Resistance | German Peasants' War: Günter Vogler's opulent overview

Until shortly before his death, he oversaw the printing of his last book. He was not able to witness its publication. Günter Vogler died on January 19 of this year. He had already written the foreword last summer. In it, he expresses his delight at the numerous publications that have already been published and exhibitions that have opened to mark the 500th anniversary of the German Peasants' War. At the same time, the renowned professor of Early Modern History and internationally recognized Thomas Müntzer biographer warns: "We should avoid viewing the Peasants' War in isolation." For there were numerous acts of resistance before and after it, not only in Germany, but throughout Europe. He demonstrates this in his work, now published posthumously and already considered a standard work.

Vogler, born in 1933, who studied at the Humboldt University in Berlin , received his doctorate, and taught for decades, begins by quoting Ernst Bruckmüller, Professor of Economic and Social History in Vienna, who stated that the so-called Great German Peasants' War "was by no means a nationwide movement: Militarily, it was composed of 'groups' in southwest Germany, Franconia, and Thuringia that had little or no connection with one another." Why did the Peasants' War nevertheless play such a prominent role in historical consciousness and research? Bruckmüller points to the prominent interpreters he found, such as Leopold von Ranke and Friedrich Engels. Their positions, however, could hardly have been more controversial.

Vogler's monograph now fills a gap in research and journalism, offering for the first time an overview of peasant revolts and uprisings in the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" and in other European countries, the number of which was considerably larger than previously assumed.

First, however, Vogler examines the living and working conditions of the peasants. Each village had different settlement structures. What the humanist Johannes Böhm noted in 1520 was common to all of the peasants: "Their situation is quite deplorable and hard. They live apart from one another, humbly, with their families and their livestock. Their houses are huts made of clay and wood, rising slightly above the ground and thatched with straw. Their food is scant bread, porridge, or boiled vegetables; their drink is water and whey. A linen coat, a pair of boots, and a brown hat are their clothing."

According to Vogler, peasants constituted the vast majority of the population in the estate system, 60 to 90 percent depending on the region. And they were the hardest hit by the three scourges of the time: plague, famine, and war. They were usually dependent on a landlord. This implied not only economic exploitation but also legal unfreedom. When the arbitrary actions of the secular and ecclesiastical authorities exceeded the limits of tolerability, revolts, uprisings, and peasant wars broke out.

The German Peasants' War is one of the many Peasants' War in Europe and yet has a special profile.

Is it any wonder that one of the earliest recorded uprisings took place in Saxony? In 841/42, the "Stellinga," which means companions or comrades, rose up not only against their own nobility, but also against the then foreign Frankish rule. After that, there was a period of peace before uprisings on the North Sea coast in the 12th/13th centuries, where the peasants lived and worked together "in a cooperative" manner, which displeased the local rulers. Even the Pope in faraway Rome intervened. Gregory IX, an uncompromising opponent of heresies, who even occasionally presided over an inquisitorial court himself, railed against the "devil in the Bremen diocese," against the "violent and godless people they call Stedinger." The Holy Father incited the crusaders against them. But the rebels won a resounding victory over the Holy Warriors on June 6, 1233. The latter then advanced with armored cavalry. The Stedingers were "pierced by lances, struck by swords, and trampled by the horses' feet. And the hand of the Lord fell so heavily upon them that 6,000 of them perished in a short time," according to a contemporary report.

From 1336 to 1339, the so-called Armleder Uprising struck fear into the rulers. Starting in Franconia, the revolt spread to Alsace. Born of crop failures and famine, it also opposed high interest rates. "The uprising demonstrates the consequences of the rapidly growing monetary economy," writes Vogler, "and the ways in which those who suffered from it defended themselves." Even then, the Jews were declared the enemy: "The leading classes of the cities were interested in ensuring that the rebels' discontent was directed exclusively against the Jewish moneylenders. Especially since they hoped to be able to appropriate their property." In Göttingen, a massacre of Jews took place. Who doesn't think of the Nazi era, the shameless robbery of the deported Jewish neighbors?

Then, in Bohemia, Jan Hus, the son of a peasant, entered the scene. A charismatic preacher at the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague since 1402, influenced by the English reformer John Wycliffe, he strove "for a just society and gained a growing number of followers." This, too, is a great merit of Vogler's account: it illustrates the mutual ideological influence between the reformers and revolutionaries. But like many "rebels" and "conspirators" before and after him, Hus too was to suffer betrayal and ruin. A council initiated by King Sigismund and convened in Constance by Pope John XXIII was to rule on his teachings. Although he had been assured safe conduct, shortly after his arrival in the city on Lake Constance, Hus was placed in chains and ordered to recant, which he refused to do, only to be condemned to death by fire as a heretic.

The outrage over this aristocratic perfidy was great. The Hussite Wars of 1419 to 1434 were not limited to Bohemia and Moravia, but also spread to neighboring regions. Vogler calls it "remarkable" that "five crusades failed before the Taborites could be defeated." The Taborites had founded a settlement on a hill, which they named Tabor after a mountain in Galilee, based on an early Christian, one could even say early communist, model.

