A history of the Mu?nster Anabaptists: Inner Emigration and the Third Reich: A Critical Edition of Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen's Bockelson: A Tale of Mass Insanity

A HISTORY OF THE MÜNSTER ANABAPTISTS

Other Work by Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen in English Translation Diary of a Man in Despair

Other Books by George B. von der Lippe Max Schmeling: An Autobiography (Edited and translated) The Figure of Martin Luther in Twentieth-Century German Literature: The Metamorphosis of a National Symbol

A History of the Münster Anabaptists Inner Emigration and the Third Reich

A Critical Edition of Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen’s Bockelson: A Tale of Mass Insanity Translated and Edited by George B. von der Lippe and Viktoria M. Reck-Malleczewen

A HISTORY OF THE MÜNSTER ANABAPTISTS

Copyright © George B. von der Lippe and Viktoria M. Reck-Malleczewen, 2008. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–60547–3 ISBN-10: 0–230–60547–8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A history of the Münster Anabaptists : inner emigration and the Third Reich / translated and edited by George B. von der Lippe and Viktoria M. Reck-Malleczewen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–230–60547–8 1. Anabaptists. 2. Germany—Church history—16th century. 3. Reck-Malleczewen, Fritz Percy, 1884–1945. Bockelson. 4. Beukelszoon, Jan, 1509–1536. I. Lippe, George B. von der. II. Reck-Malleczewen, Viktoria. BX4933.G3H57 2008 2849.309435614—dc22

2007045687

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: June 2008 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

This work is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Leonard Paul Stoltz.

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Contents

List of Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgments

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Translator’s Preface Conservative Opposition: Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen’s Antifascist Novel Bockelson: A History of Mass Hysteria Karl-Heinz Schoeps The Last Sunday Viktoria M. Reck-Malleczewen 1 Prologue (Prologus)

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1

2 The Beginning of the Tragedy (Incipit Tragoedia)

17

3 The City of God (Urbs Dei)

39

4 The Sword (Gladius)

53

5 The Last Whore (Deterrima Cunnus)

71

6 King of the Sewer (Rex Cacans)

85

7

Desperate Hope (Spes Desperata)

113

8 Starvation (Fames)

137

9 Day of Wrath (Dies Irae)

153

10 Lest I Be Burned in Eternal Fire (Ne Perenni Cremer Igni)

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CONT ENT S

Works Cited/Consulted

187

Anabaptist Bibliography

191

Inner Emigration Bibliography

199

Index

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Illustrations

Cover Image View of the Siege of Münster, 1534; woodcut by Erhard Schoen (courtesy of the Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster). 1.1 Reck-Malleczewen relaxing next to the Alz River, which flowed through his beloved estate of Poing bei Truchtlaching in the Chiemgau region of southern Bavaria. The picture was taken in the late 1930s or early 1940s, a time in which Reck was already well into his own “inner emigration.” 1.2 Portrait of Jan van Leiden, 1536; copper etching by Heinrich Aldegrever (courtesy of the Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster). 1.3 Portrait of Bernd Knipperdolling, 1536; copper etching by Jan Muller from portrait by Heinrich Aldegrever (courtesy of the Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte). 2.1 Statues of the Madonna and Nine Apostles from the West Portal of the Überwasser Church, ca. 1370; sculptor(s) unknown (courtesy of the Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte). 4.1 The Severed head of Jan Matthys, ca. 1534; contemporary woodcut (courtesy of the Granger Collection). 4.2 Portrait of Hille Feiken, the beautiful “Judith of Münster,” executed in the summer of 1534; woodcut, artist unknown (courtesy of the Granger Collection).

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5.1 Portrait of Gertrud van Utrecht (actually Divara van Haarlem), 1536; woodcut by Hans Wandereysen (courtesy of the Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte). 8.1 Jan van Leiden beheading one of his wives, Elisabeth Wantscherer, 1535; copper etching from Lambertius Hortensius’s History of the Anabaptists, 1694 (courtesy of the Granger Collection). 10.1 Contemporary Flugschrift (Flier) depicting the executed Bockelson, Knipperdolling, and Bernd Krechting hanging in cages from the Lamberti Church steeple, 1536 (courtesy of the Münster City Archives).

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Acknowledgments

We would like to offer heartfelt thanks to Dr. Neil Donahue and Dr. Karl-Heinz Schoeps for making this project possible. We would also like to acknowledge Joseph Breault, whose technical expertise, good nature, and patience were indispensable; and many thanks as well to Mark Stoltz. In Münster we would especially like to thank Irmgard Pelster of the Münster City archives and Ursula Grimm of the Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte. And finally, we want to express our grateful appreciation to Saint Anselm College for its generous support of this project.

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Translator’s Preface

Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen was born on August 11, 1884 into a

family of East Prussian landed gentry (Junkers) on the estate Gut Malleczewen, the only remainder of which is a small cemetery in what is today Elk, Poland. From his early memories he wrote that “home . . . was those lonely estates, the broad snowfields, crystal blue lakes in the jewels of autumn—golden beech forests, November fogs. . . . Those expansive plains between the mountain ranges which stretch from the Urals down to Eastern Prussia are desolate, sparsely populated, and filled with demons and dusky gods. Western Germans, even those from just west of the Weichsel (Vistula) River, will never understand this world” (Irmgard Reck-Malleczewen, 21, our translation). For Reck, East Prussia would always be a realm unto itself, at once German and Slavic. Although family expectations were for him to enter the military or political realm, young Reck’s greater interest was for music, and he later studied medicine at the Universities of Königsberg and Innsbruck. He then worked a stint as a ship’s doctor, which would give him material for later travel novels. Thereafter he began devoting the majority of his professional life to journalism, while music and the study of history were lifelong passions that would always occupy a portion of his time. Reck moved south and continued to pursue his literary career as a theater critic for the Süddeutsche Zeitung in Stuttgart. In 1925 he acquired the estate Poing bei Truchtlaching in the Bavarian Chiemgau region, where he would remarry in 1935 and start a second family of three daughters.1 Writing, much of which were travel and adventure novels as well as some historical novels (a body of work largely written off by critics as so-called Trivialliteratur), was his occupation during the Weimar Republic (1918–1933) and the years of the Third Reich (1933 to his death at Dachau concentration camp in 1945).

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Reck was most certainly a conservative, indeed, an outspoken monarchist and self-styled aristocrat 2 (which did not endear him in every quarter) who felt the ill-fated Weimar Republic to be a political mistake, yet who after 1933 came to realize that Hitler’s Third Reich would be so much worse—a fatal, all-encompassing disaster of immeasurable proportions. In 1933 Reck converted to Catholicism, which he felt to be “the last bulwark against society’s increasing coarsening and loss of individuality” (Reck, Bockelson, 24, our translation). The intensity of Reck’s complete disdain for Hitler and the Nazi regime and the boldness with which he openly expressed it would only increase in direct proportion to the increase of repression and atrocities within the Third Reich. In a review of the 2000-edition English translation of Reck’s Diary of a Man in Despair, Jason Cowley wrote of Reck-Malleczewen: “A cultural conservative, monarchist, snob and extreme pessimist, Reck is a man out of a time, at once listlessly estranged from German modernity and mournfully engaged with it. His prose has a superb hauteur and he addresses the world out of the absurd aristocracy of his background. . . . He despises industrialism, mass-man and the ‘termite-heap’ society, Prussian militarism, the new ‘Business German’ spoken by the swarming hordes in Berlin, ‘processed food’ and the petty bureaucrats of Nazism. . . . But, above all, he despises Adolf Hitler . . .” (Cowley, 53–54). This is indeed a unique individual who, in writing and publishing Bockelson while remaining in Nazi Germany, aimed and landed a direct literary blow to the Adolf Hitler whom he loathed beyond all else. Reck’s “prose of superb hauteur” often presents one with a challenging read, and it is an even more challenging undertaking for the translator who attempts to retain Reck’s style of overwrought and elitist nineteenth-century prose, while at the same time investing the work with the requisite clarity for an English-language reader of the twenty-first century. Though relatively unknown, Reck-Malleczewen’s name fits prominently into the phenomenon in German literary and cultural history that was only later given the name Inner Emigration. Inner emigrants were writers, artists, and scholars from everywhere across the political spectrum, who remained in Germany during the Third Reich and sought to express varying degrees of protest to the Hitler regime.3 To better explain Reck and his work within the context of Inner Emigration, it is best to pose a few questions. How much of Reck’s Bockelson figure can be ascribed to Reck’s hatred of Adolf Hitler? What literary techniques did Reck use to establish parallels between

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Bockelson/Münster and Hitler/Third Reich such that Bockelson would be published (it was, if only briefly) while keeping himself out of harm’s way (which ultimately he could not do)? The first consideration—the relationship of Reck’s Bockelson figure to Adolf Hitler—is best addressed by consulting Reck’s diary; covering the period from August 11, 1936 to October 1944, it was first published in 1947 and translated into English in 1970. One need not read far to find definitive statements with respect to Hitler: “I saw Hitler last in Seebruck, slowly gliding by in a car with armor-plated sides . . . : a jellylike, slag-gray face, a moonface into which two melancholy jet-black eyes had been set like raisins. . . . What I saw gliding by there . . . like the Prince of Darkness himself . . . was no human being” (Diary, 22–23). Compare a description of Hitler contained in the April 1939 entry of Reck’s Diary with a Bockelson description, already published in 1937: But Bockelson? His are the blurred and gelatinous features of a bastard born in a roadside ditch, of the barkeep and pimp. . . . (Bockelson, 12) I examined [Hitler’s] face through my binoculars. The whole of it waggled with unhealthy cushions of fat; it hung, it was all slack without structure—slaggy, gelatinous, sick.” (Diary, 75)

The parallels between Reck’s Bockelson and Hitler are clear and unmistakable. In that the majority of Reck’s diary was written after the completion and publication of Bockelson, it would appear that the Bockelson and Hitler figures were interchangeable for Reck—a single personification of evil whom Reck had openly presented to a German readership with the 1937 publication of Bockelson. In his Diary entry for September 9, 1937 Reck writes: “My friends have taken the occasion to give me warning about my own writings. . . . Night after night, I hide this record deep in the woods on my land . . . constantly on the watch lest I am observed, constantly changing my hiding place” (Diary, 42).4 Hence, a great deal of that journal’s content which Reck felt the need to hide “night after night” would have already been reviewed by Nazi censors and published as the political-historical roman à clef, Bockelson: Geschichte eines Massenwahns. Reck’s means of getting his text published fall into several basic categories. First there is Reck’s primary layer of historical cover: Bockelson’s reign over the Münster Anabaptist community of 1534– 1535 is the perfect metaphor, as the average person knew little or nothing about it; a secondary layer is afforded by the French

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Revolution, about which Reck knew a great deal; further layers consist of historical figures and events from numerous times and places. In short, Bockelson abounds in historical red herrings whose often vague relevance to the text at hand could serve to distract and confuse even the most astute reader. Consider an example of a dangerously clear observation followed immediately by a questionably relevant statement concerning the French Revolution: “‘Ein König aufrecht über alles. Ein Gott, ein Glaube, eine Taufe . . .’ (‘One King upright above all. One God, one faith, one baptism’). And so we would appear to have come to a parallel with the French Revolution, at that juncture when the states are consolidated and when Napoleon settled in St. Cloud and Malmaison, and persecuted the Jacobins and called for the old emigrated aristocracy to return” (Reck, Bockelson, 127). Hence a telling blow is not left simply hanging in midair to be picked off by Nazi censors but is rather followed immediately by a flurry of almost non-sequitur details concerning the French Revolution. The reader may also be drawn into a pastiche of obscure historical characters and then hit with another Bockelson-as-Hitler jibe, fortuitously attributed to someone else (i.e., Kerrsenbroch): “Back then the memory of Karl von Luxemburg and the first Maximilian still lives on in their hearts and when we hear today the reports written around 1450 by lady-in-waiting Helene Kottaner about the crowning of a Hungarian King who was then but four weeks old, so the hymns to the mystical crowns of the Middle Ages still sing to us today. . . . But here fate would have it that someone born in a gutter grabs for the crown—a ‘theater king and commander of whores’ as Kerssenbroch so liked to call him. . . .” (Reck, Bockelson, 120–121) In this instance a series of somewhat interesting but ultimately confusing historical jabs allow Reck to land an unexpected and therefore all-the-more punishing shot at the Bockelson-Hitler figure. Reck’s prose itself, at times academic and arcane, and at times appearing to be simply chaotic and labyrinthine, serves, at least initially, to deflect the notion that therein lies an abiding hatred of Hitler and the Third Reich. Seemingly pompous conventions such as Latin chapter titles,5 liberal sprinklings of Latin, French, and old Plattdeutsch (Lowland German), as well as numerous historical, literary, and biblical references, support the initial impression that Bockelson is nothing more than a scholarly treatise on a little-known incident in German history. Equally important, Bockelson abounds with instances of antiBolshevist sentiments and jargon, all sincere expressions of monarchist Reck’s true feelings, yet which could only have improved Bockelson’s

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chances of being published in the Third Reich of 1937. Consider the following masterstroke at the end of Bockelson, which was aimed at Hitler but could have been even more readily applied to Stalin: “It was not religious visions and hallucinations which motivated this first soviet republic, but rather . . . there was a great political gangster fanning the flames under his witches’ cauldron . . .” (Reck, Bockelson, 203). It is indeed ironic that a consistent layer of generally anti-leftist and specifically anti-Bolshevist content would facilitate the publication of a work so brimming with hatred for the fascist Hitler and his regime. We must ask as well, who was Fritz Reck-Malleczewen in 1937? He was certainly not Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, or Ernst Toller. The arbiters of Nazi culture were simply not expecting serious political protest from this lesser-known author of so-called Trivialliteratur. Those who might have been aware of Reck’s ultraconservative politics would not have considered him likely to criticize Hitler or the Third Reich. Indeed, Reck’s literary/political reputation—or lack of thereof—may well have helped get Bockelson by Nazi censors to whom our perspective of literary hindsight was not available. Reck’s tale of a late-medieval theocratic dictatorship was directed at Hitler and the Third Reich, yet it could apply to any number of demagogues and totalitarian regimes before or since the Nazis; and we of a certain age cannot help but think of Jonestown or David Koresh and the Branch Davidians.6 But isn’t terror spawned by fundamentalist religion a fear with which we have all lived since that otherwise beautiful fall day of September 11, 2001? Reck’s Bockelson: A Tale of Mass Insanity was written about a sixteenth-century nightmare of approximately eighteen-months duration and costing thousands of lives; but more essentially it was a literary weapon courageously aimed at an even more terrifying twentieth-century nightmare which lasted twelve years and cost millions of lives. Perhaps the great tragedy of Reck-Malleczewen’s Bockelson is that it will no doubt always apply to numerous times and places. Reading Bockelson, we can only marvel at Reck’s historical and personal foresight—his vision took in and recorded not only that which had happened or was happening but also foreshadowed in Münster’s collapse the fall of the Third Reich with all its consequences. At the outbreak of World War II, Reck wrote: “I have no doubt that immeasurable suffering is coming, and that it could not be avoided. But I also have no doubt about the thing that has sustained me for six years and maintained me in the darkest hours of my life . . . the certainty that today the great monster signed his own death

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warrant” (Diary, 84). As the war escalated, Reck’s journal entry for June 1941, foresees that “It is entirely possible . . . that I myself will be pulled by the eddies from this latest stroke of Hitler’s genius, and dragged down” (Diary, 122). It has always been thought that Reck died in February or March of 1945. Yet Nico Rost—also a prisoner at Dachau— tells in his diary entry for April 15, 1945 of a haunting encounter with another inmate: Early this morning as I was at the desk waiting for today’s death list— another two hundred names—a man spoke to me. He was about sixty, very nervous and totally exhausted. He was shaking and swaying, and his speech was so convoluted that at first, I really didn’t know what he wanted. After a while I understood that he had been a patient but now had to be reassigned to his block. . . . I asked him for his name. . . . “Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen.” Immediately I asked, “Not the writer Reck-Malleczewen?” He saw that I suddenly took greater interest in him. “Yes, that’s me, do you know my books? . . .” An hour later . . . When I think back now about my encounter [with ReckMalleczewen], doubts start to arise. Surely this man’s name was Reck-Malleczewen, but was he really the writer? Could it be that his instant, “Yes,” to my question was simply a desperate grasp at what he hoped might be a straw that would save him? In any case, if he had tried to deceive me, I certainly forgive him. (Rost, 279–281, our translation)

In a tribute appearing in the 1946 and 1968 German editions of Bockelson, Reck’s wife Irmgard tells of an end that should not have happened—which came in the very last days of the regime that Reck had consistently opposed: His fate caught up with him shortly before the collapse of the regime. Some contemptible informer started the avalanche in motion. On the last day of December 1944 he was arrested and dragged off to Dachau. “A judgment? There is no judgment, since there is no crime,” was the Gestapo’s verbatim explanation to Reck’s family. They learned that he was put into “special treatment,” and in March the family was notified that he had already “died” in February. Some of his things were handed over to his wife. Much was missing, but there was a letter amongst them which showed that in the end he had been able to overcome hatred and bitterness—that “cancer of the soul” which had haunted

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him all throughout the last years of his life—and to sacrifice his life for and to serve that which had always underlain his every endeavor. He closed the letter with: “If you want to honor my memory, repay evil with kindness, indeed, with active help.” (Irmgard Reck-Malleczewen, Bockelson, 27)

Reck’s detractors—and there have been many—might do well to read Bockelson and reflect on the resolve with which he openly opposed unmitigated evil, as well as the courage with which he paid the ultimate price. George B. von der Lippe Notes 1. Reck and his first wife, Anna Büttner married in 1908 while Reck was still a university student. They shared a passionate love of music and had four children together but had been separated and then divorced for a number of years at the time he married Irmgard von Borke, the adopted daughter of a close friend. 2. Part of the role that Reck himself quite consciously chose to play was his transformation of the name Reck to a hyphenated “ReckMalleczewen,” in support of the aristocratic image that he sought to project. In his Diary entry for July 25, 1944 he writes: “I derive from monarchical patterns of thinking. I was brought up as a monarchist, and continued existence of the monarchy is one of the foundation stones of my physical well-being” (Diary, 196). 3. An excellent collection of recent scholarship on Inner Emigration is to be found in the volume Flight of Fantasy: New Perspectives on Inner Emigration in German Literature 1933–1945, edited by Neil H. Donahue and Doris Kirchner. 4. Viktoria Reck-Malleczewen recalls being allowed once to accompany her father to bury his diary under a crabapple tree in an orchard on the Reck-Malleczewen property at Poing. 5. Chapter titles are given in English, with Reck’s original Latin titles in parentheses. 6. Of the two cult tragedies, the episode of the Branch Davidians, where a compound in Waco Texas became a latter-day Zion of Münster under siege, resonates most strongly: In addition to the public drama of a prolonged standoff, we have both parties refusing to negotiate for anything less than total surrender, . . . a final solution that was marked by unnecessary brutality, and the deaths of many people who had taken the wrong path, following the wrong man. The chief rebels, Jan van Leyden and Vernon Howell [David Koresh], were both selfcreated young men who changed their identities; both saw

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themselves in the form of the biblical David; both usurped the authority of the previous prophet; both lacked formal education but had a thorough knowledge of the Bible and complete recall of it; both were talented performers with a marked artistic bent; both took more wives than the law, secular or religious, allowed; both were cunning, unscrupulous, and, in Jan’s case at least, murderous; and both were capable of inspiring great affection despite all that was known to be reprehensible about them. (Arthur, 199)

Conservative Opposition: Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen’s Antifascist Novel Bockelson: A History of Mass Hysteria Karl-Heinz Schoeps

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or authors of inner emigration it was not possible to comment with impunity on the contemporary political situation within the Third Reich using contemporary subjects. Therefore, authors were forced to find modes of indirect critique that would, first, avoid censorship and reprisal, and second, deliver critical commentary staking out positions at odds with state ideology, or at least allowing for an openness of interpretation, even if it at times amounted to inscrutability. One way to accomplish this sort of indirect critique was through “historical camouflage,”1 that is, by using the past to illuminate the present. One of the best examples of this technique is Reinhold Schneider’s Las Casas before Charles V (Las Casas vor Karl V, 1938). Another method of critical indirection (and here, dislocation) was to use exotic lands as the setting, as did Werner Bergengruen in his novel The Supreme Dictator and the Court (Der Grosstyrann und das Gericht, 1935), Ernst Juenger in his novel On the Marble Cliffs (Auf den Marmorklippen, 1939), or Ernst Wiechert in his short novel The White Buffalo (Der Weisse Büffel, 1937, first published in 1946). Though less well known than all of these other authors in inner emigration, the Protestant East Prussian turned Catholic Bavarian monarchist Friedrich Percyval Reck-Malleczewen (1884–1945) used the historic Anabaptist rule of 1534–1535 in the city of Münster to present the most trenchant criticism of National Socialist rule to appear in print in those years within Germany. In 1533, four hundred years before the Nazis came to power in Germany and in the wake of Martin Luther’s reformation, the Westphalian city of Münster experienced increasing inner turmoil

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that threatened to erupt into civil war. Lutheranism had reached Münster in the early 1530s as it had all other German lands, but neither Catholicism nor Lutheranism was firmly in control in the city. Under the leadership of Bernhard Rothmann, who had the support of the guilds, the Reformation was officially recognized in the Treaty of Dülmen in February of 1533 (after an attack on the episcopal court in Telgte in 1532). Soon the Lutherans who dominated the city council set out to secure the Reformation. But this was only the beginning of the bloody struggle that was to rage in Münster for the next two years. For Rothmann, the city reformer, Luther’s reform did not go far enough; he wanted to introduce what he perceived as true Christianity in Münster. At issue were communion (Rothmann favored Zwingli’s “that means the body of Christ” vs. Luther’s “that is the body of Christ”) and Baptism (Rothmann opposed the baptism of children, thereby turning against the prevailing law of the land “geltendes Reichsrecht”). He and his followers challenged the city council and, after three fierce clashes, gained a majority in the council elections of February 23, 1534. To quote Hans-Jürgen Goertz, an authority on the age of Reformation: “The Anabaptists therefore gained power legally by successfully exploiting an unstable situation where Lutheran and Zwinglian tendencies were competing against each other over the Reformation, and guilds were struggling for control of the council” (Goertz, 30). The Anabaptist movements were by no means restricted to Münster but found adherents and prophets in all German lands. Some were more radical than others, some were more militant than others. All of them, however, thought they were the chosen few and all of them were more or less brutally persecuted. However, it was only in the city of Münster that they gained power for a short while—16 months, to be exact, from February 23, 1534 to June 25, 1535, when Münster was recaptured by imperial troops. One of the better-known Anabaptist prophets, Melchior Hoffmann . . . had selected the city of Strasbourg as the new Jerusalem. Instrumental in gaining power in Münster were prophets from abroad and their followers, notably Jan Matthijs (or Matthys), a baker from Leiden and one of Hoffmann’s disciples, who had arrived in Münster in February 1534 and, in particular, Jan van Leiden, also called Bockelson (after his father Bockel), an actor, playwright, and tailor who had quit his professions to open a bar. Their teachings appealed particularly to women (Ranke, 541), who played an important part in Matthijs’s and Bockelson’s ascension to power. But Münster was not enough for their ambition. According to Johan Dusentschnuer, one

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of the new prophets and Bockelson’s official spokesman or, in modern terms, “propaganda minister,” the Anabaptist revolution should spread throughout the world: “As Johan Dusentschnuer proclaimed, the renewal of the world should issue from Münster” (Klötzer, 165). Münster figured as the center of salvation for the whole world (the “salvational center of the imminent renewal of the world,” Klötzer, 160). Missionaries were sent into surrounding cities to proselytize their citizens. When Jan Matthijs died on Easter in 1534 in a fight with imperial troops who beleaguered the city, Jan van Leiden succeeded him as leader. Proclaimed king of the city by Dusentschnuer, he erected a theocratic dictatorship, ruthlessly persecuting all enemies. Bockelson abolished the city council and replaced it with a council of twelve elders. Catholic icons were destroyed and pictures, books, documents, and even musical instruments were burned in the marketplace; only the Bible was spared and became the sole ideological guide for the community. Dissidents were either killed or forced to leave town; their belongings were confiscated and became communal property. New laws were introduced that abolished private property and sanctioned polygamy. All valuable metals were confiscated. However, not all of these measures were introduced for purely ideological reasons as Hermann von Kerssenbroch, one of the first and contemporary chroniclers of Anabaptist rule in Münster, claimed (Laubach, 194). According to Ernst Laubach, there was also a military necessity for this measure as the city came under increasing pressure from Bishop Count Franz von Waldeck’s forces (Laubach, 184). Metals were needed for defensive purposes, social tensions had to be reduced by abolishing private property, and since women outnumbered men by a vast margin, polygamy seemed to make some sense; it was not done for the personal pleasure of the chief prophet Bockelson, at least not primarily (as Kerssenbroch maintained). The leveling of church spires was not wanton destruction but was carried out to create effective platforms for defensive weaponry and observation posts. A new city ordinance made the respected citizen and merchant Knipperdolling, who was Bockelson’s right-hand man, the official “bearer of the sword,” in other words police chief of Münster (not executioner, as Kerssenbroch would have it). Bockelson was a gifted orator and had the support of the majority of the citizens. His claim to be a divinely selected leader was bolstered by his military victories against the sieging forces and by the failure of an ill-prepared coup against him. Bockelson saw himself as a “King on David’s throne” whose mission was to prepare the millennium rule of Christ. When

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the military situation deteriorated after the Bishop’s forces had effectively blockaded the city and gained the upper hand, Bockelson emphasized the need for sporting events and games to divert people from the grim realities of hunger, destruction, and the daily chores of keeping up the defenses, a task to which every citizen, whether male or female, young or old, had to contribute. Draconian punishments were meted out for traitors and defeatists. Up to the very end Bockelson and his followers hoped that new weapons and a reserve army of Anabaptists from the Netherlands would change the desperate military situation and lead to final victory. But that was not to be; Bockelson’s theocratic dictatorship finally failed. The Bishop’s forces finally captured the city at great cost to attackers and defenders alike. Rothmann died in the final battle (or possibly escaped, according to Dülmen, 354), Bockelson and Knipperdolling were captured, interrogated, tortured, executed, and their bodies displayed in iron cages suspended from the tower of the Lamberti church. Münster was again saved for Catholicism (and has remained Catholic to this day). This then is the historical background for Friedrich Percyval Reck-Malleczewen’s chronical of the Anabaptist rule in Münster, Bockelson: A History of Mass Hysteria, which was published inside Germany in 1937. Reck-Malleczewen followed the historical events very closely and used a number of sources including Kerssenbrock and Gresbeck, both eyewitnesses of the events in Münster (albeit with a bias against the Anabaptists), as well as the eminent nineteenthcentury historian Leopold Ranke. To lend an air of historical authenticity to his work Reck-Malleczewen quotes liberally from his sources in Latin and low German. He uses footnotes and a bibliography citing his sources. Ranke had postulated that history be studied objectively and “sine ira et studio,” that is, without anger and passion. ReckMalleczewen, in his chronicle, followed the opposite path (i.e., “cum ira et studio”). But Reck-Malleczewen’s intention was not to achieve historical objectivity. On the contrary, he openly criticizes Ranke for his misplaced objectivity and asserts: “The times of wanting to understand at any price are gone until further notice. In writing history as well” (136). In searching for a convenient vehicle to publish his criticism of the Nazis within Nazi Germany, Reck-Malleczewen chanced upon the Anabaptist rule in Münster.2 In this context objectivity and understanding were the last things he needed; both were replaced by attack and polemics. The subject matter Reck-Malleczewen selected for his attack on National Socialism was cleverly chosen because the Anabaptist rule in Münster in the sixteenth century provided, indeed, a number of striking parallels to Nazi rule in Germany in the twentieth

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century, particularly when seen through the eyes of some of ReckMalleczewen’s sources: Kerssenbroch wrote from a Catholic stance, and Heinrich Gresbeck was a traitor who had deserted to the Bishop’s side and helped to bring about the fall of Münster. Even ReckMalleczewen noted in his book that neither of them had reason to present Bockelson and his rule in a positive light and may have overshot their goal (66), but by and large the conservative Reck-Malleczewen agreed with them and followed their lead. In reading sixteenthcentury sources Reck-Malleczewen was struck by the parallels between Bockelson’s rule in Münster and Hitler’s rule in Germany, as he noted in his diary (published posthumously in 1947 as Tagebuch eines Verzweifelten, translated into English in 1970 as Diary of a Man in Despair) on 11 August 1936, and I quote this reference to Nazi Germany almost in its entirety: I have been working on my book about the Münster city-state set up by the Anabaptist heretics in the sixteenth century. I read accounts of the ‘kingdom of Zion’ by contemporaries, and I am shaken. In every respect down to the most ridiculous details, that was the forerunner of what we are now enduring. Like the Germany of today, the Münster city-state for years separated itself from the civilized world; like Nazi Germany, it was hugely successful over a long period of time, and appeared invincible. And then, suddenly, against all expectation and over a comparable trifle it collapsed. . . . As in our case, a misbegotten failure conceived, so to speak, in the gutter, became the great prophet, and the opposition simply disintegrated, while the rest of the world looked on in astonishment and incomprehension. As with us . . . , hysterical females, schoolmasters, renegade priests, the dregs and outsiders from everywhere formed the main supports of the regime. I have to delete some of the parallels in order not to jeopardize myself any more than I already have. A thin sauce of ideology covered lewdness, greed, sadism, and fathomless lust for power, in Münster, too, and whoever would not completely accept the new teaching was turned over to the executioner. The same role of official murderer played by Hitler in the Röhm Putsch was acted out by Bockelson in Münster. As with us, Spartan laws were promulgated to control the misera plebs, but these did not apply to him or his followers. Bockelson also surrounded himself with bodyguards, and was beyond the reach of any would-be assassin. As with us, there were street meetings and “voluntary contributions,” refusal of which meant proscription. As with us, the masses were drugged: folk festivals, useless construction, anything and everything, to keep the man in the street from a moment’s pause to reflect. Exactly as Nazi Germany has done, Münster sent its fifth columns and prophets forth to undermine neighboring states. The fact that the

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Münster propaganda chief, Dusentschnur [sic], limped like Goebbels is a joke which history spent four hundred years preparing: a fact which I, familiar as I am with the vindictiveness of our Minister of Lies, have most advisedly omitted in my book [he didn’t, actually—KHS]. Constructed on a foundation of lies there existed for a short time between the Middle Ages and modern times a bandits’ regime. It threatened all the established world—Kaiser, nobility, and all the old relationships. And it was all designed to still the hunger for mastery of a couple of power-mad thugs. A few things have yet to happen to complete the parallel. In the besieged Münster of 1534, the people were driven to swallow their own excrement, to eat their own children. This could happen to us, too, just as Hitler and his sycophants face the same inevitable end as Bockelson and Knipperdolling. (trans. Rubens, 19–20).

In Reck-Malleczewen’s interpretation, Bockelson is a precursor of the Nazi dictator with whom he shared many negative attributes. He bears, Reck-Malleczewen writes, “the degenerate traits of a bastard born in the gutter . . . who dabbled in literature . . . who probably was a great artist in the eyes of his followers” (11).3 Both Bockelson and Hitler were would-be artists: Hitler was a painter (of sorts).4 For Reck-Malleczewen, Bockelson is nothing but a charlatan and an idle prattler, “basically a miserable and unimportant creature who could only emerge briefly in times of turmoil. History occasionally allows itself the cruel joke . . . to make a nonentity into a center of great events . . . but only for a short time” (12). Reck-Malleczewen’s chronicle, then, is more than the story of this prophet; it is “the story of a demonic German intoxication during which all those devils and evil spirits escaped into the open from the hidden recesses of the soul, devils and spirits which up to then had only been depicted on Gothic canvases” (12). Hysterical mobs roamed through the streets of Münster proclaiming the end of the world. “Münster,” ReckMalleczewen comments, “has gone mad overnight” (17). ReckMalleczewen’s description of Anabaptist rule in Münster follows history but with its own slant, emphasizing parallels to National Socialist rule in Germany four hundred years later, omitting events that did not fit his theory, and showing the Anabaptists entirely as victimizers and not as the victims they certainly also were. Occasionally, Reck-Malleczewen’s language even mimics Nazi language. After the council elections of February 1534, ReckMalleczewen constructs an analogy to the appeasement policies toward the Nazis of the 1930s, in which the old council tries to negotiate and appease the Anabaptist rebels instead of opposing their

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terror with a firm hand. In Reck-Malleczewen’s view, determined opposition at this time would have saved thousands of lives later. Thus, the old order collapses without any resistance; its insignia are destroyed and streets are renamed to erase all memory of earlier times—exactly as in Nazi Germany. Some people emigrate, but most citizens fall for this madness. Citing threats from abroad the authorities strengthen their words, “it is the old game of all revolutionary states and cities to divert the attention of the masses from their real plans” (17). The outlook for Münster looks bleak indeed and the Anabaptist Reich is in danger, but Reck-Malleczewen, with clear reference to the situation within Nazi Germany, addresses the city of Münster with words of comfort: “Do not give up and do not bury your head in the sand” (33–34). Adherents of the old beliefs, now called “godless,” are forced out of town, even killed, their possessions confiscated. With the intolerant Nazi policies in mind Reck-Malleczewen describes how Anabaptists destroyed and plundered churches and cathedrals, burned books—except the Bible—and encouraged residents to identify traitors (imagined and real). Knipperdolling is stylized into a Freisler whose sword threatens all who resist, complain, or criticize those in power. The influential prophet Dusentschnuer assumes traits of Goebbels: “The word of this limping prophet counts a great deal in Münster. One day in September . . . he runs to the market square shouting that Johann Bockelson, God’s holy man, will rule as king not only of Münster but over the whole world and all nobility of the Reich” (83) Just like Goebbels, the Anabaptists made effective use of propaganda, the goal being, as Reck-Malleczewen terms it in obvious analogy to the language of the Third Reich (or lingua tertii imperti [LTI], as Victor Klemperer called it), the “propagandistic disintegration of the enemy” (propagandistische Zersetzung des Gegners, 57). Rothmann’s propaganda leaflets spread through missionaries and shot into the Bishop’s camps around Münster, have the desired effect; some of the Bishop’s soldiers join the Anabaptists and new Anabaptist communities emerge in the country. ReckMalleczewen’s venom is directed especially at Rothmann, the intellectual instigator (intellektueller Drahtzieher, 115) behind all the evils of Anabaptist rule. He sarcastically calls him “dear Rothman” throughout his book and holds him responsible for all the misery and crime committed in the name of the new millennium, the Thousand Year Reich, envisioned by the prophets of Münster. In describing the end of Anabaptist rule Reck-Malleczewen even anticipated the end of Nazi rule. The new rulers of Münster do not

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have time to savor their victories; the opposing forces have regrouped and tightened the ring around the city. Shortages of food lead to rationing and hunger. Even games and other entertainment can no longer distract the populace from the misery of their situation and the lavishness of the king’s court. The situation seems hopeless, but the king prepares for a final victory. He promotes some of his vassals to dukes and promises them lands he has yet to conquer. He responds to criticism with increased terror and forces every remaining citizen to contribute to the defense of the city. The final struggle (Endkampf ) is a struggle for life and death, which can only end in the destruction of one side or the other. Bockelson wants to defend the city at any cost and appeals to his followers to persevere (durchhalten). But in the end the forces of the Bishop capture the city in a bloody battle; the expected relief armies from the Netherlands and the new weaponry in which Bockelson (and the Nazis) believe to the very end never materialize. Bockelson and Knipperdolling are caught, tried, and executed; Rothmann is never seen again and probably dies in the fighting. Before his judges Bockelson recants and promises collaboration against other Anabaptists. In Reck-Malleczewen’s view, the great king of Zion turns out to be “a reckless psychopath whom history allowed to play for a time at the controls of its vast machinery causing a great deal of damage” (176). In Reck-Malleczewen’s conservative view of history the tragedy of Münster was caused not so much by one individual but by the emerging power of the masses. For him the National Socialist mass hysteria had its origins in the mass hysteria of the Anabaptist state of the sixteenth century. The Anabaptist rebellion had already displayed the evils contained in all subsequent mass movements, be they the French Revolution of 1789, the German revolutions of 1848 and 1918/19, or the Bolshevist revolution of 1917. Münster was “the embryo of a modern council republic (Räterepublik) on a puritan basis” (45). The Anabaptist war was “the first example of a ‘total war’” (40). Reck-Malleczewen sees only the destructive aspect of revolutions and invariably sides with the old order; in Münster’s case with the Catholic Bishop Franz von Waldeck. Revolutions are seen not as reactions to oppression and social evils but as “safety valves for the discharge of pent-up mass resentments” (91). In ReckMalleczewen’s analysis “it came to these products of mass hysteria only because of the total breakdown of the social order. It was the unhappy fate of this city that a great political gangster stirred up the fire under this witches’ cauldron and it had to pay dearly enough for this” (187).

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To even a casual reader with no knowledge of the events that took place in Münster in the sixteenth century, Reck-Malleczewen’s chronicle appears subjective and polemical. Nevertheless, some astounding parallels emerge between Nazi rule in Germany in the twentieth century and Anabaptist rule in Münster in the sixteenth century. Both Bockelson and Hitler came to power legally and with support of the middle and lower middle classes in times of social and economic turmoil (Münster suffered an economic crisis in the wake of the declining Hanse and increasing religious strife; Weimar Germany suffered the results of the Wall Street crash of 1929 and political strife between the right and left). Both consolidated their power through terrorism and ruthless persecution of opponents in order to create a dictatorship. Both shared in the idea of a thousand-year Reich, albeit not on the same ideological basis: the Anabaptists saw themselves in religious terms as precursors of Christ’s thousand-year rule, whereas the Nazis envisioned one thousand years of their own secular rule and did not see themselves as precursors of some other ruler. Both their leaders, Hitler and Bockelson, came from humble origins. Both had artistic ambitions, both were gifted orators and demagogues, and both came from a foreign country to take over the reigns of government. Yet to describe the Anabaptist rule in Münster solely in terms of Nazi rule or in terms of any other mass movement does injustice to history, as experts have pointed out. According to Richard van Dülmen, the rule of Jan Matthijs and Jan van Leiden cannot be defined in terms of modern mass movements: The charismatic leadership under Jan Matthys and the institutionalized kingdom of Zion under Jan van Leiden are inadequately defined when seen as an outbreak of mass hysteria and rule of arbitrary terror in anticipation of modern totalitarian systems. Though it cannot be denied that those elements existed, social life in the Anabaptist state under conditions of siege was far more rational than generally accepted. . . . Nor was the Anabaptist rule the result of a “plebeian revolution” or the final act of an early bourgeois revolution. (van Dülmen, 364–65, my translation)

Van Dülmen also points out that the Anabaptists came to power quite legally and with the support of the established wealthy citizens, not just the rabble, and that all segments of the populace participated in their rule, although craftsmen constituted the largest single group (van Dülmen, 365). The beginnings of Anabaptist rule were peaceful; it changed its character to a more militant society only under the onslaught of the Bishop’s forces. Jan Bockelson was a charismatic

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leader but he was neither a “Christian communist idealist,” as Ernst Bloch or Georg Lukacs would see him, nor a modern demagogue and leader of the people, as Reck-Malleczewen would have it, at least in van Dülmen’s view (316). Perhaps Friedrich Dürrenmatt got it right when he warned in the foreword to his play Es steht geschrieben (It Is Written, 1947), which also deals with the Anabaptist rule in Münster: “To what extent our times are reflected in it is another question. It would, however, be closer to the author’s intention to be very cautious in drawing parallels which are, at best, tentative” (my translation). But the problem is more general. How legitimate is it to use historical events and figures to transport other ideas? Some critics have pointed out that a number of representatives of the so-called inner emigration, not just Reck-Malleczewen, have resorted to that device as mentioned before. But writers and filmmakers closer to the Nazis also used history as a vehicle for their ideas. There were numerous plays and films about Fredrich II of Prussia. One of the more blatant examples is the film Jud Süss (Jew Süss), in which the screenwriters Ludwig Metzger, Veit Harlan, and the noted playwright Eberhard Wolfgang Möller used real events that occurred in Württemberg and Stuttgart in the eighteenth century to advance the anti-Semitic policies of the Nazis in the 1940s. In his seminal work Literarische Innere Emigration 1933–1945 (1976) Ralf Schnell devotes a chapter to the problems arising from fictionalizing history; one of the authors he singles out is Reck-Malleczewen. One of the main problems in selecting historical parallels is that events that are seemingly similar are chosen and highlighted at the expense of those events that do not fit the theory of historical parallelism. Schnell faults particularly Reck-Malleczewen’s Bockelson in this respect, but one suspects that Schnell is biased against Reck-Malleczewen for his conservative stance, as he makes amply clear in his discussion of ReckMalleczewen’s Diary of a Man in Despair (42–46). In Schnell’s view Reck-Malleczewen’s conservative stance prevented him from arriving at a genuine analysis of fascism (42). However, it seems to me that Schnell could be faulted for his leftist ideological blindness just as much as he faults Reck-Malleczewen’s limitations resulting from his conservatism. In the end it does not really matter whether Bockelson is historically accurate (he is [often] not); what does matter is that the book could be published in Nazi Germany in 1937 despite its obvious criticism of Nazi rule. It is, as Günter Scholdt pointed out in a 1982 lecture held at the Deutscher Germanistentag in Aachen, indeed “one of the most astonishing belletristic works to appear in the Third Reich” (Scholdt, 350).

