Heinrich Pfeiffer (farmer's guide)

Heinrich Pfeiffer , born as Heinrich Schwertfeger (* before 1500 in Mühlhausen ; † 27 May 1525 executed near Mühlhausen ), was a Cistercian monk , later a Protestant preacher and fellow campaigner of Thomas Müntzer in the Peasants' War .

Life

Heinrich's exact date of birth is not known, but with some probability it was between 1485 and 1495. Almost nothing is known about his father. His first name is unknown. He was a citizen of Mühlhausen. Pfeiffer left the Cistercian monastery Reifenstein in Eichsfeld in Thuringia in 1521. The Cistercians were among the energetic opponents of the Reformation , but Pfeiffer had obviously dealt with the reformist writings, because he fled the monastery on the nearby Scharfenstein in 1521 , where he lived under the Burglinde preached the Lutheran teachings to the residents of the surrounding villages. He was therefore expelled from the castle and went to Mühlhausen in February 1523. At the beginning of 1523 he gave his first sermon in Mühlhausen in the open air. The sermons are not recorded. His sermons against the nobility and the clergy intensified the inner-city conflicts. Clerics were driven out and the anti-clerical mood spread to the rural areas. The Mühlhausen council consulted the council of the neighboring town of Nordhausen about further behavior towards Pfeiffer. It was therefore assumed that the sermons were directed not only against the papal church and the clergy, but also against the secular authorities. On February 9th, he was summoned to the town hall by the council. But the council let him and his supporters, who threatened to band together, go again. On April 1, 1523 Pfeiffer was called to the council again. His followers banded together and organized themselves. On the same day Pfeiffer was actively involved in the election of the Mühlhausen eight men. The eight men were a committee of eight men, two from each quarter, to exercise rights against the council. The eight men mostly came from the petty bourgeoisie. On August 24, 1523, the two preachers Pfeiffer and Hisolidus were expelled from the city. Pfeiffer stayed briefly in Weimar and probably returned to Mühlhausen in December 1523.

Thomas Müntzer arrived in Mühlhausen in August 1524 . Müntzer's motivation to come to Mühlhausen is unknown. Perhaps he hoped to find a favorable atmosphere in Mühlhausen for his Reformation ideas. In September Pfeiffer formulated the eleven articles with Müntzer. They called for the establishment of an "eternal" council and a Christian order. However, the Mühlhausen council managed to expel Pfeiffer and Müntzer. Pfeiffer went to Nuremberg , where he wanted to have the writings “How the Auffrur zu Mulhausen rises” and “Of the repeal of the law” printed. The writings have not been preserved. The manuscripts were presented to the preacher Andreas Osiander by the Nuremberg Council and, according to his expert opinion, not printed. On October 29th, Pfeiffer was expelled from the Nuremberg Council. A short stay in Erlangen followed . Pfeiffer returned to Mühlhausen on December 13, 1524 and, after Müntzer's return to Mühlhausen in mid-February 1525, worked at his side. In addition to Müntzer, Pfeiffer became the leader of the uprising in Mühlhausen and the surrounding area. On April 26th, the first military operation outside Mühlhausen to Salza ( Bad Langensalza ) was carried out under Pfeiffer's direction . Müntzer stayed in Mühlhausen. After the victory of the princes in the Battle of Frankenhausen , Pfeiffer left Mühlhausen on May 26, 1525 with about 300 rebels. However, he was captured with about 50 men on the same day near Eisenach . Together with Müntzer he was executed in the field camp between Mühlhausen and Görmar .

Research history

The former Jesuit Johann Wolf was the first scientist to deal with Heinrich Pfeiffer . As a reason for his work with Pfeiffer, he cited that science had already dealt with Müntzer in detail, but had so far neglected Pfeiffer. However, Wolf soon reached the limits of his biography due to the limited source material. In Pfeiffer Wolf saw a "nefarious" revolting preacher and false interpreter, "who with his habit had completely undressed not only the monk, but also the Christians and people". The second major scientific work on Pfeiffer was the dissertation Thomas Münzer and Heinrich Pfeiffer 1523-1525 published by Otto Merx in 1889 . A contribution to the history of the Peasant War in Thuringia. Unlike his predecessors, he described Pfeiffer as “a man of great energy and sparkling eloquence. With courage and energy, with tenacity and perseverance, he pursued the goals he had set for himself, and not shrinking from any danger he rested no earlier than until he had achieved them ”. In 1933 Günther Franz saw in Pfeiffer an absolute supporter of Müntzer, who "used his established influence for Müntzer's teaching". At the beginning of the 1950s, the important Soviet peasant war researcher Moisej Mendeljewitsch considered Smirin Pfeiffer's role in connection with the Thuringian uprising to be so insignificant that he hardly considered it in his remarks. It was not until Manfred Bensing's dissertation, printed in 1966, that Pfeiffer's assessment changed. For Bensing, Pfeiffer was a traitor to Thomas Müntzer and the Thuringian uprising. From this point in time at the latest, Pfeiffer was seen, especially in East German and socialist historiography, as an ideologue in his own right, but far too deeply rooted in the petty bourgeoisie. In 1975, Gerhard Günter attempted to save his honor, in that their relationship was more likely to be “a fighting community of Müntzer and Pfeiffer that would last until death”. In 1987 the apparent contradiction between Müntzer and Pfeiffer was cleared up and exposed as a pure polemic.

