free,national order. Powerful movements had arisen in the early sixteenth century against the alien forces that stood in theGerman people's way forward-Roman law and theRoman Church. Their chief political program aimed to replace theuniversal Reich of Charles V with aGerman Reich. Itwas, inGunther Franz'swords, one battled in "an eternal struggle for theReich." with the Franz's picture of the Peasants' War possessed obvious affinities National-Socialist revolution's self-fashioned image. Following the "seizure of Weimar society, fragmented power" in 1933, National Socialism transformed into classes, confessions, and political interest, into a national community once more. Interpretationsof thePeasants'War during the 1930s only occasion ally placed it in its latemedieval context. Far more often itwas treated in terms of an ideal populist state, theReich, an image thatbecame an increasinglyattrac tive alternative to theRepublic during the interwar years. The spread of this imagemade itpossible to bridge the (National Socialist) present to the sixteenth
century.
In theGDR, too, historians saw the Peasants' War as a people's revolution. Unlike National-Socialist views, however, for them itsrolewas merely to facili the way to socialism and tate an intermediate stage-bourgeois society-on eventually to communism. Its intended progressivemeaning stood, therefore,
218
LAURENZMULLER
in contrast to theNational-Socialist view. The concept of an early bourgeois revolution expressed a definitive faith in progress that negated theNational Socialist idea of an eternal struggle for a populist order. For National-Socialist thought, the revolution was a step toward a timeless (and thus ahistorical) goal. For historical materialism, revolution or class struggle accelerates history by radically reshaping material conditions and making the transition to the next, higher stage of social formation possible. Each dictatorship thus ordered its vision of history to serve a utopian ideal, respectively the eternal populist community and the classless society that stands at the end of an inexorable history.The contrast allows us to see clearly how both dictatorships distanced themselves, though on entirely different historical bases, from bourgeois society. For National Socialism the development of bourgeois society was a fatal journey in a false direction that had to be corrected. For the GDR underMarxism-Leninism, the same development was a necessary, ifnow obso lete, stage of history'sprogressive development. Historical legitimacywas more important in Marxism-Leninism than inNational Socialism, which focused not on the lawfulnessof history but on (far more vague) eternal populist values. The two evaluations of the Peasants' War reveal not only fundamental differ ences between the two dictatorships but also a common theme: the defeat of the Peasants'War in 1525 allowed them to portray theirown regimes as a realization of the German people's age-old demands. By their appeals to the popular revolution of 1525, each system sought legitimacy from history as a kind of
plebiscite.

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it a potential cisely becausethe Peasants' War hadbeendefeated, offered legitimacy

Germany was being strapped into theWeimar

interests and ideologies.

Socialist law, which

the materialist worldview, with

deutsche Bauernkrieg. Herausgegeben 1926), 8-11.

Buch-Gemeinschaft, 20Ibid., 53. 21Ibid., 306. 22Ibid., 17.

felt bound by the "inalterable" party its harsh criticism of "materialistic"

the party retained

legitimizing the National-Socialist

Zielsetzung Stolleis and Toward Darr? rose

reflects vision.It His two-volume collection ofsources, Deutsches this Bauerntum,

of theReich's Office forAgrarianPolicy (Reichsamt fur 'relinquishment'

West Berlin appeared in 1947.

an independent Vogler of German history. interpretation geois revolution,

materialist sense. According

world. The GDR, fascist system.

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