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The question arises as to why this book could appear at all. Ralf Schnell suggests as a reason that it is close to Nazi ideology (Schnell, 154; Scholdt, 355). I agree with Scholdt that Schnell is too eager to throw all conservatives into one pot—tempting as that may be. To be sure, Reck-Malleczewen was against all mass movements and revolutions, whether they come from the right or from the left. ReckMalleczewen’s writing was also tainted by racism when he talked about the “Verniggerung” (niggerization) of Germany in his Diary. But his Diary of a Man in Despair (published in 1947) makes amply clear that he was a staunch anti-Nazi, albeit a problematical German conservative. It is more likely that Bockelson escaped censorship and was published simply by accident, or because it found a publisher willing to take the risk of publishing it because no one had denounced it. Reck-Malleczewen’s book may also have benefited from the numerous rivals and conflicting opportunists in the cultural bureaucracy of the Third Reich who allowed a number of works slip through. Jan-Peter Barbian confirms the possibility of such scenarios in his recent study Literaturpolitik im “Dritten Reich” (1995). Perhaps a censor chose to assume that it was all directed against Bolshevism, which indeed it was to a certain extent, but in Reck-Malleczewen’s mind Bolshevism was equated to Nazism. In any case, it was a courageous act to write and publish such a work. Reck-Malleczewen eventually paid dearly for his antifascist stance. He was denounced to the Gestapo, arrested and taken to the Dachau concentration camp, where he died in February of 1945. His book Bockelson: A History of Mass Hysteria, despite all its shortcomings, is more than another document of inner emigration; it is a document, in the guise of historical fiction, of active resistance against an inhuman regime.

Notes This essay originally appeared in the book Flight of Fantasy: New Perspectives on Inner Emigration in German Literature, 1933–1945, published in 2003 by Berghahn Books. Used with permission. 1. Term borrowed from Ralf Schnell, 113. 2. Reck-Malleczewen’s Bockelson is not the only treatment of the subject matter. Other works dealing with the Anabaptist rule of Münster include Robert Hammerling’s epic Der König von Sion, Lulu von Strauss und Torney’s novel Der jüngste Tag (1922), Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s drama Es steht geschrieben (1947); revised as Die Wiedertäufer (1966), and Franz Theodor Csokor’s Der Schlüssel zum Abgrund (1955).

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3. My translation. Page numbers in the text refer to the 1946 edition of the original; all translations are mine. 4. Friedrich Dürrenmatt in his comedy Die Wiedertäufer (The Anabaptists), the second version of his play about the Anabaptists, written in 1966, made ample use of the fact that Bockelson was a playwright. The first version dates from 1946 and is entitled Es steht geschrieben (It Is Written).

The Last Sunday Viktoria M. Reck-Malleczewen

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ost childhood memories appear to be like those loose Polaroid pictures in book pages. One knows about when they were taken, but somehow you can’t pinpoint the exact occasion or date. It was different with this last day of 1944, I am almost sure it was a Sunday. The house still smelled of Christmas, the parents were less nervous about the war, in a festive mood even, and the house was warm and full of candlelight, set to bring in the new year. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was playing on the radio. The year to come would bring an end to the war. As a five-year-old I only sensed this, not yet having the vocabulary to speak about it. Writing about this brings back the feel of that day, and all that happened. The doorbell rang, followed by the dog’s alarmed barking and disruption of the harmonious afternoon; or was it evening—I don’t know. The cook answered it, and called my father. I was curiously alarmed by the shrill noises, and the hushed tones in which the three men and my father spoke, and I made my way down the stairs to eavesdrop. I believe my sister was behind me. Something was off, something made me start to scream with a terror that was, up to then, only reserved for nightmares. My father had already been handcuffed. There is a gap in my memories. I found myself sitting on an old chest in the lower hallway, my sister next to me. We were crying and the cook tried to console us. Mother had disappeared into her room. Life itself had changed for us all that day. The capacity for joy had left with him. We never saw our father again. We were never allowed to speak of him or of that Sunday, nor did anyone tell us what had happened. People, still in the mindset of those Hitler-years, despised us, and we, who had been comfortable even in those last years of the war, had become dirt poor. My aunt, in her dying days, told me that my father had asked to be unshackled for just a moment, to bestow upon me a thorough

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thrashing. As darkly humorous as it may seem, the stormtroopers did indeed grant his request. His nerves, frayed by the knowledge of his certain death, had not been able to tolerate my wailing. How well I do understand him. When I saw my mother one last time before her own death, she finally told me something about that day: We were all to be taken to Dachau, my father and his wife and children along with him. My youngest sister was one year old then. According to Mother it was the Bavarian policeman who had accompanied the SS who had talked them out of it. Bavarians in the remote area where we lived were mostly not all too fond of Hitler and his minions. It appeared that the SS could not afford to make enemies in that isolated place. I am not sure, but it seems to me that those of my generation belonging to either side of the opposing parties, the children of camp victims and those of Nazi leaders alike, suffer a very similar form of isolation. I am certain that my father has been an unseen, silent presence in me every day of my life. Note “The Last Sunday” is Viktoria Reck-Malleczewen’s brief reminiscence of December 31, 1944, the day her father was arrested by the SS, shackled, and taken to the concentration camp at Dachau, where shortly thereafter he was murdered.

Figure 1.1 Reck-Malleczewen relaxing next to the Alz River, which flowed through his beloved estate of Poing bei Truchtlaching in the Chiemgau region of southern Bavaria. The picture was taken in the late 1930s or early 1940s, a time in which Reck was already well into his own “inner emigration.”

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Chapter 1

Prologue (Prologus)

T

he chapter that we shall examine here may be the singular most gruesome and strangest in the already strange history of the German people. At the same time it is the least known, although it kept the world in suspense for almost two years and turned a substantial city of the old Empire and one of its districts into an insane asylum. It was as great a problem for that old world of emperor and imperial estates as had been the Peasants’ War nine years earlier. Yet when an entire city closes itself off from the outside world for a full eighteen months, when it elects a foreign tailor’s apprentice with a checkered past as King of Zion and does so not only amidst the cheers of the rabble but also with the enthusiastic consent of craftsmen, the prosperous upper middle class, patricians, and even a few noblemen who happened to be in the city; and when finally this king—again, with the approval of great and small alike—turns all traditional values upside down, tears apart the moral fabric of the medieval bourgeoisie . . . when noblewomen swarm to his harem, and when all this comes to pass behind a steaming veil of blood, unbridled greed, and misunderstood legends from the Old Testament: then one might legitimately speak of mass insanity, of a mysterious psychosis overwhelming an entire community. Indeed we have in the history of the German Middle Ages more than a few examples of this kind of psychosis afflicting the masses, and thus we are today probably objective enough to register the laws of such bizarre occurrences as coolly as we would in the clinical description of a physical illness. Today we also know that such occurrences appear at the great turns of destiny and changes in world history, when old foundations crumble right before the eyes of an industrious and thoroughly sober people, without the new bases for a fruitful and structured life having yet emerged. And we know that in

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such times underground vaults with undreamed of contents open up, vaults over which God’s children have lived innocently throughout their days of too many labors and too few joys. We also observe that these unknown catacombs exist beneath every culture, that indeed they must underlie every people capable of reflection and of having great thoughts. The saying that in times of crisis one knows not where one is going, holds true for the individual as well as for an entire people.1 We tend to look upon the Renaissance—which practically overnight tore the ground right out from under the feet of gothic man with his God-centered life—we tend, I say, to continue to view this gigantic world transition as a simple change in taste during which facades changed a bit through the shapes of their windows and doorframes, and during which one wore a different style of clothing. We think much too much about the symptoms and much too little about the causes, and least of all about what happened to the body and soul of Nordic man behind those changed facades. We don’t think of how it came to pass that he who had kept his money in a locked drawer began to accept the idea of interest-bearing capital as a factor determining the course of history. And we don’t think about why Christopher Columbus’s entering America—which for the Vikings had been merely an interesting adventure—turned every accepted concept upside-down and threw history’s rudder onto a completely different course. If we visualize these facts, and if we understand how ancient and sacred ideas fell apart around the year 1500, then we will truly grasp that the disappearance of the laws governing life and society left people with a lack of structure and an unholy individualism, and only then will we understand the true causes of all the volcanic eruptions of that time, whether they be called the Peasants’ War, Schmalkaldic Riots, Iconoclasm, or the Zion of Münster.2 The deeper the waters of the souls, the more terribly they were stirred by the unseen hand guiding history. And if we ask ourselves why this intervention occurred at all, and where this horrible transformation of the gothic homo religiosus into the new type of man with his by-now-stale objectivity originated, then we are confronted by one of the eternal riddles that history presents to the unspoiled person; only a true scoundrel would dare to deny their existence in the name of all those two-bit explanations which flow so easily off the tongue. That which happened in Münster back then was only the remote and partial arena of a cosmic tremor, and even many of those who felt that the events in Münster were an abomination probably did not view it much differently. The

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good carpenter Gresbeck,3 who saw these events first-hand, offers the laconic explanation: “And everything they did, it just had to be good; it was after all God’s will.” And when the Münster fever dies down, and this King Bockelson sits in prison, once again nothing but a poor tailor’s apprentice who has been captured by the State’s Attorney— the bischöfliche Kaplan (bishop’s curate) Syburg, who visited him in prison, reports “that the remorse of this unfortunate man is extraordinary, and that according to his own confession, he wishes to suffer a tenfold death as punishment.” We will try, therefore, to document the stages of this fever for the sake of history, but there still remains the question of how, precisely in this respectable, apparently quite staid middle-class corner of northern Germany, it could come to this mad frenzy, this orgasmic climax in the years 1534 and 1535. But this question is really identical to that concerning possible demonic traits of the medieval soul, those traits which became tangible in cathedral gargoyles, in the Syrlins, and in Grünewald’s spectral figures . . .4 yes, even under Johann Sebastian Bach’s resounding columns one can encounter those demons which have to exist, if only because God does. If it is possible that the floggers on the gothic martyr-panels beat the Savior (“so that the law may be carried out”) in their capacity as God’s civil servants, and if they did it in such a way that the viewer is forced to pity them as much as the one being beaten—if the occidental mind of that time was capable of such expanse—then we should not be too surprised that during its meanderings it was confronted by the demons, the monstrosities of its own underworld, the pests of its own arch-crudeness, and all other mortal sins. So often when contemplating history one is confronted with the fact that saints and devils dwell side by side in very close quarters, and that a creature must sink very deep into the mire, should it ever want to gaze onto the face of the Eternal One. Perhaps more than any other of the Germanic tribes, it is those from Obersachsen (Upper Saxony), poorly endowed by nature to begin with, which tend toward the creation of social thunderstorms; perhaps more than any others, it is the Alemannic who is given to brooding over religious topics and opinionated discussion of scripture. In 1525 the Saxons had brought Thomas Münzer’s weavers’ guild into the war of the south German peasant hordes,5 thereby introducing an eternally alien and communistic note to the troops from Baden and Württemberg and Franconia; the Alemannic, deeply immersed in his own thoughts, enjoys engaging in bold religious speculation—as can be seen even today in the rich menu of Swabian sects—and thus

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willingly throws away his worldly goods in order to found a new Kingdom of Heaven, which finally brings him into serious conflict with the law. The social roots of Wiedertäuferei (Anabaptism) lie in the Zittau area,6 but the true ideological components of the Anabaptist movement can be found in Swabia and Switzerland. The concept that no simple child but only the conscious adult should receive the sacrament of baptism is the most harmless in the tangle of ideas of these first Saxon and Swabian Anabaptist communities—the effect is far more explosive when they immediately devolve into heresy, often into violence, almost always into mania. Close yourself off from the outside world, little community of saints, live without possessions as did the first Christians—live thusly, and, since the return of the Savior is imminent anyway, you will very soon find yourself amidst the chosen ones and the prophets. Indeed, you shall see that the meekest of your members partake in the grace of seeing God’s miraculous visions and hearing His voice with their mortal ears. The last sentence, however, the promise of visions and voices as direct revelation of God’s will, is perhaps the most dangerous of all. Later on, at the height of the insanity, it eventually permitted every scoundrel to make references to the directly heard voice of God and the signs that had just been seen, which assured fulfillment of desperately unholy desires. In any case, the rather earthly paradise of polygamy that we find later in Münster was erected by the “King” of Münster using just this very technique. But in the year 1530 all this is still a world away from the orgies to occur later in Münster, yet at this time the strangest roots take hold all over Germany: Doesn’t this Martin Luther make things a little too easy for himself—not to mention the papists—with all his talk about salvation through Jesus Christ being based on faith alone? Doesn’t he embrace this doctrine, lying stretched out on some nasty, comfortable bed? And is it not finally time to remember all those good deeds through which man, being made of clay, must first earn God’s grace? Dark underground passages lead from this doctrine of good deeds into the realm of the Old Testament, emerging in the further region of old Hebrew legends and in the moral codex of the synagogue, and still later they lead to Münster, straight into the bizarre world of the Empire of Zion. This is the way things unfold in Saxony, in Switzerland, in Swabia, and even in Salzburg and Munich. No one thinks yet of any political consequences. At this point it is only a gentle, pensive man, the fur merchant Melchior Hoffman,7 who still carries these ideas throughout southern Germany, Alsace, Sweden and Eastern

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Friesland, and even into Livonia.8 His influence grows from month to month in the parishes that are springing up everywhere. He even corresponds with one or two imperial princes, and in his dreams and visions he moves the seat of the New Jerusalem to Strasbourg, from whence, according to the Word of the Apocalypse, 144,000 apostles will go forth with him to spread this new doctrine throughout the land. This gentle man loses his influence on the outward development of the movement when in 1533 he is locked up in Strasbourg. Note, however, that he only loses outward influence, because there is indeed a stirring everywhere, and because even in 1532 we can readily speak of a broad wave of mass hysteria rolling over all of western Germany. But if we want to speak of Melchior Hoffman’s immediate successor, then we are probably thinking of that sinister and violent baker from Haarlem, Jan Matthys,9 who, as we shall see, had an immediate and decisive influence on the events in Münster: an eerie figure, perhaps personally above reproach, in any case undisturbed by all of the ambiguities that swirled around Bockelson, who was also imported from Holland to Münster. But he was still a violent man and, in contrast to Hoffman, a defender of brutal expansion and a prophetocracy dripping with blood, as we shall see soon enough in Münster. Münster, however, is overwhelmingly Protestant, which is hard to imagine nowadays.10 The city had slipped almost entirely from the strong grip of the old church, and its monasteries along with those city-dwelling representatives of the aristocracy and a few of the wealthy bourgeoisie—or as one called them in Münster, “men of inheritance”—were the last bastions of Catholicism in Münster. But almost right from the start this Protestantism in Münster is of a very special sort—it wants nothing to do with all of Luther’s compromises. It is extremely combative, almost to the point of being heretical, which can be attributed primarily to the city’s most trendy Modepastor (“pastor du jour”), a man by the name of Bernhard Rothmann. The term Modepastor, however, reverberates with all its implications in the judgment of a contemporary theologian: “Dear Rothmann always wanted to adorn himself and make himself pretty like a pussy cat, presenting himself to the common rabble as an angel of light.” And from Melanchthon11 comes yet another bit of highly characteristic information about him, according to which “Dear Rothmann” has been frequently visiting the house of lawyer Wiggers, who had moved to Münster from Leipzig. There he is one of the admirers of the aesthetic and carefree lady of the house, who is regarded as the Aspasia12 of her social circle. Rothmann starts an affair with her, and

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finally marries her after her husband’s death.13 It appears that he was an homme à la femme, a man who simply needs the constant echo of women in order to satisfy his pastoral craving for admiration; this is indeed borne out by his enormous consumption of women in the later period of polygamy. It is probably this need for admiration and a craving for originality at all costs that sets him on his course. Early on he denounces the baptism of children and indulges in strange changes in the communion rite. As reported by a contemporary, “He broke some rolls in a large dish, poured wine over them, and, after speaking the Lord’s words of communion, told those who wanted the Holy Communion to dig in,” which earned him the nickname “Stutenbernd,” because rolls were called “Stuten” in their language. The man with this strange, almost offensive and certainly suggestive nickname,14 defended his views in public Disputation as early as August 1533; at that time he already had many disciples in the alleys and back streets, and he is from the start the leader of the opposition against the feudal Bishop Franz von Waldeck,15 preaching passionately against the pastors Fabricius and Lenning who had been sent to Münster by Landgrave Philipp of Hesse on Luther’s advice. Can they even speak Münster’s language, these foreign gentlemen? They cannot, they are “imports,” and the runaway nuns from the old convents taunt that “now we’re getting a Hessian God to eat” during communion. For it is the women, in fact the wives of the leading Grossbürger (prosperous upper middle class), who already belong— even back then there were snobs among women—to Rothmann’s most ardent admirers; and later the matadors of the “New Zion” will be asked under torture whether Rothmann, who by then had long since vanished without leaving a trace, might not have used a magic potion to bewitch the ladies. Doubtlessly “Dear Rothmann” never did that; he didn’t have to, because even without any magic there was an underground fire crackling here in Münster, and anyone willing to stoke it, especially among the women, was welcome.16 When Bishop Franz von Waldeck ventures to take action against the handsome pastor and the unruly city, Münster launches a retaliatory raid on Christmas Eve 1532 against the pilgrimage site of Telgte, where the clergyman is thought to be staying. They only capture the bishop’s feudal lords, thus forcing the bishop to grin and bear the nasty spectacle and to hand over all of the city’s churches into the care of Rothmann and his disciples, but only until the overly impetuous demolition of ancient Catholic bastions is avenged and the hastily erected edifice of Lutheranism begins to crumble.17

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From the very beginning Münster is swamped with Baptist preachers from Holland and the Cleves area,18 who—bearing such strange names as Strapade, Vinne, Roll, and Klopriss—first off wear down Dear Rothmann and baptize him, and in so doing lay spiritual siege to the entire city. The patricians and the officials of the increasingly restless city are still against the vain pastor and his dealings, and since there might well have been a little jealousy over the Rothmannenthusiasts among the ladies, so the two “conservative” (one is almost tempted to say “bourgeois”) denominations, the Catholics and the Lutherans, agree to take joint action and force the mayors to pass a strict ordinance banishing Rothmann from the pulpit and expelling the foreign Baptist preachers. But now it is far too late, and the fire can no longer be extinguished.19 Unfortunately, the gentlemen have absolutely no intention of respecting the ban on preaching or the deportation orders; hence the pet pastor of Münster’s womanhood continues his fervent preaching, and the other preachers, having been led out one door, return through the other to the cheers of the mob. The local clergy, especially the Hessian preachers, are driven off by rabid women, while riffraff abuses the mayor and councilmen. The hour has come for a Dutch wind to fan the flames . . . In the first days of January two wayfarers named Willem de Cuyper and Barthel Boeckebinder show up on orders from the prophet Matthys. They take up lodging at the home of our zealous and respected fellow-citizen Knipperdolling, 20 who is a tailor and cloth merchant; they announce in the name of the prophet that “the promised land is near,” they baptize the preachers in Münster including the Pastor Rothmann, they disappear on the third day but immediately send in two replacements. One of them is named Gert tom Kloster, who will be mentioned often in the chronicle of this mad year in the city of Münster. The other one, however, will turn out to be the real sorcerer in the coming orgy of the city of Münster; he will be reformer, prophet, head of state, and harem-keeper in one person. He comes from Leyden, his name is Johann, and his trade is that of a tailor. He is named brevi manu Bockelson after his father, whose name was Bockel, and it is under this name and as the later King of the New Zion of Münster that he will live on in history.21 Who was this man, who for more than a year kept the German world in suspense? His mother is the daughter of a small landholder— they are called Kötter in Westphalia. She traveled to Holland, conceived her son out of wedlock with Bockel, the mayor of Gravenhagen, gave

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birth during her roving quite literally in a gutter, married the child’s father only after her son’s birth.22 This son, Johann, learns the trade of a tailor, travels to England, Portugal, Flanders, and Lübeck, finally ends up in Leyden, and at the age of twenty marries a widow considerably older than himself; he soon tires of the tailor’s trade and opens a tavern that from the start enjoys a less-than-spotless reputation. In his capacity as tavern keeper, Bockelson also writes poems and Fastnachtspiele 23 and has the ambition to be accepted into the “Chamber of Rhetoricians,” a literary club that in those days flourished in the provinces. He even reaches this goal and is considered to be something of a prodigy, though his plays, according to the admittedly prejudiced Kerssenbroch24 are “sometimes playful, mostly obscene, hardly ever virtuous.” In addition to the trades of tailor and tavern-keeper he practices a bit of the time-honored profession of procuring. At least he dabbles at it. Kerssenbroch, who as a Gymnasium (highest level of high school) student observed first-hand some of the earliest days of the Anabaptist era in Münster, writes, “The young men and women showed up at his pub, drank day and night, debauched day and night, whored around and gambled, played music on the fiddle and other instruments, and wasted their fortunes.” Matthys made Bockelson’s acquaintance fairly early on and sends him to Münster for the first time even before 1533, where the tavern-keeper, man of letters, tailor, and pimp “takes an interest in the excellent preachers working there.” He rents a room at the home of citizen Ramers but soon packs his bags again. He shows up next in Osnabrück, where he is thrown out because of his Anabaptist activities. In Schöppingen, where he resides in the house of Count Heinrich Krechting, 25 he is called “by inspiration of the Holy Spirit” to the bed of a sick maid—for the former tailor also dabbles in medicine—whom he completely cures with his own remedies and especially through the administration of baptism. In the fall of 1533 he emerges in Coesfeld and, briefly, for a second time in Münster, and then he returns to Leyden and to Matthys. Strangely enough, after administering it himself so many times before, he only now receives his baptism, then travels through the provinces with Gert tom Kloster baptizing others. After a brief final stay in Leyden in January of 1533, he shows up for the last time in Münster to turn the city into an insane asylum, and it is there where his own indeed rather eventful life finally draws to an end. It is, however, impressive to look at contemporary portraits of the two men who were destined to become the directors of this grand, if

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unfortunately somewhat bloody opera. That Bockelson even then—he was still in his twenties—looks to be in his fifties, can be ascribed not only to his beard, but also to the era around 1500 with its feeding frenzies in which the overly lean figures of Schongauer disappear, and the German nation began to distend into those pot-bellies seen in Cranach’s portraits.26 More important however is the physiognomic difference between the two men. Knipperdolling, the established and respected cloth merchant can hide neither his choleric temperament nor his arrogant determination of the sectarian—at least everything is solid, precise, and, if you will, honestly eccentric. But Bockelson? His are the blurred and gelatinous features of the bastard born in a roadside ditch, of the barkeep and pimp who could play the literary dilettante, the failed tailor, who in his tailor’s guild probably enjoyed the reputation of a great poet and in the Chamber of Rhetoricians was presumably held to be a skillful dressmaker.27 Around his neck the chain, all over his body the jewelry with which the inferior so gladly cover their deeply wounded self-confidence. Over his entire appearance hovers an aura of that haplessness that passes so easily from weakness of character to moral depravity and crime: the stigmas of a man conceived in an evil hour in an evil bed, a man who so effortlessly turns the life of a ne’er-do-well into a cesspool, the environment of filth into vice, and vice finally into bloodthirstiness. But Peter the Great personally beheaded his bodyguards because “my hands were so idle,” and the Borgias poisoned friends and slept with their daughters and sisters, yet they remained at least gorgeous monsters—as God had created them—subject to a higher mercy because they were consistent. In this case, however, God’s higher hand had composed a dissonant waltz. Bockelson too beheads his victims with his own hands but without that gruesome excess of strength that we can ascertain in Peter. He too turns a respectable and perhaps even a somewhat bland city into a bordello for eighteen months, 28 yet I would like to see anyone who could find in this man something of the excess of Pope Alexander the Sixth 29 or even the tragedy of Don Juan. Anyone who scratches here will at first find only a deep layer of hysteria, whoever scrapes further encounters a wretched and thoroughly inconsequential creature. For history, which as a rule operates according to immutable laws, permits itself on occasion the cruel joke of lifting a miserable wretch, a windbag, an hysteric onto her pedestals for a while or for a short time, hence turning nothingness into the center of great affairs, a buffoon into a puffed up mercenary officer,

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Figure 1.2 Portrait of Jan van Leiden, 1536; copper etching by Heinrich Aldegrever (courtesy of the Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster).

in the mob’s fantasies the tanner Kleon30 into another Pericles, and in the same fantasies Gracchus Babeuf into Gracchus Cornelius.31 But only for a short reprieve, all this only to all the more cruelly unmask Policinelle,32 to dip the betrayed imposter into the sewer as all the world laughs, only to finally hang this roi dessous—ripped and pinched by glowing tongs—from the tip of the Lamberti Church steeple.33 So . . . a little pile of nothing, charged up with hysteria, and one could justifiably ask me why I write his name on this book. But this is not the story of some pitiful Tscheka-König (Cheka king)34 —it is

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Figure 1.3 Portrait of Bernd Knipperdolling, 1536; copper etching by Jan Muller from portrait by Heinrich Aldegrever (courtesy of the Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte).

the story of a satanic German intoxication, an episode during which all the demons, the elves, the devils that one had only dared to capture on pious gothic picture panels, finally escaped from the secret vaults of the clairvoyant Caucasian soul.35

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The producer was, despite all the gold chains and finger rings, only a sorry buffoon; hence the carnival play was acted out anyway by a cast of all the more full-blooded extras. And now the curtain lifts over one of the many tragedies of the dying gothic world. Notes 1. The first three paragraphs of Reck’s opening chapter constitute, on one level, the introduction to a historical treatment/novel, however there is already a great deal that is directed at Hitler and the German Volk during the Third Reich, all of which is barely concealed within the context of sixteenth-century Münster. 2. The Peasants’ War of 1525 will be discussed later. The Schmalkaldic League was founded in 1531 by, among others, Philipp I of Hesse as a body of Protestant cities and states banded together in defense against Catholic Emperor Charles V, who defeated the League in the Schmalkaldic War of 1546–1547. More fighting ensued until the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, which allowed Protestantism to exist based on the wishes of individual princes. Iconoclasm, the destruction of religious articles, is recorded as far back as the eighth-century Byzantine Empire, and it will play a significant role during the Reformation, especially in this account of the Münster Anabaptists. 3. Meister Heinrich Gresbeck was a young carpenter who had come to visit his mother in Münster during the Anabaptist hold on the city. He ended up marrying, staying, and, though a Catholic, having himself baptized. He became a lower-level functionary and therefore had an insider’s knowledge of the Anabaptist colony. After hunger had Münster in its hold, Gresbeck escaped to Waldeck’s side and, through his knowledge, made it possible for the bishop’s force to finally overcome the Anabaptists. Gresbeck wrote an account of his time in the Münster enclave which is in many ways more valuable than Kerssenbroch’s, in that Gresbeck was an eyewitness to the very end and did not have Kerssenbroch’s understandable bias against the Anabaptists (Williams, 456–457). 4. The Syrlins—Jörg the Elder (1425–1491) and Jörg the Younger (1455–1521)—were influential sculptors of the German Late Gothic period. Matthias Grünewald (ca. 1470–1528) was a leading painter of the German Renaissance whose primarily religious paintings were characterized by haunting figures rendered in striking color combinations. 5. Thomas Münzer (ca. 1490–1525) was at one time a friend and colleague of Martin Luther, but as his preaching became decidedly more radical than Luther could condone—especially in the area of social and economic justice for the peasants—the two theologians became enemies. Münzer was an organizer and leader of the peasant

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6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

13

cause in the Peasants’ War of 1525, while Luther remained on the side of the nobility. Münzer was finally captured by Philipp Landgrave of Hesse (who will play an important role in the fate of Münster’s Anabaptists) and executed with Luther’s approval. Zittau is a city located in the southeast of the Bundesrepublik in the state of Sachsen. This is an area where Luther’s Reformation began to take on a more politicized, radical, proletarian character. Melchior Hoffman (1495–1543), the son a fur trader, eventually became an itinerant preacher and fur trader known as the “Anabaptist Apostle of the North,” finding many converts in Northern Germany, Holland, Friesland, and Scandinavia. He spent the last decade of his life imprisoned in Strasbourg, where he had told his followers that Judgment Day would come to pass (Arthur, 11–12). Livonia was a Baltic province historically divided into three kingdoms within the Russian Empire—Estonia, Livonia, and Courland. After World War I, it was divided between Latvia and Estonia. Jan Matthys was a baker from Haarlem, Holland who became an apostle of Melchior Hoffman and traveled with him throughout Northern Europe and the Lowlands. A sinister figure, he eventually renounced Hoffman’s nonviolence and became the first leader of the Anabaptist enclave in Münster (Arthur, 36–41). Münster and its environs are today overwhelmingly Catholic in an otherwise largely Protestant Northern Germany; and this is directly attributable to the Anabaptists, after whose defeat Münster returned to Catholicism and never looked back. Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560) was an extremely influential humanist and closest colleague of Martin Luther during the Protestant Reformation. Aspasia, born in Asia Minor around 450 BC, was a courtesan who was well educated and known for her prowess as an entertainer and conversationalist. She lived with Pericles as his concubine and bore him a son and was thus criticized by many for her sexuality and considerable influence over Pericles. Some felt Wiggers’s untimely death to have been caused by poison, while Kerssenbroch reports that Wiggers—recovering from an illness—traveled in the company of his wife to the mineral baths in Ems. “[T]his woman who cared more about herself than her husband, once left him alone sitting in the bath, and upon her return she found him drowned in the water. Whereupon she returned to Münster, stopped mourning after a few days, and married Rothmann.” In any case, it would appear that husband Johann Wiggers was an impediment to his wife’s plans and needed to be removed (Kerssenbroch, 403). Rothmann’s nickname, Stutenbernd, derives most innocently from the North German roll (der Stuten), which could itself be considered to have a somewhat suggestive shape until broken up. The same word also designates the uppermost part of the thigh. Die Stute is a mare

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15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21. 22.

or female horse; Rothmann’s colorful nickname was most probably intended to suggest the “stud” who services any number of fillies. Bishop Franz von Waldeck (1491–1553) was a bishop by dint of politics, not religion. He was anything but a devout Catholic, his reputation being that of a pursuer of wine and women, if not song. He already had a wife and mistress, numerous children, and an illegitimate son when he was appointed Bishop of Münster in 1532 and was mandated by Emperor Charles (Karl) V to quell the Anabaptist uprising. As the commander of a large imperial force, his inability to conquer the vastly outnumbered Anabaptist Army over a period of sixteen months showed him to be a less-than-inspirational tactician and military leader (Arthur, 18–19). Reck will continue to emphasize the enthusiasm with which Münster’s women embraced Anabaptism, particularly with respect to Rothmann and then, to an even greater extent, Bockelson. Reck recorded in his September 9, 1937 Diary entry: “I have told about Hitler himself, and how he showed himself to the mob assembled at Berchtesgaden, and how afterward bewitched females swallowed the gravel his feet had trodden . . .” (Diary, 49). Reck’s observation of Hitler’s effect on women during his personal appearances is well documented in Nazi propaganda such as Leni Riefenstahl’s 1936 film Triumph of the Will. The 1532 Münster raid on Telgte could be interpreted as a parallel to pre–Third Reich Nazi violence as carried out by Hitler’s SA (Sturmabteilung) or Brownshirts. The Duchy of Cleves (das Herzogtum Kleve) was located in what are today parts of Nordrhein-Westfalen and the Netherlands. In 1521 it became part of the united duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg. At the time of the Anabaptist uprising in Münster, this united body of duchies was ruled by Duke John III, The Peaceful, so named for his stance as a mediator between Protestants and Catholics during the Reformation. Whether intentional or not, Reck’s observation that the decision of Catholics and Lutherans to unite against the Anabaptists was “far too late” could well be a criticism of the failure of political parties in the Reichstag other than the National Socialists to form pragmatic coalitions against the Nazis before it was too late. Bernd Knipperdolling (ca. 1495–1536) was a Münster cloth merchant who was among the first in the city to convert to Jan Matthys’s particularly extreme practice of Anabaptism. A singularly enigmatic figure in the Münster saga, he would become Bockelson’s second-incommand (Williams, 554–563). Jan Bockelson (ca. 1509–1536) is also known as Jan (or Johann) of Leiden (Jan van Leiden or Jan von Leiden). Reck makes a number of references to the circumstances of Bockelson’s birth. What he states here is the truth of what is known, but with a decidedly negative spin. That Bockelson was born literally in a gutter

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23. 24.

25.

26.

27. 28.

29.

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is one version that cannot be substantiated. Reck’s intention of demonstrating parallels between Bockelson and Hitler is served by stressing the gutter scenario as a suggestion of Hitler’s own slightly nebulous roots—his aged father Alois had been born out of wedlock with no definitive proof of paternity, and Hitler himself was the product of his father’s third marriage to a much younger woman (Toland, 3–13). Reck’s characterizations of Bockelson as a bastard and quite literal gutter trash are meant for Hitler as well—monarchist Reck found both men to be lacking not only moral fiber but also the appropriate socio-economic pedigree. A Fastnachtspiel was a play performed on the day or days before Ash Wednesday. They were often humorous and quite bawdy. Hermann Kerssenbroch (ca. 1520–1585), a student in Münster at the time of the Anabaptist takeover, wrote in Latin Hermanni a Kerssenbroch Anabaptistici furoris: monasterium inclitam westphaliae metropolim evertensis: historico narratio (first translated into German in 1771 and translated into New High German as Geschichte der Wiedertäufer zu Münster in Westfalen by S.P. Widmann [Münster, Germany: Verlag der Aschendorffschen Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1929]) the most comprehensive work on the Anabaptists of Münster, but it is predominantly not a first-hand account, as he and other Catholics and Lutherans refusing to be baptized had been banished from the city at the beginning of the Anabaptist reign. His work is understandably characterized by an overwhelming bias against the Anabaptists and particularly against Bockelson. Heinrich Krechting (ca. 1501–1580) was among the nobility that were drawn to Münster’s Anabaptist enclave and one of the few males to survive the fall of the city in 1535. His brother, Bernd, was not so lucky and was tortured, executed, and then hung in a cage from the Lamberti Church steeple (as were Bockelson and Knipperdolling) (Arthur, 34). Martin Schongauer (ca. 1450–1491) was a leading late-gothic painter of the German Northern Renaissance. Lucas Cranach (1472–1553) was the court painter in Wittenberg and thus became the most prominent portrait painter associated directly with Luther and other Reformation figures. Another of Reck’s Bockelson-Hitler parallels is that both were initially drawn to the arts before they became despots. The duration of the Anabaptist hold on Münster is usually given as sixteen (February 1534–June 1535) or eighteen months, depending on whether the initial period of Rothmann’s and the early Anabaptist influence is included. Pope Alexander VI (1431–1503, Pope from 1492 to 1503) was a member of the notorious Borgia family and one of the most outrageously immoral popes of the Renaissance. His many sins fell into the categories of lust, greed, and even murder.

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30. Kleon was an Athenian politician and military commander who was originally a tanner. Despite his reputation as being cruel and brutal, he was an inspiring public speaker who used his talent to arouse Athenians into war with Sparta, which Athens won under his leadership in 425 BC. He was killed in the Battle of Amphipolis in 422 BC. 31. Francois-Noel Babeuf (1760–1797) was a socialist leader of the radical arm of the French Revolution who was convicted and executed for a planned overthrow of the existing revolutionary government. He had called himself Gracchus out of admiration for early Roman reformers, the Gracchi. The Gracchus Cornelius to whom Reck refers is most probably a Roman consul from approximately 147 BC who averted a revolt, but was himself killed shortly thereafter. 32. Policinelle was a favorite figure of the Neapolitan comic theater dating back to the sixteenth century, most often portrayed as a sly, greedy servant. He is also presented as a marionette wearing a white outfit, pointed hat, half mask, and a beak. 33. The entire foregoing paragraph serves as an excellent example of Reck’s seething hatred of Hitler carefully imbedded in prose and contextual references that serve to impede detection. 34. The Tscheka or Cheka was the feared Bolshevik secret police in the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1922. As will be seen in other instances, Reck’s sincerely felt negative allusions to Bolshevism and the Soviet Union most probably worked to get Bockelson by Nazi censorship and onto bookshelves, even if only for a short time. 35. The foregoing two paragraphs—referring to “a wretched and thoroughly inconsequential creature, . . . a miserable wretch, a windbag, an hysteric, . . . a little pile of nothing charged up with hysteria” and explicitly telling the reader that Bockelson “is the story of satanic German intoxication”—are perhaps all-too-clear statements of Inner Emigrant Reck’s loathing not only for Hitler but also for the hysterical masses that Reck felt the German Volk had become.

Chapter 2

The Beginning of the Tragedy (Incipit Tragoedia)

T

he outbreak of the Münster inferno coincides, and this was probably no accident, almost perfectly with the arrival of the two Dutch prophets. At the beginning of January 1534 the Baptist preachers Klopriss, Stralen, Roll, and Strapade run through the streets and alleys, crying alas and alack about the gleaming, wealthy city of Münster in general and the city officials in particular; in this matter they direct their attention especially to those jewel-bedecked wives of councilmen and “men of inheritance,” and they finally succeed in getting the elegant ladies to deposit their jewels at Rothmann’s house, where they were allegedly being kept for the support of needy preachers. This, however, meets with the harsh criticism of their husbands, who soon begin to smell garbage of a different sort and never manage to summon up the expected sympathy for the ministers’ doings. They wait with bullwhips and sticks for their women to return from the charitable pilgrimage, and the councilman Wördemann used a stick to “fortify,” as Kerssenbroch reports, “the faith of his wife—who had used this opportunity to have herself baptized—such that she could barely crawl, let alone walk.” It is of little help that the suspicious and outraged husbands are soon plotting a sound thrashing for the preachers as well, since the wives are already aflame, and even the young nuns of the feudal Überwasser Convent are beginning to desert. A contemporary poem offers a rather graphic picture of this: Some began to shun their order, Some were driven from their cloister

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Many were mad with carnal lust, With rebellion full enough to bust. So possessed they were by impurity, They ran from their convent after impure men.

