This work brings together a variety of writings — published and unpublished tracts, letters, declarations, and lists of articles-illustrative of both the rich diversity and the fragile unity that existed in the political thinking of some major radical reformers of the early Reformation in Germany. To give the volume a coherent focus, the texts selected for translation have been drawn from a single decade, the 1520s. They concern the central event of that decade for German society, the Peasants’ War of 1524–26, the most massive European popular upheaval before the French Revolution. During the period 1521–27, as Reformation radicals confronted the issue of revolution, and subsequently had to deal with the reality of a failed revolt, the basic patterns of the radicals' thought about society and politics were established.

Politics for the radical reformers was inseparable from religion, as it was for the vast majority of sixteenth-century Europeans. The texts assembled here are “premodern” in the sense that their criticisms of existing social and political arrangements, their legitimations of change, and their visions of an alternative society’ are animated by Christian ideas and values. But rather than attempting to categorize the writings in terms of a theological typology (Anabaptist, Spiritualist, etc.), I have presented them in roughly chronological order. This arrangement is appropriate to the inchoate nature of Reformation radicalism during the 1520s and to the evolution that radical thought underwent over the decade. Before 1525 no radical aimed at establishing a separatist church or “sect.” This alternative emerged only after the failure of the Peasants’ War.

The concrete person who, as a particular person, as a totality of needs and a mixture of natural necessity and arbitrariness, is his own end, is one principle of civil society. But this particular person stands essentially in relation [Beziehung] to other similar particulars, and their relation is such that each asserts itself and gains satisfaction through the others, and thus at the same time through the exclusive mediation of the form of universality, which is the second principle.

Addition (H,G). Civil society is the [stage of] difference [Differenz] which intervenes between the family and the state, even if its full development [Ausbildung] occurs later than that of the state; for as difference, it presupposes the state, which it must have before it as a self-sufficient entity in order to subsist [bestehen] itself. Besides, the creation of civil society belongs to the modern world, which for the first time allows all determinations of the Idea to attain their rights. If the state is represented as a unity of different persons, as a unity which is merely a community [of interests], this applies only to the determination of civil society. Many modern exponents of constitutional law have been unable to offer any view of the state but this. In civil society, each individual is his own end, and all else means nothing to him.

A highly provoked defense and answer to the spiritless, soft-living flesh at Wittenberg, [Luther] who has most lamentably befouled pitiable Christianity in a perverted way by his theft of holy Scripture.

By Thomas Müntzer, Allstedter.

From the caverns of Elijah, whose zeal spares no one, 3 Kings 18 [see 1 Kg. 19:19ff.], Matthew I7[:1ff.], Luke 1 [:11, 26f.], and Revelations 11 [:13].

Written in the year 1524.

To the most illustrious, first-born prince and all—powerful lord, Jesus Christ, the gracious king of all kings, the brave duke of all believers, my most gracious lord and faithful protector — and to his troubled, only bride, poor Christendom. All praise, name, honor and dignity, title and all glory are yours alone, you eternal son of God, Philippians 2[:9–11], because your holy spirit has constantly had the fate of seeming to those graceless lions, the scribes, to be a most enraged devil, John 8[:48], even though you possessed this spirit beyond measure from the beginning, John 3 [:14]. And all of the elect have received this spirit from your bounty, John 1[:16], and thus it lives in them, 1 Corinthians 3[:16] and 6[:19.], 2 Corinthians 1[:21f.], Ephesians 1[:13], and Psalm 5[:12f.].

A letter from the community of Orlamünde to the people of Allstedt concerning how one should fight in a Christian way.

Divine peace through Christ, our lord. Dear brothers, we have read carefully the letter which you sent us, and we have perceived the reason why you wrote it, which is the violent persecution of Christians in your surroundings. With this letter we are complying with your request to write you a reply to what you wrote. In brotherly fidelity we do not want to conceal from you that we cannot help you with armed resistance (if we have understood your letter correctly). We have not been commanded to do this, for Christ ordered Peter to sheath his sword [Mt. 26:52] and would not permit him to fight for him, because the time and the hour of his suffering were near. Thus, when the time and the hour arrive that we must suffer for the sake of divine justice, let us not reach for knives and spears and drive out the eternal will of the father with our own violence, for daily we pray [Mt. 6:10], “Thy will be done.” If you want to be armed against your enemies, dress yourself in the strong, steel-like and unconquerable armor of faith, about which St. Paul writes to the Ephesians in chapter 6[:13–17]. Then you will conquer your enemies vigorously and destroy them, so that they will not harm even a single hair on your head.

