A Historiography in Brief of The German Peasants War of 1525

A recent paper, written for Dr. James Rietveld, CSUF, History 300A, 13 December 2024

Apr 14, 2025

In 1525, near the Black Forest, a rebellion started and soon swept the region with similar demands, though lacking in central organization and put down ruthlessly by local princes. 1848 and ’49 once again saw massive insurgencies, this time put down by surrounding emperors. This historiography seeks to answer the question How have historians treated the revolt of 1525-26 since Friedrich Engels “The German Peasants’ War?”

While Engels framed the revolt of 1525 to explain the revolts of 1848-49 as a class struggle won by the princes, later historians reveal a host of contributing factors, from years of bad harvests to the words of Luther’s 97 theses, and higher costs of slowly modernizing states contributing as much or more to the uprisings. Drawn by the similarities to the recent revolts of 1848/49, the revolt of 1525 captured the imagination of Karl Marx’s friend and co-writer of the Communist manifesto, Friedrich Engels, also a self-taught historian of the Marxist school. Seeing the same princely type viciously putting down the recent farmers’ revolt, like the minor princes who crushed the earlier revolt, inspired Engels to write his book through the lens of, and as a validation of, the class struggles central to communist ideology and in 1870, published the first edition of his Der Deutsche Baurenkrieg, or The Peasant War in Germany.

His treatment of Müntzer and the risings are, as he puts it, “drawn in whole from Zimmermann,” and a key quality of his was that he was “one of the best of the extreme Left in Frankfurt.” So his presentation is no great primary source analysis, from which to glean deeper understandings of the reasons people did what they seem to have done. Rather, Engels has a point to make and sees in the earlier revolt the perfect canvas to paint his indictment of the European nobility and bourgeoisie whom he saw propping the system up. In describing the conditions in the HRE:

“Out of the old nobility came the princes. Already they were almost independent of the emperor, and possessed the major part of sovereign rights. They declared war and made peace of their own accord, they maintained standing armies, called local councils, and levied taxes. They had already drawn a large part of the lower nobility and cities under their lordly power; they did everything in their power to incorporate in their lands all the rest of the cities and baronies which still remained under the empire.”

An apt description for the crazy-quilt of cities-states, kingdoms, and all points in between that made up the Holy Roman Empire, or Germany prior to 1871’s unification under Bismark. Friedrich Engels argues that the German Peasant War of 1525 was a social revolution driven by the clash between the emerging classes of the time. He compares the middle-class reformers, who advocated for a more moderate reform of the Catholic Church, to the plebeian revolutionaries, who wanted to abolish the entire social order and establish a new system based on equality and communal property. Engels compares and contrasts the Peasant War and the German Revolution of 1848, arguing that the same fundamental class conflicts continued to drive social change. He offers Müntzer and Luther as a dialectic pair, and extolls Müntzer’s aggressive revolutionary stance, unsurprisingly, whereas he essentially declares Martin Luther a sellout and traitor to the cause. As a figure, his works demand examination, at least to understand the criticisms of other historians direct at his techniques, but he is an originating exemplar of the Marxist school of history, seeking to find, instead of the mind of God in history, the ever-present proletariat who are collectively waiting to be inspired to action by his and Karl Marx’s revolution. His work, then, is critical in understanding some of the biases contained in histories produced in Soviet countries, should one become interested in Ukrainian history, for instance.

Flash forward to the 450th anniversary of the Peasant Revolt, in 1975. Several German historians are gearing up for the day by authoring articles delving into the earlier examinations and finding room for improvement. Professor emeritus Dr. Rainer Wohlfeil, University of Hamburg, in his 1977 article via translation by Maureen Cottrell, and Geoff Eley, discusses the multiple conferences held in the middle of the Cold War in both East and West Germany, as well as the many articles which were written on and around the revolt’s 450th anniversary. It provides a very well-written historiography, revealing analytical stagnation across the Iron Curtain, trapped in the rigidity of Marxist verification-based analysis, describing the East German interpretation thus:

“In the FRG there prevailed the widely accepted 'traditional' view as exemplified in the work of Gunther Franz in Der deutsche Bauernkrieg, first published in 1933 and reiterated in the tenth edition published for the anniversary.2 Franz defines the Peasants' War as a ' political revolution of the German peasant estate 'when the richer and more self-confident peasants attempted to 'forge a place in the political life of the nation more appropriate to their economic position.”

