Talk:German Peasants' War

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Bray shawn 2016.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:18, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

do not merge with Peasants War

this article should not be merged with Peasants War. That article discusses Marx and Engel's interpretations of the causes of the Peasant War but has nothing about the actual German Peasants' War. Attempts to fix it, in terms of its title, have not worked. They have all been reversed. Furthermore, it is one of the worst articles I have ever read on wikipedia in terms of citations, attribution, and other style and attribution, reliability, etc. requirements. It is soooo bad that fixing it would be more difficult than simply writing a new one. I have removed the military history project banner until this article is actually ready for assessment. Auntieruth55 (talk) 20:07, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Battles of the German Peasants' War

<noinclude>[[Category:Wars of the French Revolution navigational boxes|First Coalition]] [[Category:Early Modern rebellions]][[Category:Early Modern Germany]][[Category:Military navigational boxes]] </noinclude>

Merger proposal

Both articles are absolutely about the same subject. It's like having a Revolutionary War and American Revolutionary War articles about the same things. Even the content is duplicated. This fork should get erased.-Ilhador- (talk) 23:27, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

No one appears, so I will do the move.-Ilhador- (talk) 23:51, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Copyedit

Upon request, I ran through this. Comments:

• My reorg moved the event-related stuff out of the class definitions and created an explicit background section for everything other than the events of the war.

• I'm not an expert, but it sure seems like this takes the class struggle view, rather than balancing that view with others.

• The article remains filled with uncited claims. I didn't mark them to spare the reader. If I had, the patrician section would look like this:

• As the guilds grew and urban populations rose, the town patricians faced increasing opposition. The patricians consisted of wealthy families that sat alone in the town councils and held all the administrative offices. Like the princes, they could seek to secure revenues from their peasants by any possible means. Arbitrary road, bridge, and gate tolls could be instituted at will. They gradually revoked the common lands and made it illegal for a farmer to fish or log wood from these lands. Guild taxes were exacted. No revenues collected were subject to formal administration, and civic accounts were neglected. Thus embezzlement andfraud were commonly practiced and the patrician class, bound by family ties, became ever richer and more exploitative.

• I wasn't clear about land ownership. Did the peasants or the lords own it? If "The lord had the right to use his peasant’s land as he wished" in what sense did the peasant own it? I left the language intact.

• Was four guilders a substantial wage?

• "Some bands could number about 4,000; others, such as the peasant force atFrankenhausen, could gather 8,000." It would be more informative to include a representative range.

• Positions such as pillage master need descriptions. Also, it's worth describing how the peasant units managed to adopt a consistent organizational structure, given their limited means of communicating with each other and the absence of a higher level command.
• Given the alleged importance of the work of Franz, Blickle, Scribner, Stalmetz and Bernecke it is odd that Engels is cited more often than the others combined.

Cheers. Lfstevens (talk) 17:53, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Further reading

