Summer of Blood: The German Peasants’ War

In the lengthy chronicles of the Protestant Reformation, the German Peasants’ War of 1524–1525 is often overshadowed by the doctrinal struggles of elite reformers, leaving the widespread social and economic unrest of the peasantry as little more than a footnote. In countless biographies of Martin Luther, the war is frequently treated as an inconvenient disruption, an episode acknowledged but rarely explored in depth, as in the 2003 film Luther. When examined more closely, it is typically framed as an ideological showdown for the soul of the Reformation, casting Luther, who denounced the rebels, and the radical Thomas Müntzer, who championed their cause, as theological adversaries locked in an existential struggle over Protestantism’s future. Yet despite being the largest popular revolt in Western Europe before the French Revolution, with as many as 100,000 dead, the 500th anniversary of its outbreak recently passed with scarcely any of recognition.