These events cause Abbess Ida von Merfeld to turn with a helpless letter to the bishop, who advises her that under no circumstances is she to take back the apostates, lest the remaining faithful nuns also become infected. Franz von Waldeck, the bishop, finally rouses himself to energetic action. On the twenty-eighth of January he issues an edict raining fire and brimstone on the Anabaptists, revoking all civil privileges of their Münster advocates and threatening further reprisals. Rothmann’s reply, in order to obviate the presence of spies, is to move services into the private homes of pious brothers, to which one could only obtain access by showing a prearranged sign. In public too they now recognize each other by a small copper pin with the letters DWWF: “Das Wort ward Fleisch” (“The Word Became Flesh”); other than that they are no longer forced to secrecy and illegality in the rebellious city. In the streets the mob, which in the meantime has been armed, has become so combative that those who have remained faithful to the old beliefs turn their homes into armed camps and form something of a militia. On the thirteenth Bockelson and Gert tom Kloster arrived in Münster. Immediately after the publication of the bishop’s edict, a top-secret meeting of the Anabaptist leadership was held at Knipperdolling’s house at which the pious predicants seriously propose staging a Bartholomew’s Massacre1 against Catholics and Protestants, which of course doesn’t remain a secret to the members of the “old faiths.” It is to be expected that, under these conditions, the “Old Believers” would prepare counter-measures. They soon begin—with the knowledge of at least Mayor Judefeldt—to transport arms to the Überwasser Convent on the other side of the Aa River, and at that time they may have already petitioned the bishop for intervention. But the Bartholomew’s Massacre doesn’t occur just yet. The two envoys to Münster need more time to work on the masses, and they declare “that the time has not yet come to purify God’s temple and to stain one’s hands with the blood of the godless.” It is noteworthy that everyone arrived at the assembly heavily armed, they did not leave until dawn, and from the very start they treated Bockelson and tom Kloster not only as messengers from the prophet Matthys but directly from God as well.

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The council, having again tried in vain to have Rothmann removed from the city, probably senses the readiness for bloody violence, but takes no further action than that which every weak government has always taken in such instances: it negotiates, speaks of a “friendly and peaceful coexistence,” and posts an edict to that effect.2 The rebels just sneer and tear down the edict, crawl out of their hiding places into the daylight—with increasing frequency and always heavily armed—and force the city to dispatch not only Mayor Judefeldt but also Syndikus von der Wieck (who has flirted with the Baptists) to the bishop’s Landtag (regional diet) that was to be called on the second of February in Wolbeck; Heinrich Redeker, who on the night of the ambush in Telgte stole 500 gold guilders from the bishop’s knight Melchior von Büren,3 and Tile Bussenschute, a gunsmith and “terrible tall cyclops,” as Kessenbroch calls him, are also sent. The bishop considers this meeting to be a provocation and walks out, and “thus the meeting wearily adjourned,” according to a contemporary report. In the meantime our “Dear Rothmann” has unfortunately met with a mishap: In order to lure the last few nuns away from Ida von Merfeld, he delivered a sermon in the Überwasser Convent, reminding the young women of their duty to reproduce the human species, something no longer so far removed from their own desires, but then he shifted to an even more effective argument and prophesied the collapse of the convent steeple at midnight. It is unwise to predict the collapse of sturdy steeples unless one is sure of oneself, and even Rothmann probably feels that he has gone too far this time. The young women were—according to Kerssenbroch— “more pleased than frightened;” they saw the old world crumbling down around them and probably saw in “Dear Rothmann’s” suggestive imagery a bright, enticing new one emerging on the horizon. They flee, taking with them their belongings and disappearing into the big pressure-cooker that Münster will become in the next year-and-a-half. Ida von Merfeld and the Ladies von Linteloen and von Langen are the only ones who remain.4 Since it hadn’t in the least occurred to the Überwasser steeple to fall for Rothmann’s sake, and since Rothmann’s excuse—the disaster was only averted by the nuns’ conversion—was equally unimpressive, so Roll, Knipperdolling and also Bockelson save the face of the Anabaptist propaganda machine by storming “like madmen” into the streets yelling, “Oh Father! Mend your ways! Repent!” Mend your ways, repent, the day of the Lord is upon us, the city’s downfall is near! Few summon the courage to laugh, most have

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already been so captivated by the Münster insane asylum that they join in throwing themselves to the ground and praying, jumping to their feet and tearfully embracing one another. A tailor, whose daughter has already experienced such an attack of hysterical rapture, lifts his head and sees “God enthroned in the clouds with the victory banner in hand, threatening the faithless,” and the bloodthirsty prophesy, probably issued by the brutal Matthys, “that God will soon sweep his threshing floors,” is in no way missing from the tailor’s visionary outburst. The man, completely crazed, jumps around on the curbstone, claps his hands, flaps his arms in a flying motion —despite his enthusiastic efforts he remains earthbound—and falls to the ground, lying cross-shaped in the street filth. The Gymnasiasten (male high school students) observing all of this with Kerssenbroch, laugh, but still the orgy continues. In these nights preceding the actual outbreak of the conflagration, the enflamed of both genders run through the streets proclaiming heaven’s imminent descent; they accidentally fall into piles of excrement yet still see “the myriad of angels,” and they continue to scream until their sore throats give out.5 Münster has lost all reason overnight, and since life is not good in a city gone mad, those who have clung to a modicum of sanity begin to think of emigration, while the preachers whisper into the ears of the wavering and the little people: “Outside your city wall stands a heavily-armed feudal bishop ready to eradicate the kingdom of God which is arising in your midst—beware of traitors!” It’s the same old game that all rulers of rebellious states and cities employ to divert the attention of the masses from their real plans—so it was in 1792 in Paris and in Moscow of 1917, and it could hardly be different in Münster. If one can believe the account given by an unknown source, there promptly arrives at city hall the old rowdy and pickpocket Redeker, telling of a stranger who had that morning arrived in the city from without and reported that the bishop, with a punitive expeditionary force of 3000 men, was already on his way. It is the ninth of February, and despite all cries of penitence there is in the air the perfume of Karneval. The stranger is summoned by messenger to city hall, and with the speed of lightning—mayor Tilbeck already appeared to be a wavering figure—the news of imminent danger spread throughout the city. For the bishop is no less a figure inspiring terror to the people of Münster than will be the Duke of Braunschweig to Parisians in September of 1792, as he was poised in the Vosges Mountains with his army of white terror and his “thousand transportable gallows,” and if Paris was, in the words of a contemporary, presque electrique at

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that time, then Münster is in no case less “electrified” by this report of the approaching bishop.6 By eight in the morning an armed mob is already at what is today called the Prinzipalmarkt, shouting every possible threat against the Old Believers, the reactionary “men of inheritance,” the well-to-do; from the very start, this game has at least as much to do with socioeconomic resentment as it does with religious fervor. Difficult times can occasionally teach common prayers, and in this hour of need Catholics and Protestants very quickly forget their feud and agree on a joint defensive action. The Überwasser Convent and its adjoining cemetery had already long since been intended as a weapons depot and place d’armes for an occurrence just such as this—the locality was perfect due to its many hiding places, its favorably disposed abbess, the proximity of the Frauentor (one of the city gates), and the arrangements which had undoubtedly been made with the now approaching bishop. Kerssenbroch—boarding at the home of the counterrevolutionary Old Believer, Dr. Wesling—is, as a young humanist, of course on the bishop’s side, moving out on this very evening along with his landlord, carrying the master’s weapons and ammunition, after which Wesling’s maid Assola, having been ordered to do the same, was caught by the Baptists and robbed of her cargo. One of the game-rules of all revolutions is that this type of Putsch never succeeds until all of the emotional abscesses of the rebelling masses have been drained and the resentment has run its course.7 Another of these same game-rules is that such attacks never succeed until the mob’s hunger for robbery, murder, and revenge has been sated, all pockets are filled and all need for admiration has been gratified, and until yesterday’s fiery prophets—lazily digesting after a feeding frenzy—lie before the state treasury amidst the leftover scraps of their plunder. Because the volcanic eruption in Münster was as necessary to the course of history as the eruption of a boil in a clogged body, so this coup, prepared intra et extra muros, was destined to fail at this stage. The Old Believers, who in this case were probably of the propertied class, go to the Frauentor and the Judefelder Tor,8 as had surely been prearranged with the bishop, capture the pro-Baptist councilman Paulken and his son, take from them the keys to the city, confiscate three blunderbusses with ammunition which they take to the Überwasser Cemetery and point towards the inner-city where they know their enemies are to be found. As their ranks increase, they occupy the entire center of the city including the cathedral square, they arm the cathedral steeples, and at this point they capture

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the predicants Vinne and Stralen and lock them in the tower under the belfry. The Baptists are waiting at the Prinzipalmarkt. They have unfortunately neglected to occupy the important bridges over the Aa River and the entrances to the cathedral square; now they barricade themselves here in a less-than-advantageous position behind barrels and benches dragged from the Lamberti Church. And so they now stand opposing one another, with squabbling and shouting the battle cry “Christ” on the side of the Old Believers and “Father” on the side of the Baptists. They diligently fire blunderbusses and cannons, and the first Bruderblut (brother’s blood) is spilled into that earth which will swallow the same potion many more times in the near future—among the casualties of this night is a fellow-student of Kerssenbroch, shot through the temple, while Kerssenbroch himself “still a child and not yet accustomed to the hissing and soaring of the bullets,” hides out in the St. Aegid Cemetery behind the charnel house.9 On the side of the Old Believers the Pastor Fabricius10 encourages the warriors, on the other side the Dutch messenger Bockelson acts in the same capacity as a sort of battlefield chaplain. And so it goes until almost midnight, but it can’t continue like this forever! The gentlemen at Überwasser saw to it that, as had surely been prearranged with the bishop, the houses of their followers bear straw crosses as a sign that “good folks” live here and that they must not be looted by the bishop’s eagerly awaited troops—alright, but where in the world are these troops? It is almost midnight, and these gentlemen who are freezing as they confer with one another are all humanistically educated men who therefore recall Julius Caesar’s description of the siege of Alesia, which brings them to the idea of an all-out assault during which they will shield themselves from the opposing blunderbuss fire with portable shelters—unfortunately no one says where at this late hour such splendid military equipment might be obtained.11 In the meanwhile on the other side the enemy undertakes its own “spiritual offensive,” in that Knipperdolling and about fifty other rowdies run right up to the Überwasser walls howling into the night the usual: “Mend your ways! Repent!” But the noble and gracious lords in the cemetery remain steadfast—they grab the troublemaker and his pack and lock them up with the others “in the tower, where they bellow like oxen.” This roaring continues until everyone is completely hoarse. Of course when they later hear the clopping of horses on the cobblestones “they became silent in that tower and screamed no more.” The prisoners sensed that this was the bishop’s horsemen, for whom they still had a healthy respect.

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But what really did occur shortly after midnight, and how did the riders enter the city? It happened this way: following the bishop’s orders, Drost von Wolbeck, Dietrich von Merfeld, and Rotger Schmysing appear before the city gate accompanied by several heavily armed clergymen—Herr Melchior von Büren, still furious over having had his purse stolen by Redeker in Telgte, also rode with the bishop’s horsemen. These gentlemen demand admittance in the name of the bishop; Mayor Judefeldt, a man fundamentally loyal to the old regime, approaches them and expresses some misgivings about the city privileges that could be compromised by the presence of the bishop’s men, but he is reassured when he learns that the gentlemen have strict orders to respect the privileges. Whereupon Herr Judefeldt opens the gate, and the gentlemen ride into the city, which has a sobering effect on Knipperdolling, until now still bellowing in the tower. Only at this point is further information made known. The bishop is advancing on Münster, as well as 3,000 peasants, and now finally there should be an end to the preachers and their eternal riots. The Anabaptists, who perhaps through Tilbeck have gotten wind of this, are starting to sweat. Judefeldt is in complete agreement with the bishop’s plan; he realizes at this point that there must finally be a resolution, and thus the fate of the budding Empire of Zion appears to be sealed. But something else happens. It always turns out differently with coups such as this; just when it seems that everything has succeeded . . . in this hour there always appears a man who is faint of heart and who spoils everything. So it was with the storming of the Bastille, so it was in 1792 during the defense of the Tuileries,12 so it was in 1848 with the clearing of the Schlossplatz in Berlin by victorious troops,13 and so in 1534 it could not rightfully have happened otherwise. The “Other Mayor” Tilbeck is in this instance the one who spoils everything. Kerssenbroch maintains in a letter written on that very evening that the bishop promised immediate assistance and protection of the city’s privileges, but that Tilbeck took this letter, which can no longer be found in the city’s archives, and withheld it. Indeed, a contemporary epic is sung about Tilbeck as follows: Our gracious Prince [Bishop] sent a letter to Tilbeck Which the traitor Tilbeck did not publicize. The Prince wrote and guaranteed That he would keep the city of Münster’s rights intact; Tilbeck should open the gates to His Grace, And His Grace would hurry to the pious citizens.

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Such is the epic’s assessment of Tilbeck. The bishop’s promise to respect the city’s privileges would have made a strong and favorable impression on all those who had gathered here, and this being so, Tilbeck kept the letter to himself and in this night played upon the people’s general fear of losing the privileges, a fear common to medieval cities. So am I wrong in my assertion that this Mayor Tilbeck, under a different name and in different garb, shows up in almost every revolution? At this point the bishop’s advance guard is in the city; in the first morose light of the coming winter day three thousand peasants follow, and the Anabaptists at the Prinzipalmarkt feel their hearts sink and their pants fill, and this causes them to do that which the Bolsheviks would copy four hundred years later, when they bombard the white army with written and verbal ammunition. In order to demoralize what I am tempted to call the “Bourgeoisie” in Überwasser, they sent arbitrators to clear up any “misunderstandings.” From the Anabaptist camp comes the master tailor Kibbenbrock— during this mad year in Münster the noble tailoring trade seems to experience its Aristeia—accompanied by a man who answers to the somewhat apocryphal name Schwedartho. So these two heralds negotiate: of course today’s skirmish wasn’t at all meant to be taken so seriously; they, the Baptists, had really only wanted to hold maneuvers on this day, and it is simply a terrible accident, dear gentlemen of Überwasser, if you so misunderstood our harmless intention and responded to our poor people with such severe gunfire! But whom do we see there in your midst? Those are the bishop’s men, sworn enemies of the city, great feudal lords of the Hanseatic League, habitual slave drivers! Have you also considered, you Old Believers with your straw wreaths, what will happen to you once this notorious enemy of the city has been admitted, and that the bishop, once he is ruler of the gates and walls, won’t hesitate to take your freedom away from you? Wouldn’t it indeed be better in the end if we negotiated and decided, as you Old Believers yourself have suggested in your edict, to keep on living peacefully side by side? So the tailor Kibbenbrock, after delivering this speech, returns eastward to the Zion area around the Lamberti Church. Gentlemen, decide, if you please, in favor of a contract with the cobra lying at your side, “to live with it henceforth in peace and friendship . . .” Kibbenbrock’s words are carefully poisoned arrows, their poison is measured well for the ever-present men who are always to be found at such times, those men with the dear little reassurances, for the eternal compromisers and the perpetual “neither-yes-nor-no-sayers.” These words are especially meant for a man named Tilbeck, and a meeting

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with the Anabaptists—who can possibly fathom every villainy after 400 years—is finally agreed to. In any case they are catchwords of Tilbeck’s new dirge as soon as the arbitrators return to the west bank of the Aa River. “Is this suggestion to keep on living peacefully side by side really so unacceptable? And who can guarantee that the bishop will really keep his promise?” And above all: “Have you considered, dear sirs, that it is the blood of your brethren that you intend to spill?” There it is again, the old Judas word, and each time it was uttered—in 1789 and 1848 and 1918 and Russia in 191714 —and each time it was followed by a period when brotherly blood was not spilled but rather poured out by the bucket and which caused wounds immeasurably more horrible than if decisive action had been taken right from the start. Nevertheless, the decision is made to negotiate, and even the otherwise rather levelheaded second mayor, Judefeldt— Tilbeck was now “first mayor”—approves of the decision, which he will later bitterly regret. Arbitrators are chosen and given orders in which phrases such as “mutual tolerance” and “freedom of religion” are prominent; hostages are exchanged as a guarantee of mutual reassurance.15 But when the time at last arrives, the decision is final, and it will determine Münster’s fate for a long, long time. It will become a playground for all the Empire’s criminals, a kingdom of the underworld, a breeding-ground for dementia, a catalyst for the entire old imperial realm. The bishop’s envoys and mounted soldiers forget the game and ride off unhappily, even tearfully if Kerssenbroch is to be believed; the three thousand peasants, whose presence in that multitude must have seemed strange to both sides, fall upon the beer which had been donated by the city council, drink themselves blind and march off again. And, in order to invest this solution with the appropriate acoustics, the already-loaded cannons on both sides are fired into the air, rattling windowpanes throughout the entire city. Kerssenbroch reports that Bishop Franz wept upon hearing the outcome but finally cursed and dug his spurs into his horse. What now follows on the Baptist side is a foreshadowing of the 1793 Carmagnole,16 and here, just as later in Paris, it is the women who start the orgy. Kerssenbroch, anticipating here and there in his Latin chronicle all the bombast of the Baroque Era, speaks in this context of “Bachantesses, Thydadesses, Maenads, Mimalodines, Anodines, Tryaterides” and thereby tamps just a little too much powder into his flintlock with this deployment of quaint comparisons.17 But even without this perhaps overly descriptive language, that which

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ultimately does occur here is truly wild enough. With hair undone the ladies come running to the market, scantily clad and some, despite the wintry season, totally naked; they throw themselves cross-shaped to the ground, wallow in winter’s street filth, crying, laughing, beating their chests. “They certainly all called out for ‘The Father,’ but none called for ‘The Son,’” reports Kerssenbroch, alluding to the emphasis on the Old Testament which was so characteristic of the dissolute theology of the Divine Empire of Münster and which was one of the main causes of all the excesses that the city will be forced to witness in the coming months. But even now all that is humanly possible is being done: And the ladies feel and see blood raining from the heavens, they see blue and even black fires blazing, they see a man with a crown of gold sitting on a white horse galloping jubilantly across the sky with sword in hand, ready to slay the godless. But, dear ladies, we are already dealing with a pipedream, and we’ll see soon enough that this horseman, hardly heavenly but almost desperately carnal, will not keep us waiting very long. So in their burning desire for a hero, they call loudly for the “King of Zion,” who for the time being still sits in some tavern biding his time, and it is also quite interesting, how from this moment on the word “king” is slowly, quite gradually beginning to sneak into the consciousness of the Münster populace, particularly the ladies.18 But finally, when the screaming—“the grunting of a thousand pigs” as Kerssenbroch calls it in a fit of ill temper—eventually becomes nauseating, a disgusted gentleman finds a way to end the orgy: he shoots the golden weathervane down from one of the market houses. When it crashes thunderously to the cobblestones, the ladies awaken from their pious intoxication, and for the time being they stop seeing the King of Zion trotting through the clouds and deign to return home to prepare their husbands’ suppers. And it is in these days that Mayor Tilbeck has himself baptized by “Dear Rothmann,” and this fact remains unshakeable, even though later, when the winds of fate have turned, Tilbeck will fervently deny this baptism in a letter to the bishop.19 But even now some of Kerssenbroch’s fellow-students find it wise to grab a piece of bread for the road and leave the city, not, however, without the watchman at the city gate bemoaning the departing piece of bread. But searching the emigrants for food now becomes the order of the day, and since women leave carrying smoked hams under their fur skirts and since the haberdasher Sündermann, upstanding Zion patriot that he is, catches one woman carrying off this smoked national treasure, as Kerssenbroch puts it “by indecently groping her,” so thereafter by

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order from above, no one wanting to pass through the gate escapes such a body search. It can be readily seen that thoughts of siege and the starving out of the emerging Kingdom of God already preoccupy the powers that be. The idea is not too far-fetched. On February 23, as Zion celebrates a self-indulgent Fasching [Carneval], the bishop has already dispatched his fully armed mounted troops to Wolbeck; since so many Münster refugees fill his ears with their bitter complaints, his intentions for the city are not good; he is already negotiating an alliance with his powerful neighbors—Cologne, Lippe, and Hesse; money and promises of support are at his disposal, and there is a storm brewing over the young Kingdom of God. Incidentally, there is no “mutual tolerance” in evidence, and unfortunately we will never learn why the Old Believers, who had kept the enemy at bay with their weapons during the first encounter, never thought of these weapons, and especially of the hostages, for the second. Even the election of the new city council, which according to city ordinance would have been carried out free of disturbances, is held under the pall of terror. Redeker, whom we had already come to know as a rabble-rouser, holds forth in the marketplace right before the elections, urging the masses “to vote for a new council which will no longer be concerned with matters of the flesh but rather with matters of the spirit.” And while the mob surrounds city hall, the first ballot produces only twenty-four delegates, namely dissolute and criminal scum which “the council would not have even hired to guard the city’s prisons or as horse or dog keepers,” as Kerssenbroch chooses to express it in his occasional fits of patrician arrogance.20 It is easy to imagine what else came of this election. Indeed, Münster suffers no lack of politicized tailors, even as fellow-tailor Bockelson bides his time in the background, and, in order to stress even more the preponderance of this honorable trade for the future, we shall elect as mayors Kibbenbrock and Knipperdolling, who after all are not just professional prophets and visionaries but also garment makers of rank and standing. And in the meantime, as the exodus of Old Believers accelerates, 21 Münster, like a dry sponge, absorbs everything from far and wide that has been infected with the same psychosis. See how every sort of rabble comes in every kind of conveyance; even people of standing such as Count Heinrich Krechting arrive at the Mountain of Zion. Deserting mercenaries and vagrants come but also respectable people and beautiful, honorable women such as Hille Feiken, who migrates from Friesland and sees in Bishop Franz the great Holofernes, and

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covets for herself—not without some success as we shall see—the role of the heroic Judith.22 They come from near and far, and especially from the Netherlands, with both empty and full pockets, with wives and children and fully loaded wagons, and their long train is horrible proof of the searing flame of madness which now rages in this northwestern corner of Germany, and, just at a time when the peasants’ suffering had passed, 23 now for a second time the old black and gold empire of the Salier and Staufer is threatened with disaster.24 Later in the summer, still more will come, and again among them are men with old, respected names such as Scheiffert von Merode, “to the great astonishment of all who knew him,” writes an official from Cleves about this Baptist nobleman. The number of arrivals, however, is far greater than of those leaving the city, and it goes without saying that we should on their behalf lay claim to the homes which have been deserted and the Niesing Convent which we have looted, and soon enough there is only one concern that weighs upon our hearts . . . Yes, their number far exceeds that of the emigrants, and how shall we be able to feed them all, all of these so very many new eaters? Münster is still in that hoo-ha mood which follows every revolution . . . that euphoria which we surely all remember from the Germany of late 1918 through early 1919.25 And all the while the fever is rising, and it dissolves the old concepts and the old propriety, and finally it dissolves the ties that bind parents to their children, siblings to one another, husband and wife. The family von der Recke, for example, bears an otherwise reasonably good name yet suffers the evil of having in their midst a few excitable and eccentric women, and these eccentric women fall prima vista for the prophets of Zion. This is what happens: one of these ladies, long since a nun at Überwasser, flees the convent, convinces her mother and sister at home to be baptized as well, and the three women go in corpore straight to Dear Rothmann’s house. When husband/father Johann von der Recke comes to collect them there, they scream at him that he is no longer their husband and father. When, after the fall of Zion, he is able to reclaim his three slightly worn ladies, paying the bishop a high bail for them and vouching for their future good behavior, one of the daughters—hopelessly under the spell of her psychosis—again runs away, to be lost forever in one of the stillvegetating Anabaptist sects in northern Germany. In the meantime Fasching (Carnival, beginning on November 11) has come to Münster, and the new masters of the city commence to celebrate it properly. Carnival groups portraying the bishop and his

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chief officials parade through the city in a wagon, a fellow as tall as a tree is dressed in a monk’s habit and hitched to a plow, and in Hilltrup, about twelve kilometers inside the city limit, they carry a woman of ill repute around the cemetery to the knelling of bells, the yelling of psalms and the brandishing of church banners. That it would under these circumstances come to the destruction of the old cathedrals—this purest manifestation of the German spirit—is practically a given. The mob will always hate that which won’t fit into its gorilla head; the rabble, once unleashed, will always trample those things that its own clumsy fingers could not create. By around February twenty-third they had already started to drag off treasures from the various convent churches, to give church vestments to street whores, to steal and burn valuable documents (just as in France of 1789). The St. Mauritius Seminary—in those days outside the city—is ravaged and burned, the Niesing Convent is plundered, and what we gain here is room to put up the brothers and sisters who are flocking to the city from everywhere. It is under these circumstances that the way is paved for the destruction of the cathedral in the center of the city.26 The name of the hero who stages this orgy has been passed down: At the head of a band of scoundrels, Bernhard Mumme breaks into the cathedral, to live in it thereafter as a savage. The inner sanctum is befouled in the time-tested old ways of all burglars, the glass windows are smashed, and with a blacksmith’s hammer they beat on the clock whose artful construction was the life’s work of an unknown master.27 They defile the cathedral library with human feces, and in the days that follow they burn the collection of incunabula and etchings imported from Italy by Herr Rudolf von Langen. The altar panels painted by Master Franke are sawed into boards for a latrine, the Roman baptismal font shatters under their hammers. With hammers and axes they hack away at wooden and stone sculptures, and the organ is carefully destroyed pipe by pipe. So cry now, you saints, tear at your beards, you gothic magi who stood so piously around the crèche of Christ: Your time is up . . . Gone is the time of master cathedral builders who in silent anonymity stepped back behind their work dedicated to God; gone is the time when the resounding “Lord Have Mercy” was humbly written on the tombstones; gone is the time when cathedral bells rang while Kaisers of the Holy Roman Empire28 moved through the crisp, cold winter nights in carts drawn by teams of patient oxen; gone the Christian unity; gone the time when it was up to the imperial lord of

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the visible world to find—in the concept of the old Reich and the invisible realm—the great holy formula for reconciliation of all peoples and peace on earth. Ah, we knew that there was never such a formula on this blood-spattered earth, knew it and searched for it nonetheless, and from this our searching, which could never actually find anything, came the holy vaults and that eternal bout with the angel,29 and in the end, the pious “God has his soul” on our gravestones. The bishop will surely hear of the desecration of God’s house, he will come with Landsknechte (mercenaries),30 with heavy guns and hanging ropes so that you will once again experience a resurrection. Mankind—you dear stammering children of the spirit of the Middle Ages—has changed overnight; it has been bitten by the snake of reason and will suffer for centuries from a fever delirium called “the equality of all people.” There will be times when you find yourselves to be nothing more than museum pieces, objects to be auctioned off, and no one will know any longer where it was that you once wanted to serve God; and the time will come when any butcher’s apprentice will be allowed to set his butt down on the throne of German emperors as he is led past it past it in a museum.

Figure 2.1 Statues of the Madonna and Nine Apostles from the West Portal of the Überwasser Church, ca. 1370; sculptor(s) unknown (courtesy of the Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte).

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One day after centuries have passed, people, as the Renaissance gave birth to them, will awaken from this presumptuous dream of wanting to live with a God. One day martyrs’ blood will spatter for the second time, and for the second time a slumbering God will awaken to the wailing of his children . . .31 Yes, some day it might just be that way again, but until then countless generations will come and go, and you will be standing around in barns and sheds, and mankind will be busy building deaf automatons of iron that will replace you. Be glad to escape the chamber of oddities, consider yourselves lucky in these days of Mardi Gras if the troglodyte’s hammer shatters you, and go on, go to pieces and up in smoke: it is better that way. Goodnight, dear old pious world, goodnight, old Holy Empire, goodnight, world of God-seekers and cathedral-builders, goodnight, goodnight. “The cathedral is so devastated that it no longer looks like a beautiful house of God but rather more like a defaced abandoned building. Similarly, all of the city’s churches, houses of God and monasteries have been pitifully looted and destroyed such that God’s word and sacrament are laughed off, and those staying in them live more like beasts than human beings,” says an old report to the Westphalian Landtag (state assembly). Because you should know that after their work is done, the gentlemen celebrate exorbitantly under those sacred arches, gorging and guzzling with their ladies, defecating on old memorial slabs, using the baptismal fonts as chamber pots, and scratching up ancient frescos on the walls. Only the new council isn’t so terribly comfortable with all this. Very uncomfortable in the last days of their regime were the two mayors Judefeldt and Tilbeck, and they wrote to the bishop apologizing for the prevailing conditions; and Tilbeck, that model of dependability and truthfulness, lied to the bishop and bravely denied reports of his recent baptism. But the bishop, an otherwise soft-hearted gentleman, replied in an extremely reserved manner, and now a report comes to the newly elected council which leaves no doubt whatsoever as to the bishop’s intentions: On the bishop’s orders, Syndicus von der Wieck was arrested by Officer Moring in Fürstenau as he was leaving the city. To be sure, while in captivity Moring treated him more as his guest than as a prisoner, but the bishop sent the executioner with a writ of execution, who arrived just as the two gentlemen, prisoner and captor, were sitting at a leisurely after-breakfast game of chess, and Wieck was mercilessly beheaded . . .32 But whatever happened to our Predicant Roll, who, after all, can be considered one of the founding fathers of the new Zion. We have

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sent him out—since the smell of war is in the air—with orders to raise troops and arouse sympathy for the city, just as we have sent the blacksmith Jakob out to the Julich area to act as a propagandist. So what did happen to Roll? In Maastricht he was arrested and burned. And as far as our Master Jakob is concerned—they meticulously interrogated him, very meticulously indeed, and we shall never see him again either. So, City of Münster, know well that in the great ocean known as the Holy Roman Empire you are only a tiny islet; know well that the islet has seriously provoked the great, powerful ocean; know well that this great empire with all of its weighty trappings of imperial power and its princely need for appropriate recognition will defend itself furiously once it believes itself to have been challenged by a tiny band of heretics, those who were born in a ditch and with whom the lowliest camp follower would not share the same bench. To be sure, City of Münster, you are only a tiny speck on the German map, but you are a very important speck, and whoever has you has all of Westphalia, and whoever has Westphalia—doesn’t he really have the entire district of Lower Saxony? And whoever has that, doesn’t he pluck a shining gem from the Kaiser’s old crown? All of the secular and ecclesiastical sovereigns are looking at you, even the Kaiser himself, and there’s whispering and murmuring in the Dutch provinces, in southern Germany, in France, and behind the Baltic Sea in dusky Livonia where the light nights of summer are by themselves already the cause of strange and bizarre ideas. Do you, who have isolated yourself from the German Reich and who both secretly and openly swear death upon all rulers and princes, you, who want to make everyone and everything equal in the eyes of your severe and jealous God—do you actually believe that you can, without being punished, send your apostles throughout the country and that the Kaiser will allow the fire to burn until the sparks that fly from your embers become flames and burn down the entire German house? Hear this, City of Münster: The passionate thought often turns overnight into a sharp sword, the passionately harbored wish of those who are ready to die for its fulfillment is often the fulfillment itself. Barely 200 years after you ran amok there will be a handful of men they call encyclopedists, and with their thoughts—only these whispering thoughts—they seek to destroy the world order of their time with its baroque kings and theocrats and its class-bound institutions.33 And these eight or ten men stand before the King of France and the German Kaiser and the great church of St. Peter and millions and

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millions of people for whom thunder still roars in God’s angry voice and who have not yet lost their pious belief that on the Holy Night of Christ, God’s hand loosened the tongues of mute creatures that in this hour they too could join mankind in praising the Savior.34 So eight or ten men will stand against an entire mighty world and will only need fifty years to overthrow with their whispering thoughts this powerful world, to cast the crown of the French kings into the dust and in St. Denis to scatter the bones of these kings to the four winds, to burn out the sacred Ori-Flamme in Reims,35 and to put a naked whore in the place of holy pictures on the altar of Notre Dame in Paris, just as you did in Westphalia. The thought, oh city of rebellious visions, the harbored thought is an almost immeasurable force, and military men hold it in contempt only as long as it takes them to realize too late that it can weaken their armies, that it can turn weapons against their bearers.36 If you venture everything you might still win, if you keep your house in order you can enflame with your heretical torch the entire world as it frees itself of its gothic confinement. So do not lose heart prematurely, and whatever you do, don’t hide your head in the sand. In Wolbeck and in Bevergern they are drowning and burning your followers from without; the bishop is recruiting men on horse and on foot. The furious bishop pays well and his coffers of gold appear to be full, and in his articles of war he has already divided the plunder of your property between himself and his troops. Hear this, City of Münster, His Grace has the support of the Archbishop of Cologne, the Duke of Cleves, the Counts of Bentheim and Lippe, and the Landgrave of Hesse, who up until now has always striven for peaceful negotiations between Protestants and Catholics, he is also there and sends, along with various siege-equipment, the two big flame-throwers known as “The Devil” and “His Mother.” And if these friendly neighbors ask a high price for their help and harsh rental charges for their cannons, and if they send their commissioners—without whose approval His Grace may take no independent action—into the bishop’s camp? And look, the cities of Deventer and Bielefeld and especially the regent of Brabant are there. And what you hear rumbling beyond your walls, if you listen closely, is the pounding of the bishop’s gunpowder mills. Oh yes, he pays well, does the bishop, he snatches away sacred treasures from the communities and then forces them to buy them back, and from the treasure that he has thereby amassed he pays his commanders fifty gold florins a month, and Gerhard von Morien and Johann von Raesfeld will together cost him 1,300 florins for their

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eight-month service as his generals, and, on top of all that, what is paid for von der Recke, Stednick and Kuritzer, and Iselmunde and for all the countless other leaders and all the expensive artillery—can we even begin to tally? You, Münster, you are worth it to him, and he has already come to an agreement with his Landsknechte that after the successful siege they must by no means kill your prophets and predicants, but rather deliver them to him alive: and why, pray tell, is that, you devastated City of Münster? And from Easter week on, Münster and its realm of Zion were severed from those arteries that bring warming, nourishing life’s blood from the rest of the Reich. Notes 1. Bartholomew’s Massacre refers to the slaughter of some 2,000 Huguenots in Paris on the eve of St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, 1572. 2. As Reck was writing this work, Hitler was already on his way to a planned European hegemony by gambling that several bold moves would not be met with resistance from Western powers—starting with repudiation of the Treaty of Versailles by rebuilding the German military forces and having German troops march into the occupied Rhineland in 1936. Reck was correct in his critique of the politics of appeasement—governments negotiating ineffectually and speaking of “friendly and peaceful coexistence”—that would lead to Hitler’s annexation of Austria and occupation of the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland in 1938 and most of remaining Czechoslovakia in 1939. In an attempt to avoid war, Great Britain and France negotiated endlessly with Hitler while he continued expand the borders of the Third Reich. After the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria, Reck wrote in the March 20, 1938 entry of his diary: “But I foresee a day when the nations will regret their cowardly passivity. The cost is beyond measuring: but they will have to pay, someday” (Diary, 59). 3. Melchior von Büren was a wealthy Münster patrician who served as a Domherr (church official) for St. Paul’s Cathedral (Sankt-Paulus-Dom) and was a generous philanthropist as well. After von Büren had left the city with other “Old Believers,” Bockelson confiscated his house and made it his own (Arthur, 202). 4. The Ladies von Merfeld, von Linteloen, and von Langen were typical of unmarried noblewomen who would join an order of nuns. 5. The foregoing paragraph reflects not only the aversion that Reck felt for mass participation in Nazi street rallies and parades but also the mixture of amusement and fear that such events inspired.

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6. Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1735– 1806) was an admired Prussian ruler and skilled military tactician. In 1792 he commanded an army of combined empire and Prussian forces poised for war with revolutionary France. 7. Reck’s allusion to another “putsch” that was not initially successful but was only mildly suppressed and whose leaders kept its spirit alive would be to Hitler’s 1923 Beer-Hall Putsch. 8. Wherever it occurs, the word Tor refers to a gate in the Münster City wall. 9. There are a number of items in Münster named for St. Aegid, the most prominent being the Aegidikirche (a church first mentioned in a document from 1181). 10. Dietrich Fabricius was a young Lutheran pastor at the court of Philipp Landgrave of Hesse whom Philipp first sent to Münster to preach renunciation of Anabaptism in the Lamberti Church; but the young clergyman only received abuse from a mob of Anabaptist women. He would return later to negotiate (unsuccessfully) with Bockelson and also to report to the bishop on the state of the Münster enclave (Arthur, 25–26, 132–134). 11. The Siege of Alesia took place in September of 52 BC, a decisive Roman victory over the Gauls which Caesar described in his Commentari de Bello Gallico. Caesar’s main principle was to build a set of fortifications around the Gallic fort of Alesia, thereby starving out the enemy. This will be, in fact, the essential strategy employed by the Empire forces to defeat the Anabaptists. 12. Tuileries Palace was a residence of the French royal family until replaced by Versailles. During the French Revolution Louis XVI and his family were held at Tuileries under house arrest until it was stormed by a mob on August 10, 1792, although the royal family managed to escape. 13. This reference is to the failed German Revolution of 1848. 14. The first three dates refer to the French Revolution, the German Revolution of 1848, and the so-called November Revolution in Germany at the end of World War I. In expressly citing these uprisings by the forces of the left—the Russian Revolution in particular— Reck could pass Nazi political inspection and then add “which caused wounds immeasurably more horrible than if decisive action had been taken right from the start” (with for example, Hitler’s National Socialist “revolution”) with total impunity. 15. These names were obtained from an anonymous diary, which was found in the Münster city archives, and which is the only source of their names. Mentioned were Wilbrant Ploniess “borgermester,” Hermann Herden, Johann Kerckerinck, Eber Ocken, Claess Snyder, Berndt Pickert, and Ever Gestemer (Reck, 205). 16. The “Carmagnole” was a popular song and street dance during the French Revolution practiced by Red Republicans and therefore associated with the Reign of Terror (September 1793–July 1794).

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17. In his references to mythical women of abandon (e.g., the Bachantes or Maenads were female followers of Dionysus), Kerssenbroch does indeed tamp “just a little too much powder into his flintlock with this deployment of quaint comparisons.” Then again, what better way was there for inner emigrant Reck-Malleczewen to suggest Hitler’s appeal to masses of women while at the same time—even if unintentionally—strengthening his text’s camouflage of esoteric erudition, thereby improving its chances of being published. 18. “[T]he word ‘king’ is . . . beginning to sneak into the consciousness of the Münster populace . . .” as would the word “Führer” in Germany, particularly after Hitler unified the offices of Reich Chancellor and Reich President upon the death of President von Hindenburg on August 2, 1934. 19. On February 16, Hermann Tilbeck wrote to the bishop: “If there are rumors claiming that I and my family were baptized, these rumors are completely false. Should the prince want it, I am ready to cleanse myself of this crime before God, the world, and all people. I therefore ask that His Grace not be taken from me” (Reck, 205). 20. The foregoing paragraph would appear to be an allusion to the increased number of Reichstag seats gained by the National Socialists in the elections at the end of the Weimar Republic. There is also the suggestion of intimidation at polling places by Hitler’s SA or Brownshirts. 21. By 1936, Reck had already seen “the exodus” of numerous prominent Germans who had chosen to leave Nazi Germany. In his September 9, 1937 Diary entry Reck addresses those who have left Nazi Germany: “And this is how we now live, my vanished friends. Do you, who left Germany four and more years ago, have any idea of how completely without legal status we are, of what it is to be threatened with denunciation at any time by the next hysteric who comes along? . . . [W]hen you come back . . . will you actually be able to understand that flight into civilization was more comfortable than remaining at the dangerous outpost, an illegal watcher among the barbarians?” (Diary, 42). Reck’s words crystallize the ongoing academic debate as to whether the German intelligentsia afforded more courageous and effective opposition to Hitler by staying (Inner Emigration) or leaving (Opposition in Exile). 22. In the Old Testament tale of Judith and Holofernes from The Book of Judith (not included in the Hebrew or Protestant biblical canons), the beautiful Judith’s home city of Bethulia was under siege by Holofernes, a general of Nebuchadnezzar. After becoming drunk at a banquet, Holofernes repairs to his tent with Judith, who kills him and brings his head back to Bethulia, which had thus been saved from conquest. Hille Feiken’s tragic attempt to emulate Judith will be described later. 23. Reck is referring to the bloody Peasants’ War of 1525.