By this point Western historians had begun interrogating the sources in a recognizably modern, way, thanks to Bacon and Locke, and we see new ideas to do with individualism vs collectivism and even a hint of a similar existentialistic attitude to that of a 1980s graffiti artist. Wohlfeil not only pokes holes in the standing Marxist position, he also differentiates himself from one of our next authors, Peter Blickle by stating that “the Peasants' War was a mixture of varying actions at the local, regional, territorial and supra-regional levels - a fragmentation determined not least by the fact that the 'common' man in town and country were only seldom united by common interests and common action,” whereas Peter Blickle’s thesis “combined the socio-economic, political and religious strands of the conflict into a complex chain of events and raised it as a whole to the level of a conflict affecting the entire political and social system. To this extent, and despite all the regional differences, the Peasants' War was a single phenomenon.”

The constellation of works completed around the 1975 anniversary or inspired by it include such luminaries as János M. Bak, founding member and Professor Emeritus of Central European University's Department of Medieval Studies and Bob Scribner, late professor of the History of Western Christianity in the Harvard Divinity School, who’s” central achievement is to have altered, more than any other one scholar, the perspective of the field of Reformation studies in the direction of practiced religion,” according to his obituary.

We are ready to meet Dr. Peter Blickle, who has been Professor Ordinarius for Modern History at the University of Bern, Switzerland, since 1980. He is a leading scholar of German history and the author of numerous books, including “The Revolution of 1525: The German Peasants' War from a New Perspective.” In it, he introduces economic aspects, like rising tax burdens combined with harsh weather spoiling crops over many preceding seasons which added to the pressure and primed conditions for revolt. He concludes that the War was a “Revolt of the Common Man,” because it united city and rural lowers classes, two groups who tend to be seen in tension with one another’s needs. The revolution also sought to deal with the “crisis of feudalism through a revolutionary transformation of socio-political relations.” And he contends that it was not just an uprising, but was a revolutionary movement due to the new ideologies and constitutional concepts that were born of the foment, like equality before one law. I found Dr. Blickle to be thoroughly readable and his conclusions sound. His careful term Revolution of the Common Man, meant to encompass not only farmers and peasants, but also townsfolk and tradespeople, all making very reasonable and mild demands. From electing and being able to remove their own pastors, to allowing of wood-cutting, to demanding removal of the death tax, it takes little imagination to hear these people’s angry voices, singing the song of angry men, to borrow a phrase from Les Misérables.

Another 1970s contribution, Tom Scott’s historiographical review from 1979 gathers the developing historical understanding of the peasants’ war as a pin to the decade. This excerpt from his historiographical review of the German Peasants' War of 1525, focuses on the conflict's causes and consequences. The review critically examines how historians have used economic, social, and ideological factors to explain the rebellion's origins and trajectory. It explores whether the revolt was primarily driven by economic grievances, the impact of the Reformation, the breakdown of feudalism, or a combination of these factors. Ultimately, the review highlights the complexity of the Peasants' War and the need for nuanced historical analysis that accounts for both structural forces and the changing mentalities of the peasant population. I found this work particularly useful in understanding several sources that were in transit, and a list of more titles to seek out.

Keith Moxley is Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Art History at Barnard College and Columbia University. A proponent of a semiotic view of woodcuts as an artifact of their period, detached from any “universal” artistic vision, instead they are deeply connected with their audience, as reality TV is today. I find Moxley’s book highly compelling, as it has informed the approach to woodcuts in my reenactment community for several years now. His conclusions on how to approach woodcuts of the period, not discounting them simply based on whom they were made to be seen by. Once one stops worrying about the artistic qualities of a woodcut and gets on to looking AT the woodcut allows one to see more of what is right there in design choice, subject matter, and how those choices would impact the viewer’s sense of reality. He describes their use in degrading the peasant, de-liberating women, and exalting the Imperial knights and nobles as the elect. This bears a striking resemblance to the way social media is being used today to reenforce traditional social norms and mark those who fail to comply as less than people and as proper targets for violent rebuke.

