Trillbilly Worker's Party - **UNLOCKED** Against the Godless Tyrants (w/ special guest Andrew Drummond)

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

**Unlocking this Patreon episode in light of the official book release** For this episode we're joined by Andrew Drummond to learn about the early German revolutionary Thomas Muntzer: the world he inhabited, his political and theological visions, and his impact on history. We also talk a little bit about Friedrich Engels's book on the German Peasants War, which you should check out if you're looking for a good supplement to Drummond's book (both linked below). Order Andrew Drummond's book, The Dreadful History and Judgement of God on Thomas Muntzer, here: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2993-the-dreadful-history-and-judgement-of-god-on-thomas-muntzer And read Engels's stab at it is here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/peasant-war-germany/index.htm

Thank you for watching! Welcome to the show this week, Trillbillies. I am joined by a very special guest, the author of a book that you've no doubt heard me reference a time or two in the last few months. The book is called The Dreadful History and Judgment of God on Thomas Munzer, The Life and Times of an Early German Revolutionary. The author is Andrew Drummond, who I have here with me today. How are you doing today, Andrew? Hi, Thomas. I'm doing very well, thank you. Good. Good to hear it. Just as a way of getting the audience a little, you know, introduced to this.

It's interesting. I was reading the I was reading Ingalls book on the German peasants war, which is really a fascinating book. I don't really know how the history of it holds up. I don't really know how the history of it holds up but as far as I understand it after the revolution of 1848 Marx goes and writes the 18th premier he's trying to figure out what happened?

why did the bourgeoisie not side with the proletariat in this case what are the class divisions here right and so he writes this amazing uh track to the 18th premier but ingles goes and he looks at this and he's like no we have to go like in the classic ingles way he has to go like we have to go deep history here like we have to look at the german presence rebellion and like so yeah he he looks at the situation in like 15th 16th century germany and it's fascinating because he applies a lot of the same developments a lot of the same observations he notices in 1848 to the german peasants rebellion

which i've front-loadeded probably one of the last questions I was going to ask you, but it's really fascinating how a lot of historians will take Thomas Munzer's story and the German Peasants' Rebellion and apply it to contemporary events. And Ingalls was one example of that but yeah but you you you point out several in the in the book as well i think that after the terror and the french revolution

was maybe one of the first attempts to uh to grapple with this history and then um there was like a hegelian uh i think it was zimmerman was that his name? Zimmerman, Wilhelm Zimmerman, that's right. Yes. Yeah. That's right. And then the Nazis also did it, and then the GDR as well. So I don't know, it's a very fascinating thing. And I recommend the readers go check out the Ingalls German Peasants War

because he's got a lot of great lines in there um what just i just pull out one line and then we can get into the interview but engel says in the very same manner as the bourgeoisie at present demands a government a cheap government so the middle class of medieval times demanded first of all a cheap church so it's like it's interesting because you know in the united states how often you hear that like right like balancing the budget and you know what i mean it's just this time old demand of the bourgeoisie that like there'd be a cheap government that they not have to pay for like uh services yeah um yeah but yeah i mean you're actually quite right about Engels' book there, because I reread it again recently. It was the first Engel's take on Munzer's situation

and on the peasants' situation is spot on. That's fascinating. You know, I think in the second chapter, he kind of divides out the various class interests at play. So the first chapter, obviously, chapter obviously is him again doing a very in my opinion a very thorough like combing through a political economy of like 15th 16th century germany holy roman empire um and then the second chapter he kind of tries to map those conflicting interests on and honestly one of the fascinating things about it is the last paragraph in the first chapter is he's like look man like the 18th century france like revolution was pretty

straightforward right like it was pretty simple like society had been split up into a few classes when you're talking about the peasants for it's like there's 20 different classes and class interests and the whole thing is decentralized and everything is sort of degrading and no one really can coalesce into these larger mass political forms. It's a very fascinating thing. Yeah. So, Andy, let's just start out here. here um i will you know as your as your book title hints at your book isn't isn't so much about what ingles is trying to do your book is honestly the way that i read it is a very fascinating attempt to understand munzer right because there's so little about him in the

historical uh archives that we know so we have to kind of speculate on his life um yeah but so much of it which was what i was surprised about was so much of it is about the relationship between luther martin luther and munzer and as the title hints at the title was actually a title of i think luther's first tract or pamphlet after munzer died it's a very like damning title right like the dreadful history and judgment of god on thomas munzer um yeah so your your your book tries to kind of like dive into the the relationship between these two guys. But maybe before we even get into the Reformation and Martin Luther, if there's any way to just kind of sketch a brief outline, and I can kind of pitch in here because I just read the Ingalls, but maybe kind of sketch a brief outline of what was going on in Germany at this time? When we use the word Germany and Holy Roman Empire, what was the

