IV. Münzer’s Biographers

Our information about Münzer is very scanty, as is the case with so many unsuccessful revolutionists both before and after him. Notices of him are not lacking, but they come chiefly from his enemies, and are consequently malicious and untrustworthy. The best-known sources of enlightenment are the passages in Melancthon’s Historie Thome Münzers, des anfengers der Doringischen vffrur, sehr nützlich zu lesen, &c., which seems to have been published in the same year (1525) in which the insurrection was suppressed. This account is given in nearly all the editions containing a full collection of Luther’s works. We all know how a time-serving dependent of a prince of that epoch would be likely to write about the prince’s most dangerous enemy. Melancthon had special cause for animosity, since he had long coquetted with the associates of Münzer as we have already seen he had even received and answered letters from Münzer himself, and was obliged to expiate his offence by redoubled indignation.

Accuracy was not the chief object of the “gentle Melancthon”, his only desire being to abuse Münzer. Even on matters of indifferent interest, his statements are wholly untrustworthy.

Sleidan and Gnodalius have simply copied these statements, and from them they have been repeated in the later histories of that period. Münzer was only seen in a true light after the French Revolution, which roused the Pastor G. Th. Strobel, of Wöhrdt (Bavaria) to a study of the Peasant War, and particularly of the Münzer sedition. This led to the discovery of the omissions and contradictions in Melancthon’s statements, which Strobel sought as much as possible to rectify in his own writings (Leben, Schriften, and Lehren Thomae Müntzers, des Urhebers des Bauernaufstandes in Thuringen, Nurenberg and Altorf 1795). This work is the first scientific monograph on Münzer, and that written by Pastor Seidemann (who published a memoir in 1842) can alone be compared with it (Thomas Münzer, eine Biographie, nach den im königlich sächsischen Hauptstaatsarchiv zu Dresden vorhandenen Quellen bearbeitet, Dresden and Leipzic). Seidemann has brought forward a number of new arguments; but in the title of his work he promises more than he performs, for in most of the particulars he relies upon Strobel, from whom he frequently takes excerpts without mentioning their author.

The most recent work on Münzer is by O. Merx (Thomas Münzer und Heinrich Pfeifer, 1523-1525, Göttingen 1889), a doctor’s dissertation, the author of which misses no opportunity of bringing his loyal opinions to light. This brief memoir gives a few details and some chronologically accurate statements, which till then had been buried in contemporary writings or in collections of scattered materials. But it deals wholly with the mere surface of events, and displays no comprehension whatever of Münzer’s purpose or achievements.

All the other monographs on Münzer which we have come across are scientifically worthless but the most pitiable of all is a discourse by Professor Leo, Thomas Münzer, given by order of the Evangelical Society in Berlin, 1856. He has merely copied Seidemann, but has interlarded his statements with servile malevolence. The spirit of Melancthon’s writings appears throughout his discourse, as it does in most of the records of that period down to Janssen and Lamprecht.

We have met with but one among the independent accounts of Münzer, which has correctly estimated the historical importance of the man and his personality. It is that which Zimmermann gives us in his Geschichte des Grossen Bauernkrieges, a work never yet equalled, much less surpassed, in spite of the fact that more than half a century has elapsed since its publication, and although a few of its details were already well known.

Friedrich Engels has given an account of the Peasant War based upon Zimmermann’s work, and with it also a narrative of Thomas Münzer’s deeds, in a publication which first appeared in the sixth number of the review, Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Hamburg 1850, and which since then has repeatedly appeared in pamphlet form under the title of Der Deutsche Bauernkrieg. Although (as he admits in his preface) Engels gathered his data from Zimmermann, he elaborated them independently on the basis of the materialistic conception of history, and with the recent experience furnished him by the revolution of 1848, by which means he acquired a great many new and important glimpses into the causes of the Peasant War, which we have found of the utmost importance in the following account.

On one point – and that certainly an essential one – we cannot agree with Zimmermann. He holds that Münzer was ahead of his age and superior to it. “Münzer was three centuries in advance of his time, not only in his political but also in his religious views.”

Zimmermann came to this conviction after comparing Münzer’s opinions with those of more modern thinkers, such as Penn, Zinzendorf, Rousseau, &c. Had he compared them with the earlier communistic sects, he would have found that Mtinzer moved entirely within their sphere of thought; indeed we have not succeeded in discovering a single new idea in him.

In our judgment also the importance of the man as an organiser and propagandist has been much overrated. The persecution of the Beghards and Waldenses, which had not ceased, indicates that not only the opinions, but also the organisations of the communistic sects, had been preserved up to the time of the Reformation. We may assume that, contemporaneously with Münzer, perhaps indeed before him, as was notorious in Zwickau, countless agitators and organisers were active in promulgating the same opinions, and that in many places secret associations were already in existence, upon whom they could rely for support.

Münzer surpassed his communistic confederates not only in philosophic conceptions and in the talent for organising, but in his revolutionary energy, and especially in his statesmanlike discernment. The communists in the Middle Ages were universally inclined to peace. In revolutionary times it is true they were easily carried away by the fever of sedition. When the Reformation set the whole of Germany in a mighty blaze the communists did not remain unaffected by it, but many of them appeared to doubt the efficacy of violent measures – the South Germans in particular, as they were influenced by the Swiss Anabaptists, who were decidedly opposed to Münzer’s opinion that force alone could procure the spread of the gospel. They wanted to fight with spiritual weapons only – to “conquer the world with the Word of God,” as they expressed it at the time. We shall revert to this in the chapter which deals with the Anabaptists.

Münzer was very far from displaying this peaceful disposition. His vehemence and energy could not be surpassed, though at the same time he was anything but a simpleton or narrow-minded sectarian. He had a very good knowledge of the existing situation, and amidst all his mystical enthusiasm did not fail to reckon with facts. Moreover, very far from limiting his operations to a small community of true believers, he appealed to all the revolutionary elements of his time, and sought to make them serve his purpose.

He failed in his purpose it is true, but his failure was due to circumstances beyond his control. He did what he could with the means at his command, and that an insurrection of unarmed peasants in Thuringia, in 1525, could for a time threaten the very foundations of existing society was owing, in no small degree, to Thomas Münzer – to his extravagant communistic enthusiasm, combined with an iron determination, passionate impetuosity, and statesmanlike sagacity.