The agrarian crisis in the 14th and 15th centuries renewed peasant resistance in various European regions, including present-day Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Flanders, France, England, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, as well as Hungary and Transylvania. In Hungary, a planned crusade against the Turks gave rise to an uprising against the country's arrogant magnates. It went down in history as the Dózsa Uprising, named after the Hungarian minor nobleman and leader György Dózsa. A special feature of this uprising: many clergy also joined the uprising. For, according to Vogler, "every act of resistance, no matter what form it takes, has its own characteristics."

In German lands, the Bundschuh conspiracies began again. For the first time in 1439, peasants in Schliengen in the Prince-Bishopric of Basel chose the Bundschuh, the traditional peasant footwear, as a symbol of their rebellion. The articles of the Bundschuh movement demanded the abolition of "church tithes" and other customs duties, as well as the elimination of noble privileges in the use of forests and fishing grounds. The allies' slogan: "God bless you, fellow! What is your nature?" The response was to be: "We must not be cured of the priests and the nobility!"

In 1476, the musician and lay theologian Hans Böhm, known as the "Piper of Niklashausen," aroused the attention of both the people and the authorities. Because of their greed, he prophesied "imminent ruin through a terrible judgment of God" for the nobility and clergy. He demanded the abolition of all taxes, serfdom, and class distinctions. Everyone should earn their living through their own labor, and fields, meadows, pastures, forests, and bodies of water should be returned to the commons, common property. These seemingly communist visions inspired the people. Consequently, Böhm was arrested, interrogated, and burned at the stake. The author Alex Wedding (Grete Weiskopf) dedicated a children's book to this bold man, "The Flag of the Little Piper," which citizens socialized in the GDR will likely be familiar with.

"Hans Böhm's emergence came at a time when reforms in the spiritual and secular spheres were long overdue," Vogler notes. He recalls other outstanding figures, such as Joß Fritz, a serf in Upper Swabia, gifted with ingenuity and persuasiveness. Incidentally, the West German singer-songwriter Franz Josef Degenhardt honored him with a ballad: "And again on the streets, Joß Fritz, hunted, sought, hidden./ And those who hear and touch him are stirred and infected./... Let not the red roosters flutter before the hawk cries./ Let not the red roosters flutter before their time."

The time seems to have dawned in 1524, announced by astronomers and astrologers, including Leonhard Rynman: "The peasants and the common people of many places... will join together and rise up against their kings, princes, and rulers of both spiritual and secular status." For the Marxist historian Günter Vogler, such a development was not surprising, "for for a long time, in various regions of the empire, the social situation and legal status of rural subjects had been subject to interventions and attacks by landowners and lords... It was therefore only a matter of time before the fire would ignite."

After Vogler has outlined and discussed the events of the German Peasants' War, he looks at subsequent European uprisings and revolts, such as the "Club War" of the Finnish peasants and the uprisings in Russia under Stepan Razin in 1670/71 and Yemelyan Pugachev in 1773/75. Above all, however, Vogler is concerned with the historical classification and interpretation of the German Peasants' War, which Ranke condemned in 1839 as an outburst of "hatred and revenge": "And with this fury came the fanaticism of enthusiastic preaching, which ... believed itself called upon to shed blood." A few years later, Wilhelm Zimmermann, with his work "General History of the Great Peasants' War," presented the first source-based publication committed to the ideas of the Enlightenment and liberalism. For him, the Peasants' War was an expression of a long-standing struggle "to win freedom for the people and dominion on earth for the Kingdom of God," Vogler says, paying tribute to this Protestant theologian, historian, and representative of the Frankfurt National Assembly of 1849, to whom both East and West German historians refer positively. Friedrich Engels, in turn, sought to raise awareness of past revolutionary traditions with his 1850 work "The German Peasants' War" after the recently crushed revolution of 1848/49.

It's interesting how Vogler compares and comments on the various terminology, including in English and French: What should we call these conflicts? "Unrest and riots reflect a state of discontent, without the consequences being immediately foreseeable. Rebellion and revolts signal the transition of a small group or one or more communities in a region or small territory to open resistance directed against the immediate authority. Uprisings and peasant wars encompass a larger territory, in which a large number of insurgents pursue their variously motivated interests."

The former student, who fondly remembers the professor's lectures and seminars at Humboldt University as exciting and lively, senses that he is primarily concerned with definitional precision. Perhaps also because of his co-editorship of the "Illustrated History of the Early Bourgeois Revolution in Germany," which he held during the GDR era with Adolf Laube and Max Steinmetz.

At the end of this carefully edited, solidly presented volume, enriched with numerous historical engravings, graphics, pamphlets, paintings, and contemporary photographs of the sites of the events, the author returns to Bruckmüller's doubts about the uniqueness of the German Peasants' War. Günter Vogler writes: "The conclusion could be: On the one hand, the Peasants' War of 1524 to 1526 joins the ranks of other Peasants' War in Europe, with which it has much in common. On the other hand, it distinguishes itself from them by exhibiting a specific profile due to its coincidence with the Reformation and its influences."

Günter Vogler: "When the Farmer Revolted in the Country." Peasant Resistance as a Struggle for Rights and Freedoms from the 9th to the 18th Century. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 320 pp., hardcover, €79.