Michael G. Baylor (Ph.D. Stanford University) is professor of history at Lehigh University, where he specializes in the history of early modern Europe and the social and cultural history of Germany at the time of the Reformation. His article “Thomas Müntzer’s First Publication” Brings up the point that while Müntzer is seen as a bloodthirsty revolutionary, he starts out cautioning against open rebellion. Although, “while warning against rebellion, the letter does not in principle disavow violence as a legitimate way of bringing about needed political and social changes. What Müntzer cautioned against was not an illegal or unjustified rebellion but an "inappropriate" (unfaglich) one.” So, not saying be peaceful, but rather wait a minute, folks. He eventually does decide the time is right and becomes the voice of the rebellion, decrying Martin Luther as a sellout and traitor. This view is held also by Engels, whose approval of Müntzer is palpable.

In his book “The German Reformation and the Peasants War,” Baylor delivers a short and accessible book. By focusing on religious aspects, we are drawn to see some unexpected political implications of Martin Luther’s 97 theses. We see how Luther disowned the revolutionary violence, and how Thomas Müntzer pushes it onward. Ultimately, Moxley describes the Peasant revolt as an unsuccessful sister-movement to the religious reformation, hoping to similarly reform European society for the better. By allowing the sources to speak for themselves through good translations, the historian steps back out of the spotlight. For instance, we have the ordinances for the Franconian Bright Band, adopted in later April 1525.

“6. The supreme commander is to be elected by the common bright band, to exercise power over all the people.

15. A Judge is to be appointed by the common assembly, and he is to administer justice each day, as often as the need arises, alongside the appointed assessors or jurors who have been or may in future be appointed, and to punish the evil and advance and protect justice.

22. Four sergeants shall be appointed by the bright band to make a battle-order…”

These show attempts by the revolutionaries to achieve professionalism in the ranks, with varying degrees of success. I noted how many of these regulations find a home in the modern U.S. military’s Uniform Code of Military Justice

In his 2007 article, Thomas F. Sea highlights how slow the noble class was to respond to the uprisings, how that tardiness allowed the early successes enjoyed by the peasant bands, and a few reasons for their ponderous action. Slowing their efforts were the conflicted loyalties of many, resulting in unreliable traditional and mercenary troops. He then mentions the funding issues relying on mostly mercenary army causes. Finally, the early negotiated settlements, and other fallout from the war are examined. His thesis argues that “while localized uprisings had occurred with increasing frequency in the decades prior to the 1525 revolt and an uneasy awareness of growing levels of peasant discontent was widespread among most rulers of southern and central German lands, the extent of the major rebellion that developed in early 1525 took everyone by surprise.” This is born out by the almost bumbling pace of reaction, hampered all the more by the other ongoing conflicts drawing mercenary and noble fighting resources away to other regions. Mercenaries were often preferred because the nobles did not trust their subject not to mutiny and turn against them, once assembled, trained, and armed. So, who did the belligerents hire to fight their fight?

Without soldiers, you can’t have a war, and in an age when princes were seeking alternative sources to the rebelling peasantry for soldiers to fill out their armies, mercenaries were becoming a more common sight, from Swiss pikemen to Italian condottiere, to the Holy Roman Empire landsknechts, founded in 1475 by Emperor Maximillian I. These last notables feature in the ranks on both sides of the revolution’s battlefields, and Dr. Erik Swart’s doctoral thesis points out some important distinctions between landsknecht and more recognizably modern forces. Swart describes the Landsknechts, mercenaries who were in vogue with the princes of Europe, and their organization. They were infamously used by both sides. This journal article examines the evolution of the Landsknecht, a type of German soldier, into a more disciplined "soldier" during the second half of the 16th century, specifically focusing on Low German foot soldiers in the Low Countries. The article argues that William of Orange played a significant role in this transformation by implementing reforms that aimed to increase control over soldiers and improve their discipline. This change was driven by the need for greater control over the soldiers, fueled by a shortage of money. He also explores the social background of the soldiers, demonstrating how their poverty and lack of other opportunities made them vulnerable to these changes. Using these later Landsknecht as a contrast to help inform our understanding of the earlier companies. As a step in the trial-and-error journey from the medieval armies to professional armies of the modern era, they are fascinating, however they also grabbed the imagination of German nationalists, and so have been used in propaganda going back to their own time, and forward into the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. There is a 500th anniversary reenactment of the battle of Pavia with thousands expected to attend the defeat and capture of the French king in 2024. All the attention over the years has muddied their history just as Caribbean pirates have become disconnected from the outlaws they were.