The basic and just articles of the whole peasantry and the subjects of spiritual and secular lords, by whom they feel themselves burdened.

To the Christian reader, the peace and grace of God through Christ.

Because the peasants are assembled, there are many antichristians who now find reason to disparage the gospel, saying, “These are the fruits of the new gospel: to be obedient to no one, to rise up and rebel everywhere, to form infantry units with great violence, to band together to reform spiritual and temporal authorities, to expel them, perhaps even to kill them.” The following articles reply to all these godless, superficial critics, first, to stop them from disparaging the word of God, and second, to justify on Christian grounds the disobedience, indeed the rebellion, of all the peasants (Romans 1).

First, the gospel is not a cause of rebellions or insurrections, because it speaks of Christ the promised Messiah, whose words and life teach nothing but love, peace, patience, and unity, so that all who believe in Christ become loving, peaceful, patient and united. If the basis of all the peasants' articles (as will be clearly seen) is directed toward hearing the gospel and living according to it, how can antichristians call the gospel a cause of rebellion and disobedience?

“Guard yourself, devil – hell will soon collapse.”

Three transformations have taken place. God the father brought about the first with the Old Testament. God the son brought about the second transformation for the world in the New Testament. The holy spirit will bring about the third change with a future transformation of the bad situation in which people now find themselves.

In order to promote the honor of God and the common good, I, a poor man, know those things which are in the future: that God will humble all social estates, villages, castles, ecclesiastical foundations and cloisters. And he will institute a new way of life in which no one will say, “That is mine.”

The cities will be humbled, their buildings reduced to ruins, and their inhabitants and crafts will abandon them. The villages will become rich in property and people, and all their grievances will be redressed. The nobility of birth will pass away, and the common people will occupy their houses. Cloisters will lose the four mendicant orders and the right to beg, and the other rich cloisters will lose what they possess in payments and rents. All religious divisions will pass away together and be made into a single church. All resources – such as woods, water, meadows, etc. – will be used in common. Each land will have no more than a single lord; spiritual and temporal lords, regardless of their current form, will pass away. Our obedience to spiritual and temporal lords will find an end.

The radical Reformation

Radicalism in the sixteenth-century Reformation first appeared in the stormy early years of the movement in Germany and Switzerland. Especially from 1521, the year when Luther was condemned at the Diet of Worms, a powerful current of popular evangelicalism convulsed society. During the early 1520s a cause which had begun with the defense of Luther in his conflict with Rome entered a phase of rapid proliferation. Evangelical preachers appeared in numerous towns, gaining a widespread following among the laity. And, contrary to popular stereotype, the laity did not always follow clerical leaders. From urban bases the Reformation quickly spread to the countryside. With this rapid growth, the reform movement inevitably became more diversified and its message more diffuse. Influential new centers of evangelical theology appeared, such as Zurich where Ulrich Zwingli emerged as the dominant figure. In addition to those of Wittenberg and Zurich, a variety of other Reformation programs were also initiated at the local level. Here preachers and laymen advanced dieir own understanding of slogans initially made popular by Wittenberg dieologians (“the pure gospel,” “Christian liberty,” “the priesdiood of all believers,” etc.). As the Reformation spread – dirough a flood of printed literature, but, more importandy for lay commoners, through sermons, public debates, and less formal oral channels – it also absorbed preexisting socio-economic grievances and political aspirations, and gained a revolutionary momentum. This popular movement culminated in the Peasants' War of 1524–26, or, as it has also been termed, the Revolution of the Common Man.

The immediate occasion for me to publish this oudine is the need to provide my audience with an introduction to the lectures on the Philosophy of Right which I deliver in the course of my official duties. This textbook is a more extensive, and in particular a more systematic, exposition of the same basic concepts which, in relation to this part of philosophy, are already contained in a previous work designed to accompany my lectures, namely my Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Heidelberg, 1817).

The fact that this outline was due to appear in print and thus to come before a wider public gave me the opportunity to amplify in it some of those Remarks whose primary purpose was to comment briefly on ideas [Vorstellungen] akin to or divergent from my own, on further consequences of my argument, and on other such matters as would be properly elucidated in the lectures themselves. I have amplified them here so as to clarify on occasion the more abstract contents of the text and to take fuller account of related ideas [Vorstellungen] which are current at the present time. As a result, some of these Remarks have become more extensive than the aim and style of a compendium would normally lead one to expect.

