ABSTRACT
The German Peasant War of 1525 can be described as the most important of the pre-modern European peasant revolts and as the first of the great modern revolutions. It stands beside the Revolution of November 1918 as one of the landmarks of German revolutionary history. This chapter examines the treatment of this event by German socialist historians since the mid-nineteenth century. The ways in which they dealt with the subject raise important issues for the relationship between people's history and socialist theory. Zimmermann's appeal was strengthened by his involvement in the Revolution of 1848, when he was elected to the Frankfurt Assembly, in which he belonged to the radical wing. Engels' Peasant War in Germany was largely an expression of frustration at the failure of 1848, and a restatement of his belief in the continuance of the revolutionary tradition in Germany.