historical context of this era? Yeah. I mean, the first thing to say is that Germany basically covered the same territory that the place we know as Germany today is, but there wasn't a central government. There were hundreds, literally hundreds of little or large governments looking after little bits of territory. But the common factor was that they all spoke German. Now, in the 15th century, there was an economic upswing. It was partly driven by the development of ore mining, you know, silver, copper. There were huge mines, silver mines in particular, discovered in Saxony

and just across the border into Bohemia. And the development of those mines created capital, mines created capital which allowed a small number of Germans and Bohemians to basically invest more, to lend money and so on. So the beginnings, the very early beginnings of capitalism in a way, I mean it's too much of a stretch to call this capitalism because it's not. But these things were happening. The economy was generally recovering from things that had gone on in the previous couple of hundred years, like the Black Death and all these things where the population was devastated. And my view is that as the economy picked up, people like the peasants and the townspeople began to feel more confident in who they were and began to start looking for more representation.

So that was going on in Germany. And in fact, between about 1476 and 1520 odd, there were quite a lot of peasant revolts in Germany, small ones, but they didn't last long, but they were very popular. And over in Bohemia, in what we now call the Czech Republic, there was the Hussite, it's called the Hussite Reformation, we'll maybe cover what a reformation actually means later, but it was the Hussite led by Jan Hus who was for his pains was burnt at the stake by the Roman church but they were almost the precursor of what happened in Germany a hundred years later

there was this reformation people got all excited about it the nobility saw a chance to grab some land from the church the poor people saw their opportunity to demand more representation and all these things were going on. And of course, there was a dialectic between them because what happened in Bohemia affected what happened in Germany almost 100 years later, and there was a feedback effect as well. And in the middle of all this was the Roman church, which in Germany in particular was a huge major landowner and owner of wealth. And they were also major political power brokers.

In fact, I think there were seven electors to the Holy Roman Empire in Germany, and three of them were princes of the church archbishops. So they had a huge stake in what was going on in Germany. And that's the background to what we now know as the German Reformation. to what we now know as the German Reformation. Yeah, and so if you were like a peasant at this time, you were pretty much being squeezed out. And when I use the word peasant, you know, I guess I should sort of be a little more specific.

As you pointed out, capitalism hadn't quite developed yet. So there was no such thing as a proletariat as we would understand it there were guilds and artisans there were miners um miners actually play a huge part in this story which is a fascinating uh a fascinating thing just as a side tangent like uh it's some at some parts in your story i felt like like I was reading a Western. It's like it felt like I was like Deadwood or something like you've got like miners. You've got like a mysterious preacher coming to town. You've who made up probably the most of German society at this time who were serfs, basically. They didn't really have freedom of movement and they were taxed from all kinds of different directions, either from the princes, from the nobility, from the churches themselves. from the nobility, from the churches themselves. And in fact, the church was even selling, I'm pretty sure I remember this correctly,

wasn't the church selling indulgences because it was trying to pay back its debts to, I think, like the Fuggers, right? Like the bankers, the Fugger's at the time? Yeah, absolutely. Yes, the Fugger family got very rich in the 15th century and they ended up, I think, the richest family in Northern Europe at that time. And they were subsidizing the church. And in order for the church to pay back the debt with interest, they had to sell indulgences. It was all an interesting feedback loop

when it gets at the it gets a lot of the conflict and again this kind of gets at engel's point in that last paragraph in the first chapter which is just that like there's a lot of different players here and you've got the added elements of the church. And in a lot of cases, clergymen were landowners. And so when peasants were feeling the brunt of taxation and inability to move, you know, where they directed a lot of that ire was against the church itself. And so something I like to point out to our listeners a lot and that you point out in the book was that during this time, there was not a separation of political and religious worldviews in the way that we conceive them today. Like really at the time, like what you would consider as a political worldview

in a way to act on that was also a religious one so that like if you were to rebel it took a religious form yes and and ingles also makes that point as well um in you know in a in his kind of catty way he's like talking about like the german idealists like they they just look back at the peasant war and saw like a religious dispute, a bit, you know, religious bickering. But underneath this is class conflict. And you just outlined that. But I do want to talk about the religious parts of this as well. Um, so, you know, we talk about like Martin Luther, we talk about the Reformation, but in the same way we kind of just provided like a brief sketch of the sort of political economy of the time. What were some of the like intellectual ideas floating around?