Commemoration

A monument and a street named after him in Mühlhausen commemorate Heinrich Pfeiffer. Since 2003, the city of Mühlhausen has also been commemorating the time of the Peasant War and the life and work of Thomas Müntzer and Heinrich Pfeiffer with the “Müntzerspiel”. The Frauentor with its well-preserved city wall, the Marienkirche and the historic town hall become the stage for this drama.

literature

• Günter Vogler :  Pfeiffer, Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 319 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Gerhard Günther : Comments on "Thomas Müntzer and Heinrich Pfeiffer in Mühlhausen" In: Gerhard Heitz (Ed.), The farmer in the class struggle. Studies on the history of the German peasant war and the peasant class struggles in late feudalism, Berlin a. a. 1975, pp. 157-182.
• Thomas T. Müller: Müntzer's tool or charismatic leader? Heinrich Pfeiffer's role in the Thuringian uprising of 1525 . In: Günter Vogler (Ed.): Peasants' War between Harz and Thuringian Forest . Steiner, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-515-09175-6 , ( Historical Communications Supplement 69), pp. 243-259.
• Thomas T. Müller: “Listen, I want to announce a different beer to you.” The life of the Mühlhausen farmer's guide Heinrich Schwertfeger, known as Pfeiffer. A literature study . In: Eichsfeld-Jahrbuch 1997, ISSN  1610-6741 , pp. 47-66.

Web links

• Biography ( memento of February 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (Italian) in the Dizionario del pensiero cristiano alternativo (accessed on September 13, 2012)
• "Müntzerspiel" - peasant war spectacle in the city of Mühlhausen, which reminds of the life and work of Thomas Müntzer and Heinrich Pfeiffer

Remarks

1. ↑ Thomas T. Müller: Müntzer's tool or charismatic leader? Heinrich Pfeiffer's role in the Thuringian uprising of 1525 . In: Günter Vogler (Ed.): Peasants' War between Harz and Thuringian Forest . Stuttgart 2008, pp. 243-259, here: p. 247.
2. ↑ Reinhard Jonscher: The Reformation in Thuringia up to the eve of the Peasants' War. In: Günter Vogler (Ed.): Peasants' War between Harz and Thuringian Forest . Stuttgart 2008, pp. 31–42, here: p. 38.
3. ^ Gerhard Günther: The inner-city movement in the imperial city of Mühlhausen and the actions in the peasant war from 1523 to 1525. In: Günter Vogler (ed.): Peasant war between the Harz and Thuringian Forest . Stuttgart 2008, pp. 92–111, here: p. 92.
4. ↑ Sven Tode, Stadt im Bauernkrieg 1525. Structural analysis of the city in space using the examples Erfurt, Mühlhausen / Thür., Langensalza and Thamsbrück, Frankfurt am Main and others. a. 1994, p. 169
5. ^ Gerhard Günther: The inner-city movement in the imperial city of Mühlhausen and the actions in the peasant war from 1523 to 1525. In: Günter Vogler (ed.): Peasant war between the Harz and Thuringian Forest . Stuttgart 2008, pp. 92–111, here: p. 93.
6. ^ Gerhard Günther: The inner-city movement in the imperial city of Mühlhausen and the actions in the peasant war from 1523 to 1525. In: Günter Vogler (ed.): Peasant war between the Harz and Thuringian Forest . Stuttgart 2008, pp. 92–111, here: p. 94.
7. ^ Hans-Jürgen Goertz: Thomas Müntzer. Mystic - apocalyptic - revolutionary . Munich 1989, p. 137.
8. ^ Gerhard Günther: The inner-city movement in the imperial city of Mühlhausen and the actions in the peasant war from 1523 to 1525. In: Günter Vogler (ed.): Peasant war between the Harz and Thuringian Forest . Stuttgart 2008, pp. 92–111, here: p. 100.
9. ^ Gerhard Günther: The inner-city movement in the imperial city of Mühlhausen and the actions in the peasant war from 1523 to 1525. In: Günter Vogler (ed.): Peasant war between the Harz and Thuringian Forest . Stuttgart 2008, pp. 92–111, here: p. 102.
10. ↑ On the history of research: Thomas T. Müller: Müntzer's tool or charismatic leader? Heinrich Pfeiffer's role in the Thuringian uprising of 1525 . In: Günter Vogler (Ed.): Peasants' War between Harz and Thuringian Forest . Steiner, Stuttgart 2008, pp. 243-259, here: pp. 243f.
11. ^ Johann Wolf: Cities in the Obereichsfeld . Duderstadt 1994, p. 89.
12. ^ Otto Merx: Thomas Münzer and Heinrich Pfeiffer 1523–1525. A contribution to the history of the Peasant War in Thuringia, Thiel I: Thomas Münzer and Heinrich Pfeiffer up to the outbreak of the Peasant War . Göttingen 1889, p. 53.
13. ^ Günther Franz: The German Peasant War , Berlin and Munich 1933, p. 256.
14. ↑ Moisej Mendeljewitsch Smirin: The People's Reformation of Thomas Munzer and the great Peasants' War . Berlin 1952.
15. ↑ Manfred Bensing: Thomas Müntzer and the Thuringian uprising of 1525 . Berlin 1966, pp. 182-189.
16. ↑ Ludwig Rommel, Heinrich Pfeiffer and Thomas Müntzer or the story of a legend . In: Jahrbuch für Geschichte des Feudalismus 11 (1987), pp. 203-211.