James M. Stayer is a Professor Emeritus at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and received his PhD from Cornell University in 1964. From excerpts I have seen on the web, I want more of this author’s work tying Anabaptism into the story of the peasant’s war, though Baylor touches on the role of Anabaptists as emissaries for the words of revolution and as keepers of some of the ideology of the revolt long after it was put down.

I find their twelve articles and fight rather poignant in this winter of 2024/25. While I have a great deal of primary source work before me, I find myself understanding the German Peasants’ War of 1525 as a complex issue, rooted in the economic disruptions from weather and increasing taxation by lords, and religious upheaval resulting from the translations of the Bible into the vulgar argot of German, inspiring demands like one law under God. While not the simple headwaters of the coming socialist revolutions as Marx and Engles espoused, the failed revolution of 1525 interestingly reveals existentialist perspectives found in later mass protests for human dignities and worker rights as well as in graffiti in Germany and France.

This study has yielded troves of ideas to work into my portrayal of an aging landsknecht double-pay soldier, who fought to suppress the revolt, sacked Rome, and fought at Vienna. From recreating contemporaneous broadsheets, to being able to discuss the twelve articles with the public, I can understand the many sides involved in the revolt much better, and so can articulate what drove the peasants, city-dwellers, princes, and priests whose delicate social order teeters and then violently re-asserts itself.

This historiography will become part of a much larger work following the life of one of the commanders of landsknecht hired to quell the uprising, one Nicholas I Graf von Salm, whose long life would be spent fighting alongside or for, Holy Roman Emperors Maximillian I and his Grandson Charles V, starting in the Netherlands, present for the defeat of Francis I at Pavia, von Salm later notably appears at the siege of Vienna leading the same, or another company of landsknecht against none other than Sulieman the Magnificent’s failed siege of 1529, dying shortly thereafter.

As we enter the 500th year since the everyman’s revolt rocked central Europe, we can expect a new tome in February of 2025 by historian Lyndal Roper called “Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War,” which I for one have already reserved, promises to reveal “a mass movement that sought to make good on the radical potential of the Protestant Reformation. By recovering what the people themselves felt and believed, Summer of Fire and Blood reconstructs the thrilling, tragic story of the peasants’ fight to change the world.” There will likely also be a few dozen articles and book reviews about the subject because of the anniversary.

While the revolt failed, the questions it raised and some of the answers offered by the revolutionaries work for todays communities in gaining the freedom to worship, use of public lands, even the welfare state of the modern EU could likely trace roots back to the revolt, an event that, though obscure, reaches into our very modern lives with lessons still relevant.

Bibliography

Bak, János M. “The German Peasant War of 1525”. The Library of Peasant Studies No 3. London: F. Cass, 1976.

Janos Bak was a founding member and Professor Emeritus of CEU's Department of Medieval Studies in The German Peasant War, he gathers essays about the revolt in three volumes, with “one contributor noting the similarities between the organisation, demands and action of the Swabian peasants and those of the Zapatas of Mexico four centuries later …” and who was remembered by University of British Columbia’s department of history thus: “János Bak was born in Budapest in 1929 and lived there until he left Hungary after the Hungarian uprising of 1956. He received his PhD at the University of Göttingen in Germany and after a few years moved briefly to the United and then to Canada to begin his career at UBC in 1968. His research interests included rituals of rulership in medieval Europe as well as various aspects of central European medieval history and peasant studies. UBC benefited greatly from his vast network of contacts in medieval history, which he drew on to host a variety of stimulating workshops and conferences on our campus. After he retired from UBC in 1993, he returned to Hungary and began a new career as a founding member of the Department of Medieval Studies at the Central European University in Budapest, from which he retired in 2007. He died in Budapest on June 18, 2020.”