And when we use like the word like Reformation, like what does that word mean and how do we understand it? What does that word mean and how do we understand it? Yeah, I mean, Reformation basically means the reform of the church, which includes its hierarchy, its day-to-day practices, and sort of best described as the liturgical practices, the mass, the communionion and so forth. And in fact, not least, which language to use, because a lot of the religious stuff was written or spoken in Latin, which was completely beyond the ordinary people. So the word Reformation actually only appears well into the 17th century, in fact. It wasn't used in the 1520s or in 1517. It wasn't the Reformation.

They were called Lutherans or Martinians and so forth in Germany. But the point should also be made that there wasn't just the German Reformation. I've alluded to the Bohemian one 100 years earlier. There was also the Swiss one, led by Huldrych Zwingli. And then, of course, at a later stage, admittedly, there's the Scottish and the English Reformations and the Dutch Reformation. So all of these things were going on. I think the point really to be

made about Luther, there is this view that Martin Luther started the German Reformation and that was it. It started in 1517 when he banged his 97th thesis on the door of the Wittenberg Church. Wittenberg church but things had been going on long before that and things went on long after that as well and it also is quite interesting that I think you've sort of hinted at it just just now the people different classes in society of which which there were, as you say, many in Germany, had a different view of what they wanted socially and politically. They also had a very different view of what they wanted from the Reformation. So there was a Reformation for the princes. There was a Reformation for the imperial knights, for the rich merchants, for the plebeians, for the peasants, the humanists. And actually, even the German Catholics wanted change. So everybody wanted their own reformation,

which makes the whole thing a bit of a soup, really. It's an interesting situation. Yes, I think that's where we are with the word reformation. Yeah, and you pointed out how there had been precursors to it, and there had also been a lot of intellectual... I guess the point here is that this is the intellectual environment that Munzer emerged from. And as you point out in the book, we don't really know a lot about Munzer's early life. We have a few things here and there, like maybe he enrolled at a university here, maybe he did there. Maybe he, you know, did there. We know for a fact that he was, you know, I think he was placed in Zwickau at one point, if I say that correctly.

Zwickau, yeah. Yeah. And then we can kind of, you know, the picture of Münzer becomes clearer as we get closer and closer to the German peasants rebellion. the German peasants rebellion. But this, these early years in which we tried it would try to, you know, look at any other historical figure and say, like, what made them perceive reality this way, right? Like, what made them like critique the conditions of this time this way and led them down this path? With Munzer, unfortunately, we can only make some hazard some guesses. But like, I think that what your book does and what i what i find so uh helpful about it is that you you kind of position munzer in a sort of it's not an opposition because early on they were uh comrades in a sense they saw things similarly but you put him in

comparison with martin luther and it's just fascinating the differences, like the divergences in their worldviews. So, for example, how like Martin Luther and Munzer interpreted specific passages of the Bible, specifically Romans 13. And I wanted to read this passage for the audience because this is really fascinating. Romans 13, the passage in this book is about submission to authority, right? It's about how to understand your place in the world as a Christian godly person,

but also as someone who is trying to either change the world or bring people to the light. This verse was cited to me all the time growing up when I was a Christian and I opposed the Iraq War. Right. And people were like, well, you know, George Bush, though, he's still our leader and we have to blah, blah, blah. But Romans 13 says, let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against that authority is rebelling against what God has instituted. And those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. And, you know, you can continue reading. just from those two sentences, Luther interpreted that to mean we must reform the church, but still

defer to the world's secular authorities. And I think that he did see some reform happening in that way too, with regards to the princes and how they rule. But Munzer reads that, and he says, no, we have to completely upend authority in the social order. We have to, like, that is the thing standing in between us and our knowledge and relationship with God. And I think that that is a fascinating insight into who this person was, right? You have these two people and they read that verse and you can kind of like go off and see how, you know, you can derive some interesting insights about their personalities just by how they interpret that verse. And so maybe a good thing to do here then, Andy, would be to talk about some of Munster's other theological positions, right? So like one of the most fascinating chapters of your book is about Munster's other theological positions, right? So, like, one of the most fascinating chapters of your book is about Munster's theology, right? And, like, all the various

things that kind of went into that. So, maybe let's just start talking about his theology. And, you know, without casting too wide a net, I kind of wanted to start with the theory and the topic of apocalypse. Like, how did apocalypse feature into a lot of these thinkers? Like, what was their thinking on that? Yeah, I mean, it's the, just about everybody thought the world was about to end, quite honestly. 1500 was a significant date for a lot of people prior to 1500, in much the same way as, now this may be taking your readers back beyond their birthday, in much the same way as the year 2000 was regarded as a critical date. And I think, you know, Mayan prophecies would bring the world to an end and so on. So these sort of things were going on. would bring the world to an end and so on.

