Lyndal Roper has written about the 16th -century farmers who dreamed of justice
“Summer of Fire and Blood” by Lyndal Roper
When it came about First political mass movement? A common answer is: during the French Revolution of 1789, when the national poor allies with Paris lawyers. A new – and a bit shocking – answer comes the Oxford -historian Lyndal Roper Included in his beautiful book “Summer of Fire and Blood”. She believes that the first mass movement was already created in the 1520s of Germany.
The event itself is known. The German Boer War broke out in 1524. Concerned by the Reformation, radicalized farmers from southwestern Germany marched, the country with requirements for the abolition of life and lower taxes. Citizens were burned, the monastery destroyed and killed dukes, but were stopped in 1525 by princely troops. More than 100,000 farmers were killed – the end. Marx And English Was fascinated by the war and described it as a failed bourgeois revolution. English emphasized his rebel leader, the priest Thomas MüntzerAs a communist time traveler, without a revolutionary class by his side.
Wrong wrong, wrong, Calls out. What both Marx and English, as well as later history writers, have not understood, is that the farmer was only a mass movement. A mass movement can be compared with … an octopus! A beautiful essence with blue blood, built -in turbo operation and the brain in the arms. Only its existence puts the world upside down – and exactly the farmers did raw.
Formed an Occupy movement quickly and created a precursor to the working municipalities
It started after a Duchess in Sthühänt ordered his life to collect empty sea shells, intended as a warning that became a symbol of the oppression from above. Her servants refused, came together and developed a political program Light: tax, purchased tenth, new generals, AV financing of the monastery and so on. An Occupy movement was quickly formed and created a precursor of the working municipalities. The Octopus had been on the turbo -road – and thought with its arms.
It is a pleasure to read Roper’s Blood and Dirt scented prose. Prior to “Summer of Fire and Blood” she cycled the resurrection of sixty miles, and from time to time it feels like reading a war report, steaming daily fresh pressure. In a somewhat fantastic way, she manages to get to the inner dreams of time, through reconstructions of pamphlets, diaries and letters. Because the farmers lost the war, and the history of victories is a single large cancellation culture, it is a neighborhood sheet. But Roper knows the time on his five fingers. She has written no less than two biographies Martin Luther last.
Here is how The reconstruction look: by studying carefully contemporary artists who Albrecht Dürer And Lucas Cranach Discover the roller that farmers are depicted around 1520 in a new way. Suddenly you see them in antique poses, with stately boots and swords in the belt while binding grain and recovering machines. Roper connects this with well -known theologians from that time (as Andreas Karlstadt) The bald in felt hat changes and wants to be attracted by “brother” instead of “doctor”. The conclusion is that it has suddenly become hip to be a farmer – a formidable ruralization wave swept through the country. I see Olle Sarri In the movie “Together” for me, with a team instead of lathe.
In addition, Roper deconstrates the image of the farmers as a bloodthirsty Red Khmer. Already in 2016 gave Per Svensson From “Freedom, Equality, Reformation!” Where he resembled the rebels in Taliban and Müntzer with an Islamist with Holle -yeyed. This is what it looks like when citizens write history: the smallest beep about financial equalization must be stamped with “terror” and “Gulag” – even if it was 500 years ago. Roper is not blind to the roads – Anti -Semitism was an active ingredient in the uprising – but points out that the majority of the farming movement was certainly violent – but not murderous. The occupied monasteries rarely killed the monks. Instead, they cut the fishing nets in the ponds, took the gold from the abbot and drank the wine in the basement. The gold was used to start a fund for the dowry for poor women. This is how a vibrant popular movement works: Tegel -Rijk in the tentacles. And the farmers were hardly a bloodthirsty Khmer – they reminded more of anarchists with dreadlocks in Christiania.
De Hoop continued and burned castles. These buildings held up as a poison toad chairs in the landscape, the ancient malignant time was symbolized. On one occasion it is notorious Margareta Renner “Cut the trailer on the noble ladies”. The idea was to make the misses “picked geese”, with a Rabelaian humor. Communion was taken and melted in the castle chapel. Luther had come involuntarily in a way to finance the revolution, so he was shocked. Make the sloppy jam of the farmers’ dips, he appealed to the princes.
The idea is flaring up: if political democracy celebrates 500 years this year, where would we have been?
So it went As always accompanied by popular founders. The princes and their vassals united. The dream of freedom was a fight with glow bars and stretchbank. Afterwards dried the authorization of blood from the sword – as usual – that another society is “not realistic”. But as Roper notes, it was a hair moaning that the revolution succeeded – as long as the miners came. Perhaps “freedom, equality and brotherhood” was then the result of the reform and not the French Revolution. The idea is flaring up: if political democracy celebrates 500 years this year, where would we have been?
The conclusion that we can draw from Roper’s masterpiece is optimistic cheers. There are no “historical schedules” for revolutions. And that “peasant revolt is bloody” – with Jan Myrdals Transport – is not necessarily a truth. Likewise, people seem to have an evolutionary coded operation to rebel in class communities. That roller shows lies in line with what is left Rebecca Solnit And David Graeber Formulated: Revolutions are reminiscent of large, underground Mycelium. Suddenly colorful sponges rise where you expect it the least – because the really impressive the patient is underground. The Volten Bonde in Germany started with anger over sea shells like a yarn, but was converted slightly into a think tank where an amazing modernity was formulated. Anabaptists dreamed of abolishing the nuclear family, lease farmers fantasized about a harmonious relationship with nature, swords demanded an end to privatization policy. The political visions were prepared, dynamic and intelligent.
At a time when we no longer dream of a revolutionary industrial employee class, this is good news. The world can be turned upside down by other Octopus. Mycelium spreads during the contemporary AI paths and day warehouses in the gig -economy.
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