My copy will arrive after Christmas.

Baylor, Michael G. The German Reformation and the Peasants' War: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford St. Martin's, 2012.

Michael Baylor presents 29 sources with translation and analysis. He contends that the Reformation and the Peasants’ War are inextricably linked. As an example, he provides the insight that the insurresctionists believed that man had the right to live according to the gospel and God’s law. Reminiscient of the modern Sovereign Citizen, who belives that they live according to a higher law, placing themselves beyond state law, in their minds. I am taken with the style Baylor uses in letting the sources speak to each other and the reader. An example of a demand being words to the effect of; please stop running your hunt through our fields, thereby destroying the very crops you will later want to tax.

The reasonableness of their demands should have shamed the nobles. Perhaps that shame and resentment helps to explain the brutality with which the insurrection was put down.

Baylor, Michael G. “Thomas Müntzer’s First Publication.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 17, no. 4 (1986): 451–58. https://doi.org/10.2307/2541383.

Michael G. Baylor, presents an English translation of Müntzer's "Open Letter to the Brothers at Stolberg," a work from 1523 that cautioned his followers against engaging in violent rebellion. The article also analyzes the letter’s style, key themes, and significance, showing that Müntzer's radical politics and religious positions were present from the beginning of his career. The article also describes the social and religious context of Stolberg in 1523, revealing the growing divide between moderate and radical reformers.

Blickle, Peter, Thomas A. Brady, and H. C. Erik Midelfort. The Revolution of 1525 : The German Peasants' War from a New Perspective. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.

Peter Blickle wrote The Peasants’ War around the 450th annivesary of the insurrection. While waiting for my copy of Peter Bickle’s Revolution to arrive, I have availed myself of Dr. Gerald Strauss of Indiana’s review of same, published in the Oxford Review of Books, via my AHA membership. He points to Blickle’s analysis of various grievance lists, finding them quite similar. across the region. He also mentions the focus on village and urban communal structures as a basis for the reforms demanded by the uprising.

I don’t disagree, based on my brief scan of the book. His final line frames the insurrection as a reasoned drive toward self determination with roots going far back, and branching into the revolutions of the mid-nineteenth century.

Google Books describes Blickle’s and translater Thomas Brady’s credentials thus;

Peter Blickle has been Professor Ordinarius for Modern History at the University of Bern, Switzerland, since 1980. He is a leading scholar of German history and the author of numerous books, including The Revolution of 1525: The German Peasants' War from a New Perspective.

Thomas A. Brady Jr. is Professor of History at the University of California at Berkeley.

Engels, Friedrich. The Peasant War in Germany. 3rd ed. New York: International Publishers, 2000.

Feidrich Engals was a close associate of Karl Marx, even assisting in writing of the Communist Manifesto. A self taught academic, he founded the Marxist school of analysis, focussing on class struggles as the main driver of history and seeking confirmation in events sometimes unrelated.

Friedrich Engels’s text argues that the German Peasant War of 1525 was a social revolution driven by the clash between the emerging classes of the time. He compares the middle class reformers, who advocated for a more moderate reform of the Catholic Church, with the plebeian revolutionaries, who wanted to abolish the entire social order and establish a new system based on equality and communal property. Engels also connects the Peasant War to later revolutions in Europe, such as the German Revolution of 1848, arguing that the same fundamental class conflicts continued to drive social change.

As a figure, his works demand examination, at least to understand the criticisms other historians level at his techniques.

Moxey, Keith P. F. Peasants, Warriors, and Wives : Popular Imagery in the Reformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Keith Moxley is Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Art History at Barnard College and Columbia University. His introduction has a really clear historiography, which will serve as my model. In addition, I really like how he addresses his choices in topic and source selection. A proponent of a semiotic, or ….. view of woodcuts as an artifact of their period, detatched from any “universal” artistic vision, instead they are deeply connected with their audience, as reality TV is today.

I find Moxley’s book highly compelling, as it has informed the approach to woodcuts in my reenactment community for several years now.

I will be using Moxley as a guiding text.

Scribner, Robert W., and Gerhard Benecke. The German Peasant War of 1525 : New Viewpoints. London ; Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1979.

