ABSTRACT
‘The first great action of the rising bourgeoisie’ in Germany reached its highpoint in the Reformation and Peasant War, the most significant revolutionary mass movement of the German people until the November Revolution of 1918. The long predominance and far from negligible effects of the Protestant legend about Luther has not only obscured our picture of Muntzer and the role of the anabaptists, but it has allowed important events to retreat into the background. Germany’s economic position is characterised by a significant upturn of commercial production. There were numerous technical inventions, particularly useful for development of new mineral resources, which were favoured by extended long-distance trade routes. The basic details of Germany’s economic and political position were worked out on the eve of the early bourgeois revolution, sharpening and increasing the inherent contradictions. The rise of the princes led necessarily to the decline of the knights, and to the loss of autonomy of numerous, formerly independent cities.
