ABSTRACT
The 450th anniversary of the Peasant War was also the 125th of the publication of The Peasant War in Germany by Friedrich Engels. Originally a series of articles in the May-October issue of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung edited by Marx and Engels, The Peasant War was re-published in 1870 and 1875 and many times since, with prefaces by Engels. The subject remained dear to Engels for the rest of his life and was to serve as a basis for further work on the peasantry and the agrarian question. Numerous references in his correspondence and a whole series of notes testify to the plans Engels had for a more elaborate study. Shordy before his death he still counted on starting work soon: ‘If only I were already at it’, he wrote on May 21, 1895 [ Engels, 1956: 209].