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24. The Salier and the Staufer were dynasties that began as early as the tenth century and were kings and emperors in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation from the eleventh through the thirteenth century. 25. In referencing the so-called “November Revolution,” which took place at the end of World War I from November 1918 through March 1919, Reck cites that which had occurred recently enough to be remembered by all adult Germans as a time of chaotic unrest leading to the doomed Weimar Republic. He thereby stops short of expressly mentioning Hitler’s subsequent “Brown Revolution” and lets readers (or Nazi censors) draw their own conclusions. 26. The Sankt-Paulus-Dom (St. Paul’s Cathedral), first built in its current location beginning in 1225, suffered under the two dictatorships of which Reck is writing in Bockelson. The Anabaptists did serious damage, especially to New-Testament frescoes and statuary inside the cathedral. In World War II, Allied bombs almost completely destroyed the cathedral, which was rebuilt 1946–1956. Prior to its destruction, the Sankt-Paulus-Dom was also home to the courageous Cardinal Clemens August Graf von Galen (1878–1946), whose open resistance to the Nazis earned him the name “Der Löwe von Münster” (“The Lion of Münster”). 27. Reck’s reference is to die Astronominische Uhr (the Astronomical Clock) that still remains and functions within St. Paul’s Cathedral in Münster. It was already in existence in 1408, destroyed by the Anabaptists in 1534, and rebuilt in the period 1540–1542. 28. The Holy Roman Empire mentioned here was Das heilige römische Reich Deutscher Nation (the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation) which was Germany’s first Reich, lasting up to the Napoleonic Wars in the early nineteenth century. 29. See Genesis 32:24: “[Jacob] remained alone: and behold a man wrestled with him until morning.” The Douay-Rhiems Bible (English translation of the Latin Vulgate) explains in a note “‘A man’ . . . This was an angel in human shape. . . . This wrestling, in which Jacob, assisted by God, was a match for an angel, was so ordered . . . that he might learn by this experiment of the divine assistance, that neither Esau, nor any other man, should have power over him” (33). 30. The closest English equivalent to the term Landsknecht is “mercenary,” although Landsknecht, indicates a specific type of soldier-forhire in the late Middle Ages and especially during the Thirty Years War. A Landsknecht would hire himself out to an army under the condition that his pay was largely contingent upon victory, in which case he would be paid a cut of the plunder, with the understanding that he would also be allowed to pillage and rape to his heart’s content for a specified time period—an extremely risky and brutal business. The term Landsknecht (Landsknechte is the plural form) will be used where it occurs in the text.

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31. The combination of Reck’s prose and his grasp of history (both past and projected) serve to confound a reader—or censor—to the point of simply moving on with the text. But who is to say that this apocryphal “[o]ne day after centuries have past” is not—as Reck was writing in 1936—close at hand? 32. It appears that von der Wieck was an intellectual grumbler. He contributed a great deal to the spiritual dissolution of Münster, but was unable to accept the new ways and departed from the city. When death came knocking at his door in the person of the bishop’s executioner, he died ingloriously—moaning and crying and denying everything (Reck, 205–206). 33. The encyclopedists of whom Reck speaks included the leading rationalist thinkers of the French Enlightenment. Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers was published in its first twenty-eight volumes from 1751 to 1772 under the editorship of Diderot and included contributions by Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu among many others. 34. The belief that animals were given the ability to speak on the night of Christ’s birth is derived from an old Bavarian Nativity story which has been told to children down through the years. 35. The Ori-Flamme (Golden Flame) was the red banner of St. Denis, carried before the early kings of France as a military insignia. 36. Although the narrator hypothetically directs his explanation of the power of the “harbored thought” at the Anabaptists, the concept as articulated here by Reck perfectly describes the philosophical underpinnings of Inner Emigration. Consider a similar quote from Ernst Juenger’s Inner-Emigration classic On the Marble Cliffs: “But, above all, we continued our study of language, for in the word we recognized the gleaming magic blade before which tyrants pale. There is a trinity of word, liberty and spirit” (Juenger, 63).

Chapter 3

The City of God (Urbs Dei)

A Christian should have no money, and his silver or gold belongs to everyone. From one of Rothmann’s sermons

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he blacksmith Jakob, who had been caught by the horsemen of the Westphalian Landstände (provincial diets)—and thoroughly interrogated before being executed in the manner of the period—shows himself in the face of death to be a defiant and upright man; he repents not a single word of Anabaptist teachings, staunchly calls the pope the Antichrist and infant baptism an abomination, and reveals during his interrogation a good deal of the strange, heretical world that is stirring the hearts behind Münster’s walls. In accordance with “the prophecy of Zacharias,” the city has been divided into three parts, and they begin to expunge the old days by renaming the streets. There has also emerged a prophet from Leyden whose name Meister Jakob doesn’t know; he remains in the background for now but in any case has been sent out to proselytize as had been Enoch.1 As for himself, Meister Jakob ran from the city because he had been having strange visions that he now wanted to reveal here outside the city walls. Everyone in the city has such visions, and from the pulpits the prophets proclaim that there will come a time when Münster will be so overpopulated that they will have to build a house on the cathedral square, so teeming, in fact, that empty churches will have to be turned into homes; this, of course, long after the homes of the emigrants have been confiscated.2 Because, gentlemen, the godless and all the followers of Rome and Luther have fled; Knipperdolling was barely able to prevent this

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mysterious Leyden prophet from destroying them and their wives and babies with his sword, “like an evil infection.” But now, on the Friday after Invocavit (the first holy day of the Lenten season, the sixth Sunday before Easter), they had been driven from the city, and only a few had at the very last minute bought themselves the right to stay by accepting a much belated baptism. “The weather was bitter with ice and snow,” adds Münster eyewitness Meister Gresbeck, “not even a dog would have been chased out of the city on that Friday.” In Gresbeck’s account the Münster rabble was standing around in a circle yelling: “Get out, you godless trash, God will soon awaken and punish you.” The Leyden prophet was one of the loudest to so scream. And this was truly a horrible departure; there were frail old people and small, pitifully crying children. Punches and blows rained down on them; pregnant women gave birth in the snow just outside the city walls. The bearers of old, well-known patrician names had their clothes torn off of them and were forced to leave almost naked; and Prophet Matthys put a spear to the body of Provost Dungel, a venerable old man, calling him “an old buffoon and a fraud” and let him go only after plundering him completely. So that’s how it went in Münster. But, Meister Jakob, we out here have known all this for quite some time now, since all these refugees have come to His Grace the Bishop lamenting and reporting of events in Münster. But what is going on inside you people, that is, in your hearts, and what devil rules your minds such that those who yesterday were diligent, industrious citizens now commit such atrocities? And Meister Jakob, thus questioned, begins to talk. He speaks of the Judgment Day that will come between Lent and Easter—horribly soon, gentlemen—and engulf the whole world. But here not one in ten people will escape, and only Münster, God’s own city, will be spared. “The prophet rules the people and teaches them God’s word and how to live virtuously, and he prophesies how the world shall be punished.” Thus speaks the blacksmith just before he is pinched to death with glowing hot tongs and, so to speak, with all due honors. There are later more detailed and erudite accounts of the Gottesstaat (God’s state), but for now let us stay with this first document. Judgment, punishment, penitence, the end of the world, good works . . . is it not the Old Testament with its tablets and red trumpets and its inconsolable wailing which looms behind all this emphasis on earthly life and in this concealment of the deliverance in death? And has all our gothic struggle for salvation through Christ been forsaken for this Anabaptist

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world with its stern assignment of rewards and penalties? And is it really a coincidence in Kerssenbroch’s report of the destruction of the Münster cathedral, that they destroyed all of the pictures of Christ yet spared all those of persons and kings from the Old Testament? It is no coincidence. In 1534 not sixty years has passed since the unknown master of the Peringstörff Altar painted the vision of Saint Bernardus: the sinful creature kneeling before Christ on the cross, crying out and grappling with the tortured God until Christ freed himself from the cross and sank down into the mortal arms of mankind. Yes, not even sixty years have passed since then, and these sixty years bridge similarly tumultuous epochs, such as that around 1789 or the one following the Renaissance, though they may have had different goals and a different view of the world. The gothic world had a collective source from whence the cathedrals grew, and this collective source was all about God—the Renaissance person, ordained by a higher order as master of this globe for four hundred years, relies on his own earthly existence, and it is upon this groundwork that everything we shall learn of herein is founded: the world of good deeds, so bereft of any ideology, this icy virtuousness which we find at the same time in that contemporary named Calvin and 250 years later in Calvin’s latest descendant, called Robespierre, who in the end will paradoxically destroy life itself for virtue’s sake.3 The collective of Münster—cut from the cloth of the Old Testament, born of the rejection of German mysticism—shows early on all the symptoms which come from the secularization of life: not least of all the terroristic claims to power of mass-man, nor his hostility to all things spiritual and his wanton hatred of all that eludes his hunger for power and the infallibility-doctrine of the gastrointestinal tract.4 The timespan separating that mysterious master of Peringstörff from the Münster of the Anabaptists is but a few decades, yet it is far greater than the 400 years that separate the Zion of Münster from that of Moscow with its Besboschnitschestwo (Bolshevist atheism).5 When the Anabaptists proclaimed the diktat of good deeds and virtue and replaced Meister Eckhart with the Book of Judges, they denied that heroic-pious courage of an unfinished classical sculpture and the gospel of the unfinishable that is always at the core of the most resplendent fruit born of the Middle Ages. We probably did have to wade through the sludge of Encyclopedism for 200 years before this realization began to dawn on us once again. So it was back then in Münster. And since the city cannot be lifted like some indifferent stone from within the essentially still-gothic wall of the Empire, so the Empire raises its fist; and since this raised

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fist can be readily seen from the city walls, so one eagerly begins to arm oneself. When we dragged the bones of martyrs from the plundered churches to the cemeteries and confiscated golden implements for the state treasury, we also took the memorial slabs of dead bishops to reinforce the bastions;6 then we recast their leaden coffins into bullets, just as the desecrators of the royal crypt at St. Denis had done in 1793. We also dug for saltpeter—just as the Sanscoulottes7 had done later in Paris—in cemeteries and stalls and outhouses, and finally we built powder mills and gun-foundries in the empty churches and manufactured the machinery of war even in those beautiful homes on the Prinzipalmarkt where our judges and prophets live, and where our Jan Bockelson, a saint second only to Matthys, has taken possession of Melchior von Büren’s house. Gathering before our walls are now the powerful armies of the bishop, who is bleeding his subjects with such high war taxes that in August there will be riots in the city of Bocholt. He starts the siege by erecting a second rampart around Münster’s walls and first five and then seven fortifications with guns and bulwarks. His Landsknechte, who are by no means well disciplined and who during their advance burn down two feudal family estates in Plettenberg just for fun, laugh about little Münster as they advance, chiding somewhat prematurely, “it’s such a small village, not worth all these war machines, just a meager little soup, not worthy of such a large fire.” They saw it, and they still misread the situation, those pious servants: right in the first days there is a bloody struggle which leaves many dead on the battlefield and one of the bishop’s drummers in the hands of the city, his severed head promptly appearing on the ramparts next to his drum. On both sides there are still those somewhat crude yet almost boyish opening ceremonies with which the Middle Ages preferred to begin such sieges. Münster filled a carefully pitch-sealed wine barrel, filled not with wine but rather with a much different, less appetizing commodity, corked it well, and sent the gift, so to speak, with best regards into the bishop’s camp. They smash the barrel open, greedy for the wine, and then must hold their noses for days against the “bouquet.” But within the walls of the holy city things are much more serious, and Münster is quite full of itself. It’s going to be quite a brawl with these raging saints. Kibbenbrock and Knipperdolling delivered a grand speech in which they appealed not so much to Baptist ideology as to Münster patriotism and especially to the dislike of the great Hansen which was already prevalent at the time.8 Because really, who

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is this bishop? Like everyone of his kind, he is a feudal lord who has passed the ancestral test, has loathed from the cradle on all forms of city culture and city liberties, and who hardly goes to war just for the sake of doctrine but rather, like all of his kind, to encroach upon your liberties. You might say that these mayoral speeches have just the same effect as those held in a quite similar situation in Paris in 1792, when the Prussians waited in the passes of the Vosges Mountains. Münster organizes its army, chooses leaders and standard-bearers; it actually forbids its troops the use of godless fifes and drums after it had in its rabid Puritanism already smashed all flutes and fiddles and lutes, as well as lotto- and board-games. Only by appropriate citation of the Old Testament and a solemn reference to David’s harp and the trumpets of Jericho do the city officials succeed in preserving military music for their army. In those days little Münster is, as Carthage once was, a prime example of total war; it mandates target practice for boys and even women, instructs girls in the boiling of tar and pouring of lime, assigns watch posts on the ramparts to the entire population— big and small, young and old—and threatens death for any sort of disobedience.9 Now we have a fire brigade in which all must serve; on our ramparts we have as forerunner to the Paris alarm-cannons a huge alarm-bell which is unfortunately under constant enemy fire; we also hold public award ceremonies to commend the invention of new war machinery and regrettably have a serious mishap with only one such innovation, a cross between a lasso and a catapult: when the thing is hurled for the first time, the bishop’s troops, instead of being scared, brazenly trample with their heathen feet on the lasso that was meant to catch them, and what’s more they laugh at us.10 Meanwhile, we are building bulwarks, we urge the citizens to keep a close watch out for traitors in their midst and enemies of God’s Kingdom. And while we are smashing all family crests, memorial slabs, and all other reminders of the old days, while we finally burn that pagan cathedral library along with every possible old document, an order is proclaimed by our God-sent prophet Jan Matthys—“a great tall man who had a large black beard and was a Dutchman,” according to Gresbeck. He, our high priest himself, issues the proclamation which will mean the end of all previously accepted customs: He confiscates all precious metals and all coined money that are privately owned. And it is with this measure that there arises for the first time something like a rebellion in the holy city.

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Some blacksmith whom a few contemporary reporters call Truteling but most call Hupert Rüscher, who has for some time now been angry about the eternal grind of daily guard duty and who used to heckle the bishop, now grumbles about the present curtailment of personal liberties and is even brazen enough to claim that our prophet, if he’s a prophet at all, is in any case a propheta cacans (sewer prophet), in good German a Scheissprophet (shit prophet), and whoever so wishes to believe in an ignorant baker from Holland may do so, but he, the blacksmith, will not. This statement is made during a card game in the watch room, and those who hear it sit in embarrassed silence, and since there are among them a few conscientious informers, “the tall man with the black beard” so slandered finds out about it within twenty-four hours. And now things look pretty bad for our blacksmith. For where would it lead if in the new Zion the prophet sent by God himself could be defamed with such words, if one could call him a Scheissprophet and go unpunished? So the blacksmith is arrested and put into stocks on the cathedral square before a gathering of the entire community, the prophet preaches a frightful sermon of admonition, has the shackled and miserably trembling man dragged to the middle of the assembled circle, and calls him a godless instigator and breaker of the Holy Covenant who must be eradicated. What that means is clear to everyone who recently saw the head of the captured Landsknecht next to his drum on the ramparts. They especially know this when Bockelson, who for now is only the second saint-in-command, begins to scream and swing a halberd around. Tilbeck and Redeker, in whom there now finally awakens a little feeling of Münster opposition to the two stray Dutchmen, try to intervene; but since in the meantime the Prophet is overcome by yet another fit of rage and screaming, they are arrested and led away by Matthys’s bodyguards, without whom the combative man is rarely seen. But since the way is now clear for further eruptions, Bockelson bravely stabs the shackled man with his halberd but cannot, to his dismay, pierce him all the way through, so he takes a musket and cries, “may the door of mercy be closed,” and shoots the pitifully pleading man. Fatally wounded, the smith is brought to his house, but now, after this outburst of brutality and bloodthirstiness, the Prophet’s mood suddenly changes. Bockelson examines the wounded man, and, as though newly inspired, shouts, “He’s recovering,” and generously pardons him. “But,” reports Gresbeck, “on the eighth day the citizen was dead.” Yet that, dear brothers, is only the beginning of the terror.

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Since then no one else in Münster dares to grumble or protest. And of course we have long since confiscated the homes of those who have fled, along with all their jewelry and abandoned household goods, but now that the unfortunate smith has been struck down by our own lightning, and now that we have demanded of all who remain in the city to turn over their cash and precious metals, now that the entire state treasury is piled up in city hall, we really have pretty much everything of value in the city. If people today have a hard time understanding how a stray underworld character could plunder a wealthy city overnight, and how this could all happen at the end of the Middle Ages with its strict distinction between mine and thine and a death sentence ready to punish even a petty theft, they should bear in mind that two hundred years earlier in Nuremberg, albeit without Zion and prophets, very similar circumstances were paving the way for Münster. One should remember that there too the leading citizens were driven from the city and that inside the city walls they preached about the poverty of the first Christians and the old delusion of the equality of everyone. One should also remember that Nuremberg of that time was something of a Christianity-based dress rehearsal for the Paris commune, and it required a more-or-less camouflaged imperial takeover to restore the old order of the city oligarchy.11 So wasn’t it exactly the same in Münster, where in a time of madness and confusion something rose to the surface which had lain dormant beneath all along. At any rate, everything here is running smoothly after the death of the smith, who, by the way, was supposed to have been one of the main troublemakers during the famous assault on the bishop in Telgte! And even the enamel-decorated gold buttons, which in those days were worn on one’s clothes, were seized. “Off with the buttons from your coat, off with the rings from your collar,” says an old document. “They couldn’t hide anything either, as there were two girls possessed by the devil who would reveal what had been hidden.” And Gresbeck, who certainly hadn’t expected such unpleasant repercussions from the new religion, gives this indignant report: “Whenever they could find someone who had kept his money, silver and gold, they would punish him, and some were even beheaded, such that no one was permitted to keep anything.” Other than that, the prophet has visions in which God’s voice designates him as the appointed administrator of the amassed treasure, and since God Almighty also deigns to convey this same command to citizens Kohues, Grueter, Kruse, and Reyninck, we shall henceforth see these gentlemen officiate as deacons who visit the needy and

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provide for them from the abundance of those who have fled. This care, eagerly given at first, unfortunately doesn’t last very long, as the citizens, forgetting their divine instructions, gradually lose their enthusiasm, and soon the city’s poor are as miserable as before. Generally, however, there is strict rationing in the new Zion. Now we have ordered a strict inventory of the available provisions, including all of the butter, bacon, cattle, pigs, and even chickens, but unfortunately all of this was never followed by any regulation of consumption; and as born North German carnivores we have within the first year of our God’s kingdom already polished off over a thousand cattle and comparable amounts of fat, butter, and eggs, and, moreover, the rampart-guards saw fit to throw away the perfectly good if somewhat foul-smelling salt-herring, which they will later come to bitterly regret. “In time,” reports Gresbeck, “they would have gladly eaten the herring that they had once disliked.” And since we live a life of luxury in the first year, the tables of our communal love-feasts, which will soon be discussed, are after a short time somewhat scantily set, “so that now everyone who has anything must eat at home. But they didn’t have much at home. Everything had been taken from them, and it couldn’t be reclaimed once hunger started to set in.”12 So that’s how it went with food rationing and with the communal meals which were eaten under green trees, and a child would read a chapter from the Testament, the Old One, of course. Grumblers are not tolerated and lushes even less. For instance, Captain Gert der Raucher (Gert the Smoker), who defected to us from the bishop’s army and gets his nickname from those primitive cigars he smokes which Columbus had discovered—back then they were a good two fingers thick and almost a yard long—forty years ago in America. Anyway, when this captain—somewhat unruly to begin with—starts a ruckus in a tavern over the early closing time, calling the tavern owner’s wife a whore and hitting the tavern keeper over the head with a beer stein, well, we just tie him and his drinking companions to a linden tree on the cathedral square and shoot him dead. After all, there must be order; that is what the Prophet with the long black beard wants, and that is what the Twelve Elders want, whom we have in the meantime elected as our senate, and who never assemble in city hall without the Testament, the Old One of course, lying open on the table: these twelve powerful men, among whom are Jan Bockelson and another who has come to us from afar, Heinrich Krechting. Lord knows, this is a hard-nosed council. From this time forth let no one be so bold as to lock his door at night—might there be such a

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thing as mistrust among God’s children? And let no one dare to keep even a single volume, since we confiscated all books except the Bible last March and publicly burned them in the marketplace—after all, should there be any reading other than that of the Holy Scripture, and isn’t every other book the Devil’s work?13 And what should we really do, you men, dear brothers, with those among us who do not of their own free will but only after our ascendancy to power and our application of pressure and in pitiful fear for their own lives and possessions allow themselves to be baptized? Well, we lock them in the Lamberti Church, where Jan Matthys furiously rants and raves at them, telling them of God’s anger and the grim death which awaits those who were baptized only under duress if God should decide not to forgive them, a decision of which He will personally inform the baker from Haarlem in good time. With this announcement the prophet then takes his leave, locks the church door from the outside, and leaves the people alone for six hours in their terrible fear of death; screaming and crying fills the church. But when Matthys returns six hours later accompanied by his bodyguards, he merely throws himself to the ground, confers with God for a few minutes, and then jumps up and proclaims God’s forgiveness to the trembling people. Still, as long as the terrible Blackbeard lives, there remains a halfway clean slate—the embryo of a modern soviet republic with puritanical underpinnings, with which, save for the doctrine of baptism, a man like Calvin might have been completely comfortable. It is, however, above all else a pressure-cooker of good works and perfection, a mons sacer (holy mountain) of goodwill and humorlessness, although in those very years Luther himself confessed that he wanted nothing to do with a humorless God, and even a man such as Matthys was once a babe in a cradle chasing a sunbeam. But perhaps humor is a plant that only thrives in fat, sated states and not in a city of heresy against which now half of the Reich has declared war. Münster, however, in no way believes in a God with a sense of humor; its God lives in the clouds of Mount Sinai and punishes the sins of the fathers into the third and fourth generation. And since Münster is so virtuous and seeks whenever possible to outdo even God Himself in virtuousness, it doesn’t wait to punish the third and fourth generation but begins right away with the first, starting with the sinner caught red-handed. In one of Münster’s strange moods—so that the mighty may be humbled and the patrician and mayor might learn the executioner’s trade—it appoints Knipperdolling as executioner, granting him the authority to behead immediately and without

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trial all those caught in the act: So there you see him, accompanied by four powerful henchmen, sword on his shoulder as he roams the streets searching for victims. And he certainly won’t lack for victims, now that we have blessed the citizenry with a veritable conflagration of laws and orders. For the Euphorate14 and the Elders that we elected in February have now published a codex which governs each citizen’s life in the Empire of God, and from it one can get a far better sense of the curious world which has been created behind the city walls than from the tracts that are shot over the ramparts into the enemy camp. Hence the death penalty for blasphemy, therefore the death penalty as well, since it concerns those who have been appointed by God Himself, for any criticism of the city officials. Whoever disobeys their parents shall lose their head; beheaded are the insubordinate servant and the grumbling cook. The Devil shall claim one who uses trickery, indeed, he’ll even claim the one who dresses differently than is the fashion in Münster, and whoever withholds a dozen eggs from the public food inventory shall feel Knipperdolling’s hand upon their shoulder. The sword threatens the adulterer, the sword awaits all those who do not obey every petty little sanitary law from the Old Testament governing relations between the sexes, the sword hits the old gossip and the market woman who dares to gripe to her neighbor about the hard times.15 Quite bewildered, one might well ask who actually did remain alive in Münster after the introduction of this penal code, who saw the city gates open once again, who saw spring again, after all these people worried themselves to death over a God who in the end would have been satisfied even without this array of punishments. “Whoever soils himself with these sins and others contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ shall be purged by the sword and by banishment from God’s chosen ones, through the authority put here by God Himself. Revelations 22: Blessed are those who keep His commandments and enter through the gates of the city. Outside, however, are the dogs and wizards and the whore-mongers and idolaters, and all those who love sin and who commit sin.”16 That is written beneath the ordinance. For we always have Bible quotations and heavenly visions close at hand to justify our actions, even if they do obliterate every last bit of laughter and zest for living in a comfortable old city; might there be something about laughter and zest for living in those zealous and bloody writings which we have made the basic law of our state? This is how it is now in Münster since the “great man with the black beard” has been its prophet. You can argue if you will, you can

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dispute all you want, even citing the paroxysms and atrocities of the Peasants’ War, but it will be just as effective as arguing with the delusions of a fever-sick man. Heaven has its eternal thunderstorms and even the firmly grounded, enduring earth may tremble if it must—should we expect that whole races of people experience their turns of fate without fever’s delirium and frenzy? It is our fate to view the course of this process called the Renaissance which began back then; today it is we who have been chosen to look back onto mankind’s grand experiment of trying to live without gods; so they filled four centuries with ravings and turmoil, and only now do we see how the most contemplative among us are turning away from this experiment and back to the pious commandments of their old earth. This being so, and since from this perspective our eyes are wide open: Isn’t it up to us to determine how fearfully the Germans had to rave in their fever,17 when 400 years ago they stepped out of their enchanted forest and decided that they were tired of building cathedrals which no human hand could finish anyway? Notes 1. See Genesis 5: 22–24 and Hebrews 11: 5–6. 2. Jews were already being encouraged or forced to emigrate by the time Reck was writing Bockelson, which often resulted in the confiscation of their property, especially with the introduction of extremely high “emigration taxes” and restrictions on the amount of money that could be transferred to banks outside Germany. As the Third Reich evolved into the Holocaust (especially after Kristallnacht in November 1938), there was increasingly less pretense of legality, as Jews were transported to concentration camps and their property was confiscated by the Nazis. 3. Reck cites John Calvin (1509–1564) and Maximilian Robespierre (1758–1794) as two historical examples of the “icy virtuousness” that he attributes to the Anabaptists. 4. Reck’s loathing for “mass man”—especially in its National Socialist incarnation—was part of an identity that he chose to nurture and articulate whenever possible. In his September 9, 1937 Diary entry he wrote: “Mass man, by mental and physical necessity, can only exist in his self-made womb of corruption and troglodytism. This is as necessary to him as mud to a pig. But what will he do tomorrow if his slimy cocoon is swept away?” (Diary, 45). 5. Criticism of the Soviet Union and Bolshevism increased the chances of an Inner-Emigration text being published in Nazi Germany; of course, that same 400 years separate the Zion of Münster from Third Reich.

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6. A great deal of the frequently mentioned destruction of church sculpture/statuary by the Anabaptists had its practical application in using such materials to fortify the Anabaptist ramparts. The most prolific find of such items was produced by an archeological dig in 1897–1898 near the Buddenturm in Münster (Jaszai, 25). 7. During the French Revolution, “Sanscoulottes” was a designation for radical revolutionaries, especially from the proletariat. The name derived from the longer, looser pants worn by dock-workers from the area of Marseilles who were called to Paris to support the revolution. This fashion, as opposed to the knee-length “coulottes” worn by the aristocracy, gave a style and a name to the radical arm of the Revolution. 8. Die Hanse or Hanseatic League was the powerful trade association spanning Northern Europe from London to Novgorod in the period of the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Although not one of the leading cities of the Hanseatic League, Münster did have a Hanse community whose members were the wealthy and powerful Hansen to whom Reck refers. Not surprisingly, they were resented by other citizens hence making them an easy target for rhetoric exploiting long-standing socio-economic grudges. The Hanseatic League was in its period of general decline at the time of the Anabaptist takeover, affecting Münster’s economic well-being and making it more vulnerable to radical change. 9. Again, cultural artifacts such as Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will document that even as Reck worked on Bockelson, the Hitler regime wanted to show the world that Germany was radically re-militarized—in open defiance of the Treaty of Versailles—and ready for “total war.” 10. Hitler also placed a premium on the invention of new weaponry, especially as the war dragged on and Germany’s situation became more desperate. Ironically, the V-1 rocket—a flying bomb—was just such an invention which also worked on a catapult principle and whose rushed first outing on June 12, 1944 was also a fiasco, although it eventually would take a considerable toll on life and property in London (Toland, 786–787). 11. Though his description is somewhat muddled, Reck has to be referring to the Handwerkeraufstand (Artisans’ Revolt) of 1348, when Nuremberg’s craftsmen drove wealthy patricians from the Nuremberg city council and ran the city for a short time, until in 1349 the patrician followers of the Wittelsbachs and those of the newly elected Kaiser Karl IV agreed to put aside their differences and regained control of the council (Pfeiffer, 73–75). 12. Germans were subject to wartime rationing (as were the Allies) that increased as the war continued. Reck surely knew of the harsh inequities of rationing during World War I and would have expected the same or worse from the Hitler regime. In the March 29, 1942 edition

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14. 15.

16. 17.

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of his weekly newspaper Das Reich, Goebbels wrote, “The cuts in food rations that take place on April 6 will have a big impact in the household of every citizen.” Later in the article he writes, “Black marketeering, bribery, or excessive prices . . . will be punished. In particularly serious cases, property will be seized or the death penalty will be imposed.” And just as in Anabaptist Münster, rationing would not extend to the tyrant’s inner sanctum. Reck’s clear reference is to the May 10, 1933 book burning orchestrated by Goebbels on Opernplatz in Berlin. Kerssenbroch estimates (and perhaps overstates) the value of the books burned by the Anabaptists in Münster at 20,000 guilders. The original Euphorate was a body of five elected magistrates given supervisory power over the kings of ancient Sparta. In his March 1943 Diary entry Reck wrote of the guillotine’s role in Third Reich executions: “Heads roll for a bagatelle: they roll for doubts about the outcome of a war which anyone with half an eye knew was lost long ago. They roll for holding back a pound note, and they roll especially fast because of aspersions cast on the Great General—as though one could cast aspersions on Caesar sitting there atop Obersalzberg . . .” (Diary, 176). See Revelations 22: 14–15. Reck’s “Isn’t it up to us to determine how fearfully the Germans had to rave in their fever . . . four hundred years ago . . .”—couched within somewhat vague and even convoluted historical references—is the inner emigrant’s desperate plea to his countrymen for them look around themselves and see what is happening.

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Chapter 4

The Sword (Gladius)

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ur black-hearted, gloomy prophet unfortunately comes to an early and not altogether blessed end. As a guest at a wedding he is overcome right there by the Holy Spirit just when the roast is being served, throws himself lengthwise onto the table, pounds the table with hands and head “just as if he were about to die.” But he does not die just yet, he is only having one of his occasional conversations with God the Father and says, when the fit is over, “not my will but Thine shall be done.” Then he adds, “may the Lord’s peace be with you all,” and, accompanied by his wife, takes his leave. Later he announces his intention to banish the Goliath-like enemy using only a small band with little power, just as David had done. He then takes with him ten or twelve of his loyal followers, leaves the city through the Ludgeritor1 and charges the bishop’s soldiers. They, however, have not the slightest appreciation for this Davidian hero’s courage, go on the attack, and completely cut the little band to pieces. The prophet is first run through with a spear, then thoroughly dismembered by halberds. His head is chopped off. The bishop’s Landsknechte cut his torso into a hundred pieces and “throw them at each other,” shouting at the city folk standing on the ramparts to kindly gather up their mayor, for they had no idea that they had just killed God’s personal confidante. Thus ends Jan Matthys, Haarlem baker and Münster prophet, and during the night mercenaries nail his genitals to the Aegiditor. This is a heavy loss indeed, because “the Dutch, the Frisians, predicants, and the Anabaptists thought more highly of Matthys than they did of God Himself.” Irreplaceable, however, he is not, since we have in our midst the man named Bockelson, whom Matthys himself sent to us. From whence he came has already been told, how he lived and what happened to him will be told, but for now it may be established that

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Figure 4.1 The Severed head of Jan Matthys, ca. 1534; contemporary woodcut (courtesy of the Granger Collection).

from his first appearance as representative First Prophet, the mass hysteria started right up again and henceforth escalated to paroxysms surpassing even those of February.2 His first speech to the community in no way holds to the usual theme of rooting out all the godless and the singular calling of the city of Münster. He works a more powerful approach: eight days before the actual occurrence of Matthys’s death it had been revealed to him, Bockelson; the dead man—very much alive at the time—had appeared to him with his body cut open and accompanied by an armed man, but the armed man told him not to be afraid or shocked if Matthys would in a short time look this way and die. Bockelson should, moreover, become Matthys’s successor and marry the widow

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that Matthys had left behind. He, Bockelson, was somewhat amazed by this, because he already had a legal wife at home in Leyden, but there was nothing else to be done except to give in and obey the voice of God which had spoken to him. So now it’s Bockelson. At the same time he appeals to Knipperdolling, to whom he had revealed this vision at that time, eight days before Matthys’s death, and Knipperdolling confirms all of this to the astonished congregation.3 The success of the speech is in any case overwhelming and of a magnitude that even the late Matthys himself had never attained. With the usual chant of “Oh, Father, give, give” they begin to dance at the cemetery of the Grey Monks, where the speech had been given; the men draw their swords, the women let their hair down and bare themselves to the waist. Everyone begins to clap his/her hands and dance to the beat of the chanting. It goes almost without saying that God the Father is seen by all in the heavens as He witnesses the rhetorical success of His prophet. And “these same women and maidens who so danced, they were as pale and white in the face as if they were dead.” So from that day on Bockelson is the representative prophet sent by God and master of the city, as Kerssenbroch reports, even more revered than Matthys himself. And since it is now Knipperdolling’s turn to have visions, in early April God orders him, the state executioner, to level all of the city’s church spires so that everything high might be humbled; which succeeds with the help of skilled carpenters and windlasses after sawing through the framework. With a violent crash the copper-and-lead-covered steeples come roaring down and shatter into huge clouds of dust; only the Martini Church steeple is stubborn, and there the work does not proceed smoothly. The steeple only bends a little from its vertical position and hangs precariously over church and city, when a master carpenter, also appointed by God, vows to complete the job. Digging his climbing-irons into the spire’s soft copper cover, the man climbs the steep roof in an attempt to fasten a rope to the tip of the steeple, but he comes crashing to the depths below along with the superstructure which has suddenly given way. The tower-pyramid falls on the nave, crashes through the arches, and buries God’s chosen master carpenter under the rubble; only after the city is finally taken is his skeleton found in the church ruins, the climbing-irons still attached to the bones of his feet. In the meanwhile the siege is becoming serious, and the early stages of the blockade are being felt, and the small, isolated township declares a state of emergency.4 Looking at these [emergency] measures now, while at the same time reading the propaganda pamphlets

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which the city had printed to undermine the bishop’s Landsknechte and had smuggled into the enemy camp, one’s first impression is that whatever modest reserves of sanity were left after the initial outbreak of psychosis were completely depleted in these leaflets, and that all that remained were sectarian eccentricity and running amok. But it only appears this way, and de facto a very purposeful will becomes visible which capitalized on the mass hysteria and aimed to secure power for a stray tailor not just over Münster but possibly over the entire Reich. First we encounter preparations for all-out war. The city’s craftsmen—each craft being represented—are declared official military contractors; no one except the officially appointed fishingmasters Kerkerink and Hermann Redeker is allowed to fish, the official tailors are Bernhard tor Moer, Bernard Glandorp, Heinrich Edelboit. Wodemann and Deventer act as rampart-masters; veterinarians are Johann Krechting and Eberhard Follen; our gunsmiths are Heinrich Mollenhecke and Bernhard Gewandschneider; Menncken is in charge of spices; besides veterinary duties, Krechting also manages the wartime allocation of oils and fats; and Stephan Kupperschlaeger is in charge of dear old alcohol.5 No one may prevent pregnant women from eating fish, no one is permitted to wear torn or cut-up clothing or garb of foreign origin, a citizen may not engage in conversation with deserters entering the city but is rather obliged to bring them before our judge and executioner Knipperdolling. Other than that, every Münster Israelite, for this is the national name that we have now completely adopted, is to follow the scriptures to the letter, and all of these ordinances, lacking only a regulation pertaining to your dog’s fleas, are concluded with a Bible passage, and it is Bible passages which justify that he who criticizes our authorities or finds fault with the food offered at our communal meals should lose his head to the sword.6 You can see that this is a strange mixture of Old Testament and wartime economy à la 1916,7 a little Calvin with the anticipation of Cromwell thrown in, all mixed together with fear of the bishop and Münster patriotism, and everywhere in the background Knipperdolling’s sword of judgment flashes over the heads of all those who refuse to cooperate. Seen through the eyes of those in power it is absolutely necessary that it be this way, since the blockade is already being felt. To be sure, the bishop has shortages in his own camp, as his Landsknechte saw fit to loot the supply-wagons; more than a few of them defect over to God’s own city, and, to keep this nuisance under control, the bishop has had to put up a gallows. But the pillboxes are now connected to the camp by earthen walls and are even more heavily armed than before—what

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will happen once Zion has consumed all of its oxen and pigs, its flour, and all of that good Westphalian ham? Indeed, what is going to happen—isn’t it better after all not to let such sad thoughts even arise? For the time being it is still a rather cozy little trench war with a lot of mutual taunting. In the city they celebrate Good Friday against all Christian customs with bells ringing and a practical joke, whereby the written Protestant privileges— obtained only last year from Philipp of Hesse8 —are tied to the tail of an old mare which is sent into the opposing camp followed by a second nag bearing a straw effigy dressed in a bishop’s miter and vestments. The Landsknechte, however, actually mistake the straw effigy for their bishop–commander in chief, “although the man on the horse was only a poorly made straw doll in pants and jerkin, and the Landsknechte were furious. But the predicants and prophets stood on the ramparts and laughed.” To some extent this may be taken as a good sign, since it testifies to some remnants of humor in the Kingdom of God where humor is usually in such short supply. Otherwise, the two sides stand on the ramparts cursing at each other, and the bishop’s soldiers take their revenge by dropping their pants, and, bare behinds shining far and wide, shouting in malicious imitation of Münster-prophet-jargon: “Father, I lust for Your flesh;” until the saints on the wall have had enough and aim their cannon-fire at a boy who continues with the unseemly cry while flashing his rear . . . Whereupon the boy is hit dead-on and ripped apart so horribly that they are unable to gather together his widely scattered parts. The bishop’s men, in turn, seize the opportunity to catch Bastwilhelm, Münster’s chimneysweep (Kerssenbroch in his medieval Latin calls this profession, not anticipated in classical antiquity, Infunibulorum rasor) as he—also at the behest of a divine voice in the night—was sneaking to Wolbeck to ignite one of the bishop’s munitions dumps. There is quite a beautiful fire in Wolbeck but it is, thank God, extinguished in time. The chimney sweep, however, is set on fire and burned to ashes, employing the same refined executioner’s technique as had been used by knights ten years earlier to burn to death Jaecklein Rohrbach, ringleader in the murder of Count von Helfenstein:9 They bind him to a short chain on a post and ignite cords of wood at a measured distance. The victim runs in the circle of flames, roasting slowly until he is roasted to death, and in this case an old verse tells of the crime and punishment: Bastwilhelm torched the little town of Wolbeck, Hence God was forced to take his life.

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And so he burned and got his payback, As he had done to the little town of Wolbeck.