Further reading list moved out of the article

Bak, János M.The German Peasant War of 1525. London: F. Cass, 1976. Christensen, Carl C., Bob Scribner, and Gerhard Benecke.1981. "Review of The German Peasant War of 1525: New Viewpoints". Church History. 50, no. 2: 215–216. Close, Christopher W. The Negotiated Reformation: Imperial Cities and the Politics of Urban Reform, 1525–1550. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Close, Christopher W. The negotiated Reformation: Swabian Imperial cities and urban reform (1530–1546). 2006. Dill, Marshal. Germany: a modern history. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970. Dixon, C. Scott. The German Reformation: the essential readings. Blackwell essential readings in history. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. Engels, Friedrich, and Leonard Krieger. The German Revolutions: The Peasant War in Germany, and Germany: Revolution and Counter-Revolution. Classic European historians. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Forster, Marc R. Catholic Germany from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. European history in perspective. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Forster, Marc R. Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque: Religious Identity in Southwest Germany, 1550–1750. New studies in European history. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Foster, Helen Wright. The Peasant War in German Literature. 1908. (in German) Franz, Günther. Der Deutsche Bauernkrieg. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgeselschaft, 1956. Handisides, Christopher (16 March 1999). "Der Bauernkrieg von 1525: The German Peasants' Revolt". Heal, Bridget. The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany: Protestant and Catholic Piety, 1500–1648. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Holborn, Hajo. A History of Modern Germany, The Reformation. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959. Hsia, Po-chia; Scribner, Bob; and Benecke, Gerhard. "Review of: The German Peasant War of 1525, New Viewpoints". The Sixteenth Century Journal. 1980, 11, no. 4: 111. Jung, Jacqueline E. "Peasant Meal or Lord's Feast? The Social Iconography of the Naumburg Last Supper". Gesta. 2003, 42, no. 1: 39–61. Marek, Miroslav (17 March 2008). "Waldburg genealogical table". Genealogy.EU. Retrieved 15 October 2009. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help) Midelfort, H. C. Erik. Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany. Studies in early modern German history. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994. Moeller, Bernd. Imperial Cities and the Reformation; Three Essays, trans. H. C. Erik Midelfort, and Mark U. Edwards. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972. Oman, C. W. C.1890. "The German Peasant War of 1525". English Historical Review. 5, no. 17: 65–94. Pettegree, Andrew, and James M. Stayer.1994. "Review of The German Peasant War and Anabaptist Community of Goods". English Historical Review. 109, no. 432: 714–715. Plummer, Marjorie Elizabeth, Robin Bruce Barnes, and H. C. Erik Midelfort. Ideas and Cultural Margins in Early Modern Germany: Essays in Honor of H.C. Erik Midelfort. Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2009. Reiland, Mark G.Martin Luther and Secular Authority in Relation to the German Peasant's War, 1524–1526. Thesis (M.A.)--Concordia University, Irvine, 2000, 2000. Rublack, Ulinka. Gender in Early Modern German History. Past and present publications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Schertlin, Sebastian von Burtenbach, Engelbert Hegaur, Samuel G. Shartle, and William W. Lockwood. Journal of Sebastian Schertlin Von Burtenbach (1496–1577): A Knight of the 16th Century Germany. 1951. Schindler, Norbert. Rebellion, community and custom in early modern Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Schleif, Corine and Volker Schier. Katerina's Windows. Donation and Devotion, Art and Music, as Heard and Seen Through the Writings of a Birgittine Nun. University Park: Penn State, 2009. Scott, Tom, Janos Bak, Bob Scribner, and Gerhard Benecke.1980. "Review of The German Peasant War of 1525 – New View-Points". English Historical Review. 95, no. 377: 900–901. Scribner, Bob, and G. Benecke. The German Peasant War of 1525: New Viewpoints. London: Allen & Unwin, 1979. Scribner, Robert W.Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany. London: Hambledon Press, 1987. Scribner, Robert W., and Gerhard Benecke. The German Peasant War of 1525. London: Allen and Unwin, 1979. Sea, Thomas F.1999. "The Swabian League and Peasant Disobedience Before the German Peasants' War of 1525". The Sixteenth Century Journal. 30, no. 1: 89–111. Sessions, Kyle, Janos Bak, and Thomas Muntzer. "Review of The German Peasant War of 1525". The Sixteenth Century Journal. (1978) 9:1, pp. 95–99. Stayer, James M. The German Peasant's War and Anabaptist Community of Goods. McGill-Queen's studies in the history of religion, 6. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1991. Martin Luther (1525). Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants House Book of the Monastery of Maria Mai (ca. 1525). For a translation and commentary of the description of peasants' war by the nuns of Maria Mai see Corine Schleif and Volker Schier, Katerina's Windows: Donation and Devotion, Art and Music, as Heard and Seen Through the Writings of a Birgittine Nun, University Park: Penn State Press, 2009, pp. 401–464 Ernest Belfort Bax (1899). The Peasants War in Germany, 1525–1526, from Internet Archive. HTML source. Gunther Franz (1956), Der Deutsche Bauernkrieg, Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgeselschaft Corine Schleif and Volker Schier, Katerina's Windows: Donation and Devotion, Art and Music, as Heard and Seen Through the Writings of a Birgittine Nun (University Park: Penn State Press, 2009), pp. 401–464. Hillay Zmora (1997), State and Nobility in Early Modern Germany: The knightly feud in Franconia 1440–1567, Cambridge University Press, 1997 (hardback), 2002 (paperback), ISBN 0-521-56179-5