So these sort of things were going on. But even after 1500, a lot of the, particularly the reforming theologians like Luther, like Muenzer, thought that God would basically bring some kind of punishment on the wicked and that would be some kind of apocalyptic event. Now, Munzer was definitely one of those people. He, right from the very early writings which we have of his, which are the famous Prague Manifesto, which was written in 1521, he was talking about the apocalypse, about God coming down to punish people.

The interesting thing was that, although Martin Luther also talked about the apocalypse, Martin Luther was quite happy to just wait for it to happen. Whereas Munzer wanted to get people prepared for it. Quite why is an interesting question. It's very, very difficult to pin Münzer down to what would happen A during and B after the apocalypse. he doesn't really say much about that all you can say is that it was going to happen and the the righteous the the elect as he called them the people who were in contact with god basically had to do as much as they could to

prepare for it i'm guessing that if they did that, not only would they save themselves, but they would perhaps alleviate some of the punishment for the rest of the world. So yeah, so Münzer was definitely on the apocalyptic side, but so was everybody else. It really has to be said. I mean, some of the Lutherans were saying, you know, basically this is the end of time. But they then just got on with what they were doing, which was sort of, you know, smarming up to the princes in nobility and get them to do something. Whereas Münzer went in a completely different direction from that. Yeah, it's interesting. If you look at Münzer's entire theology,

so you just mentioned the elect, and that's another key part of his theology. Yeah. In some ways, it kind of resembles almost a sort of like vanguard. If you want to read that into it, it kind of has like almost a bolshevik kind of vibe to it yeah yeah um but i think that just speaking even more broadly like something must have happened in munster's life that made him in the same way that like

this happened with marx too at a certain point that made him align his critique and worldview with the working poor with the peasants with the workers with the miners the weavers and so if you look at all of the reforms he pushed and you can even see this in his critique of the apocalypse and and then how youhumans can't just wait it out, like Luther said. They have to actually, like, intervene in the stream of history and bring it about. If you look at a lot of his other proposed theological reforms, you're always seeing these attempts to democratize the entire religious praxis. So like you hinted at it earlier, mass at this time was conducted in Latin. And even people like Luther saw this as a kind of barrier to understanding

like what people were, was a barrier for the lay people to understand God and religion. was a barrier for for the lay people to understand god and and religion um but like munter actually before luther even went so far as to like draw up his own mass in german and uh write hymns and it's honestly fascinating again i found that to be a very fascinating part of the book as well um not only that munter would go out of his way and like draw up a German mass not only that he would write hymns in German that would almost be kind of like educational services in a way but even more than that that the printmakers at the time would have to like order all these typesets right and then they would have to be the ones that like produce and print the

literature, the liturgy and the music as well. And so that's the thing, obviously, you always hear about that about the Reformation, about the printing press and everything, right? And in Ingalls in the German Peasants' War, one of the fascinating things he talks about is how the clerics were kind of on their heels a little bit because the printing press had made a lot of their work obsolete, like intellectual work, right? Like they could then mass produce a lot of these things. This is an interesting side tangent.

But like, let's talk about some of these other interesting, almost sort of like democratic reforms proposed in Munster's theology. I wanted to talk about two things that I think are inherent in this. His advocation of the reliance on faith rather than scripture and reading, in scripture and reading and his advocation. I'm not entirely sure if he was as big a proponent of this as some of his peers like Storch, but on dreams and visions. So maybe let's talk a little bit about those things. Yeah. I mean, fundamental, yeah, you're right. Fundamental to Minter's beliefs was this idea, which actually went back to some of the medieval mistakes, the idea that an individual could be in direct contact with God. Now, for Münzer, for this to happen, the individual, the man or the woman, had to suffer. Now the suffering, probably he meant it as spiritual or