And there is no longer any doubt as to what kind of plans the bishop harbors deep in his heart for the rest of the holy citizenry. Since this is the case, and since ultimately there won’t be anything left for all these pious supply officers to administer, Münster decides that the only measure which can help in the long run is to convince its neighbors— the lowlands, perhaps the Dutch provinces, perhaps even the whole Reich, and especially the bishop’s soldiers—of the greatness of its cause. Subversion of the enemy by means of propaganda:10 To all who threaten Münster, God’s most Christian city, we wish God the Father’s leniency, mercy and peace, through Jesus Christ Savior for all the pious, well-meaning people and for those who love the Christian truth: Listen you nations, hear, you boys and old men who have surrounded our city: Since we want with all our hearts not only peace but also brotherly love in Christ, how can you justify before the pious believers, not to mention before God Himself, that against the written law you lay siege to and slaughter us without a declaration of war? God helps those who are just! That we send you this letter is, mark these words, for the following reason: We hope that there are many among you who love God their Creator and who would rather suffer death than to wage war only for money and without a declaration of war, without the right, without God, and without the beloved truth. We believe that there are men amongst you who, seduced by lies, have become our enemies and who now believe that by bearing arms against us they are doing work pleasing to the Lord. But so that each of you will know precisely what he is doing, we want to teach you briefly about our faith and about our life. Our faith belongs to the one living God, Creator of heaven and earth, just as set forth at length in the Holy Scripture. We know therefore and believe: The Eternal God loves those who fear Him and follow His path, just as He terribly hates all evildoers. Therefore, since we believe in God and know that He rewards those who seek Him and walk on His path, we conduct our lives before God such that we allow no evildoer in our midst to go unpunished, let alone forgive and forget such heinous deeds as are alleged in the lies about us. Moreover, we will gladly compensate four times over anyone other than Satan and his followers whom we might have deceived. This is our faith, this is our law, this is our life. Our trust is in God, He is our shield and protection, we shall obey His will in life and in death. That is also why we do not fear the Antichrist and his parsons, the monks, the cunning of the devil and all his cohorts. Our life founded

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in Christ begins only after this mortal flesh leaves its mortality behind. Only then will these enemies who oppose Christ be struck down and cast aside. So mend your ways and recognize your mistakes so that you won’t slip off the path and into a ditch. We wish this introspection for all people, that they may be sanctified along with us. But God alone will judge that which people wish for us. Take this as a friendly warning and take care not to provoke our experienced old leader. We respect all God’s enemies no more than we respect chaff and dust, and surely they will not be able to oppose [God] and will be dragged before God’s court. Should you believe this our credo to be untrue, we will gladly allow a group of you, chosen by you, to come over here and put this to the test. For God alone knows how much we long for His Kingdom. Written at Münster, in God’s most elevated city, on the eighth of April 1534 the year of our Lord. [Signed by] the Elders and Christ’s entire community and brotherhood gathered at Münster.

Such leaflets, tied to arrows and stones, come flying daily into the bishop’s camp and in no way fail to achieve their desired effect. For this note convinces more than a few pious Landsknechte that over there behind Münster’s walls something like God’s own country is to be found, and they simply defect. There will be no easy conquest of the “little village,” and the average man would just as soon leave the bishop’s trenches, the sooner the better. And perhaps the worst is that it all lasts so long and costs so terribly much money, and that out there in the countryside the citizens are shouting something awful to those Landsknechte who want to join His Grace the Bishop, something inadvertently heard by Droste von der Recke and immediately reported to the authorities: “Why do you want to serve that helpless, stingy bishop, who has no money?” And how was it in our own times? Did not half the world with all of their war machines gather together in 1919 against a state just as rebellious and not at all dissimilar from dear old Münster?11 Did not Deniken stand a mere 150 kilometers before Moscow,12 and was Koltschak not descending the slopes of the Urals,13 and weren’t all these armies poisoned behind their leaders’ backs by just this potion which is called “propaganda?” Of course those inside notice how it is in the enemy camp and continue to draw their paper sword quite often. Cannot this paper sword become a magic wand that moves mountains? For those on the outside can its lies not turn the slaughterhouse into a flower garden, a ship’s galley into a sunlit haven, a stable of whores into a room full of scholars? How did France manage to win in 1794? Who smuggled that army of libertines without uniforms eastward over the Rhine, that army which until recently stood on our own soil and so elegantly

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and so silently spoiled everything that still resisted Rousseau’s somewhat dusty, moth-eaten ideas?14 What is printed in Münster back then is totally designed to make all of the Holy City’s witches’ orgies appear to be “not as bad as all that” and those who dance to be basically quite conservative folk.15 And in order to compare this propaganda with the facts, we shall shed some light, just a little, on these leaflets . . . “We believe and profess that Jesus Christ is the true Son of God. We recognize Him as our Lord, we would rather quarrel with the entire world than incur His displeasure, would rather all be slaughtered than turn our back on Him . . .” This is approximately what is said in the shortest excerpt. Fine, you dear men of Münster, but we out here simply fail to understand why you have destroyed all of His pictures in the cathedral yet left undamaged all of the Old Testament prophets and judges and forefathers, why you only deal with the Old Testament and never with God’s only begotten Son.16 But let us continue . . . “We do not believe that He is of Mary’s mortal flesh.” Well, you should discuss that with future theologians—that interests us today just as much as whether or not you insist on adult baptism. Something else concerns us today, and it is the question asked by all sinful creatures: What is your position on salvation and the forgiving of our sins? “We in no way approve of what the Lutherans and Papists say about good works, the fruit of one’s faith. The Papists don’t make a great fuss over one or the other and think only of those fictitious good works that their idol the Roman Antichrist is supposed to have performed. The Lutherans talk too much about their faith and think too little about good works, and fruit cannot be found amongst them but rather whoring, boozing, gluttony and whatever else is of the flesh.” Could this not have come from one of Calvin’s sermons? And could not Robespierre, [Calvin’s] last descendant, let go with such a flame of perfection—though perhaps fueled by the verbiage of 1793—at the Convent? But let us go on . . . “We know that we are the children of anger and that we can only be justified by our faith in Jesus Christ. But the belief that He died for us does not accomplish anything, and the Kingdom of God cannot be won that easily, and it is written: ‘The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent shall take it by force.’”17 Do we not hear, though it be from the grave, the voice of that violent prophet Matthys, who in February, had it not been prevented, would have decapitated all of the Old Believers in Münster, Lutheran and Catholic alike?

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“It is true that through faith in Christ we attain forgiveness, but only so that we shall never sin again. For if we should return to sin again after recognition of the truth, then it would be more evil than it was the first time, and it would be better, had we never recognized the truth at all. But should it happen anyway that someone lapses into sin, he will be judged and punished in accordance with the scriptures.” Certainly, and that is why you sent poor Gert der Raucher—who had surely imagined life among you to be more pleasant—before a firing squad for a drunken scene; that is why you mercilessly shot smith Rüscher, who had unfavorably criticized your prophet; and that is why you threaten death for any trivial matter, even if it is just a silly complaint. Do not speak of the fact that with all your other staunch principles regarding marriage and domestic life,18 you rule—in order to preserve the dominion of Moses and the prophets—far less with the Bible than with the executioner’s sword. Remain silent about your heroic deeds in the cathedral and that puritanism with which you want to destroy everything which brings joy to the human heart. Surely there must have been a time when even your prophets were children, a time when they knew that there are also such things as laughter and rejoicing and that the world is something other than an academy for perfection; when they knew that their Creator really does like to hear the laughter of His children, and that He allows them to stumble and fall so that they will see the heights from which He reigns and themselves aspire to those heights. They all knew that at one time, these sinister prophets. But they forgot and were carried aloft by a wave of mass hysteria, and now they want to turn the whole world into the gray Zionist madhouse that is Münster. “Whoever says that he knows God and does not hold to His commands is a liar, and there is no truth in such persons,” is the motto written beneath the foregoing Baptist document. But alas, you poor one-day-wonders, do you really know God so well, and are you really so sure that He always wants to be only the strict and zealous God of Sinai, and that He is even comfortable with your gloomy perfection? But in your monomania you print leaflet after leaflet and send them out into the smiling spring of 1534. You make the bishop out to be a troublemaker and intentionally withhold the fact that if you had ever been able to blast through this ring of siege, you would hardly have remained quietly seated on your Münster–Mount Zion. Your world would have sloshed over like a bowl of heavy bile, and it would have flooded the entire Reich. The bishop’s position in this summer of 1534 is reminiscent of the German Army as it stood before Paris in the late fall of 1870.19

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Both are constantly threatened by the specter of revolution all around them, and both learn to understand that in history which is so often overlooked: that every revolution, even a rebellion of the Old Testament, promotes expansion and becomes a firebrand which readily ignites neighboring roofs. It just cannot go on this way with this cozy little siege; a decision must be made. And in May an all-out attack is launched against the demonic city. There were already some small skirmishes in April; noble gentlemen from the bishop’s army were captured by these rough Anabaptists and are now writing disgruntled letters from the city. And we over here on the bishop’s side were also compelled to reinforce the ramparts so as to ward off the never-ending attacks, and we met with very little sympathy from the peasants whom we commandeered to do the earthworks. We have waited long enough, and now we have positioned heavy artillery, and since the Friday before Pentecost it has been thundering against Münster’s ramparts and entrenchments. But this Münster is a devil’s nest and knows how to defend itself. A short while ago the multitude took communion; now the multitude stands on the ramparts using earth and cow dung to mend the gashes that our artillery has torn into them. Our Landsknechte rejoice prematurely over the anticipated plunder; and in the Gelderland army’s camp they drink far too much before the scheduled attack, “ut neque discrimen dierum neque vespertini neque matutini temporis haberent rationem” (“they could not tell day from night, nor were they in possession of their senses in the morning”), meaning the gentlemen from Gelderland march far too soon against the city that is now fighting for its very existence. The bishop’s other armies see the premature dash of the Gelderlanders and in turn join the fray but are unable to alter the confusion and unfortunate outcome of this day. These pitiful Baptists, to whom deserters from the bishop’s camp have divulged the attack, purportedly suffered only two casualties, while we on the bishop’s side had two hundred. That those in the bishop’s camp are blaming it on treason does not change the outcome, and on the following day the onsite war commissioners from Cleves, Cassel, and Cologne write somewhat dejected letters to their rulers at home. But now heads are swelling in Münster, and divine voices order them to a sortie from the city in order to nail shut the bishop’s cannons. This time it is Rothmann who calls volunteers to Cathedral Square, and “this same Stutenbernd had such a silver tongue that his luck did not lie in his agility alone,” and since it is once again God

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Himself who orders this sortie, the volunteers—Anabaptists and deserters from the bishop’s camp and all the run-of-the-mill drifters streaming into the city via secret paths from Friesland and Holland, and for whom Meister Gresbeck has very few kind words—elbow their way to the undertaking. The troop presses into the outside world through a secret passageway that had been cut diagonally across the rampart at Judefelder Tor. Because no exit gate was opened, they completely surprise the besiegers (totally immersed in drinking and dice games), slaughtering the guards standing by the artillery. The touchholes are nailed shut, the gun carriages are hacked apart with axes, the gunpowder is strewn about on the ground. When the Landsknechte finally get themselves together to defend, the hastily retreating Baptists light fuses near the strewn powder such that it flares up just as the bishop’s warriors pass the spot, and His Grace’s soldiers burn to death miserably. Over here are heard their wretched screams, over there the pesky city-dwellers are laughing once again. Fourteen, and in one report even twenty-six of the bishop’s pieces have been nailed shut and two powder-barrels have been pierced, and it is only sheer luck in what would have otherwise been a catastrophic loss of artillery that an artisan is found who is able to repair the cannons which had been nailed shut. A skirmish at Mühlberg bei Sankt Mauritz, which goes somewhat less badly for the bishop’s troops and during which Captain Corytzer loses an eye, is only a small consolation in this sea of misery. All this happened around Pentecost. But how shall things go on if Münster doesn’t fall and this Anabaptist cancer eats itself deeper and deeper into the body of the Reich. While we here attack the holy city in vain, things flare up everywhere on German soil, in Moravia, in the Werra Valley. In Erfurt the Anabaptists make clever use of the social unrest among the lower classes; in Augsburg there will soon emerge, though in a less violent incarnation, a second Anabaptist prophet and king.20 In Strasbourg they are only waiting for the moment in which Melchior Hoffman, wrapped in heaven’s aura, leaves his prison. But in the Netherlands, in the cradle of our prophets and mighty men, there the movement is so powerful that it poses a threat to the very government, even more so than in the inner regions of the Reich. But what will happen here in Münster if this movement should win the upper hand and push itself as intervening power between the city’s ramparts and the bishop’s cannon-armed forts? In Neuss, where talks concerning the means and implementation of this siege have already been held in the spring, the war council

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meets in June for a second time, and the bishop receives new means, new promises. Of course the provincial diets must guarantee the 40,000 gold florins which Cleves and Cologne advance; they are well aware that many more cathedrals—even the entire Reich—will burn if Münster is able to hold on, and whatever it will take to choke off the new God-state is being made ready here. But since we inside the city walls see the towering danger that looms before us, since we are so sure of the heroic Old Testament legend and each of us has fantasized ourselves in the role of David, why should there not be a Judith in our midst, a Judith who strangles Holofernes before our city walls and frees the beleaguered city of Bethulia? We don’t know what Hille Feiken looked like,21 no portrait painter came to capture her features while she was imprisoned—as the Parisian painter David will someday capture the features of the beautiful Charlotte Corday.22 We know from her confession that she came from Friesland, was married and had a husband who answered to the by-no-means-ordinary and probably Anabaptist-enhanced name of Paulus. We know that the young couple hastened to the city, tantalized by the many rumors of Münster’s Empire of God that circulated throughout the land, and we know that they had themselves baptized there. This woman, described by all contemporaries as exceptionally beautiful, has received the mission from God to go over into the enemy camp and there to murder the bishop just as Holofernes had been, using if necessary the same feminine wiles. Her instructions specifically state that she is to enter the bishop’s camp not under cover of night and fog but rather in broad daylight. She differs from Judith only in that she did not bring a sword for beheading but rather a self-made poisoned shirt interwoven with gold and silver threads, truly a Nessus shirt 23 which His Grace is to wear at an intimate supper for two. This is an extremely poetic plan, which unfortunately proves considerably more prosaic to implement. According to some reports she is immediately caught entering the camp, according to others it is only a Münster deserter that prevents her from going before the bishop. This deserter, however, is none other than Hermann Ramert, at whose home Bockelson stayed in the fall of 1533 and who now, having gone over the edge in the lunatic asylum of Münster, flees the city and divulges the assassination plan which is known to him. This in turn suggests that the plot was prepared in the city and attempted with the knowledge of the prophets and elders. Predicant

Figure 4.2 Portrait of Hille Feiken, the beautiful “Judith of Münster,” executed in the summer of 1534; woodcut, artist unknown (courtesy of the Granger Collection).

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Johann Klopriss remains steadfast in his later testimony given under torture that “Judith” left the city against the specific counsel of the Baptist authorities, but Hille herself admits on June 27 that she had been given money and provisions by Knipperdolling; moreover, Knipperdolling later confirms this during his “meticulous interrogation.” He was much angrier than the cunning and, in such cases, shrewder Bockelson; he was a man who easily saw red in his hatred of the Old Believers, and so he might well have been the one who quietly approved and supported this somewhat fantastic plan. Whatever the case, the beautiful Hille is caught and under torture testifies that day and night God gave her no rest about carrying out this mission—“she would have incurred God’s wrath had she not done it.” She is brought to Bevergern, where she is executed in the usual horrible way, after telling the executioner to his face that, try as she might, she can find no guilt within herself. But the Anabaptists, who have heard of her demise, force a captured Landsknecht from the bishop’s army named Marschalk to write a letter in which he bitterly laments his situation and implores that he be exchanged for someone in the bishop’s camp. Oh, by the way, for whom? Of course, for Hermann Ramert, who just defected and who betrayed the “Judith” plot. They stand on the ramparts with a lot of to-and-fro between the two sides and call to Ramert: “Come back at once!” Which Ramert unfortunately does not do. The gentlemen of Münster, for all their cunning, were more naive about some things than Genesis itself. Notes 1. St. Ludger was sent out by Karl der Grosse (Charlemagne) as a missionary to Friesland and Westphalia in 804. In 805 Ludger was consecrated bishop of this area and has remained to this day the patron saint of Münster. 2. Although hardly a perfect match, Matthys’s death followed by Bockelson’s immediate rise to First Prophet (and soon “King”) can be interpreted as representing Hitler’s rise to “Führer”—combining the offices of Reich President and Reich Chancellor—immediately upon the death of President Paul von Hindenburg on August 2, 1934. 3. According to Kerssenbroch’s account, Bockelson retracts this attestation later under torture, claiming that he had lied. Here Reck states, “I was not able to find any testimony confirming the retraction” (Reck, 206).

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4. Reck would have certainly remembered the British naval blockade of World War I, which led to serious shortages in Germany. 5. Reck’s delineation of all Münster’s new offices and titles could well be interpreted as a satirical allusion to Hitler’s numerous appointments and reorganization of the state bureaucracy after his appointment to the office of Chancellor, particularly after von Hindenburg’s death in 1934. 6. Reck’s target is the profusion of new, overly restrictive, and extremely punitive laws enacted as the Third Reich evolved. 7. By 1916 the privation—in no small measure because of the British naval blockade—and resulting discontent on the German homefront during World War I was considerable; the winter of 1916 was called the Kohlrübenwinter (Turnip Winter) (Schmeling, 5). 8. Philipp I of Hesse (1504–1567) was a champion of Protestantism who will come to play a very important military role in the MünsterAnabaptist saga. 9. Jaecklein Rohrbach and Count Ludwig von Helfenstein were two leading figures in the Peasants’ War of 1525. Jaecklein, an innkeeper by trade, was, along with Florian Geyer, one of the key leaders of the peasant army. Count von Helfenstein had ordered that any peasants falling into his hands be executed forthwith. When von Helfenstein was captured by Jaecklein, he was executed by running the gauntlet. From then on, Rohrbach was a marked man, who was finally captured by a noble army under Georg Truchsess and was executed by being chained to a post in the middle of slow-burning ring of fire, where he was gradually roasted to death as Truchsess and his soldiers looked on while they dined. 10. The pamphlet, dating to the year 1534, is reprinted here in part (Reck, 206). 11. Reck is speaking of postrevolutionary Russia when various white armies were trying to overthrow the new Bolshevist regime. Both Reck and the Nazis would have found such forces to be heroically engaged in the fight against Bolshevism. 12. Anton Ivanovich Deniken (1872–1947) was a prominent Russian commander in World War I, and then fought the Bolsheviks from 1918 to 1920 with a volunteer white army. His troops fought from the western Caucasus Mountains to the Don River, where they were stopped and eventually disbanded. Deniken subsequently emigrated to the United States. 13. Alexander Wassilevitch Koltschak (1874–1920) was a Russian admiral who got as far as the Volga River with his white army of anti-Bolshevist troops. He was killed in the ensuing battle. 14. Reck’s comparatively positive reference to Hitler’s unchallenged retaking of the Rheinland west of the Rhein in 1936 provides a good example of Reck the German patriot who nonetheless hated Hitler and the Nazis.

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15. Even as Reck was writing Bockelson, Hitler was still intent on presenting Nazi Germany to the outside world in the best possible light. In order to obtain the 1936 Olympics for Berlin, Hitler instructed German celebrities traveling abroad (e.g., former world heavyweight champion Max Schmeling) to convince the press and Olympic officials that negative publicity had given Hitler’s Germany an undeserved bad name—that indeed, “everything is moving along quite peacefully” (Schmeling 87, translation von der Lippe). Berlin got the 1936 Olympics, and Hitler made sure that all traces of antiSemitism were removed and the cultural freedom of the Weimar Republic was restored . . . for the duration of the games and no longer (Schmeling, 135). 16. In that the Münster Anabaptists were, at least in theory, Old Testament fundamentalists, they destroyed or damaged a great deal of New Testament art and sculptures, especially those including Christ and the Virgin Mary. Much of this damage was in the St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Lamberti Church and is still visible today. 17. See Matthew 11: 12. 18. Perhaps not intended as such by Reck, but this could be readily interpreted as an allusion to the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which stipulated who could marry whom (at least with respect to marriages between Jews and non-Jews) and were in effect even as Reck was writing Bockelson. 19. The reference is to the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), the winning of which led to Germany’s Second Reich (1871–1918) under the leadership of Prussia’s Kaiser Wilhelm I and Otto von Bismarck. 20. The most notable occurrence of Anabaptism in Augsburg around this time was in 1526–1528 under Balthasar Hubmaier, Hans Denck, and Hans Hut, although the movement was effectively outlawed in 1528. Anabaptism in Augsburg had a modest revival under city engineer Pilgram Marpeck from 1545 until his death in 1556—he may be the “second Anabaptist prophet and king” in Augsburg to whom Reck is referring, although he had little in common with Bockelson or his reign in Münster. 21. Actually, a contemporary woodcut of Hille Feiken in profile does exist and is included in these pages. 22. Charlotte Corday (1768–1793) was a beautiful young woman who came to Paris during the French Revolution as an ardent follower of the more moderate Girondists. She sought to end persecution of the Girondists by the Jacobins when she stabbed J.P. Marat in his bath, after which she was quickly captured and executed for the murder. Several artists sought to capture the beauty of Charlotte Corday (including a National Guard officer whom Corday, as her last wish, requested to paint her portrait at her execution). David’s famous painting of a dying Marat in his bath does not show Corday, but does show her name at the top of a petition (her ruse to gain access to

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Marat) that he is holding. In 1937 Reck published an historical novel entitled Charlotte Corday: Geschichte eines Attentats (Charlotte Corday: Story of an Assassination); it is interesting to note that Schützen-Verlag also published Bockelson in 1937, which leads to the unanswered question of whether Charlotte Corday might have been yet another layer of camouflage for Bockelson. 23. The Shirt of Nessus comes from Greek mythology as follows: Hercules requested that the centaur Nessus carry Hercules’s wife Deianira across a river, during which Nessus molested her. Hercules then shot Nessus with a poisoned arrow, which prompted Nessus to give Deianira his tunic as a gift for Hercules, which would supposedly make him love only her. The shirt, however, was poisoned and eventually led to Hercules’s death.

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Chapter 5

The Last Whore (Deterrima Cunnus)

“But all the predicants in Münster stood with the entire community against the lust of the many women, yet the king justified it to them, using the Scriptures, and forced them to do it.” From Predicant Klopriss’s confession given under torture

A nation’s administration of justice is the product of its landscape, as

is its entire state structure along with its customs, thought processes, and speech patterns. So, according to the ancient chronicle The Saxon Mirror,1 a watchdog may be publicly brought to trial if it failed to announce by its appropriate barking the thieves approaching a remote farmhouse; this dog is then executed after due process, the questioning of witnesses, and the pleas of the prosecution and the defense. That is as closely connected to this haunted landscape north of the Limes Romanus and its multifarious functions, as is the fact that it was the mathematics of the north that first ventured forth from the still comprehensible function of “a-to-the-third-power” to begin calculating with the inconceivable and irrational function of “a-tothe-fourth-power.” The purpose of this apparent digression will soon be understood. Many of the things that happened in Münster—not the least of which being the emergence of polygamy in the otherwise rather prudish land—seem to be simply inconceivable to us, and we wonder over and over again how all this could happen in the first place. Yet when a

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people dissociates itself from its landscape as did the Germans of the period around 1500, then it naturally renounces its body of laws along with its sociology and its customs, all of which are bound to this aforementioned landscape. This collapse of the old ideas at first produces a deep sense of helplessness and severe shock, and consequently we always see the mass psychoses of a people in their years of transition. Hence the Pugachev Rebellion in Russia can be seen as a result of Peter the Great’s forced Westernization. Then isn’t this whole Anabaptist business with its Zion, Bockelson’s kingdom, and polygamy practically a forgone conclusion? The idea of polygamy, which was still punishable by death according the “Meticulous Neck Ordinance” of the old Reich, becomes almost a fad in the Germany of 1520. But is there anything more puzzling than the origin of a fashion, even if it be only a fashion of thought? Are we not just as bewildered by the clothes that we found so beautiful in 1900 as we are by the fact that at that same time three-fourths of German intellectuals fell for Haeckel’s riddles of the universe?2 The idea of polygamy was the fashion of its time in the year of 1530. We know that more than a few of Luther’s followers approached the master himself with this concept, pointing emphatically to the scriptures and pleading that he might sanction multiple marriages. We know that he deftly evaded them by pointing with a shrug to the laws of the land. And we know that six years after the turmoil in Münster, Luther himself blessed—and thereby almost broke his friend Melanchthon’s more sensitive heart—the double marriage of a German imperial prince: The double marriage of that very Philipp of Hesse who had loaned his two heavy Kartaunen [cannons] “The Devil” and “His Mother” for the siege of Münster.3 Kerssenbroch tells us, always from the perspective of injured patrician righteousness, a horror-story about the origins of Münster polygamy. And if one chooses to believe him, a bishop’s Landsknecht deserter who had been brought into Knipperdolling’s house as an Anabaptist catechist caught the official state prophet Bockelson one night in that very same house just as the man of God was creeping into the chamber of one of Knipperdolling’s serving maids, even though he was considered to be a Savior and even though he already had a legitimate wife in Leyden, as everyone in Münster knew. The Landsknecht began to doubt the saintliness of the man and told others of the affair. The prophet surely used clever rhetoric to gain the man’s silence, but the incident became public knowledge anyway, and Bockelson sought the advice of the predicants, who were themselves quite amenable to a loose lifestyle. And it was then decided

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by these theologically-schooled men in order to cover up the scandal, to deduce public polygamy from the Scripture and to announce it de jure et de lege (by court and law) as part of the municipal law. For three days straight the predicants preached on the delicate subject, expounding that men are by nature polygamous to begin with and demonstrated from this fact and the sentence at Genesis 1: 22, “Be fruitful and multiply,” that polygamy is a commandment from God, and on June 23 it was formally announced as such before the entire community. So much for Kerssenbroch’s account. Along with many valuable details, however, he also includes a number of made-up horror stories in his chronicle. For instance, he will have us believe in this already gloomy chapter that later on, in the very heyday of Münster’s “Isle of the Blessed,” Genesis 1 was being read to a large gathering in Bockelson’s home, and then at the words “be fruitful and multiply” the lights went out, and everything further which occurred was an exaggerated but certainly literal and unnecessarily hastened compliance with this high command . . . Again, so much for Kerssenbroch. But that which actually did transpire in Münster amidst these ponderous northern Germans is already quite outrageous even without embellishment, and we should rather take pains to limit ourselves to the substance of that which is today known to us to be true. The both blessed and cursed Matthys did not take his marriage vows very seriously, since we know that he too had a legally wedded wife sitting in Leyden, where he last lived, while we encounter him in Münster at the side of a completely different woman, Divara, who will be mentioned here again quite frequently. As for disciple and successor Bockelson, we have already heard that he had received divine orders to assume Matthys’s place and to marry at once the already pregnant (by Matthys) Divara . . . Which is what Bockelson, obedient follower of all his inner voices and visions, was compelled to do immediately. And as I had already established above, all of the inner voices which were heard at that time in Münster had the pleasant quality to demand only those things desired and hoped for by the various prophets and never that which was unwelcome or adverse. In short, polygamy in Münster4 unfortunately arose from the somewhat too sensuous fantasy-world of the man who kept terror at hand for the realization of his many plans and who went by the name of Bockelson, a vagrant tailor and tavern keeper from Leyden. It can be readily seen just how far this mass psychosis must have progressed when so stolid and reasonable a city, which has so far never been

Figure 5.1 Portrait of Gertrud van Utrecht (actually Divara van Haarlem), 1536; woodcut by Hans Wandereysen (courtesy of the Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte).

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governed by the club rules of the Venusberg,5 gives in to the customary desires of a man like this and allows, as it were, all concepts and norms governing the most intimate aspects of life to be annihilated. But the introduction of polygamy hardly proceeds as smoothly as Kerssenbroch imagines.6 We know from the confessions of captured and tortured Anabaptists that the opposition of the predicants was at first intense, and there is no reason to doubt the confessions of these men, who remained steadfast even under torture.7 According to Dorp, who wrote a report of the events specifically for Luther himself,8 the predicants fervently opposed Bockelson for eight days straight when he had first seriously proposed polygamy, and at a later interrogation Knipperdolling even asserts that “they wanted to arrest Bockelson,” and that their opinions turn favorable only when Bockelson cites the Bible’s renowned Twelve Elders and once again speaks of a divine order to introduce polygamy. One of the most prominent symptoms of Münster’s mass-psychosis is that the mere reference to an order allegedly received directly from God’s hand was always enough to break any resistance to even the wildest of schemes, and that at any such reference these men would have tried to climb to the moon. Hence, after Bockelson’s announcement there is no more holding back the Council of Elders, but rather they throw themselves into the new ways with a passion of which perhaps only these Northern Germans are capable once their native prudence has been abandoned. For three days straight the predicants preach about this controversial matter to the entire Münster congregation gathered on Cathedral Square, and thereafter the city is truly ready for all the incomprehensible events filling the twelve months before Zion’s fall. In every contemporary description the precise phrasing of these new marriage laws is overshadowed by the detailed accounts of their direct consequences and other side-effects that they might have had. If we scrutinize that which became state law in Münster back then, this is what we see: 1. All marriages entered into before the new laws are burdened with the sins of the old ways and are therefore invalid. 2. All women are obliged to take husbands; the penalty for refusal is death. This regulation also applies to the wives of men who have been absent for some time, such that a husband may find himself confronted by completely unexpected circumstances upon his return. The regulation applies, as we shall see, even to old and no longer fertile women, insofar as they are obliged to choose a Schutzpatron (protector) who will assume their care. We will get back to that.

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3. If a marriage is barren, then the couple shall divorce regardless of their feelings for one another; “the woman shall be given to lie with another man.” 9 4. Should a woman become pregnant and the purpose of the marriage is thereby achieved, so the man is entitled to take a second wife, and if she too should be so blessed, then a third and a fourth wife—the number is theoretically unlimited. 5. A divorce is possible if the spouse in question has submitted an official written statement of their intentions. We will come back to this later. 6. These regulations also apply to any foreigner who may be staying in the city, men and women alike. 7. Any quarrels between spouses are decided by a marriage court consisting of predicants and elders. 8. Opposition to these laws, as well as “stubborn refusal of marital obligation” by the wife shall be punished by death after a warning, as is any disobedience of the wife against the husband’s will. In praxis this means: 1. That old marriages are torn apart. 2. That a woman whose husband is absent—for a long time, given the conveyances of that era—must suddenly leave home and children for the home and bed of another man. 3. That murder and mayhem reign in those marriages where because of a pregnancy there suddenly appears a second, third, and fourth wife. 4. That the barbaric penalties, which invariably end under Knipperdolling’s sword, make it extremely easy for a husband to rid himself of a bothersome wife. 5. That the “old women’s” protectors who suddenly find themselves forced to be responsible for the welfare of a frail old being, eagerly look for the first opportunity to rid themselves of this burden. 6. That all of these forced marriages become tragedies. So it is. Later we shall see the further consequences in detail. And since the monstrous laws subvert every legal concept and every civil norm, since in practice they dissolve the family unit and finally threaten by their very nature every kind of well-being and family bond, as well as the leader of the family himself, it does not take long for opposition to set in.10 While the gift of prophesy and the sudden onset of Baptist paroxysm in Münster are linked to the tailor’s trade, it appears that the trade of

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blacksmith is bound to the spirit of rebellion and insubordination, and, again in spring, it is a blacksmith who this time recruits likeminded men in grave, extremely dangerous opposition to the oligarchy, or rather autocracy, of prophets. We have already briefly met smith Mollenhecke when the elders appointed him as Weapons Master in charge of the artillery and the harquebuses, and it might well have been this access to the city arsenals that afforded him the necessary arms. The man has 200 citizens behind him, who, outraged by the new laws, reinforced by deserters from the bishop who have found themselves to be bitterly disappointed by Münster, assemble at night and imprison the entire nest of prophets and predicants—Bockelson, Knipperdolling, Rothmann, Schlachtschaf, Klopriss, Vinne, and the rest—in city hall. That is what happened, and there exists but one highly amusing commentary on these arrests. Predicant Schlachtschaf is caught in a rather delicate situation by the rebels, and as he was being locked in his cell at city hall, angry women appear before the bars, pelting the clergyman with rocks and street-filth, spitting at him and asking “if he wanted more women, if one weren’t enough.” That is what happened to poor Schlachtschaf, whom they caught in a tête-à-tête with two ladies, and unfortunately we have no record of what transpired during this arrest, nor of how other gentlemen reacted, who by now had become accustomed to unbridled caprice and who were suddenly forced to confront grievously unpleasant possibilities. Then Mollenhecke and his people come up with a perfidious plan. They intend to call the bishop into the city and have him clean the Augean stable and remove the unbearable conditions; they want to open the Ludgeritor to the bishop and thereby put an end to the terror, the Tschekistenregim, the raging of a biblically masked hangman’s oligarchy. That is their plan, and they could have carried it out too. But I wouldn’t know of a single revolution which lacks this “almost” and “would have” and “if only” and the famous “if we’d only had both companies” with which the entire uprising “could have” been sent straight to hell.11 So it was at the storming of the Tuileries and again in Berlin’s March of 1848, and in looking back, the observer always forgot that revolutions play the same role in history as do volcanoes in geology: Both are safety-valves—the latter for the excess pressure of lava, the former for built-up social and spiritual pus, and their eruptions can only be controlled after inner balance has been reestablished. That Louis XVI, in his attempted escape to Varennes, failed to reach the sentries of the Royal Allemand Regiment that had been alerted to receive him is apparently the result of a series of coincidences; but such a series of coincidences is as necessary to the

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scheme of history—unfortunately only clear to later generations—as the fact that in this case smith Mollenhecke, still master of the city for this night, is destined to fail in his putsch. Unless the archives deceive us, he fails because these gentlemen (Mollenhecke’s men), headed by the Landsknechte who had defected from the bishop’s army, first fill their pockets with all the confiscated valuables and money stored in the treasury of the city hall and then in the wine cellars drink themselves into a stupor, thereby forgetting the most important thing—to open the gates for the bishop. By dawn it is too late. When they finally appear at the marketplace, their heads pounding and their eyes gummed shut, to try to make the coup palatable to the congregation, there is already an uproar, and just at the most critical moment our old friend Redeker appears, shouting into the crowd, which doesn’t yet seem to know, that the whole passel of saints is imprisoned—Bockelson and Knipperdolling and Dear Rothmann and all the other men of faith. Since there are, however, numerous diehard Anabaptists in the crowd, the mood becomes uncertain, and then suddenly—someone must have betrayed the plan—news comes that ramparts and gates are now manned [by Anabaptists], and it is too late for forging a joint endeavor with the bishop. The mood changes completely, the mob grumbles and presses forward, forcing Mollenhecke’s men back into city hall where they barricade themselves on the upper floor. Not all the ladies of Münster are so dissatisfied with the racy new laws, and since there are more than a few of them who really feel quite comfortable within the holy Venusberg, then as predecessors to Theroigne de Mericourt in 178912 they hitch themselves to cannons in the arsenal, drag the artillery to the marketplace where shooting at city-hall windows has already erupted. So now the mob— its mood completely changed and once again fully Anabaptist—breaks open the doors of the city hall, frees the holy men tied up in the cellar, shoots at the rebels through the ceiling, positions the artillery outside and lights the fuses. Whereupon Mollenhecke’s men in the attic stick an old hat out of the window as a sign of surrender and finally give themselves up. But they would have sooner found mercy with a cobra than here where a few scary hours had given the lords of the city an opportunity to ponder the possibility of being toppled straight to hell. Approximately 120—the rest have escaped—are dragged down from the attic, some forty are pardoned, around eighty are mercilessly executed, but not too quickly please, not with the simple aim of canceling out one’s enemy. But rather the saints assemble at length and hold council like Sioux Indians about how to conduct the torture. Yet it turns out to

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be less severe than anticipated, and the worst pain inflicted on the prisoners will be the mental anguish of waiting. First a large ditch is leisurely dug at Cathedral Square in which to bury the prisoners. When one of the prisoners escapes and hides at home with his wife and children, he is torn from the arms of his loved ones, hacked to bits by halberds, and a mob carries the pieces on spears through alleys just as would be done to the beautiful Princess Lamballe in 1792.13 The rest are brought before the State Executioner Knipperdolling at his own leisure, ten today, seven tomorrow; they are beheaded, so to speak, for breakfast. But Knipperdolling is not the only executioner these days. “Whoever has the desire to kill a prisoner,” reports eyewitness Gresbeck, “may take one and kill him.” For four days their wailing is heard throughout the city, and the bishop’s army on the outside hears it; several days later the war commissioners from Cleves report to their ruler that they “had heard great rumbling and discord in the city, as well as the sounds of penitence.” The bishop’s attack on the city a year later succeeds in much the same way as was planned here. But right now the time was not yet ripe. The time was just as wrong as in Paris four months before the Thermidor, and as Paris did before the virtuous lawyer from Arras (Robespierre), so Münster cowers before the master tailor of Leyden. There is no more resistance after smith Mollenhecke’s adventure, and the two “men of inheritance,” Heinrich von Arnheim and Hermann Bisping, who afterwards yet dare to offer some opposition, if only ideologically, quickly come to know Knipperdolling’s two-handed sword. “They greatly constrained the people, and after Mollenhecke’s uprising no one was permitted to say that the marriages were wrong, and everything that they did had to be correct.” It had to be correct, but it just wasn’t. The city, not permitted to complain aloud, twists and turns, and terrible tragedies are acted out behind the beautiful gothic facades on the Prinzipalmarkt. He who belongs to the Baptist gentry and has armed his heart sevenfold against tears and sorrow—he is doing just fine. “So the Dutch, the Friesians, and all the good Anabaptists took more wives in addition to their first ones,” reports Gresbeck, and since, according to his report, these gentlemen are far too comfortable and pasha-like to themselves search for the second, third, fourth, and fifth wives, “so they forced their first wife to go out and get another mate for their husbands.” This is how they come to have quite impressive harems, and Bockelson’s includes sixteen ladies toward the end of the Baptist reign; by and by, Dear Rothmann gets up to nine wives; Knipperdolling, that sinister figure behind the prophet’s throne, is content with two or three, as are

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the predicants. Yet one year after the fall of the Anabaptists, the twelveyear-old son of the murdered Mollenhecke ascribes even more to them, and at the end of his statement given to the bishop’s council-members there is the significant sentence: “There are many, many more, I was just tired of writing them all down.” That is understandable since among these women are bearers of old and high-born names, noblewomen and patricians and, last but not least, nuns from the Überwasser Convent. The strange thing is that these marriages, sanctified by a dog’s wedding, remain pretty much barren. In Bockelson’s harem, as we shall see, only two children are born in the course of a year, of which one, since blessed Matthys’s widow Lady Divara was already pregnant at the time she married Bockelson, is not even Bockelson’s natural child. Gresbeck, always ready with quick-witted and pointed commentary, has his own explanation for this: “The same Anabaptists who had so many wives had the least children, wasting away from an overabundance of the flesh, they were nothing but skin and bones, languishing so, that the wives left them.” But the larders are still reasonably full, hunger has not yet come to Zion, the majority of men are still content with their new marital status. Now the nuptial formalities are completed rather quickly, and since Father Gresbeck’s description of the new marriage rite uses too many pompous words, we will translate it as: “If a couple wished to be joined in marriage, they are no longer united by a preacher as before; rather, they bring along a friend or two, and then they just parade around holding hands. With that they were husband and wife.” One can readily see that this results in the shortest possible protocol, the same as during divorce proceedings—no festivities, no testing of the two partners—just as is done today in a certain Eastern European country, which shows more than a few similarities to Münster, the holy city of Zion.14 That’s how it is. For the men, as has been said, quite comfortable, but less beneficial for the women—for the women with their longing to eternalize their feelings and their abhorrence of eradicating or being eradicated. “There was once a man and a woman who wished for a child but did not conceive one.” But of what use to us are fairy tales, with their pious old words from a time long gone by? If you feel that you are pregnant, don’t breathe a word to anyone, lest the second wife, and after her the third and fourth move into your little world that you have so faithfully protected, and when you are no longer the mistress of your own home and dare to protest, then you will be thrown into the dismal Rosenthal Tower until you change your mind, and if you still don’t give up your resistance, you will be

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dragged before the predicants’ court, and this court of predicants knows only one verdict, the one involving Knipperdolling and his executioner’s sword. And as with you, so it is with those women whose husbands are abroad and who can only save themselves by entering into a new union, and as it is with you, so it is with those women who are now revolted by their husband with all his other wives. And it is no different for the girls who are forced into an unwanted marriage. There is a nasty saying from that time; the chroniclers report it, and outside, the bishop’s mercenaries sneer and shout it, as we have already heard, to the Baptists standing on the city wall, and it goes: “My spirit lusts after your flesh.” It is the “open sesame” that is supposed to break all feminine resistance; we can only hope that this is a fabrication and that it wasn’t as the chroniclers contend—that this magic incantation forced every woman not yet spoken for to succumb to the will of a man . . . We hope that the form—the law—was not that cynical, but praxis was, and so execution threatens every woman who withdraws from her husband. So it is for the disobedient, for those who remain the only mistress in their house, for those who choose to keep their promise of remaining faithful. And so it is for even the poor women who seek to avail themselves of the legal option of divorce, for while their divorce petition is officially recorded, the predicants later declare these women to be “accursed in body and soul,” and behind this declaration stands the headsman. And even for old women who might be dissatisfied with their protector, the assigned Schutzpatron, it is no different, and they too receive a red necklace, no wider than the cut of a knife. The spirit of suicide makes its rounds among these poor women, the Aa River washes their corpses ashore, which are hastily buried. And since the lust of these men does not even stop with children and even a twelve-year-old is subject to the marital law, the holy city is forced to keep “Meestress Knuppers” at hand, who in those days passed as a physician, to try to heal those who had been ruined in body and soul. So it is. And to maintain these conditions and not let the terror cool off, executions continue apace along side of the suicides, and even Jan Bockelson himself no longer shrinks from swinging the executioner’s sword. “And so Johann von Leyden and Knipperdolling put to death with their own hands many a pious man and many a pious woman and let many languish until death, or took what belonged to them and deplorably chased them away from their loved ones and made them indigent and miserable such that God might pity them. And all that they did had to be done, and it all was God’s will.” Yes, of course, Meister Gresbeck, sometimes it is God’s

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will that He closes His eyes and allows Satan to have his way, and it is in such times that, according to His will, those who bear witness to Him are separated from those bearing witness to Satan. Satan, however, Meister Gresbeck, is a gentleman of enormous reality, and once he is unleashed, the supports of our houses rot, and hearts decay. And wife shall betray husband, and daughter—for only modest gain—shall betray her very father to the Tscheka of Münster.15 And that which reigns will be made of trash and refuse and have sewage coursing through its veins, and that which has the strength to overcome death shall suffer and die, and it will be right in the end, because nothing breaks sevenfold steel as does the suffering and dying of the righteous. You see, Meister Gresbeck, it is right. Come on, death. Come you faithful servant of God. But here we are dealing with an earthly matter and a time when Satan truly had been unleashed, and under his spell the human heart had been cast adrift. Though it was a glorious time, we were doing wonderfully, and Münster’s prophets and saints “had all the money, silver and gold and sat in their houses or estates and wanted to have ten or twelve wives on top of that.” So it was. And then comes another sentence, and that sentence should never be forgotten: “They had their way, and the devil laughed.” It could be heard for an entire year in Münster, that laughter. Notes 1. The Saxon Mirror (Der Sachsenspiegel) was compiled in 1235 by Eike von Repgow. It was the first comprehensive written law book in the German language and began to replace orally rendered law with a more consistent written code. It was in effect for three hundred years and served as a model for law books in Prussia, Silesia, Poland, the Ukraine, Hungary, and Bohemia. 2. Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1834–1919) was a biologist and philosopher who popularized Darwin’s work in Germany. He was both a legitimate scientist and a flamboyant theoretician upon whom many looked askance. 3. Bockelson’s “Dear Philipp” (Philipp I Landgrave of Hesse [1504–1567]) caused scandal and incurred the disapproval of Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon when, though already married to Christine of Saxony, he married Margarethe von der Saale in 1540. 4. Vielweiberei in the Münster-Anabaptist context meant just that— polygamy in the form of multiple wives for male Anabaptists (the reverse was completely unacceptable). Bockelson’s justification of this innovation was both biblical and practical, to the extent that of the

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5. 6. 7.