On the law of God. How the law must be removed, and yet must be fulfilled.

Preface

No time has ever been so evil that God has not done something for mankind for which he cannot be thanked enough. Again, there has never been such prosperity in this world that some evil has not had to be feared. Not that God himself is so inconstant or takes pleasure in such unrest. Rather, everything carnal is so perverted that it always misuses what is at its disposal, even the very best things that God shares with it. Therefore the Lord always mixes his sweetness with salt for all his friends, as long as they stay in this world, so that the sweetness stays fresh, and his friends do not get lazy and dull.

Some people, even the majority, complain that die world is now filled with evil. This is indeed true. For although the world has always been an evil tree, it has never borne so much evil fruit as in our time. All history books and chronicles show the truth of this. But still, however much there is to complain about, there is much more that God should be thanked for if one does not look at things with a jaundiced eye. For, to say nothing of the secret work of God, if God has awakened the whole world only to ask what is the truth and to worry about error, all the treasures and values of the whole world cannot be compared to this.

The good is the Idea, as the unity of the concept of the will and the particular will, in which abstract right, welfare, the subjectivity of knowing, and the contingency of external existence [Dasein], as self-sufficient for themselves, are superseded; but they are at the same time essentially contained and preserved within it. – [The good is] realized freedom, the absolute and ultimate end of the world.

Addition (H). Every stage is in fact the Idea, but the earlier stages contain it only in more abstract form. For example, even the ‘I’ as personality is already the Idea, but in its most abstract shape. The good is therefore the Idea as further determined, the unity of the concept of the will and the particular will. It does not belong to abstract right, but has a complete content whose import encompasses both right and welfare.

Within this idea, welfare has no validity for itself as the existence [Dasein] of the individual and particular will, but only as universal welfare and essentially as universal in itself, i.e. in accordance with freedom; welfare is not a good without right. Similarly, right is not the good without welfare (fiat iustitia should not have pereat mundus as its consequence). Thus, since the good must necessarily be actualized through the particular will, and since it is at the same time the latter's substance, it has an absolute right as distinct from the abstract right of property and the particular ends of welfare.

Provident, honorable, and dear wise lords, first of all we offer our obedient and due service, because God almighty has sent to many of our hearts the spirit of truth with the revelation of his holy gospel. He enlightens all who believe in him. But the clerical mob, monks and parsons, knew how to suppress this [spirit] in many ways, without having any basis in truth. Still worse, together with their tyrannical followers they keep trying to hinder it as much as they can. And they like to see disturbances, in which [the work of] the devil, with the clergy as his tools, is characterized by division among the people into different parties about how we receive the mercy of God. And all friendly requests for them to stop have been useless. Since we should owe God more obedience than man [Acts 5:29], it is highly necessary that we eliminate godless things, and that we begin to reform ourselves, to develop godly, brotherly behavior in praise of almighty God and the honor of his holy word, Christ our Lord, and to institute brotherly unity. [It is necessary to do this] so that others, foreigners, do not seek to reform us, and so that they are not able to burden us. We want to free ourselves from the grievances which need imposes on us, and we want to support and maintain ourselves among one another as follows.

First, it is our request, desire and deep conviction that henceforth an honorable council and the congregation should have the power to install or remove a pastor in parish churches or in other churches.

Hegel was born on 27 August 1770 in Stuttgart, in the south German state of Wiirttemberg, son of a middle-class civil servant. His professional career, pursued entirely outside his home state, did not begin until he was over thirty, and was interrupted between 1806 and 1816. His eventual rise to prominence was meteoric: Hegel was offered a professorship at the University of Heidelberg in 1816, followed by an appointment two years later to the prestigious chair in philosophy at the University of Berlin which had had Fichte as its only previous occupant. Hegel occupied this position until his death from cholera on 14 November 1831. The influence of his philosophy began to decline even before his death, but its impact on Prussian academic life was perpetuated through the activity of some of his students, especially Johannes Schulze, who was Privy Councillor in charge of education from 1823 until the 1840s.

Hegel's first lectures on right, ethics and the state were delivered in 1817, during his first autumn at Heidelberg. As his text he used the paragraphs on ‘objective spirit’ from his newly published Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1816) (EH §§ 400–452). His second series of lectures came a year later in Berlin. He soon formed the intention of expanding his treatment of this part of the system in a longer text, which probably existed in draft well before his third series of lectures on right and the state were delivered in 1819–1820.