psychological suffering, but there's no reason on earth why it shouldn't also be physical or social suffering as well. So in order to be in contact, in communication with God, you had to suffer, you had to lose your faith, you had to go right down to the bottom of the pit, and then you had to fight your way out again. And at the end of all that, some of that is a bit iffy, but the effect of that was to say that the church, its hierarchy, the canon law, the priests, everything else, were unnecessary. You didn't need to have any of that because the individual didn't even need to be educated, didn't have to be able to read. As long as they felt that they were in contact with God, that was good enough. The other

interesting thing, just in passing on this idea of the elect, is that on several occasions, Münzer specifically says that to be one of the elect, you don't even need to be Christian. He actually says that the Turk, i.e. the Muslims, and the Jews, and the interesting people he calls the heathen, could equally well be of the elect. Now that, I mean, that is a quite extraordinary statement to make in the early 16th century. It's actually quite an extraordinary statement to make even in the 21st century. So he, Münzer basically breaks down all the barriers between the individual and God. And he backs that up with another central concept of his, which he mentions on many occasions, is this idea that you must fear God more than you fear man, i.e. you shouldn't necessarily have to pay any attention

to what the civil authorities are saying to you or what the church authorities are saying to you. If you stick with your principles, that is the main thing to do. And that also goes back to this discussion about Romans 13 because this is where I think I think Munster just basically ignored Romans 13 whereas Luther stuck to his guns on that Munster was quite happy going off in a completely different direction and that was this thing about the fear of God and the fear of man and And he mentions it more and more as the Peasants' War emerges and people are out marching and coming up against, even coming up against military authority, that you should fear God, never mind what these these men are doing fear god yeah that's um it's quite an inspiring thing actually it's uh it's um yeah yeah something that is so interesting about the way people at this time this is a kind of a tangent but something that's so interesting about the way people at this time communicated is all the references to like well to be crude shit like they're constantly talking about shit i don't know

why that was so common at the time but like in all of luther's um correspondence he mentioned on do i do know that like luther personally. He had a lot of like, I think he had IBS. He was constantly struggling with like constipation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it is interesting just to like, and again, this is what I like so much about your book is like it really just kind of puts a lot of this correspondence out there and like lets it speak for himself like the between these two individuals yeah um and because that's that's how a lot of uh that's how a lot of these things were hashed out at the time and in fact as you point out like luther really wanted

a showdown with munzer but like privately he wanted like a private disputation yes and once again like munzer in this very classically democratic sense is like no let's do it in front of everybody let's have it transparent let's have it public um and i and i guess i just find that very fascinating about munzer that like you know early on this is before the glorious revolution in england obviously before the french revolution that like you know early on this is before the glorious revolution in england obviously before the french revolution that like you've got these early inklings of uh of a democratic movement in in germany of all places right this wasn't the financial uh point a core of the world system there were some important trading routes and some important places,

but this wasn't France or the Italian city-states or England at the time. This is Germany. But I guess maybe right now we can talk a little bit about the Peasants' Rebellion itself. Because as you mentioned earlier, Munzer's role in the rebellion was kind of the climax of the entire thing. So maybe let's talk a little bit about the Peasants' Rebellion. entire thing. So maybe let's talk a little bit about the Peasants' Rebellion. You know, when did it start and why? And how did Munzer come to plug into it? It's a huge story and it's a very complicated story. I'll try and compress it into three sentences. Essentially, what is now called the German Peasants' War of 1525, it actually started in 1524. And the way it started, there are two ways of looking at it.

One is a sort of colorful way where there was a Countess, Countess Constantia of a place called Lufthansa down in southwest Germany, who in, I think, June 1524, looked in her cupboards and decided that she needed some barberries to make jam with. And she also decided that she wanted her ma servants to do a bit of sewing and to do a bit of sewing in those days you wound your thread around snail shells now um what constantia did bless her was to summon her husband's peasants who were in the middle of collecting the harvest at the time right and say to look, I need a whole pile of berries and I need some snail shells. And I go off and do it. Y'all gotta walk uptown to the Bronx

and get breast milk from a Cambodian immigrant. I only drink the finest breast milk. Now, understandably, the peasants were a bit pissed off about this and essentially went on strike. But it all sounds a bit like, you know, marry Antoinette and let them eat cakes. It's one of those sort of things. But the thing is that it's not utterly implausible because what then happened was that in that local bunch of people taking industrial action,