I have moved the list here because it is way too big and indiscriminate (Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information). Further reading on a well known subject such as this should consist of a short list of good quality reliable source histories that for some reason or other are not cited, and possibly a couple of not so reliable English language websites with a broad coverage of the events that mention facts and details not in this article.

The point of Further reading to to aid a reader with a selected list further reading. I suggest that someone who knows the subject well goes through the list I have moved here and selects the best half dozen or so titles and moves/copies them back into the Further reading section in the article.

An alternative is to find a University reading list about the subject and put a link to that into further reading (as it does away with OR) I Googled ["German Peasants War" bibliography site:ac.uk] and I am going to add the first hit from that list. The may be better lists and a serch of site:.edu will return more, but it will do until other alternatives are added. -- PBS (talk) 14:55, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Luther and Muentzer Section

Why is MacCulloch's opinion on Muentzer quoted at length, thus giving him implicit authority? His is only one voice in a very long--and still ongoing--debate on Muentzer's role in the War. By quoting him at length, the article is probably in violation of Wikipedia's political neutrality rules, since MacCulloch's view is clearly and openly anti-Marxist and anti-communist (and is thus identical, by the way, to that of Norman Cohn's liberal anti-communist attack on Muentzer in The Pursuit of the Millennium). To be fair, the article should either cut the MacCulloch quotation, or include a counterbalancing quotation from a scholar--e.g., Albert Toscano in his book Fanaticism--who argues that liberals have often critiqued Muentzer's role in the War in an attempt to prove that their own moderate, reformist, enlightened liberalism is the only viable alternative to Muentzer's "fanaticism." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.36.228.164 (talk) 21:15, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Adding New Sources

Hello I have a project where I am supposed to add new information to this article, particularly using different sources to help input new research, I am going to post my sources here. Feel free to give me any critiques as I will be adding(or taking away) more sources based on their effectiveness in adding reliable information to this post.

Parker, Charles H., and Jerry H. Bentley. Between the Middle Ages and Modernity: Individual and Community in the Early Modern World. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. Print. Moxey, Keith P. F. Peasants, Warriors, and Wives: Popular Imagery in the Reformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Print. Sea, Thomas F.. 1999. “The Swabian League and Peasant Disobedience Before the German Peasants' War of 1525”. The Sixteenth Century Journal 30 (1). The Sixteenth Century Journal: 89–111. doi:10.2307/2544901. Sea, Thomas F. "The German Princes' Responses to the Peasants' Revolt of 1525." Central European History 40, no. 2 (06, 2007): 219-240. http://search.proquest.com/docview/214224814?accountid=13758.

Bray shawn 2016 (talk) 05:05, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Review of Shawn's Contributions

° Under the "Ultimate Failure of the Rebellion" section, the "(albeit in fewer numbers)" language almost sounds like it's written in essay style, to me at least. I would suggest : " The main causes of the failure of the rebellion was the lack of communication between the peasant bands [DUE TO] territorial divisions AND their military inferiority. While Landschkenkt, [include a number??] professional soldiers and knights joined the peasants in their effort, [BUT] the Swabian League had a better grasp of military technology, strategy and experience."