8.

9.

10.

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estimated 7,000–8,000 Münster Anabaptists, there was a definite surplus of women (it is estimated that there were approximately 5,000 women, compared to roughly 1,500–2,000 men, and 1,200 children), and that the community sought to increase its numbers not only through recruitment but also as the result of a significantly accelerated birthrate (which, ironically, did not occur). Rumors of Anabaptist Vielweiberei also served to attract converts, luring a considerable number of Landsknechte from the enemy over to the Anabaptist side (Dethlefs, 25–26). Venusberg references the magical mountain realm that is home to Venus in Wagner’s Tannhäuser. Kerssenbroch was no longer an eyewitness when polygamy was introduced to the Anabaptist community. Compare this with the confession of Predicant Klopriss that was cited at the beginning of this book. Yet he did, as did his colleague Vinne, find some words in defense of polygamy. This was always done with reference to the scripture “Be fruitful and multiply” (Reck, 206). Henricus Dorpius [pseudonym] wrote a brief account of the happenings in Münster for none other than Martin Luther. Of accounts which claim to be firsthand, his was the first to appear (Warhafftige historie, wie das Evangelium zu Münster angefangen / und darnach durch die Widderteuffer verstöret / widder auffgehört hat [True History of How Evangelism Started in Münster and Thereafter Ended Because of the Anabaptists]). Of the pressure to produce Aryan children, Reck relates the following in his Diary entry for September 22, 1939: “A young couple in Munich discovered that a defect of vision, with recurring blindness, seemed to be hereditary in the man’s family. The young man had himself sterilized forthwith . . . [and] sent his wife to the Font of Youth (Lebensborn)” (Diary, 91). Reck’s delineation of the ill effects of Münster’s enforcement of polygamy targets measures which were or would be in effect with respect to increasing the Aryan birthrate, including an ongoing propaganda campaign, special recognition and advantages for prolific mothers, as well as the SS-inspired Lebensborn program. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 stripping Jews of their citizenship and basic rights were also already passed and in effect as Reck worked on Bockelson; the tenor and content of the Nuremberg Laws resemble the Anabaptist laws that Reck cites, particularly with regard to marriage and the conception of children. Indeed, polygamy was a concept taken under serious consideration by the Führer himself. Martin Bormann’s rambling memo of January 29, 1944 (characterized by Bormann as the summary of a discussion with Hitler on the night of January 27–28) re: “Safeguarding the Future of the German People” is directed at radically increasing the German birthrate, especially after the war. In short, it calls for acceptable German men

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11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

and women conceiving and giving birth to as many German babies as possible. Among numerous measures to achieve this end result is that stated at point 28.(2) of the memo: “Additionally, on special petition, men should be able to enter into a binding marital relationship not only with one woman, but also with another, who would then get his name without complications, and the children automatically getting the father’s name” (Lang, 478). There is perhaps no better illustration of Reck’s “‘almost’ and ‘would have’ and ‘if only’” than the failed July 20, 1944 Hitler-assassination attempt by a group of Wehrmacht officers headed by Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg. Stauffenberg slipped into a meeting and left a briefcase containing a bomb under the table, just six feet from Hitler. Then an “aide leaned over the conference table to get a better look at the map but was impeded by the brown briefcase. He couldn’t budge it with his foot so leaned down to transfer it to the outside of the heavy table support. It was a trivial move which would alter the course of history” (Toland, 797). Theroigne de Mericourt (1762–1817) was a passionate advocate for women’s involvement in the French Revolution. Both beautiful and brilliant, her star burned brightly for a short time, until she was beaten and humiliated in 1793 by a mob of women who opposed her moderate Girondists and, no doubt, her considerable celebrity. She spent most of her remaining years in an insane asylum. Princess Lamballe (1749–1792) was Marie Antoinette’s confidante and lady-in-waiting. Her long-forgotten diaries, released as The Secret Memoires of Princess Lamballe, revealed intimate conversations between her and Marie Antoinette. In 1792 she fell victim to a mob that is said to have committed rape, torture, and, ultimately, dismemberment of her body. Her body parts were allegedly placed upon a pike and paraded before the windows of the imprisoned Marie Antoinette. Yet while she was murdered, this popular version of her demise has since been determined to have been a fiction of Royalist propaganda. This reference is to obtaining a divorce in the Soviet Union (ca. 1936), a regime that Reck disdained as much as he did the Third Reich, but his written expression of this anti-Soviet aversion may well have improved Bockelson’s chances of being published in Nazi Germany of 1937. Fear of the Spitzel (informer), even in the form of one’s own family members, became an all-pervasive aspect of life in the Third Reich. Yet Reck succeeds in giving this observation an anti-Bolshevist flavor— hence making it far more palatable to the arbiters of Third-Reich culture—with the simple insertion of the word “Tscheka.” Reck states in his Diary entry for September 22, 1939: “And children denounce their parents, and brothers, if there’s a little something in it for them, deliver up their sisters, and all in all, what is right is what is useful for Germany . . .” (Diary, 91).

Chapter 6

King of the Sewer (Rex Cacans)

It is also known that Herr Bernd Rothmann said at a social and in a public house that all kings, electoral princes, and all the nobility would become King Bockelson’s subjects, and officials, and queens, princesses, old ladies, and noblewomen would be subject to the queen and be her handmaidens. From the confession of Anabaptist Scheiffert von Merode

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hall it, then, continue like this on into eternity in this satanic city, and shall it, since the Netherlands and the entire Friesian coast and even large stretches of southern Germany have been contaminated by the Anabaptist spirit . . . shall this boil of heresy poison all of Germany, covering the entire Reich with its festering sores and finally letting everything go under in this frenzy which has been imported by a few maniacal foreigners? In August the fire of war is to descend upon the city for a second time. A great war-council meets in the bishop’s camp outside Münster, and since all the mighty allies converge here with their baggage trains, mounted soldiers, camp followers, and war commissioners, it is easy for Bockelson to divine from all this commotion in the enemy camp the purpose of this war council and then to deceive his people into believing that God the Father had announced to him yet another attack on Münster in the near future. On August 24 all of Münsterland’s illustrious neighbors assemble in the bishop’s camp—the Archbishop of Cologne, the Counts of

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Schauenburg, Isenburg, Nassau, Waldeck, Neuenahr, Bentheim, and Wied.1 Not to mention the high war commissioners of Hesse, Cleves, Brabant, and the Duke of Grubenhagen. For there was such a duke [of Grubenhagen] in the multivoiced choir of the Imperial Princes. That was, as stated above, on the twenty-fourth of August. And the following is decided: “Before we commit anew our cannons, ‘The Devil’ and ‘His Mother,’ and all the other artillery large and small, let there go forth a delegation into the city, officially requesting that they surrender. We will grant you amnesty, city of Münster, with respect to all of the costs and bloodshed; we will even grant safe passage for all of your prophets, if only you put an end to your satanic Anabaptist dances and once again become a city obedient to His Mercy the Bishop. Should you refuse, however, take heed. Our cannons are loaded and aimed at you, and our storm troops stand ready. This is the last hour of our mercy, and should you let it pass, do not be surprised if fire and sulfur and thunder should rain down upon your roofs.” Something to that effect. And with this charge, and after a threehour truce has been negotiated, the bishop’s delegates enter the city, which extends to them a rather surly reception. Nobody speaks to them. They are shunned by the few people still to be seen on the streets—every citizen is strictly forbidden to speak with any member of the delegation, and whoever might think of breaking this ban knows perfectly well what awaits them. Even the reception by Bockelson himself is thoroughly disappointing to the gentlemen. Apparently the Prophet is already negotiating with fellow travelers in Holland concerning an intervention; obviously he is depending on the effectiveness of his propaganda, which is in fact bearing rich fruit in these months. His rhetoric, in any case, is as selfconfident as it can be—he doesn’t give a damn about the bishop’s mercy and knows well what it amounts to.2 It is not the city that is godless, but rather it is the bishop himself. In short, there is no way that Bockelson is going to turn over the city. With this message the gentlemen, for better or for worse, take their leave. Since, however, it is assumed—and correctly so—that the ordinary citizen of Münster has learned nothing of the magnanimous offer, the substance of the bishop’s peace offer is in the next few days attached to countless arrows and shot over the walls into the city, but unfortunately no one behind those walls is allowed to pick up and read these notes on peril of immediate execution. Has enthusiasm somewhat cooled to the extent that such a ban is necessary?

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Bockelson is on his guard now, riding day and night through the streets, telling of his divine revelation, urging diligent prayer, diligent fasting, and even more diligent vigilance. He even has a roll call prepared listing all of the faithful. Kerssenbroch got hold of a copy of this interesting list and emphasizes with a wink that he is preserving it non sina causa—not without good reason. Which is probably intended for those who after the fall of the city claimed to be faithful followers of the bishop, even if their names were on the list. Unfortunately it has not been handed down to us, this list. In any case, the city’s grace period elapses on August 26, and right on time all hell breaks loose. It must have been a heavy barrage for the artillery available at that time, since the sun is hidden for days behind a cloud of gunpowder smoke, and, if Kerssenbroch can be believed, it shatters all the windowpanes in the neighboring villages. A hail of iron rains down on the city, directed particularly at the gates, perforating the roof of the Überwasser Convent, cutting gashes in the gates, but it cannot do much damage to the ramparts which have a foundation made of good native stone. There stand—driven into the line of fire in part by the ongoing terror—the old and frail, the women, and almost the entire population of Münster;3 by night they fill the holes with dung and soil, and the ladies are ready for the coming storm with lime, Pechkränze (“garlands” of hot pitch), and other less appetizing projectiles. To be sure, the women get a little tired during all these thunderous nights, but they bear up marvelously. Young boys shoot crossbows, and through alleyways behind the ramparts there rides a man who threatens an ignominious death for any capitulation. He rides from gate to gate, directing his reserves to the most threatened positions; his deportment in those days is both wise and courageous. On the thirty-first of August the storm breaks loose. By firing the opening shot, the Landgrave of Hesse’s “Devil” signals the beginning of the fighting, the storm breaks out on six sides all at once, the heaviest barrage being directed at the Judefeldertor and the Kreuztor. As luck would have it, the “little village” defends itself tooth and nail this time as well, because now, after rejecting the peace offer, it is a matter of life and death, and the attack “is met so cruelly and courageously that those of the bishop’s soldiers who managed to escape were glad and thankful.” And when the storm, which couldn’t have lasted long, was over, there stand the Baptists, men and women alike, sneering and shouting from their ramparts at the bishop’s troops to please come again, for a decent attack should last at least a day. “Had God not been with us at this time/We would

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have had to give up,” they sing as a victory anthem from the walls, and Bockelson rides through the streets, laughing and asking his people if they did not indeed have a powerful God. This is the hour in which he is already planning yet another provocation of the old Reich. The bishop’s defeat is even worse than the first one. From his camp is heard throughout the entire night the wailing of soldiers’ wives who had so suddenly become soldiers’ widows. “Such a great number of them, both nobility and commoners, had been killed. Some of the soldiers had been captured by the city or had deserted,” reports a contemporary pamphlet. In fact, forty-two experienced officers and hundreds of the bishop’s people are dead; in fact, in Münster (as is later stated under torture by Predicant Klopriss) there were only fifteen or sixteen casualties. So after this assault the city is stronger than ever. And most of all, Münster is more confident than ever, and it is no wonder that the bishop’s army is falling apart, and the only consolation during this trying time is the report of a deserter from the city that in Münster they are already adding barley to their bread flour, and that there is starting to be a shortage of fruit and oil and especially roots and vegetables. And two months later, upon questioning itinerant preachers sent out from Münster in October, we will hear just the opposite, that Münster has enough provisions to last a good two years at least. Still, the deserter’s message provides some encouragement. There is no taking of the satanic city by means of storming it and keeping it under bloody siege, so let’s starve it out by hermetically sealing it off from the world outside. And while, to this end, the bishop reinforces his ramparts and builds new blockhouses before the city gates, Münster celebrates with victory parties and is quite prepared to embark on new adventures, since all of Bockelson’s predictions evidently do come true. As for the goldsmith Dusentschnuer from Warendorf, he is only a poor cripple but is powerfully glib and “could scare the people to death, and so they made him a prophet.”4 Simple souls are always deeply impressed when someone starts wailing about the evil of the times and keeps raking the fires of hell. And that is exactly what this new prophet understands so perfectly, and when he lies—which, according to Gresbeck, he does quite frequently—“he always says, ‘God spoke to me.’” It is through just such a message that God told him, among other things, that a Christian brother must never own more than one jacket, two pairs of pants, two jerkins, and three shirts, and whoever has more than that must deliver it, if you please, to the deacons in

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order to help the foreign indigents, the brothers who have come to us from afar. But confiscations are common everywhere, even in those homes where there is nothing left to confiscate, and since that’s the way it is, and since, moreover, he appears to enjoy Bockelson’s good graces, soon the word of this limping prophet carries a good deal of weight in Münster. And thus one day in September, while the intoxication of victory still prevails everywhere, Dusentschnuer runs out on the market square, crying that God’s own holy man Johann Bockelson shall henceforth be King . . . not only of Münster but rather King of the entire world, over all the imperial princes and, of course, King over Emperor Carolus himself. Dusentschnuer proclaims this, he is handed a sword by one of the elders who have been summoned, and he presents it to Bockelson, “so that he may carry it until God himself shall take his dominion from him.” Dusentschnuer also takes some chrysma oil and “on the orders of the Father” anoints the tailor and pronounces him as “successor to the throne of David” to be King of Zion. And here let us pause for a while. Less than three hundred years will pass before Encyclopedism will have spread over the entire world with its three-penny wisdom and the unshakeable proof that even kings have digestive tracts and rot in their graves “just like everyone else.” Not even three hundred years will pass before all the pious myths of divinely bestowed crowns will have been destroyed, and Napoleon will have made dukes out of butchers and bakers, turned a soldier into a king, and transformed kings of the old dynasties into beggars. That’s how it will be around 1800. But we’re still writing about 1534, and the memories of those magnificent Staufer monsters have paled so little that a mere ten years earlier during the Peasants’ War, der schwäbische Haufen (the Swabian peasant army) had refused to torch the old worm-eaten castle of the Staufen Dynasty because it had always protected the peasants.5 Back then the memory of Karl von Luxemburg6 and the first Maximilian7 still lives on in their hearts and when we hear today the reports written around 1450 by lady-inwaiting Helene Kottaner about the crowning of a Hungarian King who was then but four weeks old, so the hymns to the mystical crowns of the Middle Ages still sing to us today.8 But here fate would have it that someone born in a gutter grabs for the crown—a “theater-king and commander of whores” as Kerssenbroch so liked to call him—and thereby challenges everything which remains unspoken in the hearts of his contemporaries.9

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Bockelson himself later admitted that which Predicant Beckmann had stated under torture in the fall of 1534: That the whole proclamation of Bockelson as king had been a performance prearranged with Dusentschnuer, Knipperdolling, and the predicants; and anyone who still doubts that must explain how it is that with Dusentschnuer’s spontaneous inspiration a ceremonial sword and jar of chrysma oil could be immediately produced. The proclamation is a theatrical farce and Bockelson’s behavior is a farce as he throws himself face down to the ground, calls himself too young for the burdens of the regal office but is finally certain that God will help him and will compensate for his inadequacies. Therewith he accepts the crown. When Bockelson asserts in his well-honed prophet’s manner that he had already known this for a long time, and when he threatens any possible adversaries with the sharpness of his ceremonial sword, the masses, utterly taken by surprise, begin to grumble, and when His Brand New Majesty hears this grumbling, it sets off a new hysterical outburst accompanied by grandiose gesticulations and finally exhausting itself in threats of terror. That of course silenced any opposition and “then they stopped and sang a German psalm, ‘Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr’ (‘Praise God in the Highest’), and then everyone went home again.” There was truly nothing else that they could do but resign themselves to the new kingdom, and afterwards the predicants worked on the people for a good three days straight, drawing particular attention to Jeremiah 23 and Ezekiel 37.10 But Dusentschnuer, well aware that opposition and arrogant grumbling come quickest from a full belly and posh living, preaches anew against gluttony and finally manages to send an entire wagon train of donations to the court of the new king. It is always the same with brand-new kings, as it is with brand-new aristocracy. Yesterday’s paper nobility would do well not to show up too soon behind a pack of dogs in a fox hunt. Every young dynasty should remember Napoleon, who upon his second marriage to Marie Louise received from his imperial father-in-law a whole chest full of papers proving [Napoleon’s] royal lineage. Napoleon, however, returned the chest with the comment that his kingdom had its origins in Montenotte and the Lodi Bridge.11 But His Majesty of Münster completely disregards this commendable rule of the game, and in the fall of 1534 time and resources are wasted right away in the creation of the most resplendent court. Thus we hear of an immediate confiscation of all the horses still to be found in Münster; right after that we hear of knightly games on horseback and an extensive roster of court employees. The roster, with its

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135 names—not counting His Majesty’s sixteen wives—could even be called a flight of fantasy, if one considers that this kingdom only slightly exceeded the dimensions of Münster’s present-day Altstadt (old city) and that the enemy stood just outside the city limits. It goes without saying that Knipperdolling is made governor, Rothmann chancellor, and that among the councilors and high state officials are to be found the tried-and-true old Baptist names Gert tom Kloster and Redeker and Krechting. But it is hard to imagine what else there was to be found there in the way of royal tailors, vintners, personal chefs, bung masters, bodyguards, court butchers, marksmen, lackeys, wardrobe masters, court jewelers, and royal chefs “for fat and lean diets,” again keeping in mind that the roster still does not mention those sixteen royal wives. But it is interesting to look through this list of names, whose bearers, when in the cradle, had hardly been sung lullabies of becoming one of a tailor’s royal entourage. The name Krechting—holding high office—is represented twice, and those of Bisping and Spee appear once each on the roster of bodyguards, whereas that of Bussch is seen three times—once amongst the royal oven-masters, once on the list of royal wives, and once among the lackeys of the royal harem.12 And pray tell, what shows up further down the list but the name of Christoph von Waldeck, a cousin of Zion’s archenemy bishop. There is, believe it or not, even a son of His Grace the Bishop who had been captured by the Baptists and now finds himself unfortunately forced to ride beside the regal tailor on his most important mounted excursions.13 Thus the former tavern keeper and pimp is able to list in his court almanac the member of an ancient German house as page boy, sleep with a north German noblewoman, and have her cousin tend his oven. But now, since no proper kingdom is complete without a crown, scepter, imperial sword, ermine cape, imperial orb and seal, and all those other paraphernalia with which, in the public’s imagination, a king is at all times draped, the court jewelers have their work cut out for them in the next few weeks! The King’s crown consists of two, and according to other reports, of three partial crowns that, once soldered together, might have formed a sort of tiara; they are made of the purest ducat gold surrounding a black velvet hat. Beyond that, however, “the King had a gold chain from which a globe was suspended, in which was inscribed as his coat-of-arms a golden orb topped by a golden cross.” Along with this extravaganza of gold comes golden spurs, a saddle trimmed in gold, a ceremonial sword with a gold-trimmed scabbard, a scepter surrounded by three gold

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rings, and in keeping with the fashion of the times, rings on every finger.14 Only a few years later, Tizian will paint Charles V in simple black garb, bearing as his sole ornament the Golden Fleece. On most occasions this king (Bockelson) wears—at least according to Kerssenbroch—a scarlet jerkin, but also quite often one richly decorated in gold and silver, or one which shimmers in all colors and is interwoven with patterns of little figures. According to Gresbeck, “It was the Father’s will that he should be outfitted in this way. The common man could never recover his money, nor his silver or gold, for the King and his councilors wore it and had it in their hands,” and, in fact, this extravagance caused a good deal of grumbling in Münster.15 This luxurious dress reflects the manner in which court is held. It almost goes without saying that the royal quarters, the Bueren Curia, located where the post office is today,16 has a court orchestra, an organ, a court organist, and those delicacies which are served at the royal table have long since disappeared from the city. And it also goes without saying that the sixteen royal wives lead lives which are no less sumptuous. The royal living quarters are connected to the women’s quarters by a passageway that was created expressly for this purpose. Here rules Divara, widow of the blessed Matthys and wife of Bockelson, wedded upon command of God himself. She is, according to contemporary descriptions, an exceptionally beautiful woman and the only one of the sixteen wives who is elevated to “Queen” and entitled to appear as such in public.17 Among the names of the other fifteen wives are to be found that of Kibbenbrock, the name Kerkerinck appears twice, as does that of Knipperdolling—it might be mentioned here that one of them was possibly Knipperdolling’s maid, since the governor’s daughter Clara was so revolted by intercourse with the King, according to Kerssenbroch, as to require the services of “Meestress Knuppers.” Kerssenbroch reports quite a few details about this harem, details which verge on being embarrassing. The more important fact which appears, mentioned above and crudely discussed by Gresbeck, is that in the course of the next twelve months only two children are born—one to Divara herself and one to Margarethe Moderson. By the way, the King insists that every birth occurring in the city be immediately reported to him. Divara’s child, which had been conceived by the late Matthys, receives the name “Child Newborn” in order to cover up his somewhat delicate position within the royal lineage. So much for the King’s court, about which the bishop extensively interrogates any captured Baptists. Bockelson’s public appearances as

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head of state and especially as the highest judge in God’s Kingdom are in keeping with the extravagance. On the market square there stands, covered with tapestry, the throne and judge’s bench upon a three-tiered platform amidst the benches placed there for the court, and here we listen three times a week to judgments passed by the King on our various complaints and petitions. Then a procession, solemn and with much pomp, enters the marketplace: A bailiff with a white staff followed by his bodyguards opens the court; then come the councilors and dignitaries, followed by the King on his steed and Divara in her coach; then the other royal wives—Kerssenbroch delights in calling them whores—enter and leave the procession upon reaching the marketplace, taking window seats at a nearby house where they watch as He, the most magnificent of them all, pronounces judgment. He sits on his sella curulis (judge’s seat) with two pages sitting before him on the lowest step—the one on the left holding the Old Testament, the one on the right holding the imperial sword. Dear Rothmann, who is of course present, enjoys delivering a commentary in the form of a sermon after a verdict has been pronounced, for which, since most of the adjudicated cases deal with the new state marital laws and their many infractions by unruly women, he is prepared with voluminous appropriate material from the Old Testament. For you see, although our new prophet Dusentschnuer only recently demanded the voluntary submission to these marriage laws, Elisabeth Hölscher dares to deny her husband his marital privileges, Katharina Koekenbecker ventures to entertain two men at the same time, Margarethe von Osnabrück not only crudely berates our Preacher Schlachtschaf—who had come to admonish her—but also spits at him and pours a revolting liquid all over him. There is also Barbara Butendieck, who has made so bold as to contradict her husband with that sharp tongue of her’s. The executioner’s sword is always at hand for cases such as these, and only Barbara Butendieck, who is pregnant, escapes this fate for the time being, and is pardoned even after giving birth in February of 1535, in that she had already endured enough fear. The other ladies, however, are mercilessly beheaded.18 This convocation most often concludes with a psalm read aloud by one of the pages and sometimes with a public dance or a concert by the royal orchestra. And with that the sovereigns retire to the palace in the same ceremonial procession with which they had come. So it is, and this might well be called the short-lived heyday of the young kingdom. It is a time of sunny autumn days, and the former tailor writes letters to the Landgrave Philipp of Hesse which begin

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with “Dear Philipp”—after all, one is amongst one’s peers and is negotiating as one “Imperial Prince” to another. It is a time when the self-assured young state mints coins with the inscription “Das Wort ist Fleisch worden und wohnt unter uns” (“The Word Became Flesh and Lives Among Us”), or, even more striking, “Ein König aufrecht über alles. Ein Gott, ein Glaube, eine Taufe . . .” (“One King Upright above All. One God, one faith, one baptism”).19 And so we would appear to have come to a parallel with the French Revolution, at that juncture when the states are consolidated and when Napoleon settled in St. Cloud and Malmaison and persecuted the Jacobins and called for the old emigrated aristocracy to return.20 Had Münster been backed by somewhat greater might, had the Dutch intervention actually ensued, then it might have turned out similarly [i.e., favorably, as had Napoleon’s situation], and perhaps this unholy son of chaos might have made his peace with the order of the surrounding world, might have left behind Anabaptism, along with all of its prophets, Old Testament, harem of concubines and “be fruitful and multiply,” and made peace with the bishop and Empire. He might have done this, just as Napoleon, when the time was ripe, forgot his friendship with the two Robespierres, left behind the Jacobin cap and the revolutionary ideas of the times, dispatched Baboeuf’s disciples in iron cages to the island of Martinique, and slowly made his peace with the rest of Europe, thus paving the way for the long-sought legitimacy of his dynasty. Nothing would have really stood in the way of a similar solution, had it depended on Bockelson alone, who had started his “Brumaire” prematurely.21 I do not in the least doubt that this scion of the medieval underworld was in fact completely indifferent to Anabaptist theology and that it was simply a means by which he might attain the end result of personal power. I have no doubt that he was more than ready to betray his cause, to betray each and every one of his prophets and lunatics to the extent that in so doing he could have bought for himself both peace with the Reich and a reasonably profitable departure from the scene.22 But he wasn’t able to do that, and the fact that just at this time the bishop rejects a peace plan proposed by the city of Bremen, shows that he was well aware of Bockelson’s predicament. The above-mentioned theory that revolutions are as a rule safety valves for venting the pent-up resentment of the masses, and that prior to such an event any counterrevolutionary measures, any premature “Brumaire” is utterly useless—this theory will be substantiated here once again. When Napoleon prepared his “Brumaire,” Paris had long since put behind

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it the Carmagnole and the terror regime. When Bockelson made himself king and addressed Philipp of Hesse as “Dear Philipp,” the boil that Münster had become was still far from bursting, and we shall soon see proof of that. The pamphlet authored by Rothmann and Klopriss which is printed in Münster at this time and flies into the bishop’s camp on arrows and sticks and finds its way out into the rest of the world—this pamphlet, known in the history of the Münster kingdom as the “Restoration,” is only proof that Münster could not even contemplate peace with the world outside. It is nothing more than a repetition of the above-mentioned Anabaptist theology in a more self-assured form. It is called “restoration” because, after all, God does from time to time restore debauched humanity through the most highly personal of revelations. The appearance of Christ was a “restoration,” except that afterward mankind sank even lower, and neither the Jews nor the Saracens and Turks disdained God more than did this so-called Christendom. Like the pope, who represents the furthest fall ever, like the theologians who corrupted Christ’s teachings, like the universities that did likewise, like the princes who use Christianity to cloak their filthy power struggles. A “restoration” could have been brought about by Luther with his rebellion, before he became trapped in his own arrogance. Hence the only real restoration came from Melchior Hoffman, from Matthys, and our brother Johann. The world in Münster is restored through new revelations about the Old Testament with all of its promises, still so far from being realized; restored is the incarnation of Christ in the flesh, with which “the word became flesh;” restored is the salvation of mankind from its sins through a God-fearing way of life which the Old Believers in their dissolute lifestyle have completely forgotten. All of this had been “restored” by our prophets. In this sense they have restored baptism, which the Antichrist had turned into “a baby’s bath and magic act with bubbles and scrubbing;” it is restored because it henceforth applies to fully aware adults. Restored as well is the church in Münster, since the Lutherans would have done better to remain papists instead of replacing the Roman mass with a German one, as though a German sin were more easily forgiven than one in Latin. In all of these masses, however, the Antichrist produces a “god made of bread,” shows it to the congregation and demands that it be worshipped, and then devours this “bread-god.” Haven’t we also restored this ceremony with our Nachtmahl 23 free of all magical formulas? Marriage is restored, because Vielweiberei (polygamy) has been declared by the patriarchs and apostles; Vielweiberei is necessary

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because God’s commandment to be fruitful and multiply could not otherwise be fulfilled. Restored also are our authorities who up until now have been but a travesty. And restored last but not least is human society through the community of saints. And we have done all of this through communal property, through the absence of all selfishness, through the ideal condition “in which there is no buying and selling, no working for money, no pension and no usury, no food or drink gained through the sweat of poor people.” So that approximates Dear Rothmann’s famous “Restitution”—a newly conjured trick of the Münster propaganda, a new sleight of hand for the discontented masses, already rebelling against early capitalism. Another will-o-the-wisp for all the gloomy and the honest God-seekers and for the idealistic-heretical ravings of a period of great change, a fanfare for all those who in a time such as this would prefer to have an uninterrupted storming of the Bastille, a never-ending Pikenfest (festival with lance competition), in short, a revolutionary birthday every day.24 Again, this pamphlet, like its forbearers, aspires to a pleasing, forthright diction placing Münster’s stage in a rosy light while concealing the witches’ orgy and the . . . I can only call it Old Testament drunkenness whose din then filled Münster’s streets and alleyways. At that time—and it will certainly recur in the course of history—no one is running through the streets with cries of penance, but rather we experience a pleasant little play featuring two young girls— children eight and nine years old—terrorizing all who still dare to wear jewelry with any even passably elegant clothing. This, however, is not done in the usual manner of dissolute youth but rather in a grotesque, horrible way, the temporary mass psychosis afflicting a large community of ten or twelve thousand—a significant city by medieval standards—grinning back at us. These little beasts accost any well-dressed person—male or female—silently pointing at the untimely jewelry, jumping at the throats of women to tear off colorful bonnets or silk scarves, and if met with any resistance, falling into screaming fits that alarm the entire city. Men wearing an elegant suit are treated the same way. “When they encountered men with beautiful suspenders, they would stop and point their fingers and give forth sounds such as those of a person who was mute. If the man was willing to part with his suspenders, then the girls were most satisfied, jumping up and down, clapping their hands, turning their faces upward, and acting just as might someone who was mute. Should the man, however, be unwilling to remove his suspenders, then the girls became furious and screamed.

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These same girls also prowled through the city searching for women wearing beautiful scarves, then running after them, jumping for their necks and pulling off anything not willingly surrendered.” So that’s how it goes now in Münster, with the result being that the city freely submits to this terror—just as though these two small beasts had brought some new insight—and now willingly takes it a step further: from now on only black bonnets are worn and even red nightcaps are dyed black. All mirrors are shattered and any surrounding decorations are left to be burned by the two little hellcats. Now they also have their fits even without the attacks, and their well-known cries of “Oh Father, give, give” are beginning to infect even grown women.25 This continues until the King and predicants become aware of these excesses and see to it that the children disappear from public view. For Bockelson was cool and clever enough to calculate how dangerous such things could be, and when, in reading contemporary accounts, we see him involved in scenes such as these, then we realize even four hundred years later what an accomplished actor this multi-talented Odysseus must have been. But because the further excesses of this type are not ascribed to two hysterical children but rather to Knipperdolling, the Royal Governor himself, the principal question must here be posed as to whether what follows was a calculated attempt to compromise the King, or whether Herr Staathalter Knipperdolling really was crazy in such instances and, according to Gresbeck, “was not in his right mind when the spirit overtook him.” Answering that question requires that we first take a closer look at this strange man who looms dark and enigmatic beside the throne and has so very little in common with Bockelson, whose image we see in the cheering of Dostoevsky’s Demons and in the numerous incarnations of the Bolshevist man everywhere.26 But who was this Knipperdolling? His portrait shows not the bloated, puffy face of the King but rather the attributes of good lineage yet also the paranoid features of a stigmatized prophet. The office of Executioner, which in the context of those times could hardly have brought honor to the holder, appears not to have presented any particular burden to him, as is demonstrated by the considerable relish with which he beheads the prisoners of the Mollenhecke uprising.27 But those fits that we do witness bear in his case the stamp of authenticity, where Bockelson’s always appear to be nothing more than bad theater. Yet what happens between the two men must have taken some planning on the part of Knipperdolling. It has its roots, to borrow from Hamlet, in a grudge against “this tainted vagabond King” who was born in a ditch and was now playing at being a sovereign.28 This

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plan had as its goal, by means of a carefully orchestrated farce, to make Bockelson appear ridiculous in the eyes of the crowd and to manipulate him into situations which the Theater King and Whoremaster was really not up to. The goal and the means of this strange undertaking are quite clear, yet what remains unclear is the state of mind from which it arose, which may indeed not have been all that different from that of the Danish Prince Hamlet. In order to assure his freedom of action and his impunity, he slips into the jester’s costume. The problem in both cases, that of Shakespeare’s protagonist and that of the cloth merchant of Münster, is that there comes a moment in their exultation when the game becomes all too real and the freely chosen jester’s role overtakes the comedian himself. And so it is with the strange man called Knipperdolling. We can probably place the beginning of this Narrenspiel (medieval farce) around the end of September or beginning of October 1534, when Knipperdolling has one of his famous fits, which was long overdue, in which he once again runs into the street shouting his notorious “Repent, mend your ways!” Just as we had heard from him in February. But what was proper in the month of February seems improper and offensive today, because since then, you savage cloth merchant, we have begun a new life, established a register of evil deeds, and have so scrupulously dedicated ourselves to only good deeds that a call for penance in this community standing so blamelessly before God is tantamount to an insult. Knipperdolling, however, appearing to have lost his mind completely, races to the marketplace where the King is holding court, throws himself to the ground (in Kerssenbroch’s words “instar apri spumans humi prostatus tacuit” [frothing at the mouth like a wild boar]), and then for a moment he stops his roaring. But that doesn’t last long and was probably intended to afford a brief respite for his abused larynx. Because he suddenly jumps to his feet and, according to Kerssenbroch, crawls around on the heads of bystanders (!) much like a quadruped and with a technique which defies imitation, proclaims to them their sanctification by God the Father, daubs the eyes of the blind with his spit and promises the return of their sight. The blind, unfortunately, do not cease to be blind—but who will remember the disappointment of a few poor souls amidst scenes such as these? For this maniacal outburst is far from being over, and in days to come such outbursts will take on forms unheard of before a throne and which seriously endanger the very authority of His Majesty. The King had up until now been sitting upon his throne amidst all his pomp listening to the sermons of the predicants at the conclusion

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of a usual day at court. But during a break in the sermon, there now suddenly appears the Grand Vizier, Knipperdolling himself. Standing on his head before the throne, which, given the dress of those times, might have been quite a sight, and he declares himself to be the King’s jester and, arms akimbo, bows deeply before Bockelson. “Your Majesty, good day. How are you, sitting up there, Herr König?” This is nothing less than poking fun, and it becomes no less indecorous when Prime Minister Knipperdolling begins to dance around before his royal master, shouting to him that he is now dancing before him as he had once danced with whores. He then wrests a halberd from one of the royal men-at-arms, shoulders it, and marches around before Bockelson screaming, “This is how we shall both go out and punish the godless.” The worst part is that this fit of madness immediately begins to spread. For when the dance is over Knipperdolling turns once more to the crowd and “sanctifies” them yet again with his kisses on the mouth and cheek, whereupon there begins a great lament among those whom he has passed over, “some of the people whom he did not want to sanctify, they cried out, those poor simple people who just didn’t know any better. Some of the others, however, must have known that the devil himself was manipulating them.” So that’s how it is in Münster at this time. No calming, no strengthening, but rather an increase in the fever—no finding one’s way back to the surrounding world of sober Northern Germany, but instead only a hopeless entanglement in the red veils and snare of mass psychosis. But since the king must never remain the only sane person in a community where insanity has become the norm, and Bockelson, who during this embarrassing scene must have cut a rather pitiful figure on his lofty throne, feels obliged to have a fit of his own which, quite contrary to that of the governor, gives the distinct impression of being desperate playacting. “The King sat upon his throne and looked on, he was overcome by the Anabaptist spirit and toppled from his throne, the scepter fell from his hand, he folded his hands and sat this way for a long time, just as if he were mute. Then the women started screaming as well, and the spirit overtook some of them such that any witness to this scene would have been terrified. When Knipperdolling saw that the King had fallen from his throne, he ran to him, took him in his arms, sat him back on the throne, and blew the spirit into him. Thus the King came back to life and said in a trembling voice: ‘Dear brothers and sisters, what great joy I am witnessing.’” And suddenly in the eyes of His Hallucinating Majesty every pot-bellied Bürger and shriveled old hag became beautiful angels, and, of particular