as it were, the message spread to all the surrounding districts where already the peasants were thoroughly pissed off with their situation. And it was a sort of snowball effect. And over the course of the summer of 1524, more and more peasants started to sort of gather together and have discussions and share their experiences and decide that, yeah, they had to do something about it. Now, one of the interesting things about it, I'm not going to go into too much detail here, but The reason it happened in 1524 is partly due to Martin Luther and partly due also to Huldrych Zwingli in Switzerland, because they had been talking about freedom. spiritual freedom, and I'm not an expert on Zwingli, but I'm guessing that he meant it in much the same way. But the word freedom was getting bangied about an awful lot in those days, and that fed into these complaints of 1524. So over the course of the summer of 1524,

they started banding together in southwest Germany. They had a few set twos with the sort of local governments, the princes and so on. Interestingly, just at that point, all the mercenary soldiers which the nobility had available to them to put down uprisings were all tied up in Italy, sort of dibbing up Italy to their heart's content. And they actually didn't come home until this early spring of 1525.

So there was a lot of delaying tactics by the nobility, just waiting for their soldiers to come back. So they would sit down with the peasants and talk to them. And that sort of went on for several months. And then the winter came and everything sort of closed down for the winter, understandably. But when the spring came, February, March of 1525, it all kicked off again. And in a big way. it all kicked off again and in a big way.

There were literally tens of thousands of peasants collected in small armies and marched around southwest Germany, banging on town gates and telling the people to come out and support them. And that went on, as I say, there's a long story involved here, but there were pitched battles. The mercenaries eventually came home and they were able to be deployed against the peasants. But also at that time, the rebellion spread north and eastwards into an area called Franconia and into Thuringia and Saxony. And it was in every March, April of 1525 that there were equal numbers of armies and people uprising in that part of Germany. And Münzer's reaction to all of this was quite interesting. He had been

And Münzer's reaction to all of this was quite interesting. He had been in October, November 1524, he had been in Nuremberg getting some of his pamphlets printed. And when he heard of what was going on in southwest Germany, he deliberately set off in that direction. Basically, it was always midwinter. It was a long way to go, but he went down to southwest Germany to find out what was going on. And he spent six or seven weeks with the peasants, talking to them, understanding what they were demanding. understanding what they were demanding.

I don't think he went as far as actually preparing any sort of... There is this story that the famous 12 articles of the peasants were composed by Müntzer, but that's one of Luther's tall tales. Apart from anything else, they were composed after Müntzer went home to Mühlehausen. But he did a lot of that thing and I think that he himself, not so much Munzer influencing the peasants, it was the other way around I think what he experienced

down there pushed him very dramatically towards uprising back home in Thuringia so when he came back to Mühlhausen in February 1525, he immediately started organising the townspeople and the local peasants into armed groups. He and, I think we've mentioned the name before,

Heinrich Pfeiffer, who was also a radical preacher in Mühlhausen. And he sort of, again, sort of snowballed from there. Because by that time, the princes of Saxony, there were two families in Saxony, one of which was Catholic, the other which was Lutheran. Combined, obviously. Catholic, which was Lutheran, combined, obviously. Religious differences had no effect on when you had to suppress the peasantry. They were beginning to collect their armies, and yeah, the rest, as we say, is history. Yeah.

By this point, Munster had already been kicked out of one town, Alstead, is that how you pronounce it? Alstead, yeah. Yeah. And part of the reason why is because there was a lot of class conflict there too. This is where he published the German Mass and came to the ire of Count Ernst of Mansfield, who, like I said, is almost like, in my mind, almost like a George Hearst in Deadwood type character. And it's funny how once the peasant rebellion gets started off, Winter's like, I'm going to go sack that guy's castle.

He's like, I'm going to settle some scores like I'm going after that guy. But yeah, you're right. Like by the time the Peasants Rebellion had already kicked off, a lot of the things in Munster's life had already pushed him to align with the peasants, with the miners, with the weavers. and honestly a large part of that was Luther as well because by this point, 1524-25, Munzer has already made a definitive break with Wittenberg, which is where the Lutheran Reformation was mostly housed at, was kicking off at. So he was firmly on the other side of the fence from Luther at this time. But as you point out, something that's very fascinating, which is that, like, when it came to

suppressing the peasants, these religious differences didn't matter that much. One of the electors, Friedrich the Wise, was, like, I think he was a Lutheran, like he wanted to see Lutheran reforms anyways, but his cousins, the other prince electors, like Duke George, were Catholic. Yeah. And so they were all kind of in this delicate balance, like this delicate dance. Like, some of them didn't want to go too far in putting down the rebellion because they wanted to retain some of the reforms of the Reformation. Some of them saw it as an opportunity to quell the entire thing and then just reset and get back to normal. But it was a very fascinating mixture of various different personalities and interests and agendas. And I don't want to spoil it for the reader, reader, although of course this happened 500 years ago.