° "At the beginning of the revolt[,] the league members had trouble recruiting soldiers from among their own populations[,] particularly among peasant class[, IN] fear of them joining the rebels. As the rebellion expanded[,] many nobles had trouble sending troops to the league armies because they had to combat rebel groups in their own lands. Another common problem regarding raising armies was that while nobles were obligated to provide troops to a member of the league, they also had other obligations to other lords. These conditions created problems and confusion for the nobles as they tried to gather together forces large enough to put down the revolts."

° Overall, the article is impressive. I think something that could help, though, would be adding to the CAUSES section. The "Class Struggle" section feels a bit lacking. With only one source about a communist philosopher, it seems like there was only one interpretation, which clearly there wasn't. It feels a bit out of place. Maybe add to it or just take it out because there's already a Historiography section.

° Did you use five sources??

RenCorpus (talk) 20:09, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

"essay" is a specialized term in Wikipedia that refers to "Personal essays that state your particular feelings about a topic (rather than the opinions of experts)" that issue does not apply here. Rjensen (talk) 21:31, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

section needs more references

In the "Social classes in the 16th century Holy Roman Empire" section, three sub-sections (Patricians, Plebians, and Peasants) have no citations whatsoever. —howcheng {chat} 06:30, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Intro

In the intro it states "The German Peasants' War was Europe's largest and most widespread popular uprising prior to the French Revolution of 1789." but obviously the English Revolution / English Civil War that culminated in the execution of the king and the foundation of a republic happened in between those dates. I'm not confident enough to just change it but it does seem to me that it happened in Europe and was a successful and widespread popular uprising. Jim Jay (talk) 14:32, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Innacurate rendering of the role of Anabaptists in the Peasants' War

This article states near the beginning that the Anabaptists along with other radical reformers "instigated" the peasant's revolt. The peasant's revolt occurred from 1524-1525 and the Anabaptist movement began in Zurich in January 1525. Though there are definitely some links like Thomas Muntzer between the two movements, and similar values of equality, they differed both in goals and means. The assertion that Anabaptists participated in instigating the revolt cannot be accurate due to the fact that the peasants' revolt predates the Anabaptist movement. It seems that the author of this article should clarify instead of overstating his case by this generalization. Nebstoltzfus (talk) 15:20, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Heller Haufen

I am not sure if "Heller Haufen" may be translated as "Bright Band". I rather presume that it is named after the city of (Schwäbisch) Hall, cf. also the currency unit "Heller" which is named after the Tyrolian city of Hall. But I am not an expert in the naming conventions for these units. Other Haufen were also called after geographical features like the Seehaufen, the Baltringer Haufen or the Allgäuer Haufen and not because of their clothing/appearance or whatever else might have given reason to call them after their "brightness". But to be sure one might need a good source that makes clear that the naming was after Schwäbisch Hall, because from a purely linguistical point of view the interpretation as a bright or white band would be perfectly possible. --Proofreader (talk) 11:58, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

I just see that de:Weinsberger Bluttat mentions a paper from 1820 by Kerner titled Bestürmung der württembergischen Stadt Weinsberg durch den Hellen Christlichen Haufen im Jahr 1525 und deren Folgen für diese Stadt. Here the grammar would rather support an interpretation as "bright band" (otherwise the spelling would rather have been "...durch den Heller Christlichen Haufen" but as older use of German grammar may not always be as clearcut as today and especially when influenced by local dialect, this may yet not completely rule out the other interpretation. --Proofreader (talk) 13:03, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

And there was also a "Schwarzer Haufen" (Black company) which makes the interpretation as "bright band/company" look very likely. The German article on the Peasants' War speaks of "Heller Lichter Haufen" which would either combine both meanings (as something like "bright company from Hall") or may be understood as a sort of an intensifier ("very bright company"). "Licht" in any case is clearly an old adjective in the sense of "hell" i.e. "bright", "shining" having the same root and meaning as the English adjective "light". --Proofreader (talk) 13:24, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Background

It strikes me this section needs an overhaul. It's long and clunky, and its synopsis is sorely lacking. Stara Marusya (talk) 15:33, 15 April 2023 (UTC)