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significance, the marketplace with its houses and demolished steeples, all of Münster spins round and round before the royal tailor’s eyes. This, of course, is interpreted to mean nothing less than that the King is now prepared to go out into the world with his Volk and become ruler of the entire globe. Whereupon the ladies begin anew to screech their approval as the spirit of prophetic vision slowly drains from His Majesty. But unfortunately this farce is far from ending the embarrassing scene, and the Governor continues to be a crude public nuisance. He now calls forth from the crowd those men who on that night in February when the bishop’s people demanded admittance to the city had sat with Knipperdolling in the Überwasser Tower as hostages of the Old Believers. He sets them on the bench before the throne, blows a “breath of life” into them but to no avail. This is hardly a surprise if one considers that these are frail old men, “which in no way prevents him from designating these somewhat bewildered and ridiculous little old men as his apostles, bestowing upon them the appropriate names Peter, Paul, Simon. . . .” His Majesty upon the throne, realizing that this ludicrous scene is eroding his dignity, heartily expresses the wish that everyone go home, but he is detained by Knipperdolling, who asks those sanctified by him to genuflect before the King—the men to bend their right knee, the women their left—and finally he addresses the apostles with the following quaint, somewhat apocryphal sentence which Gresbeck appears to have personally heard in all its strange reiterations and which almost sounds like part of the Merseburger Zaubersprüche:29 “God God wise. God God gives you leave leave that you might go go home home.” Whereupon the insane asylum adjourns for lunch. Unfortunately the witches’ Sabbath begins anew on the following day, and once again Herr Staathalter comes dancing across the Market Square and sits on the throne next to the King, cries out to the crowd that he is the one who made Bockelson King and “that he too intended to be a king.” Those are of course exceedingly evil words that meet the criteria for high treason and naturally have very dire consequences. “Since the King saw and heard what Knipperdolling said, that he by rights should be king and that he had made Bockelson king instead. The King became furious,” for which he can hardly be blamed, and which in this case results in the King, similar to the King in Hamlet, rising with a flourish, turning his back on the undignified spectacle and “going home.” Yet a king, having once left, should definitely refrain from returning too soon—in such a case he would do better to send a captain-of-the-guard to seize the troublemaker, but not

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to show himself to the people so soon after his dignity has been violated. But the rules of the king’s game are not known to the former tavern keeper, and what he does do is not exactly dignified. Like a fishwife, to whom a few unused curse words occur after a squabble with her neighbor, Bockelson comes back, personally orders Knipperdolling— who in the meantime has made himself comfortable on the throne—to come down off the throne and “told him to remain silent, which Knipperdolling did.” Since Bockelson notices that this scene has made quite an impression on the crowd, he requests that the people “pay no attention to the otherwise most worthy governor, since he has taken leave of his senses.” He finally has Knipperdolling arrested, put in chains, and thrown “into the tower,” where he remains for three days. Both gentlemen knew each other under favorable conditions, and since these were hardly favorable conditions, Knipperdolling begins to feel his own head loosening on his shoulders, and he is overcome by a great sense of remorse during his detention and lets the King know that he must have been utterly confused and acted “under the influence of an unclean spirit.” The King, in turn, could not have a member of an old, established family of high position beheaded without a great outcry from the local citizenry, so he writes the imprisoned Knipperdolling a letter that, while overflowing with compliments and leniency, is otherwise somewhat bittersweet. He recommends that Knipperdolling read in the Scripture the story of Joshua, Mordechai, and the last chapters of Ezra, but otherwise remains, so to speak, affectionate König Johann and concludes beneath his signature with the usual “God’s strength is my power.” Whereupon he releases Knipperdolling, granting him a pardon and returning him to his former office. This is the first serious scandal around the young throne, and, as such, remains not without a lasting effect, as “there was a segment of Anabaptists who now wanted to elect yet a second king,” adding to the secular Bockelson a spiritual Knipperdolling. Bockelson’s response is to lock up immediately anyone who dares to voice such an outrageous notion. Such are the scandalous occurrences as they might have happened in Münster at the end of September or the beginning of October. No really direct connection between them and that which follows can be demonstrated, yet an unbiased observer is struck by the fact that everything which happens now—the appointment of the apostles and the plan to emigrate to the Promised Land—had already emerged

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during the Knipperdolling Scandal in the mutual visions of both Governor Knipperdolling and the King. Had the King not spoken of an exodus, and had there perhaps been a grand sortie planned with the brothers in Holland to take place around this time? Could it not have been that the famous “Lord’s Supper on Mount Zion” was nothing more than a maneuver to divert the attention of the masses from the actual plans of the leaders, and maybe, just a little, from the Knipperdolling Scandal that they had just survived? We don’t know the answers to these questions and can only point to a rather deft manipulation of the masses to prepare them for all the strange occurrences yet to come. For some time now the prophet Dusentschnuer is once again limping through the streets, dropping sinister hints about great events to come—about the Lord’s trumpet that will sound thrice from the clouds to announce them. These are certainly terrifying words, and it is especially the Lord’s trumpet sounding from the clouds that everyone awaits with great trepidation. In the meantime rumors slink like phantoms through the streets and alleyways. It is not so bad that we are to be called by the trumpet to a communal supper; there is something much worse which can be heard now in Münster: The faithful shall leave the city with bag and baggage; with God’s help and protection they shall—just as their Israelite forbearers had marched through the Red Sea—be led through the bishop’s ranks. With God’s help they will reach a Promised Land far grander and far richer than their former homeland. Such are the great events which God’s trumpet shall announce with three blasts, and one can again wonder whether the state leadership that is carefully spreading these rumors might not have had its own ulterior, albeit unrealized motives. The high spirits of summer were sinking with the dwindling light of autumn anyway, and the clever lad who was now ruler of the city knew full well that stockpiles were dwindling, and he could easily foresee the outcome. But in areas all around Münster the Anabaptist frenzy of this time is raging. In East Friesland they are only waiting for King Johann to arrive with his armies. In the Netherlands they are screaming, “All the aristocrats and all the priests must be struck down, and the whole world should become like Münster.” And in Amsterdam it had already come to armed riots—so could it not have been that Bockelson was considering a desperate breakthrough to the provinces when he announced this exodus? We have insufficient knowledge of the underground connections that the city might have had with Holland; we can only reconstruct

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the machinations that might have taken place in the background from what is being visibly played out on the main stage. On this main stage stand people who are distraught or enraptured, believing or already skeptical and secretly sick of the whole business of Anabaptism, and everyone awaits the promised three blasts of the trumpet. Will it really blow, God’s mighty trumpet? Why of course it will. But when the fanfare actually resounds and the Israelites fly from their beds to look into the somber sky, will they see God the Father blowing Oliphant’s horn?30 No indeed, above them they see only drifting fogs and screeching flocks of crows, and on the street they see our tried-and-true Dusentschnuer as he limps along and blows a dented old cow horn. But since the people had expected a trumpeter from heaven and not one from Warendorf, they somehow manage to bite back their laughter and do well not to show it, as the die-hard Anabaptists remain ever watchful. Meanwhile Bockelson’s disciples race up and down the streets in preparation for the second and even the third signal, and the predicants preach about it daily. And then, after two weeks, “the trumpet sounded again, and this self-same prophet hobbled through the city streets again and blew, just as he had done the first time.” And now, between the second and third signal, it appears that the exodus from the city is to be taken seriously. All are to make ready for it. Every man capable of fighting is armed, and at the third blare of the trumpet everyone is to assemble at Cathedral Square that is now designated as our holy Mount Zion. Come as well all you women, bring your children and your possessions and all your provisions; bring your butter and meat and your smoked ham, you staunch Westphalian women. Indeed, when the trumpet blows for the third time everyone streams to Cathedral Square, about fifteen hundred men and eight thousand women, and with them more than a few screaming small children who had just been torn from their beds. Not to mention the blind, the crippled and the frail. There they stand, men in sevenfold armor,31 women in sevenfold fear, and all are most sullen. For one should never promise a God the Father blowing his trumpet if all that can be produced is a hornblowing reprobate from Warendorf in the county of Münster, and perhaps it is these very same fearful hours which contain that moment in which it becomes clear that the facts and the promises really do not correlate, the moment in which high spirits capsize forever. For if all your miracles are like the trumpet signal—could it be that your Promised Land is no better? And how far is it down that road to Canaan, and how, good gentlemen, do you propose that we shall get

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past all the bunkers and lunettes and the bishop’s cannon-armed entrenchments that line that road? These cursed foreigners here, who wandered into our city carrying the white staff, they have nothing to lose—it is fine for them to speak of God’s miracles and an exodus from Egypt, but what about us standing here with our screaming children, having left our houses empty and our ovens cold? And all these poor little people make grim faces, and the general mood becomes stagnant, and Knipperdolling, who takes this opportunity to make a nuisance of himself once again, can easily console the lame and the blind brought here by their families, and promise that they will have healthy limbs and see the light of day. Alright, but didn’t you make similar promises just a short while ago, Brother Cloth Merchant, when you rubbed your spit on those blind eyes and spoke the Savior’s words—the Savior, whom you maniacal prophets of the Old Covenant otherwise never mention? “Yet the lame and the blind remain just as they were, and any such signs of miracles were nowhere to be seen on Cathedral Square.” But at ten that evening things change as Münster’s own Majesty Himself appears with crown and gold neck-chain and all of his jewelry, accompanied by all his consorts, court officials and pages, and, of course, with all of his wives, and with a speech which greatly soothes the troubled hearts. When he first arrives, things still look quite grim and hostile. So the first thing to be done, in accordance with contemporary tactics, was to divide the assembled mass into Gewalthaufen and Verlorenen Haufen.32 And then an officer raises his voice in the name of His Majesty the King and proclaims great joy to all who are present. No, it is not God’s will after all to withdraw from the city and leave dear old Münster to the wolves—this, dear friends, was nothing more than a test of your obedience. But now that you have passed the test, just look, we’re already setting up tables and benches for you, and since you already have provisions with you, sit down with your loved ones, give from your abundance to those in need, do not hesitate to partake of your brother’s bounty, rejoice in the Lord! Or something like that, and it might have been both—first a drill and then great merry-making. The King leaves for a short while in order to remove his uncomfortable armor but returns immediately, crown on head, providing a model of Christian humility. Because now he offers, along with his queen—wife number one among the sixteen, of course—to serve those present. And sure enough he is to be seen, along with the lovely Divara, passing out plates of food, and afterward the couple goes affably from person to person, inquiring about the number of children and wives. And the predicants follow

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the King’s example, praising those with many wives, and all in all everyone is having a good time on Cathedral Square, and it is only Knipperdolling who once again disturbs the peace by asking the King in all seriousness to chop off his head right here and now, because he, the cloth merchant, will rise again in three days. But His Majesty of Münster declines for the time being, because he must first take care of something else. Not without reason is His Majesty also the highest priest of this Kingdom of God: A Holy Communion will conclude the communal meal, and the royal couple stands before their councilors “in the middle of Cathedral Square holding little round cakes which they broke in two, and all the people, men and women, young and old, walked between the King and Queen and Knipperdolling, and everyone ate a little piece of the cake and had a sip of wine, and so they celebrated the Lord’s Supper.” Whereupon the crowd sings “Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr,” and the predicants speak pious words about the meaning of the Holy Supper, and finally Dusentschnuer climbs on a chair and surprises the audience with one final sensation on this eventful evening. To wit, God had revealed to Dusentschnuer the names of twentyseven men of Münster who, under the Lord’s protection, are to go forth into the world and carry the new gospel outside the city’s walls to the four corners of the earth. Woe to the place that refuses them and whose dust they shake from their shoes . . .33 “so shall that city be swallowed up within the hour and burn in the fires of hell.” And Dusentschnuer reads the names of the twenty-seven who will venture forth to Soest, Osnabrück, Coesfeld, and Warendorf, and he himself, the limping prophet, is among those destined for Soest. Yet Dusentschnuer isn’t the only prominent person among those twenty-seven. Herr Hermann Kerkerinck is there, Herr Heinrich Schlachtschaf, the schoolmaster Heinrich Graes, Pastor Dionysius Vinne, Pastor Regenwart, Chaplain Johann Beckmann, Herr Gottfried Stralen, and Herr Dietrich von Alfen. And above all Herr Johannes Klopriss, the learned theologian, who along with Rothmann had composed “The Restoration.” As you can see, these chosen are all true Anabaptists, the elite of the old comrades from the now somewhat distant, hopeful days of spring. Had it come to this in Münster, that the King was now forced to send his most faithful disciples on such an audacious mission whose outcome really leaves no doubt whatsoever?34 That which had happened behind the scenes, an incident less than befitting a Holy Supper—let us speak of that a little later and stay for now with those twenty-seven chosen ones who are now receiving

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their marching orders as they sit for one last time at the royal table and listen to His Majesty’s jangling farewell speech. Hearing that “they shall prepare the way for Him, the King, who will follow them with weapons and punish those who despise and insult them . . .” Such are the powerful words spoken by Him, the King. The chosen twenty-seven have meanwhile picked up their knapsacks and are now saying goodbye to their wives—a total of 120 [wives], an average of about four per man, which amidst all the tragedy does seem a bit comical. It is past midnight. Past midnight, and if they intend to obey God’s special orders to the letter, the apostles must pass through the city gates before one in the morning. Outside on the ramparts are one third of Münster’s able-bodied men—six hundred in all stand watch. Under their protection is a brightly lit plaza right in the heart of the city’s old section, where we find a richly set table with wine and smoked meats, a king wearing a brightly colored jerkin and crown of gold—truly a King of Hearts, this king with all his sycophants and courtiers and an orchestra of flutes and violins and drums and a harem of sixteen wives. But outside this festive circle of light are the fog and the chill of autumn, chaos, and the enemy’s sword. It is now one in the morning. The alleys alongside the city walls are usually streets where poor people live in such old cities; they are dark, dirty, foul-smelling alleyways, where one steps in filth and on dead cats, and where the dark silhouettes of silent sentries are seen on the battlements. The faint sound of drums can be heard, and light from the ongoing celebration projects a reddish glow like some distant conflagration, but here there is darkness, the damp cold of autumn, the whispering of the sentries who quietly, ever so quietly, turn the key so that the enemy cannot hear. Here is the blessed night, and just behind the oaken doors He stands, the healer of all hearts and minds gone awry, comforter of all shattered creatures, father confessor of all sinners. So come, oh Servant of God. Come now, sweet death.

Notes 1. Münsterland refers to the primarily agricultural lowland region that surrounds Münster in what is today the Federal State of NordrheinWestfalen. The area was ruled by the bishops of Münster until 1803. 2. As Reck wrote Bockelson, Hitler had long since demonstrated his considerable strength as a master in the arts of propaganda and rhetoric,

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first with respect to domestic German issues and then increasingly in the area of foreign policy. The similar mandate to press all males from the age of sixteen to sixty—the young and old, healthy and frail—into combat service as Germany became more desperate in the later war years was called the Volkssturm (Peoples’ Storm). Reck was first arrested and later released in October 1944 because “four days before I had ignored a so-called ‘call to arms’ for service with the Volkssturm . . .” (Diary, 206). As noted in Karl-Heinz Schoeps’s essay, Reck’s Dusentschnuer figure—a small man who limps, uses his oratory powers to best advantage, plans and carries out the “miracles” which, at least for a time, secure Bockelson’s throne—was an unabashed caricature of Hitler’s minister of Propaganda, Josef Goebbels. In his Diary of a Man in Despair Reck speaks of the parallels he had established between Hitler’s Third Reich and Bockelson’s Münster in his entry for August 11, 1936. Among his observations is: “[t]he fact that the Münster propaganda chief, Dusentschnuer, limped like Goebbels is a joke which history spent four hundred years preparing: a fact which I, familiar as I am with the vindictiveness of our Minister of Lies, have most advisedly suppressed in my book” (Diary, 20). But the finished work that appeared in 1937 did little to “suppress” the likeness. Southern German peasants hesitated to torch it. It is most likely an emissary of Thomas Münzer’s Middle-German rabble who insists on and carries out this arson (Reck, 206). Karl IV von Luxemburg (1316–1378) was emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation from 1355 until his death. Maximilian I (1459–1519) was the son of Kaiser Friedrich III of the Habsburg dynasty. Known for his expertise in the arts of war, gardening, hunting, and building, he was known as “Der letzte Ritter” (“The Last Knight”). Helene Kottaner was a servant and confidante of Queen Elizabeth of Hungary (1409–1442). She kept a journal in which she wrote of her part in securing the holy crown of St. Stephen for Queen Elizabeth, who gave birth to a son Ladislaus Posthumous (1440–1457). Ladislaus was crowned King of Hungary three months later. Reck perhaps lulls and somewhat confounds the reader with a profusion of historical facts and personages (some better known than others) in the foregoing two paragraphs before suggesting that we “pause for a while,” only to come back with: “here fate would have it that someone born in a gutter grabs for the crown—a ‘theater king and commander of whores.’” We know that this is a literary “surprise attack” aimed directly at Hitler, but would this have been immediately clear to German readers in 1937? Jeremiah 23: 3: “Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them

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back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply.” Ezekiel 37: 21–22: “. . . then say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from all sides, and bring them to their own land; and I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all. . . .” The Battle of Montenotte (April 12, 1796) and the Battle of Lodi Bridge (May 10, 1798) were two battles between the French and Austrians in which Napoleon distinguished himself as a commander, tactician, and fighter, hence adding greatly to his growing military reputation. In his April 1939 Diary entry Reck writes: that “the German peerage registry is full of listings of families like the von Arnims, Riedesels, von Kattes, von Kleists, and Bülows, with members holding such positions as “Group Leader” and similar offices under this criminal. . . . These honors are accepted without a thought of the disgrace they thereby bring to the famed old names they bear, and to their forefathers” (Diary, 75). Christoph von Waldeck, named as one of the royal pages, succeeded in escaping from the city on June 2, 1535 (Reck, 206). The most complete displays of items associated with Bockelson and the Anabaptist occupation of Münster are to be found in the Münster Stadtmuseum and the Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte in Münster. The confessions given under torture by imprisoned “apostles” describe Bockelson’s outfit as being somewhat simpler but still resplendent enough. The royal bodyguards also wore red and gray, the colors of the royal coat of arms, and on their sleeves they wore the well-known orb pierced by two swords (Reck, 207). With respect to the proximity of Bockelson’s confiscated residence, the Buerensche Kurie, to Münster’s present-day main post office, Münster City Archivist Irmgard Pelster indicates that noblewoman Odinga von Büren, who had the Margarethenkapelle (15 Domplatz) built and dedicated to St. Margaretha, lived at 16/17 Domplatz in a house that later became the Domkurie (cathedral administration building) and then Domschule (cathedral school). Frau Pelster states that this house was most probably located on the site of today’s Münster post office. Reck’s Diary entry for January 1940: “The latest is that the Great Man now has a mistress, named Eva Braun . . . [who] plays at being First Lady of the Third Reich, if not Empress. . . . [T]here is a complete harem of young girls on the Obersalzberg, who attend on Great Caesar exactly as their forerunners did on Bockelson” (Diary, 100–101). After the Reichstag Fire, Hitler felt that there should be swifter and harsher “justice” meted out to enemies of the state. He created the

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Volksgerichtshof (roughly translated, “People’s Court”), which went into effect on April 24, 1934. All of its judges were appointed by Hitler himself. Its judgments became increasingly ruthless and arbitrary over the course of the Third Reich and swift justice was often beheading by the guillotine. As early as 1933, the notorious Roland Freisler was State Secretary of the Prussian Ministry of Justice and from 1934 to 1942 State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice; in 1942 he became president of the Volksgerichtshof. ReckMalleczewen’s treatment of the Münster judicial system under Bockelson can be interpreted as criticism of the National Socialist system as Reck had observed it from 1934 to 1936 as well as a premonition of how much worse it would become. Indeed, Reck himself would become a victim of Nazi “justice,” albeit without the benefit of a so-called trial (see also Diary, 178–179). Reck’s only slightly veiled allusion to “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” exemplifies an anger which defines the parameters of his inner emigration; such parallels were ultimately all too clear. This sentence—following as it does the citation of a glaring parallel to the Third Reich—serves as a good example of Reck’s using the French Revolution as a sort of literary red herring; it is an historical context secondary to the Münster Anabaptists with respect to Reck’s ultimate targets of Hitler and the Third Reich. Brumaire refers the “Coup of 18 Brumaire” (in the year VIII according to the French Republican Calendar ⫽ November 9, 1799) in which Napoleon overthrew the government of the Directory to replace it by the Consulate. Here Reck suggests a comparison to National Socialist “ideologues” whose true lust for wealth and power hid behind a veneer of völkisch ideology. As written in Reck’s August 11, 1936 Diary entry: “A thin sauce of ideology covered lewdness, greed, sadism, and fathomless lust for power in Münster, too . . .” (Diary, 20). In this context, Nachtmahl or Abendmahl refers to a simplified form of communion celebrated by the Anabaptists at their evening meal. Hitler’s “Brown Revolution” had been on the scene since the start of Weimar Republic, slowly gaining momentum and credibility up to the onset of the Third Reich in 1933, after which it permeated every aspect of one’s life, remaining dramatically in the public eye and consciousness (e.g., the grandiose annual Party Rally in Nuremberg). Reck’s mention of “these little beasts” again underscores the allencompassing fear inspired by the Spitzel or informer in the Third Reich, particularly in the person of children, who were indoctrinated in school, the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth), and Bund deutscher Mädel (League of German Maidens). In his Diary, Reck wrote: “Among people I know, I have heard of more than one case of children denouncing their parents politically, and thereby delivering

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them to the ax” (Diary, 22). Reck was himself ultimately denounced by an informer, leading to his arrest by the SS and murder at Dachau. In his September 9, 1937 Diary entry Reck tells of witnessing a Hitler rally, where the hysterical “mob” had given itself over to the Führer. After returning home, Reck picks up his copy of Dostoevsky’s Demons (also called The Possessed) and reads where power-hungry revolutionary, Peter Stepanovich, holds forth on the coming world of total equality through mob rule. Reck then concludes: “Truly, Dostoevsky is right, the end of the world is at hand. It is the end, even if it is the end of one world, the tear-drenched and curse-ridden world of yesterday” (Diary, 50). And again, Reck can use Bockelson as a pulpit from which to excoriate “Bolshevist man” while directing his anger and hatred at National Socialism as well. From the same confession of Knipperdolling: “Item / er hebbe XI oder XII miseyber handt gerichtet / ouck etzliche mit schrouven up den benen ge peyniget.” (“he had executed six or seven with his own hand, and had tortured some of them”). The number seems a little scant. The king alone, still as an amateur executioner, confesses six to eight decapitations (Reck, 207). The confession of the captured king asserts that there had been many disagreements between himself and Knipperdolling because Knipperdolling envied Bockelson his royal office. This is reported by Gresbeck, Kerssenbroch, and numerous other sources (Reck, 207). The Merseburger Zaubersprüche were two ancient spells or magic incantations discovered in 1841 in the library of the Merseburg Cathedral by historian Dr. Georg Waitz. While recorded in the tenth century, they originated in the pre-Christian Germanic era before 750, hence they are particularly significant in that they predate Christian Zaubersprüche of the Middle Ages, being of pagan origin and written in Old High German. Oliphant’s horn refers to the horn carried by Roland in the medieval French heroic Song of Roland. The phrase “im Harnisch in sieben Gliedern” has the literal meaning “in sevenfold armor,” but this could also be a play on a colloquialism that would have the meaning “in sevenfold anger.” Gewalthaufen und Verlorenen Haufen refers to a training tactic of dividing an army into two smaller armies, one the offensive (Gewalthaufen) and one the defensive (Verlorenen Haufen) and then having them march against each other. Upon sending his disciples out to preach, Christ speaks the words: “And whosoever shall not receive you nor hear your words: when you depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet” (Matthew 10:14).

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34. The so-called “Röhm Putsch” and ensuing “Night of the Long Knives” in July 1934 had already occurred before Reck wrote Bockelson. Hitler’s purge of those whom he felt to have become too powerful—especially members of the SA or Brownshirts from the early days who had enabled Hitler’s rise to the top—resonates as a parallel to Bockelson’s sending “the elite of the old comrades” out to a certain death.

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Chapter 7

Desperate Hope (Spes Desperata)

The opinion was, were they able to gain the upper hand, they intended to root out and kill both spiritual and secular authorities, no matter what their station in life, no exceptions. From the confession of the captured Münster propagandist Zillis Leitgens

Leopold von Ranke’s words about Bockelson are, oddly enough, very

compassionate. At first glance it seems strange to see the great historian of the nineteenth century pointing out in defense and even admiration of the King of Münster’s youth, his versatility, his seductive gift of oratory, and his alleged good looks—all of these things that, in such turbulent times, must have lured him onto the wrong path.1 Ranke, however, lived in an era not yet threatened by the outbursts of the underworld2—an era secure in its charitable bourgeois mentality; he would have encountered this destructive type of human being only in the form of a hardened criminal, viewed by all with wonderment and loathing as he sat before a judge. Back then [in Ranke’s time] this hardened criminal would have been seen as a monster through the astonished eyes of a tolerant era, and that which the present-day tremors vomit to the surface—the collective herds of mass-man—would still have been completely alien to Ranke’s contemporaries. We, under whose feet the earth is once again reeling, are not so much interested in Bockelson per se but rather in what he, this son of the underworld, could get away with even back then—what he managed to achieve among those comfortably affluent solid citizens and the clergymen who only a few months earlier had dutifully tended their flocks, among nuns and noblewomen and those folk who only yesterday

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never would have considered the strict moral codes of the Middle Ages to be intolerable shackles. It is not the individual Bockelson who is of interest here but rather the effect he was able to have, and typical of that which he was permitted with no opposition whatsoever is a scene that took place during the Holy Supper prior to the departure of the apostles. During this meal the King notices a stranger, a Landsknecht who had been captured recently by the people of Münster and brought to the celebration as a catechist. The King’s attention is drawn to this unfamiliar face, and he asks the man about his faith. The somewhat drunken prisoner answers that he didn’t know anything at all about a faith, but only about boozing and women. Such answers simply aren’t given at an official function of a state which breaks mirrors and dyes women’s bonnets black, and it is certainly no way to address a king who only yesterday had a quite different and not altogether regal profession and who might just be reminded by such vulgar speech of the days when he, a barkeep among his guests, had listened day-in-day-out to just such words of wisdom. So Bockelson swallows his anger at this reply and asks the man—in his capacity as king of a biblical empire and using biblical language— how he could appear at such a wedding feast without the proper wedding attire, and received yet again the somewhat crude response that, “he was in no way invited to this whore’s supper but rather he had been dragged there against his will by the people of Münster.” Well, there is no way that a king can just let something like this go, and Bockelson has the man seized, screaming at him that he must surely be Judas incarnate. He then has the executioner’s sword brought to him and decapitates the prisoner during the course of the ongoing wedding feast. The corpse remains right there until morning, and since this scene was played out in full view of one and all, the festive mood has now completely run its course. Such are the deeds that this man could approve without there being a hint of protest—the same man for whose empire the apostles in this very hour venture forth into the unknown, and it can hardly be said that this heinous deed sent them off on a positive note. Of course the departure has long since been betrayed to the bishop, and he has long since ordered all the authorities to keep a sharp eye out for the Münster preachers, so that when these [preachers] enter their assigned cities—even cities where there was a measure of pro-Anabaptist sentiment—their fate is sealed. And it is not as if the preachers were in any way clever, slipping unnoticed into these cities as would have been wise, but rather they

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begin by marching through the streets with the traditional Anabaptist cries for penitence as soon as they pass through the city gates. Klopriss, who had grown a wild beard on his smooth face, baptizes a full fifty people at the Warendorf home of a Baptist councilman and has the small city so under his spell that all of the bishop’s orders to immediately arrest this man were met by a stony silence or even, according to an old document, with “nasty sneering remarks.” In fact the throng standing in the marketplace is about ready to leave town in order to dispel the [bishop’s] forces occupying Münster, and the bishop must finally send an armed force into Warendorf to restore order. His appearance works wonders. Overnight he is there, having all the fully loaded cannons gathered in Warendorf’s marketplace and fired off into the air such that all of Warendorf’s windowpanes are shattered. Further, he has all of the city’s strategic locations occupied by infantry, and he orders the surrender of all of the Münster predicants being kept in city hall. The predicants in turn decry all those contemptuous of the new credo and threaten King Bockelson’s wrath and his revenge for this outrage, but to no avail. They are, despite the city council’s anger at the heartless bishop, handed over, and in a few days most of them—not even two weeks after Münster’s Holy Supper—are beheaded atop a stage built on nine barrels, where their bodies are put on public display. Here is where Herr Dietrich von Alfen bleeds to death, despite pleas for mercy brought forth by his fellow noblemen and even by the executioner himself. Such is also the fate of our tried-and-true old friend Stralen, and some Warendorfers who had just been baptized by Klopriss are decapitated as well, all because the baptized city councilor Erpo Holland had carelessly left in the open a list of those who had been baptized. Only Klopriss himself, whom the bishop has sent like some rare beast to the Archbishop of Cologne, is reserved for the agonizing death by fire, and at Brühl in February 1535 “he is punished and brought by fire from life to death in compliance with the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.” But first Klopriss must undergo an interrogation in which he praises Bockelson “for his great understanding of the Holy Scripture and his superior eloquence,” though he [Klopriss] would rather be taken directly to Rome than to his second wife, whom he had chosen after his first. And in the end Klopriss proves himself to be a steadfast man who dies for his convictions without needlessly betraying Münster’s secrets as had Brother Stralen. Because of its ambiguous behavior, however, the town of Warendorf is stripped of a number of rights and expelled

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from the provincial diet. Thus ends the Warendorf mission rather sadly. Those who are sent to Soest—Dusentschnuer and Schlachtschaf among them—immediately force their way into the city’s council chambers with their usual cries for penance, whereupon they are banished from the city, then arrested, and then, despite their wailing over Soest’s thick-headedness, they are put to death on the city’s ramparts. At this point one of the preachers tries to convince the headsman that his neck is invulnerable to the execution’s sword, yet the executioner is a man completely devoid of appreciation for such contentions and only comes down all the harder, forcing the doomed head to jump from its neck, thus demonstrating Münster’s prophesy once again to be a sham. It ends badly in Warendorf and Soest, and just as badly in Coesfeld, where the apostles complain bitterly before their execution about how Dusentschnuer had led them astray. So it ends in Coesfeld, a place not at all receptive to Anabaptist teachings and where the apostles tell during their interrogation how much the people of Münster had grumbled about Bockelson’s proclamation as King, and where it happens that some of the apostles—including our trusty Beckmann— plead for mercy. And what happens in Osnabrück? There the apostles run into a fellow believer, who turns out to be no believer at all; they are arrested, and singing psalms they are taken away. To be sure, they stir up some dissent among a number of young craftsmen who hang around their cell singing psalms and muttering, plotting to free the prisoners, but the prisoners are nevertheless spirited away to Iburg. Facing the scaffold, the terrified Schulmeister Heinrich Graes from Borken cries desperately to the bishop standing on the castle balcony, would he not take mercy on a man in shackles? The bishop’s attention is aroused and he has Graes brought to him for questioning. Thus begins a wild story, of which at least the beginning shall be told here. This man, who by now should be wearing a martyr’s halo, promises— should one see fit to spare his life—to return to Münster and ferret out the city’s important secrets. The bishop, who at first mistrusts him, has him swear an oath, whereupon he is taken in shackles and under cover of fog and night to just outside the city walls, where the guards recognize the Lord’s apostle, the only one to return home, and singing hymns of praise they bring him to the King. There he answers the question of how he was able to make it back home with a truly outlandish tale of being freed from the Iburg prison by an angel of the Lord. Graes gives a graphic account of how the others were martyred, and at first he encounters a measure of suspicion with all of these angel stories, yet he knows just how to win Bockelson’s heart with his

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assurances that the world outside sympathizes with the Anabaptist cause. He is declared a prophet and held up as a paragon of faith by all the state preachers. From now on he participates in all of the important deliberations and learns everything that he wants to know. Of course Graes’s life under these circumstances hangs by a silken thread, since deserters from the bishop’s camp as well as prisoners who come into the city daily and know the role that Graes played in Iburg. Of course any day can seal his fate, and of course he is searching for an opportunity to escape the city. And so we will soon see how he succeeds in doing just that, and how Münster will have to suffer because of this adventure. But first let us acknowledge that the lives of these poor apostles were sacrificed completely in vain and that, as we soon shall see, things won’t be going very well for Münster from this point on. There is nothing left for us to do but hope for intervention by our Anabaptist brethren in Holland and Friesland, and to blow the propaganda horn twice as loud to arouse their attention. What Münster accomplishes in this regard during the months of late autumn and early winter can be found almost everywhere in the deft literary hand of Dear Rothmann. It is certainly quite a fire that is kindled in Holland, and it comes within a hair’s breadth of igniting the entire Reich. As we shall soon see, leaving the city is still quite easy, so that nearly all of these new itinerant preachers sent out up to late December—well equipped with ample funds and also with secret letters and Rothmann’s propaganda leaflets—reach their destination; and we shall shortly see how the seeds that were sown flourished. In addition to that, pamphlets and letters tied to sticks and arrows again fly over the ramparts of the bishop’s camp. They are even to be found stuck on the doors of the bishop’s bunkers, nailed there by particularly bold Anabaptists. Once again the pamphlets incite the Landsknechte to insubordination; they are passed from hand to hand, to bourgeois and peasant alike, convincing more and more of these simple people how upright and harmless the poor Anabaptists are, and how great an injustice is being done to them by the bishop’s persecution. Rothmann’s unrelenting pamphlets seem to be everywhere, yet it is nearly impossible to pin them down. And they breed new Anabaptist communities all over, spreading like a cancerous growth modeled after Münster. “They sent,” as was later testified by the aforementioned Schulmeister Graes in early 1535, “they sent out over a thousand books from Münster to all surrounding cities and villages.” The booklet entitled “Concerning Revenge” was written to incite the common folk to rebellion.

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Knipperdolling, when driven to the streets by another of his shouting fits, no longer cries for penitence but rather to “root out, root!” And in these dark days of autumn, King Bockelson sadly announces his impending demise as well as the coming ascension of his even mightier successor, who will “bring down all that is high.” And Rothmann’s text rages with the same chiliastic hatred against all that doesn’t conform to Münster’s example and especially against all the estates of the imperial realm. The text appears to be quite Maccabean3 and reveals in daring fantasies its fury over the increasing poverty in Zion. It is supported by the citation of any punitive Old Testament prophesy that seems to fit, especially Ezekiel 30, “Babylon”—meaning of course anything that is not Münster—Babylon will be severely punished for infringing upon the Kingdom of God, and, according to Ezekiel 30, a fire will be lit in Zoan, and “Baal of Nopf will be toppled,”4 and everywhere in this Old Testament exegesis we recognize Dear Rothmann’s unbridled desire to annihilate all existing order—to lower that which is high and elevate that which is low—in the time-tested manner of all sons of the underworld. Such is the booklet “Concerning Revenge.” Yet it attains its apex of shamelessness at its conclusion where after all these threats of fire and mayhem it points to those meek, who, according to Christ, shall inherit the Kingdom of God. And it is precisely this dialectical somersault, with all of its artful turns of phrase, which is the essential Dear Rothmann. That is the fallen pastor with his nine wives, to coin a Russian adage, the priest’s son gone mad whom life never obeys, yet who can always count on his dialectics: ancestor of Pjotr Stepanovitch in Dostoevsky’s Demons, ancestor of all modern word-acrobats whose only weapon is Dialektik, whose goal is subversion at any cost and whose legacy is mass psychosis. Fate did not hang Rothmann from the tower of the Lamberti Church as it did Münster’s other Anabaptist leaders, and it would be unseemly to wish even the basest of sinners anything more than a simple passage from this life. But since torture with glowing pliers had become customary after the fall of the city, and in light of the fact that Knipperdolling and Bockelson were paraded like wild animals throughout the countryside, meeting their deaths on the scaffold, it would have only made sense that especially Rothmann, the intellectual puppet-master, would have met with such punishment as well. As it turned out, however, he vanished forever without a trace, no doubt under cover of the towering piles of corpses, on that fateful Midsummer’s Night Eve of 1535. What does remain, however, is his— especially his—blame for the city’s unspeakable suffering, for all the rivers of blood which seeped into the earth during those eighteen months of rule by terror.

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The text “Concerning Revenge” is not Rothmann’s only literary accomplishment in those months. When finally in December of 1534, “four electoral princes from the Rhine area, as well as the counties of the Rhine, the Netherlands, and Westphalia all assemble to discuss the situation and necessary measures to be taken, they also deliver a letter to the holy city in which they confront the people of Münster with their multiple heresies and misdeeds, to which this assemblage naturally receives a fiery written reply. The following excerpt from the Anabaptists’ letter, dated January 10, 1535 and directed especially at Landgrave Philipp of Hesse, betrays Rothmann’s authorship: God in the highest, Lord of the heavenly armies and only immortal king who spans the heavens like a book and makes firm the earth below, who blesses and listens to all that lives according to the will of Christ, who spurns and humbles all that is high and haughty on this earth. This same God, whom we alone recognize and fear, may he bestow upon you grace and mercy in accordance with your good will. Amen. Especially, Dear Philipp Landgrave of Hesse, though we are forced to recognize that we must be wary of you in that you have mightily aided our sworn enemy with cannons and men, the so-called Bishop and papist along with other Babylonians, yet we still have good cause to write to you with hope and consolation. First of all we are greatly surprised that you along with the other so-called Evangelicals have so forgotten the gospel that you now support and use against us that which you once condemned as abominable. The lords of our enemies won’t permit us to speak with anyone, won’t allow our writings and books to be read. Dear One, for what reason? Surely because the Devil well knows that nothing is stronger than the truth. But it is deplorable when those who extol the gospel persecute it at the same time. That the papists, those true Babylonians, persecute us, that is to be expected. But that the Evangelicals, friends of the truth and followers of Christ, now aid and abet the lying Christians [Catholics]—who can explain that? Therefore, Dear Philipp, we hope that you will reflect, that you will listen to us and at least name our transgression or the cause of our mistreatment. We have dealt with some Evangelicals who call themselves Lutherans or Zwinglians and have asked for proof of our transgressions or the false teachings that we may have followed. But to this very day we have received no other answer than that we are heretics. Does this explanation suffice? There is really no need to incur so much bloodshed and the great costs of war on our account, for we are always ready to obey divine law if someone can prove to us that we are wrong. But if we are right, then for the sake of justice we shall bear all the world’s enmity to the end of

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our days. For we are surely protected by the power of the Holy Spirit, and no one can find any fault in us before God. Therefore we are unafraid. We know that all of the world’s assaults upon us will not succeed, for our redemption is imminent and the fire that was lit cannot be extinguished by all the oceans of the world. We will now report some things which have come to light here and which could at first sight be offensive to the common man, perhaps even to you. Hence we are sending you a printed pamphlet [Rothmann’s “Restitution”] as instruction in our Christian teachings. If the truth means anything to you, then read this pamphlet carefully and then hold judgment fairly and according to the truth. We hear that the outside world does not look kindly upon us because we have crowned a king of the new temple, and for this they curse and slander us horribly. As you doubtless know, Christ said that no shred of the Holy Scripture shall remain unfulfilled. So take the Prophets in hand and see for yourself what they say about the Babylonian captivity5 and the end of this world and what witness is borne by the parables of Christ, by the Apostles, and the Apocalypse as to how the Babylonians will be punished and to what kind of empire and glory God’s people will come together from all corners of the earth. If you think about this carefully and understand St. Paul’s writings and what he says to Timothy,6 then you will surely perceive whether we crowned a king of our own accord or whether he has been ordered by God himself to be our king. We beg of you, do not view us with so little respect and understanding, as though we have produced and tolerated this Fastnachtspiel for the purpose of our own destruction. We would also like to speak with you through reasonable and faithful brethren or with capable and pious men who will not go back and forth with elaborate lies as did Fabricius,7 so that we might discuss what is the truth between you and us. Then we may assume, may know for sure that your opinion of us and of Christ’s truth will change, as you will no longer be influenced by the lies and falsehoods which are reported about us on a daily basis. Let us know your opinion and you shall find us ready at any time with all fairness, justice, and truth. Written in Münster, January 10, 1535. By command of God through the unification of Sovereigns and the community of the city of Münster.