I am still looking for a copy of this source, mentioned in other works as important., and a member of the constellation of books and articles printed around the 450th anniversary. From his Obituary in Central European History by Thomas A Brady (JSTOR)

“Bob Scribner’s central achievement is to have altered, more than any other one scholar, the perspective of the field of Reformation studies in the direction of practiced religion.”

He certainly seems worth the read, at the least.

Scott, Tom. "The Peasants' War: A Historiographical Review: Part I." The Historical Journal 22, no. 3 (1979): 693-720. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2638660.

Tom Scott’s historigraphical review provides a look back from 1979, into the views on the peasants’ war. This excerpt from his historiographical review of the German Peasants' War of 1525, focuses on the conflict's causes and consequences. The review critically examines how historians have used economic, social, and ideological factors to explain the rebellion's origins and trajectory. It explores whether the revolt was primarily driven by economic grievances, the impact of the Reformation, the breakdown of feudalism, or a combination of these factors. Ultimately, the review highlights the complexity of the Peasants' War and the need for nuanced historical analysis that accounts for both structural forces and the changing mentalities of the peasant population. I found this work very useful in understanding a couple sources that are in transit.

From Goodreads:

Before joining the Institute of Reformation Studies in St Andrews in 2004, Tom Scott was based in the School of History at the University of Liverpool. Before that he was a research fellow at Clare College, Cambridge.

Sea, Thomas F. "The German Princes' Responses to the Peasants' Revolt of 1525." Central European history. 40, no. 2 (2007): 219-40. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008938907000520.

In this 2007 article, Thomas F. Sea shows how slow the noble class was to respond to the early successes enjoyed by the peasant bands. Slowing their efforts were the conflicted loyalties of many, resulting in unreliabile traditional and mercenary troops. He then brings up the funding issues relying on a mostly mercenary army causes. Finally, the early negotiated settlements, and other fallout from the war is examined.

Sea, Thomas F. "Imperial Cities and the Peasants' War in Germany." Central European history. 12, no. 1 (1979): 3-37. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008938900022573.

In his two articles, Thomas F. Sea first explores the nobles’ brutal reactions to the War, and then Sea addresses the role of Imperial cities in the revolt. I am considering buying the documents, as I bump into Thomas F. Sea’s name fairly often in citations and the abstracts piqued my curiousity.

Stayer, James M.. German Peasants' War and Anabaptist Community of Goods. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1991. Accessed November 1, 2024. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Swart, Erik. "From "Landsknecht" to "Soldier": The Low German Foot Soldiers of the Low Countries in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century." International Review of Social History 51, no. 1 (2006): 75-92. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44582930.

In his 2008 PhD. Thesis, Erik Swart describes the Landsknechts, mercenaries who were in vogue with the princes of Europe, and their organization. They were infamously used by both sides. This journal article examines the evolution of the Landsknecht, a type of German soldier, into a more disciplined "soldier" during the second half of the 16th century, specifically focusing on Low German foot soldiers in the Low Countries. The article argues that William of Orange, played a significant role in this transformation by implementing reforms that aimed to increase control over soldiers and improve their discipline. This change was driven by the need for greater control over the soldiers, fueled by a shortage of money. He also explores the social background of the soldiers, demonstrating how their poverty and lack of other opportunities made them vulnerable to these changes.

Wohlfeil, Rainer, Cottrell Maureen, and Geoff Eley. "The 450th Anniversary of the German Peasants' War of 1524-1526." Social History 2, no. 4 (1977): 515-20. http://www.jstor.org.lib-proxy.fullerton.edu/stable/4284674.

Professor emeritus Dr. Rainer Wohlfeil, University of Hamburg.

In His 1977 article, Rainer Wohlfeil, via translation by Maureen Cottrell, and Geoff Eley, discusses the multiple conferences held in the middle of the Cold War in both East and West Germany, as well as the many articles which were written on and around the revolt’s 450th anniversary. It provides a lively historiography, revealing analytical differences across the Wall, between the rather rigid Marxist verification-based analysis and the perhaps more dynamic Western falsification-based analysis, and provides an interesting set of authors to seek out and, possibly, translate.

Jonathan Campbell

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