But I do think the way that you constructed in the book is very good because I didn't know anything about Munster going into this. And so it was helpful for me to like, I was like, I don't know how this is going to end. You drop hints up front that this isn't going to end well for Munzer, that he comes to his end in 1525. But the manner in which it happens is, I think, very surprising and interesting. But something that you hinted at just a second ago was how some of the things we know about Munzer or think we know about Munzer actually came from Luther and how a lot of the historiography of Munzer after 1525 is shaped very much by the Lutherans in Wittenberg. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that. Like, why were, why was Luther and a lot of his colleagues, why were they so eager to tar Munzer in a way,

to kind of push him out of the historical narrative, to push him out of the Reformation? Why were they so eager to rewrite that history? Yeah, I think there were two basic reasons. One was completely self-interest um the catholics in particular blamed not so much munzer for the peasant uprising they blamed luther they said you know basically you've been talking about freedom and and you've been stirring up this and you've been attacking the church what did you expect would happen? Now, Luther, bless him, was utterly self-centered. So his immediate attacks, I mean, there's a famous pamphlet he wrote in, I think it was April 1525, which was an attack on the peasantry.

And basically, he encouraged the nobility to kill as many peasants as they could. It was a bit like a holy war. He actually said, you know, even if you die in the process, you will get your reward in heaven. So he'd already started in on the peasantry, but the Catholics were having none of this. They said, look, you said it, Luther, back in 1520, the Christian man should be free. So look what happened. So it's partly that. They wanted to divert the focus of blame from themselves onto a more likely candidate, which was Thomas Munzer.

So they had to paint him in the worst possible light. I think that I wouldn't like to name them all, but there are seven deadly sins in the church. And essentially, Munzer was accused of committing them all. Munzer was accused of committing them all. So over the course of the summer of 1525, after Munzer was dead, there was this series of pamphlets, one by Luther, another by his lieutenant,

Philip Melanchthon, and there was another one by Johann Agricola, basically all setting down all the dreadful things that they claimed Munzer had said and done and everything else. He was described by Luther as Satan, as a murderous spirit, a false prophet, a ravening wolf, all these things. false prophet, ravening wolf, all these things. And really the slightly bizarre thing about all of this is that, slight aside here, we have very little in the way of the letters of Thomas Munzer preserved for us after 500 years.

Of those that are preserved, a significant number were reproduced by the Lutherans in their pamphlets. And that's the only way we know about them. So they obviously didn't think that far ahead. But yeah, so the Lutherans were keen to blame Mincer, the Catholics were keen to blame Luther. The other reason I think why the Lutherans were keen to blacken Mincer's

name was that even after the defeat of the peasantry in Thuringia, there were small pockets of resistance. The people who subsequently came to be known as the Anabaptists, now they, in central Germany, the Anabaptists in particular, were actually quite radical.

A lot of them specifically said they admired Munzer, and they took his sort of view of the world forward with them. So there were there were minor sort of, as you would call them these days, terrorist plots instigated by these Anabaptists in 1525-26. And the Lutherans were aware of this and they simply wanted to make sure that that didn't get out of hand, if you like. So I think these are the two main reasons. The curious thing about it is, well it's not really that curious, I mean there is this old trope that history is written by the victors. The legends about Münzer persisted. You could say they persist until today, actually.

If you look at some of the slightly more rabid histories of the German Reformation, they will repeat what Luther claimed about Münzer. But they certainly lasted in serious history for a good 300 years until, as you mentioned right at the start, people like Wilhelm Zimmermann and Friedrich Engels people like Wilhelm Zimmermann and Friedrich Engels started to put the history in a slightly different context. So part of my book then is actually looking at these legends one by one and trying to demolish them one by one. And as I say, making sure that we sort of hit the 21st century running if you like

with that with an idea that not everything said about mincer was true that's well that's a that's actually a great point because I was going to ask you what was your impetus for writing this and I and I I mean you know I think that you kind of just said that like at the start of this at the start of this century right like we are at a kind of world historical conjuncture right like it's reading the book i saw a lot of similar things with the current world um not only just like the millenarian stuff but the the uh crises around political economy and how they intersect with our epistemology and how we understand the world and reality itself and how we understand resistance, right? But I think that, as you point out in the book, this is something that has been true for Münzer for a really long time. been true for munzer for a really long time um specifically it just feels like especially in germany i you know i don't know uh specifically how widely he's known about here in america

um but it feels like every time there is some world historic thing happening in germany they have to take a new position on him um And so, I don't know, is there something that you see that's inherent to his story that makes it kind of adaptable or easy to co-opt for whatever's happening at the moment? One of the things that I've only just come to realize

having written the book and got it printed and then open it up and I think, oh, I should have said this, is he had this well he had this um repeated term the the godless tyrants um now he referred basically to the essentially the the nobility the princes the rich merchants, and obviously the Roman Catholic Church. He referred to them as godless tyrants. Now, it occurred to me that the word godless is actually quite an interesting one.

