Peasants' Revolt in Tyrol | Not only divine, but earthly justice

Historians consider the German Peasants' War a "revolution of the common man." Yet there was neither a central event nor a revolution. In various regions, initially north and then south of the Alps, in Thuringia, Upper Swabia, Württemberg, Franconia, and the Upper Rhine, and later also in Tyrol and Salzburg, peasants, supported by disaffected townspeople, rose up against the exploitative, privileged classes. The uprisings quickly failed, partly because the rebels had no clear ideas for overthrowing the traditional system. Tyrol was an exception. There, the peasants only rose up after the Thuringian Uprising collapsed with the Battle of Frankenhausen and the execution of Thomas Müntzer.

The uprising began in the Prince-Bishopric of Brixen, around noon on May 9, 1525. Peter Passler's execution was scheduled for this time. At the end of a long legal battle, the employed fisherman and free farmer ended up on the execution block in Brixen. His employer, Prince-Bishop Sebastian Sprenz, had revoked his fishing rights for reasons that are no longer clear today. Passler resisted, so long and so fiercely, that he became an outlaw. He went into hiding, committed a series of minor offenses, was caught, and sentenced to death in a trial with a predictable outcome.

We know about this legal dispute through Michael Gaismair. As a clerk in the law firm, entrusted with the Passler case, he made copies of the entire correspondence. Gaismair was the scion of a Sterzing mountain farmer. His father had already made the leap into the notables of the small town below the Brenner Pass by taking on several lucrative offices and mining ventures. His son also pursued a career that only became possible during the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, with previously unimagined opportunities for economic advancement for free farmers and citizens. In doing so, Gaismair moved through all social classes: As a mine clerk in Schwaz, he helped miners protesting against poor working conditions draft a petition; as a secretary, and later an officer under Leonhard von Völs, governor of the Adige River and Tyrol's highest official, he gained valuable political and military experience. However, his position with Bishop Sprenz brought a career setback: Gaismair, while still under Völs, had been piling money into his own pockets – a minor offense among the nobility at the time, but grounds for dismissal for someone from a lower class. Gaismair lost his rank and position. In Sprenz's office, he was no more than a qualified assistant.

Whether out of resentment over his own fate or compassion for the unjustly treated Passler, on May 9, 1525, Gaismair switched sides. He informed the bishop that the citizens and peasants of Brixen had literally torn Passler down from the scaffold in a single coup and were now gathering their grievances against the prince-bishop's rule on a meadow outside the town and had already elected a leader. His name: Michael Gaismair.

On that dramatic May 9, 1525, all prince-bishop officials fled Brixen. Gaismair stepped into the emerging vacuum. Initially with the backing of the sovereign, Ferdinand – the Archduke welcomed the difficulties of his noble and clerical rivalry for power – he took over the government in Brixen. Gaismair had previously replenished his coffers with a raid and subsequent general-staff-like plundering of the wealthy Neustift Monastery outside the gates of Brixen. He was now even able to maintain a mercenary force. Ferdinand, chronically strapped for cash, was not. Deeply in debt to his main financier, the Fugger trading company, the latter could not even maintain an army. The mercenaries, who had stepped in during previous conflicts, were deployed to suppress peasant unrest north of the Alps.

Only when they were defeated could Ferdinand seize the initiative. He demanded the surrender of Brixen. Gaismair reluctantly obeyed. Ferdinand lured him to his royal residence and had him arrested. However, Gaismair managed to escape. His continued defiance placed him outside the law, much like Passler before him. Gaismair left Tyrol. From exile in Switzerland, he hoped to continue the fight. He pursued a two-pronged approach. Snowed in in Graubünden, he first drafted a theoretical concept that would form the basis of all his future actions. His draft constitution – entitled "This is the provincial order established by Michel Gaismair in 1526" – envisaged a Republic of Tyrol. Such a form of government already existed in Switzerland. However, Gaismair not only aspired to a society free of classes, in which there would be no "difference between people, so that one would want to be higher or better than another", but rather a community of equals in which things would be more caring and just than in all other countries, including the Swiss Confederation.

Gaismair's planned peasant republic was far ahead of its time. The design remained – apart from the English Revolution – the most progressive in Europe for centuries. Even today, Gaismair's model can be read as a critique of a globalized economic system based on market principles and purely oriented toward individual profit.

For the first time, before these terms existed, fundamental and human rights were incorporated into Gaismair's program. Social justice instead of aristocratic privileges, grassroots democratic representation instead of elitist hierarchies, equality before the law instead of class privileges, cooperative economics instead of (early) capitalist exploitation, and the guarantee of personal freedom instead of dependence and heteronomy are further cornerstones. Gaismair's work is all the more remarkable given that it was written by an autodidact. There may have been helpers, but these are not vouched for and are not listed by name anywhere. Gaismair's only source material was the Bible as translated by Luther. Gaismair, who abhorred the institutional church, viewed God as the highest authority, "in whom we should trust completely, for he is completely truthful and deceives no one." Conversely, the church was not so particular about the truth.

Unlike Luther, who did not want his theses interpreted politically, Gaismair derived secular justice from divine justice. Mining, previously the preserve of the state, was to be nationalized, and all land ownership was to remain in the hands of the peasants. Each person was only allowed to own as much as they could cultivate with their own labor. There was to be no unproductive property. Land that was not cultivated would go to the village community for distribution to the needy. Gaismair wanted an independent, self-sufficient state. The credo of his economics, translated into modern terms, was: no indebtedness, no budget adjustment through borrowing, no negative trade balance, no profit skimming by corporations, cartels, or oligopolies, no reduction in economic output through unproductive property.

Gaismair spent the entire winter of 1525/26 writing his provincial charter. After the snow melted, he planned an attack on Tyrol. For this purpose, he had gathered new fighters in Switzerland, including many who had fled the Prince-Bishopric of Brixen. His first target was the heavily fortified Glurns, at the border between Graubünden and the Tyrolean Vinschgau. But the plan was betrayed, and Gaismair called off the attack.

That same spring, a new deployment presented itself. In the Salzburg region, farmers, miners, and townspeople had rebelled against their clerical rule, embodied by Prince-Archbishop Matthäus Lang. After capturing several mountain passes, the insurgents laid siege to the Radstadt fortress. Peter Passler, who had gone into hiding after his liberation and had temporarily stayed in the nearby Republic of Venice, came to their aid. He, too, had gathered a sizeable group of resistance fighters around him.

Gaismair led his men from west to east across Tyrol, crossing several Alpine passes, and appearing before Radstadt at the end of May 1526. Gaismair was able to win the first battle against the mercenaries, who were no longer tied down in southern Germany. However, his strength soon ran out. Radstadt could not be conquered. The mercenary armies were replenished with fresh forces. In the end, Gaismair and Passler yielded to the superior force and escaped to Venice with their remaining loyal followers, numbering over 1,000.

Gaismair and Passler entered the service of the Lagoon Republic and from there continued the fight against Ferdinand and the re-established old order. They were unable to reignite the revolt in Tyrol or elsewhere. Passler died in mid-October 1527 in Venzone, Friuli, at the hands of an assassin hired by Ferdinand and the Innsbruck court councilor. After a failed attempt to recruit new fighters in Switzerland and lead them against Tyrol, Gaismair withdrew to the Padua region as a private citizen. There, on Venetian territory, Gaismair fell victim to an assassination attempt orchestrated from Innsbruck and expressly approved by Ferdinand on April 15, 1532.

Ralf Höller's recent book, "The Peasants' War of 1525/26: From the Fight Against Oppression to the Dream of a Republic" (Kohlhammer Verlag, 266 pp., br., €27), was published.