The Peasant War in Germany

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The Peasant War in Germany
Frederick Engels
Written: Summer 1850, London;
Published: Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Revue;
Translated: by Moissaye J. Olgin in 1926 for International Publishers;
Transcribed: by [e-mail], July 1995, online Jan 4 1996;
Proofed and Corrected: Mark Harris (2010), Dave Allinson (2016).
Marxists Internet Archive
Available online at:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/peasant-war-germany/index.htm
The 1848 uprisings in Germany put Engels in mind of the last great peasant rebellions of
the 1500s. As he would later write:
“The  parallel  between  the  German  Revolution  of  1525  and  that  of  1848–49  was  too
obvious to be altogether ignored at that time.”
Engels  demonstrates  the  failure  of  both  these  revolutions  was  largely  attributable  to  the
bourgeois/burgerdom (and thus underscoring the modern need for an alliance between the
working proletariat and the working peasantry).
The Peasant War in Germany was the first history book to assert that the real motivating
force  behind  the  Reformation  and  16th-century  peasant  war  was  socio-economic  (class
conflict) rather than “merely” religious.
The Peasant War in Germany
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Contents
Author’s Preface to the Second Edition
(1870) ..... 4
Author’s Addendum to the Preface
(1874) ..... 11
Chapter 1: The Economic Situation and Classes in Germany
..... 16
Chapter  2:  The  Main  Opposition  Groups  and  their  Programmes;  Luther  and
Muenzer
..... 26
Chapter 3: Precursors: Peasant Uprisings, 1476–1517
..... 42
Chapter 4: Uprising of the Nobility
..... 53
Chapter 5: The Peasant War in Suabia and Franconia
..... 57
Chapter 6: The Peasant War in Thuringia, Alsace and Austria
..... 78
Chapter 7: Significance of the Peasant War
..... 86
The Twelve Articles of the Peasants
..... 91
Comments by D. Riazanov
..... 95
Facsimile of opening pages from the 1870 edition
..... 99
Notes
..... 100
The Peasant War in Germany
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Preface to the Second Edition (1870)
This work was written in London in the summer of 1850, under the vivid impression of the
counter-revolution that had just been completed. It appeared in 1850 in the fifth and sixth
issues of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, a political economic review edited by Karl Marx in
Hamburg. My political friends in Germany desire to see it in book form, and I hereby fulfil
that desire, since, unfortunately, it still has the interest of timeliness.
The  work  does  not  pretend  to  present  independently  collected  material.  Quite  the
contrary, all the material relating to the peasant revolts and to Thomas Muenzer has been
taken from Zimmermann
[1]
whose book, although showing gaps here and there, is still the
best presentation of the facts. Moreover, old Zimmermann enjoyed his subject. The same
revolutionary instinct which makes him here the advocate of the oppressed classes, made
him later one of the best in the extreme left wing of Frankfurt.
If, nevertheless, the Zimmermann representation lacks internal coherence; if it does not
succeed in showing the religious and political controversies of that epoch as a reflection of
the  class  struggles  that  were  taking  place  simultaneously;  if  it  sees  in  the  class  struggles
only  oppressors  and  oppressed,  good  and  evil,  and  the  final  victory  of  evil;  if  its  insight
into social conditions which determined both the outbreak and the outcome of the struggle
is  extremely  poor,  it  was  the  fault  of  the  time  in  which  that  book  came  into  existence.
Nevertheless, for its time, and among the German idealistic works on history, it stands out
as written in a very realistic vein.
This  book,  while  giving  the  historic  course  of  the  struggle  only  in  its  outlines,
undertakes  to  explain  the  origin  of  the  peasant  wars,  the  attitude  of  the  various  parties
which  appear  in  the  war,  the  political  and  religious  theories  through  which  those  parties
strove to make clear to themselves their position; and finally, the result of the struggle as
determined by the historical-social conditions of life, to show the political constitution of
Germany  of  that  time,  the  revolt  against  it;  and  to  prove  that  the  political  and  religious
theories were not the causes, but the result of that stage in the development of agriculture,
industry, land and waterways, commerce and finance, which then existed in Germany. This,
the only materialistic conception of history, originates, not from myself but from Marx, and
can  be  found  in  his  works  on  the  French  Revolution  of  1848–9,  published  in  the  same
review, and in his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
The parallel between the German Revolutions of 1525 and of 1848–9 was too obvious
to  be  left  entirely  without  attention.  However,  together  with  an  identity  of  events  in  both
cases, as for instance, the suppression of one local revolt after the other by the army of the
princes,  together  with  a  sometimes  comic  similitude  in  the  behaviour  of  the  city  middle-
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