And, you know, I'm very definitely an atheist. I don't believe in God one way or another. But the word godless to me actually smacks of you know it's it's we we know them all it's it's the people who are trashing the planet it's it's uh it's you know bezos it's it's it's these godless people who really don't care about um you know refugees you don't care about starting a war um and then you've got the other half of the equation which is the tyrants and we all knew who they are so my view is that you know basically munzo said don't be afraid of the godless tyrants that's the fear of

man stick to your principles uh do not fear the godless tyrants and i think that is actually the message for today um where i had to say it yeah which of course which of course i haven't but but yeah that's that's uh that's the message i i've taken from from munzer yeah and i think that like just to kind of like tie a bow on things here we can start we can uh you know wrap up we're almost at an hour but um i think that one of the things that i found so resonant was his emphasis on dreams and visions i'm like you i um i don't believe in any christian god i mean i guess i would probably describe myself as an agnostic leaning towards atheists most days of the week.

However, I do have a deep abiding commitment to, you know, changing the world, seeing a better world come about. And one of the things that is so interesting as someone who's been in leftist spaces for so long is that you are constantly encouraged to read this, that, and the other, to study up on this, that, and the other. Obviously, anyone who's been listening to this show knows how much I do support that and encourage people to read and study and learn as much about the world as possible. And read and buy this book, by the way. However, it is impossible in your life to read every single book that's ever been written. You're not going to know all the knowledge about the world.

And even if you did, it still wouldn't give you the perfect roadmap to changing it. And so I think there's something that's kind of inspiring about Munzer saying that, look, you don't have to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible. There's something deep within you that knows what's right and wrong. And, you know, you derive those from a deep place within you. And more importantly, like you said, Andy, stick to your guns, stick to your principles. Importantly, like you said, Andy, stick to your guns, stick to your principles. And I think that's just a very, like you said, planting the flag early on in this 21st century.

We don't, you know, exactly know how things are going to play out. We can see inklings of them here and there. But I think that planting that flag early on is really good. And that's why, yeah, I encourage everyone to go read the book i learned quite a bit from it and so uh i really appreciate you coming on the show and talking about it with me it's been really it's been a very great learning experience and and honestly it's it's kind of made me go down the rabbit hole about the holy roman empire in general so which is a fun rabbit hole. Yeah. But yeah, so Andy,

I encourage you all to go read the book. It's called The Dreadful History and Judgment of God on Thomas Müntzer, The Life and Times of an Early German Revolutionary. It's out from Verso Books, so please go check it out. Andy, anything else you would like to plug or anything else you'd like to say before we let you go? No, no.

I'm quite happy with – I mean, we could go on for hours and hours about this, but I think I'm quite happy I've covered the topics I wanted to cover anyway. So that's good. Good. Yes. leave a little bit for the reader to to you know be able to dive in on their own and not not feel uh you know uh like they've had it spoiled for them so i mean i would say i would i would say that um when i started writing this book i knew that i didn't want to write an academic book so easy to write an academic book about mincer and get lost in his theology. I wanted to make it a book that people could actually read and hopefully understand. So sometimes it's a little bit lighthearted.

It's almost impossible to make a joke about the German Peasants' War, but I think on a couple of occasions I have. I agree. It is lighthearted. And like I said, the personalities of these I have. I agree. It is lighthearted. And like I said, the personalities of these individuals are also individually fascinating. I mean, you could go down an entire rabbit hole on Andreas, is it Karlstad? Like, that guy is a fascinating guy. Yeah, he was, yeah.

And it's very readable, though. It's a great narrative. And it's propelled along by the very fascinating personalities of the people involved so uh i think you accomplished in what you set out to do andy and so i really appreciate it Oh ja, sunt camun, ja. Geschieht uns allen. Was dem einen gehört, ist uns allen gemeinsam. Wenn einer in Not ist, sind wir alle an seiner Seite.