Thus writes Münster. The Especially Dear Philipp Landgrave of Hesse did not fail to answer and from this to-and-fro of letters there ensued a veritable “war of the quills” which became more and more passionate with every reply and ended shortly before the city was seized. And whoever might choose to read between the lines will be reading quite a bit. In August the bishop’s negotiators had been sent home with the brusque message that their work was the work of the

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Antichrist. In October one of the apostles had remarked, “Instead of letting the bishop have a free hand to do as he pleases, they should pull a rope of hair through his arse.” You can see that along with the autumn leaves of 1534, the mood had begun to fall as well, and for the first time the word “negotiation” is heard from the Anabaptist side, and from this one may well draw one’s own conclusions. Yet one might now ask why the bishop and his countless allies, who had given their ultimatums so often and had even offered some very favorable conditions in August, why did they not accept the proffered hand that was extended to them in January? The question may be answered by reference to Münster’s propaganda and the city’s ultimate goals, which had been expressed or implied so often. The bishop knew that further negotiation would only result in additional undermining of his army. He knew now that a truce would only result in a deceptive peace with the embers of revolution still very much alive. He knew that it was a life-and-death struggle that could only be ended by the obliteration of one of the parties. And the bishop’s military situation in late fall of 1534 is hardly desirable. In October, right around the time of the apostles’ mission, a serious epidemic, probably typhus, befalls the camp of the troops from Cleves. All the bishop’s offers to burn the affected camp and move the men to a new one are ignored by the leaders of the Landsknechte. The army from Cleves simply leaves its post and pours out into the hinterlands looting and burning, such that the bishop’s cavalry must be dispatched to deal with the marauders and render them harmless. The loss is covered by new, oppressive taxes, but desertion over to the Anabaptist side continues, and, to make matters worse, another even more threatening danger now arises behind the lines of the attacking army. After all, it can hardly be thought that such a massive outpouring of propaganda would be scattered harmlessly to the winds and have no effect in these turbulent days so overcast with the storm clouds of revolution! We shall soon see that the desired effect of this propaganda in Friesland and Holland was Bockelson’s last remaining hope. We shall see him looking north and west as longingly as would the beleaguered city of Magdeburg one hundred years later, hoping for reserve troops from Sweden.8 On the other hand, we learn that at meetings in Coblenz several parties are already starting to discuss the bishop’s fate in the event that the siege must be abandoned, and by now we have to admit that this is a very real possibility. Intercepted Münster couriers confess that in the area between Aachen and the coastal region four considerable

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armies are being secretly mustered to aid the Anabaptist kingdom. On January 24, 1535 it is reported by Governor Schenk von Tautenburg that a mob of one thousand Anabaptists has gathered in Groningen to march to Münster, and rumor has it that in the area around Utrecht there are as many as eighteen thousand of them! The Duke of Geldern, a fanatical Catholic, personally arrests Herr Schumacher, a prophet claiming to be Christ Himself, while also in the Utrecht area order is kept tolerably well by regular army troops and hired peasants. At the same time every highway, every nook and cranny of North German towns is swarming with Anabaptist emissaries, causing Amsterdam and Leyden to live in a state of constant panic, while during those same months in Friesland they are hoping for an imminent Anabaptist uprising throughout all of Germany from the southern mountains to the northern lowlands. So the danger of intervention has only now become acute, and not until the coming of spring will this thundercloud harmlessly burst and fizzle. And the embattled bishop had good reason to ask for help—as early as late autumn—from Mainz and Trier, from the electoral princes of Pfalz and Lüttich, and even from Burgundy, all of which finally leads to the aforementioned meetings in Coblenz. Here a decision is made to share the cost of the siege, resulting in an additional fee of fifteen thousand gilders per month, and finally Count Wirich von Dhaun is appointed to be the highest commanding officer of the Münster siege pending confirmation by the Kaiser.9 That really doesn’t amount to much, and, considering the rabid city of Münster, these measures seem to be more defensive than offensive, and the question arises as to why no negotiations were held during this time around the new year. We find a pretty clear answer to that question in one of two letters still available to us, written around Easter of 1535 by War Commissioner Justinian von Holtzhausen to his father in Frankfurt10 during the former’s time with the bishop’s occupying army: “As soon as you try to negotiate with them, they demand proof from the Scriptures. And if we attempt to do so, they claim that we distort the Scripture and are Turks and heathens. In summa, if one does not interpret the Scripture according to their beliefs, then it is not acceptable.” This obviously means: We here in Münster need these wars of words simply to buy time until the hour of intervention has come; with these negotiations we are keeping open an emergency backdoor, just in case. But above all else, as we said verbotinis to the Hessian preacher Fabricius, we would rather “eat the child in the womb” than give up our main objective: to leave not a single stone of the old Reich in place, to cram everything into the Old Testament order of our

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temple of Zion; most important of all, to fortify once and for all the rule of our King and all of his prophets.11 After all, what could Münster mean to this former tavern keeper other than a means to satisfy his need for adulation? Yearningly he gazes west in these weeks of late autumn, looking for the desperately needed intervention. For this intervention is surely at the heart of all the illusions with which now, in the fading light of the ending year, he attempts to console his subjects about the rising misery. By Easter the city will have long since been free, we just have to endure this deprivation a little longer. The coming New Year will be the most glorious to have been celebrated in one thousand years.12 If we can trust the statements of deserters from Münster, His Majesty is telling his subjects that the kings of England, Scotland, and France have already been baptized. All of which reminds one somewhat of the red flags that, according to reports of German revolutionaries, were raised over battleships and trenches at the time of the 1918 Entente. But the Dutch reserve troops remain nothing more than a great slogan of the Münster government, and in the cellar of that gothic house in which Knipperdolling lives and which still stands today,13 those propaganda leaflets are printed to keep up spirits by describing beforehand the arrival of the reserves and especially the day of judgment descending upon the bishop. The King supports this propaganda by preaching about visions which came to him today in the third hour before dawn, “when he once again heard the voice of God: ‘You shall awaken, oh nation of many, to the glory of My Name.’” And the men shall request that their women testify to their faith, but we implore you, not the old faith’s, “I believe in God the Father,” but rather, “I believe in the new Reich and in the basis of my Baptism.”14 When melancholy strikes him from time to time, he also announces that the hour of his death will soon be at hand,15 but equipped as he is with an inexhaustible will to live, he never allows his optimism to be clouded for too long. In a report by the preacher Fabricius to his master in November 1534, we read how the King still approaches the arbitrator quite proudly, dressed in a black velvet jerkin and white damask coat. At Rothmann’s behest Fabricius must stand when he delivers his report to Bockelson, while the rest of the court remains sitting. Other than that, the guest’s reception could almost be called lavish, since the King has already confiscated a great abundance of foodstuffs for himself, and His Majesty leads Fabricius affably around the city, showing him its many facets. So that’s how things stand with Bockelson himself in those months of waning light.

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But what about the city in those months of impending darkness, how does Münster fare now that it depends on Dutch assistance as it does upon the gospel itself? The city’s self-sufficiency in its isolation as reported by Fabricius to the bishop upon his return from the city is not as satisfactory as had been planned in the summer of 1534, and since there had been in the fall a rather lively to-and-fro between the two sides, there emerges a pretty clear picture of Münster’s situation based on the statements of numerous deserters, informers, and packrats forced from the city by the worsening shortages. Fabricius has already found the streets to be desolate, the people silent and dejected; that no one is allowed to speak to him, as was the experience of earlier envoys, goes without saying. A much darker picture emerges, however, in the reports of other intercepted messengers such as the nobleman Scheiffert von Merode, once an avid Anabaptist but now thoroughly disappointed by the whole business, as well as the painter Ludger tom Ring’s servant, who was also disgusted.16 While that which now reigns throughout the city cannot yet be called true hunger—we shall come to know true starvation in a little while—it is at the same time hardly the good old carefree Westphalian way of life with its bacon and eggs, black bread, strong beer, and rich cuisine.17 No household has, at the very most, more than one side of our good bacon, and under such conditions what good are the King’s big words telling us how soon, how very soon indeed, we shall be eating sausages and hams from the bounty of swine just outside the city walls. And aside from that, the King himself confiscates our tastiest morsels for his court, and of what use to us are the hams hanging in the hearths of some increasingly distant peasant village while things right here in Münster have deteriorated to the point that each of us looks suspiciously at what is in our neighbor’s pot? Now they have imposed “house lists” upon us, lists of those entitled to be fed. They have prohibited us from privately baking or brewing in our own homes, they have taken from us the heavy, sweet pumpernickel bread and expect us to eat a bread designated for the general public, a mix of barley and oats. The poorer folk even eat horsemeat, which is itself rationed. Over and over again the deacons appear, making inventories of the provisions and confiscating any surplus, although one can hardly speak of a surplus in Münster any more. This is the food situation in late fall, deliberately portrayed in the fashion of the undying, ever-present grumbler who always rises to occasions such as this. But in any case the fact is that the general mood is deteriorating and dark rumors are making their way from mouth to mouth, but quietly, oh so quietly, because fear of

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Knipperdolling’s sword weighs heavily on one and all. In the meantime this secretive grumbling becomes so prevalent that Bockelson, just to occupy the idlers, orders that old houses be torn down.18 If one is to lend credence to Scheiffert von Merode and his somewhat defeatist-sounding statements about the city,19 the complaints no longer stop short of even the King’s sacred personage, since according to Scheiffert, “the community suspects that the King, because he has sent out money and books, might himself just decide to follow the money out of Münster.” Münster, in other words, accuses its king of having spirited his money and archives abroad and of planning to desert and join them in the near future. All in all, we had come to that point of whispers, murmurs, and talk of treason which occurs in every besieged city—in Paris of 1870, in Metz under Bazaine’s defense, 20 and in all likelihood in Carthage as well, and in mythical Troy, because life itself is now endangered—life, which confronts some of us with basic needs while showing others nothing but misery, then as well as today. In fact, Münster at that point is even militarily weaker than the bishop had been told by his messengers; in fact, there is a shortage of ammunition, and sulfur for gunpowder must be scraped from the staves of old wine barrels, forcing gunnery officers to shoot the heavy artillery only at particularly important targets. To counter rumors about this shortage, two barrels filled with coal are placed in the foyer of city hall where all can see and are passed off as kegs filled with gunpowder. All of this is bad enough, which doesn’t say much since things looked no less wretched in Friedrich the Great’s Prussia of 1760: Friedrich too called upon soothsayers with rosy prognoses to lift the spirits in the camp of Bunzelwitzer,21 and all of these circumstances are significant for us only with regard to a single aspect . . . If this Anabaptist empire—born of social demands of its time and pandering to the masses with its communist slogans—had truly fulfilled some overwhelming, lasting imperative in a period of great transition, then no hunger and no defeatism would have been able to stop it. Since nothing can break sevenfold metal as can a martyr’s blood, so an invincible army would have sprung from the blood seed of the dead apostles, and all the old black-and-gold imperial splendor along with Kaiser Karl V and all of the unified kings of the Occident would not have been enough to extinguish this threat to the medieval world. For an idea laden with all the energy of a great period of transition is unbreakable and invincible, and it is in just such times that the wish alone, born of the human heart and nurtured by unlimited

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passion and willingness to die for it, this wish is unto itself nearly its own fulfillment.22 And so it would have been the same here too, if this empire— conceived as it was from the Old Testament, from communism and heightened sexuality—had been anything more than a grisly whirlpool twisting in a small tributary of a powerfully rushing stream, had it only been something more than the hysterical creation of an ambitious and unrestrained underworld figure, something more than just a sudden flare-up of an entirely curable mass-psychosis. After all, it has not even come to the time of real hunger—yet it is in these still relatively safe months of autumn that spirits start to crumble. From time to time destiny allows itself a horrible game with the children of this earth, cradling them in the illusion of never-ending streaks of good fortune, and even permitting a barkeep to become King and play with the levers of history’s great machinery. Until this machinery suddenly revs to its top speed, sucking the machinist himself into its gears and crushing him mercilessly. Once this point is reached, things go hopelessly downhill. Only then does everything which had, by dint of a miracle, gone so well now become an unfortunate accident, and when even a figure as noble as Karl XII of Sweden must, after nine years of good fortune, then be cursed by another nine years full of incredibly bad blows of fate, 23 then [fate] certainly won’t make an exception for this son of chaos named Bockelson. Bockelson defends himself against this burgeoning ill fate as best he can; once again he summarizes the laws of Zion in a sternly worded legal brief ; 24 he has a new list drawn up of all men of military age. He has the army perform intensified maneuvers. And, perhaps borrowing from the newly rediscovered classical antiquity, he devises a new piece of war machinery: heavily armed wagons equipped with sickles and furnished with banners like the florentine “Carocchino” are banded together as one powerful unit. In the event of the constantly discussed exodus, it would be rammed into the enemy as the core of the Baptist attack. But unfortunately they remain at the marketplace, because there never is an exodus, 25 and we lack the necessary horses on top of that, so it remains at the market square as a sort of mountain of wagons and citadel, which will play a role only later when fate rains pitch and sulfur down upon the city. Game days on Cathedral Square in the form of ball-games and card-playing intended to distract the idle troops and keep them from having any undesirable thoughts— these game days must be cancelled because “the King imagines that they might become too wild.” Time and again rumors of a planned

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sortie emerge, time and again we are enticed by thoughts of that lost world outside the city gates, while in the meantime the King— removed from politics and administrative duties—has his visions and cleverly enacted trances, from which he awakens with glorious new revelations of an imminent salvation and a magnificent new future. “And thus,” reports Gresbeck, “they pulled beautiful wool over the common folks’ eyes for as long as they could. They may have preached a great deal, but salvation just never arrived.” It no longer helps that from his window the King reads to his folk the story of that David for whom the Angel of the Lord fights, nor does it help any more when he wins first prize in jousting, or that he remains champion in races on Cathedral Square, or that all of this is followed by yet another communal meal, though now at somewhat meagerly set tables. “Nothing could surpass eating,” declares Gresbeck, meaning that the most glorious of court games do not fill stomachs any more than can the after-dinner show of the King’s bodyguards, consisting at least in part of rundown clerics performing a sword dance for the people, or when His Majesty stages the grand finale to the flourish of fife and drum, dancing with his sixteen wives along with his entire retinue all decked out in clothing and jewelry stolen from the exiled Old Believers.26 “It was,” adds Gresbeck with all the venom of a true son of Münster, “it was the work of a Dutchman. When a Dutchman turns seven years old, he is as wise as he is ever going to be.” Sword dances and games are simply no longer enough, and once the spirits of the masses start to sink, then that moment when even terror is no longer enough must soon follow. And it is precisely these public spectacles at which Bockelson appears—still gorgeous as the morning sun over the ocean—these spectacles are what serve to undermine [Bockelson’s] reputation and his popularity, and it is all of this courtly pomp which harms him in the eyes of the very rabble whose Anabaptist enthusiasm had been nothing more than enthusiasm for Zion’s communist agenda: How can it be that the confiscation of our paltry little possessions served no greater good than to provide this tailor with a princely lifestyle. And have we gained anything more here than a shabby vagabond king with a harem and a stolen crown? Thus speaks the poor man of Münster, and he joins the formerly rich man in posing this question: Is this squabble over a little baptism really worth being at war with all that surrounds us out there, with the Kaiser and all of his powerful forces? And after all, wasn’t the quarrel over baptism only a fad, and was it really worth destroying our modest or even richly endowed lives for this prank, and is it worth—and this is the most serious question of all—those of us born

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here in Münster starving in order to protect the oligarchy of these Dutchmen and Friesians? This latter question, arising from Münster’s sense of damaged local patriotism, is the most serious, because it is being asked by the poorest of the poor, and the fact is, since the new year the King and Prophets of Zion have had to deal with a constant intangible opposition and even with a detestable inclination towards treachery and sabotage.27 Now there is opposition even in the Baptist oligarchy itself, and when Knipperdolling’s wife—the legitimate one and not the concubine he keeps in addition to her—begins to grumble, then he was forced to exhibit her publicly for a full two hours on Market Square holding the executioner’s sword in her hand. Worse still the fate of six Münster men and women who knew of the flight of deserters and had even planned their own, and they had given the first group of deserters letters for the enemy captain out there, in which they shamefully distanced themselves from Zion while pleading for mercy ahead of time, before the fall of Münster. What can be concluded from this is that the six deserters considered the city’s fall to be a foregone conclusion. They are of course punished on the scaffold, and the fact that one of the women, the “Dreier woman,” had even been Knipperdolling’s bedmate does not trouble Herr Governor. He, who was not slated to be the executioner in this particular instance, grabs the sword from the scheduled executioner (whom Knipperdolling felt to be dawdling) and beheads his former lover. And what really is the crime of these six compared to the grisly deed that taints a chosen one, the only apostle to have returned home? We remember that Heinrich Graes and his entourage had been arrested in Osnabrück, and that he alone had been pardoned by the bishop in return for his promised services. We also remember how he returned to the holy city and emerged as the one who had been miraculously protected and how he was declared a prophet and admitted to the inner circle of the King’s most trusted advisors. And that’s how it went with Heinrich Graes. But then he noticed the countless deserters from the bishop’s ranks flooding into the city who had to know about his double role and would sooner or later have to reveal him. This lit a fire under the Schulmeister from Borken and he suddenly offered—of course by dint of another divine order—to fetch several thousand armed men from Wesel, Amsterdam, and Deventer and to request the King’s credentials for the new apostolic mission. And he gets them [the credentials], too, “for the Prophet Heinrich Graes, inspired by the Heavenly Father himself,” sets out in early

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January 1535, traveling directly to Iburg and His Grace the Bishop, telling him everything worth knowing, as can be seen in his written statement which has been preserved up to the present: the situation of the inner city, its many underground connections to the outside, the secret sect of fellow travelers in the lowlands, the arms-depots outside the city, as well as a list of those men from Wesel who, as of that very moment, become prisoners of the bishop. This is what Graes did. Above all else, he revealed to the bishop that the Kingdom’s only hope was that of outside intervention, and that Bockelson, the King himself, had offered to be beheaded like some common criminal if salvation had not arrived by Easter. Of course Graes’s testimony is immediately passed on to all of the threatened officials and magistrates that he had named, and it is this warning that results in a raid on all the foreign hideouts, and the connections to them are severed, and the assistance for which Bockelson had so ardently hoped never arrives. Maintaining his appearance of propriety, Graes writes a letter of farewell from Iburg to the community of Münster, a letter that has been preserved to this day. He is sent off to Wesel by the wary bishop in the company of two watchful escorts, all three traveling disguised as Anabaptists. They arrive armed with the Bockelson’s letter of safe conduct, thereby gaining immediate access to the Anabaptist community, and in the name of the King they demand that all weapons be brought to a house designated by Graes. But no sooner has this happened than the Duke of Jülich, who has naturally been informed of these events, arrives with great commotion in the rebellious city of Wesel, roots out the entire Anabaptist nest and sits in severe judgment over them. Dressed in white, the convicted Anabaptists are forced to walk a penitential circle around the church cemetery and then attend mass standing up. Whereupon they are accepted back into the church. Their leaders, Otto Vincke, Schlebusch, and a few others must only after the fall of Münster lay their heads on the executioner’s block. But what about Graes, the former apostle who overnight went from Paulus to Saulus 28 and delivered his own brothers to the headsman? Except for the Münster catastrophe he lives out his days peacefully in Borken as a Schulmeister and rehabilitated Catholic and passes away in the glow of funeral candles, well provided with every comfort that the venerable old church had to offer. And his Baptist heresy, his apostle’s pilgrimage to Osnabrück and salvation by the Angel of the Lord, all of that, along with his brief career as a prophet in the short-lived Kingdom of Münster, will become nothing more

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than the vague memory of a youthful prank that can hardly be fathomed in old age. Just as when the grown man, caring for his meticulously kept aviary and surrounded by starlings and linnets has simply blocked out that for a brief time as a boy he had destroyed birds’ nests and stomped out a brood of baby swallows right before the eyes of their lamenting parents. And so it is with Heinrich Graes. For this too can be the way to conclude a prophet’s career that had indeed such a fiery beginning, and perhaps it even has the hidden meaning that this sort of multifaceted Odysseus really does exist, and today, four hundred years later, we simply smile and shake our heads. Yet before we take leave of Heinrich Graes forever, let us first quote from the farewell letter that he wrote from Iburg to his friends in Münster—to the same Münster citizens whose chosen prophet he had been and from whom he only yesterday, so to speak, took his leave: May God in His grace and mercy bestow His spirit upon all of us. Amen. Dear Fellow Citizens: Certain things have recently come to pass, through which God has opened my eyes, such that I have come to see how wrong and how poisonous our doings here in Münster have become, and so God has summoned me from the city to come before His mirror, such that everyone may see themselves in my reflection and see as well the deception in all that we are now doing in this city. It is, therefore, my humble request that you now open your eyes—it is high time that you did—and realize that your actions are against God and His divine world. The former prophets were all just as much prophets as I am. How can you poor, stupid people not see that this whole thing is nothing more than deceit and seduction! Believe me, I know. If only you would mend your ways and leave this whole ungodly business behind you, then you would all save your own lives. I herewith commend you into the hands of the Lord. To prove to you that you may believe this, I have placed my signet on it which you all recognize.

All of this is written in the stolid medieval Westphalian dialect that makes the words sound twice as forceful and guileless. We do not wish to condemn this letter’s author to death, for had he refused to write it, the executioner was probably quite ready to act. Let us rather remember that people can indeed write such letters and then afterwards do well and live on this earth for a long time. Unless, of course, those painful memories begin to surface along with all of those demons who come with them in the wake of what the wise old

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Fontane29 chose to call “a little slip-up.” Perhaps. That will be in the hands of a higher judge. But if a former prophet and apostle can write such a letter, does it not then extinguish the magic which surrounds every new religious sect with invisible flames? Are not then the wings broken which once carried them over every abyss? And if the great and the chosen commit such treachery—can we really ask of the little ones, the nameless and the fellow travelers and yes, even the reluctant ones that they starve and suffer for the sake of a threadbare, disintegrating cause, and that they throw away this short life which is given to us mortal creatures? Notes 1. Leopold von Ranke’s (1795–1886) stance with respect to Bockelson, within the context of its entirety, is not as fawningly pro-Bockelson as Reck suggests, but neither is it the harsh, subjective condemnation that Reck and most others felt to be appropriate. Ranke states: “[Bockelson] possessed an agreeable exterior, natural eloquence, fire, and youth . . .” Ranke cites as his source Sebastian Frank, who wrote: “But I have found . . . that he was in countenance, person, stature and intellect, an eloquent, sagacious, cunning man; of prompt, dauntless, and haughty spirit; of bold deeds and designs; a noble, capable, and extraordinary man.” What is interesting is why von Ranke chose such a comparatively positive characterization of Bockelson when there were so many others which bitterly condemned him. The only other sentence in von Ranke’s History of the Reformation in Germany that is openly sympathetic to Bockelson is: “This young visionary artisan was entirely persuaded that the whole future destiny of the world rested on him” (Ranke, 740–741, 744). 2. Reck’s “not yet” rather than “no longer” is extremely significant— certainly an implication of the Third Reich yet to come less than a century after von Ranke’s completion of Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalterder Reformation (History of the Reformation in Germany). 3. The term “Maccabean” derives from the ferocity of Judah Maccabee’s army, which defeated the Hellenistic Seleucid Dynasty and established the Jewish Hasmonean Dynasty from approximately 165 BC to 63 BC. 4. See Ezekiel 30: 13–16, which begins with a punitive Old Testament God expressing the intent to “destroy the idols, and put an end to the images in Nopf (the Hebrew name for the Egyptian city of Memphis) . . .” 5. The Babylonian Captivity actually refers to three separate periods of banishment of the Israelites to Babylon, the most famous being that beginning in 586 BC, when Nebuchadnezzar defeated the Judeans and brought them into exile in Babylon. In that the Münster

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6.

7.

8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

Anabaptists considered themselves to be the new Israelites, any reference to Babylonians or Babylon has the traditionally negative Old-Testament connotation. Timothy I and II consist of New-Testament letters attributed to Paul, although there is controversy as to whether Paul could have written these letters. In any case, they are the letters of an older mentor praising, encouraging, and guiding a newly converted younger apostle in the role of pastor to the people whom he encounters. As such, the letters delineate and reiterate a considerable number of Christian tenets, while instructing the protégé in the art of preaching the gospel. Fabricius is the Hessian cleric known from the unrest of January 1534. In November 1534 he had been in the city as a mediator and had spent the night under the King’s opulent roof, as he was not able to finish his business in one day. These negotiations were unsuccessful, but in the course of the next morning he was told in confidence by the royal counsels that the King had now gone too far and did not dare to turn back, and that the personality of the bishop was a major impediment for any agreements, since it would have been easier to negotiate with a secular prince (Reck, 208). Magdeburg was awaiting troops from Sweden during the Thirty Years War (1618–1648). The commander in chief up to this point had been, at least in name, the bishop. From the letters of the Free Cities Council of War, Justinian von Holtzhausen of Frankfurt am Main, written to his father during the last days of May (Reck, 208). Again, Reck accurately envisions a near future, when Hitler’s objective is to defeat and control virtually all of continental Europe, from France to Russia. Even as the end was near, Hitler made a similarly manic/optimistic statement to the public on the eve of New Year 1945 (“Germany will rise like a phoenix from its ruined cities and go on to ultimate victory”), and among his inner circle “Everyone was relaxed by champagne but there was a subdued atmosphere. The most enthusiastic was Hitler . . . The others listened in silence to his prophecies of great success for Germany in 1945” (Toland, 840). Just a few hours earlier Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen had been arrested at his home by the SS and taken to Dachau. Knipperdolling’s house was still standing when Reck wrote Bockelson but was destroyed in the bombing of World War II. This is surely intended as a commentary aimed at the new National Socialist perspective on traditional religion compared to the state and the völkisch ideology as delineated in Alfred Rosenberg’s The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930).

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15. Hitler as well was prone to bouts of depression during which he would speak of his approaching demise. 16. Ludger tom Ring (1496–1547) was born in Münster and studied art in the Netherlands. Though a member of the Münster painters’ guild, he left there along with other “Old Believers” (he was Lutheran) in February 1534. He returned to Münster after the defeat of the Anabaptists. 17. According to propagandist Zillis Leitgens, who was arrested in early 1535, Münster had at its disposal two hundred cows, ninety-six horses, beer and bread to last an entire year. The number of horses is small because approximately 300 of them had been slaughtered and buried to save on hay. This happened before anyone thought of eating horsemeat. The numbers given for beer and bread are without question wrong. Had they been correct, there would have been no explanation for starvation in 1535. The number of inhabitants, which is estimated to have been 12,000 before the Anabaptist state was established, is given as 1100 able-bodied men, 700 students, and 2,000 women. However Graes, in agreement with other sources that are probably more reliable, counts 1300 men and 6,000 women. Graes, probably in an effort to bring the bishop some news that would be pleasing to him, asserts that as early as December people were eating mice and cats. It is an odd fact that the reports claim a lack of women. All women, with the exception of the executed apostles’ widows, had been spoken for. Graes’s numbers are roughly in agreement with most estimates of Münster’s demographics during the Anabaptist hold on the city (Reck, 208). 18. Item na dem se buten der stat nicht mer to arbeiten, danoch die gemeinheit in arbeide geholden, rotten unde thosammenkompst der gemeinheit dairmede verschoent moechte werren/so laten se binnen der stat umblanx der muren und sunst allenthalven unnutte huser nedderbrechen und verwoesten. (To keep the community working in spite of everything, and even by tearing down and demolishing unnecessary homes) (Reck, 208). 19. Of course, Scheiffert von Merode cannot be trusted. He had entered the city in the summer of 1534 with great enthusiasm. Klopriss had warned of him and thought him to be an unreliable person from the start. His enthusiasm cooled markedly when shortages were first experienced. In December 1534 he fled the city. The statements that he made to the bishop’s interrogators give the impression that he sought to gain personal advantage by intentionally exaggerating Münster’s shortages (Reck, 209). 20. Reck is referring to the Prussian siege of starving French troops at Metz during the Franco-Prussian War. 21. Bunzelwitz was a Polish town where the Prussian King Frederick the Great and his vastly outnumbered army held off the Russian and

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22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

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Austrian armies in August and September of 1761 during the Seven Years War. Positive mention of Hitler’s historical idol, Frederick the Great, certainly wouldn’t have hurt Bockelson’s chances of being published. On the surface, Reck’s sentiment concerning the passionately held idea is directed at the Anabaptists and, by proxy, at the Nazis as an admonition and prediction—“you didn’t have it then and you won’t have it now.” On another level Reck is saying to all those victims of the Third Reich—those in death camps, exiles, and even yet-to-beidentified Inner Emigrants—do not lose hope, do not doubt your strength, even in death. A similar thought is expressed by Reck in the September 9, 1937 entry of his Diary: “I believe that our martyrdom, the fate reserved for our little phalanx, is the price for a rebirth of the spirit, and that realizing this, we can hope for no more good during what remains of our ruined and brutalized lives on earth than that there may be meaning to the manner of our deaths” (Diary, 49). Karl XII of Sweden (1682–1718) was a brilliant young warrior-king who ruled Sweden at a time when it was among the most powerful kingdoms in Europe. Reck is referring to Karl’s military success— including a string of victories over Denmark, Russia, and Poland— until he was finally defeated by Russia at the Battle of Poltavain in 1709. Military success evaded Karl for the next nine years, until he was killed in a war with Norway in 1718 at the age of thirty-six. There were guidelines to punish unfounded denunciations and for “false prophets,” among whom were obviously those who complained or saw the future as hopeless. It is interesting to note that some of these articles are once more directed at hidden treason, mutiny, or any preparations for desertion. If anyone leaves his home without notifying his superior or his wife, then the wife is allowed to take a new husband after only three days. It is also forbidden to take a guard post without prior approval, for it was only too well known that such was often used as preparation for desertion (Reck, 209). According to statements given by Landsknechte who had deserted and were then recaptured by the bishop’s forces, an exodus had been planned for the end of October or beginning of November (1534), which happened to be the time around which the bishop’s army was weakened by the aforementioned epidemic and the goings-on in the Cleves contingency (Reck, 209). An excerpt from Reck’s September 9, 1937 Diary entry could not be more telling: “But worst of all are the females [wives and mistresses of the Nazi elite], these former barmaids, most of whom have passed through any number of hands, who are loaded down with the stolen jewels of noble families, and can still never dispel the aura of their native kitchen milieu” (Diary, 52). Reck’s intuition is again on the mark. As the Third Reich was nearing its end, there were any number of plots to assassinate Hitler, the most

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famous of which was the unsuccessful attempt led by Lieutenant Colonel Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg on July 20, 1944. But even as early as August 11, 1936, Reck wrote: “There are many rumors of attempts to assassinate [Hitler]” (Diary, 28). 28. Reck’s observation that Graes went from “Paulus to Saulus” plays on the biblical transformation of the Apostle Paul from “Saulus to Paulus,” when a vision changed him from being a persecutor of Christ’s followers (under his given name of Saul) to being himself such a follower (under his Christian name of Paul). In his act of treason, Graes reverses the biblical transformation back to “from righteous to sinful.” 29. Theodor Fontane (1819–1898) was a leader of the German literary Bourgeois Realism movement in the second half of the nineteenth century.

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Chapter 8

Starvation (Fames)

They ate all kinds of animals from land and water, anything at all that had life. Gresbeck

A round Easter, falling this year in March, the bright flame of

Anabaptism is rekindled from its glimmering embers, even though the fire had been so harshly extinguished in Wesel. And in Friesland it has finally come down to battle-ready Anabaptist congregations rising up, prepared to intervene on behalf of Münster. These raging mobs take over the well-fortified Olden Monastery between Sneek and Bolswerden. They drive out the monks, ravage the monastery to their heart’s content and defile the church in true Münster fashion. But at last they are caught and besieged by Governor Schenk von Tautenburg, who drives them back into the innermost part of the abbey church. Torches, however, cannot ignite in those tightly sealed vaults, so Schenk is forced to bring in ten formidable pieces of heavy artillery and to quickly press the rural population into service so as to lay proper siege to the Anabaptist lair. Schenk orders a thundering barrage of cannon fire and leads the attack over a floating bridge. The church is taken, in Schenk’s own words, after a “bitter struggle” in which he suffers severe losses but finally manages to drown the rebellion in its own blood. There “are on both sides in summa between 800 and 900 fatalities,” approximately 100 of them being the governor’s men. The captured Anabaptists who have survived the assault are—in retaliation for the outrageous desecration of the church—all but sixty-two men mercilessly butchered. Besides the sixty-two men, only seventy women and children survive.

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Almost simultaneously Duke Karl von Geldern, catholicae religionis adiectissimus et sectariis infensissimus (a devout Catholic and bitter enemy of the sect), sinks three Anabaptist ships—carrying women and children as well—on the Yssel River, and now, at last, those perilous Friesian and Dutch fires are extinguished along with the threat they posed to the bishop’s siege of Münster. And with that, Bockelson’s very last hope for relief has vanished. “If salvation has not arrived by Easter, then you may do with me what I am about to do to this sinner here.”1 This was said in the winter by His Majesty himself just before the execution of some poor reprobate, and serious words they were, spoken only seconds before personally beheading the unfortunate sinner. So now Easter is here, and no salvation has come, and by rights the King should really be putting his own head on the chopping block, hence he retreats for a few days to come up with a suitable excuse, as is reported by Kerssenbrock. He emerges to the light of day with the somewhat perplexing explanation that what he had meant, of course, was the inner, spiritual salvation, and not an external, military one. And the inner salvation had indeed, with God’s help, arrived. And the outer salvation, well, that we must patiently await, but it will ultimately come. For what was meant to be a shining prophesy, that is really a rather sorry conclusion, and what are we Westphalians supposed to do with an “inner, spiritual salvation” when we were told of the sausages and all the ham that we would take and eat right out from under the peasants’ noses? Alas, in Münster no one speaks of ham and sausages these days, and since the end of winter the city no longer suffers from shortages but rather from outright hunger. Even before winter’s end a woman was beheaded for illegally obtaining a ration of horsemeat, and a tenyear-old boy is hung on Cathedral Square just for stealing vegetables. When the rope breaks they hang him a second time in cold blood. Such evil things happened during the winter. And now with the coming of spring, hunger—real, furious hunger—descends upon the holy city. No more delicious smoked meat at the apostles’ meal, gone but for a few crumbs is the barley bread, gone is even the horsemeat, and the time has come when “women and children were beginning to cry out for bread.” The deacons come again and confiscate any pitiful remnants, now hidden in the beds and even less appetizing places. “And whatever the deacons could find had to go, be it fat, oil, salt, or lard. Nothing was so small that they wouldn’t take it from the people.”

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But those are only crumbs which cannot really prolong the grisly death struggle of God’s own city. In winter, as we remember, households were already being listed and rationing imposed, and now that it is spring people in the fortifications and ramparts and even those tilling the abandoned vegetable gardens of the long-lost upper class are issued vegetable rations, and the poor wretches busily digging and hoeing are bitterly disappointed when even their meager vegetable harvests are immediately confiscated.2 So overnight it’s finally really here—the time of serious deprivation. The baker no longer bakes, the miller no longer grinds—or if at all, then only for those who can pay—just as it was in the days of the [First] World War. And then there are a few daring souls who risk their lives to forage in the villages on the outside and then resell their booty later in the city at astronomical black-market prices. Whoever has nothing screams from hunger, and suffice it to say that the King diligently beheads anyone and anything trying to escape from the city under such conditions. Yet even in this time of misery the preachers, headed by Dear Rothmann, dare to clamor about the “Belly God” which Münster supposedly still worships. None of this really helps matters, and the city’s plight becomes worse with every passing day. By God, there is nothing left to share! Per royal decree we now have “wheat masters,” “lard masters,” and “salted-meat masters,” but there is no longer any wheat, lard, or salted meat to go with all these masters, and by early spring the grain ration for three weeks amounted to a little more than a single cup! So we are no longer dealing with the privation that a heroic people should be able to endure—now we are dealing with life and death. And if it were the case that this plight befell everyone equally, that everyone high and low would starve together, that the King would sit down to the same meal as his people, as he did on that long-ago October night . . . But that is not how it is. The King gladly confiscates for his own table; he crams enough provisions into his larders to last for an entire year. He takes from the poor and sits down with his toadies and his stable of whores to a table laden with smoked ham and sausages, while in the dilapidated houses along the ramparts the first deaths from starvation are being recorded.3 Here the bastard by birth reveals himself. No belated reference to his youth or his fantastic eloquence can help him now. There he stands completely unmasked, the born criminal, not the driven slave but the slave driver, not the benign purveyor of God’s message but rather the opportunist taking advantage of a period of great change. There are countless Bockelson

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dramas. Time and again tears flow for “the poor young man who became the victim of his own talents.” Leniency and compassion are certainly beautiful emotions, but the time in which to show understanding for everything no matter the cost—that time has passed until further notice. Even in the writing of history. While the King enjoys the good life, hunger in the city is now forcing consumption of some pretty disgusting nutriment. Would that we still had some of that good horsemeat which we doled out to the poor last winter and about which we grumbled so much back then! Now, since around Easter we eat just about anything that walks or crawls—mice, rats and cats, not to mention porcupines, hamsters, and grass snakes from the river Aa. We devour all of that just to calm our angry stomachs, and we eat it fur, legs and all, and we’re incredibly happy if we get hold of such food, food that we once would have found to be so hideous. For the further the sun’s arch stretches and the higher it climbs in its annual journey, the stranger, the more loathsome and beastly our diet becomes. By May we have come so far as to gobble down the leather bindings of books, to the extent that these books haven’t already been burned in Anabaptist rage. We also choke down boot leather just to have something in our stomachs, and we spice it with the grease of melted tallow candles.4 And yes, toward the end of Zion we are coming to the unthinkable as we bake cow pies and even roast on our stoves human feces taken from the latrines down by the river Aa. Until our poor bodies finally rebel and we realize—writhing, cramping, vomiting, howling from hunger—that we have become poor animals and that the concept of human dignity beacons to us from an ever-greater distance, from those regions beyond the ramparts which have become for us the stuff of legends. But even in robbing the latrines by the Aa, we still haven’t reached our lowest degradation. For out there within the attacking army as well as here in the city there is a hideous rumor making the rounds, and it won’t die down, and it appears in the dispatches and fliers out there which report to the Reich about our City of God. Rumor has it that we are eating human flesh—the rumor that we are taking the corpses of those who had been executed from their graves on Cathedral Square and tearing the flesh from their broken bones with our teeth. The most horrible rumor of all is that parents kill their children and pickle them, and that an inspection reveals those nasty pots with their ghoulish contents.5 They speak of this in the city and out there among the Landsknechte and even throughout all of Europe. The bishop’s judges and police

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won’t forget this rumor, and later, when king and governor and prophets are being tortured and meticulously questioned, both Knipperdolling and Bockelson testify with a powerfully moving reserve that “they knew nothing about it.”6 So what was really going on? The bishop’s Landsknechte eagerly search the conquered city for evidence; Gresbeck certainly heard rumors but has seen nothing with his own eyes. It surfaces in practically all contemporary accounts. It appears in Corvinus and Lilie and in almost all the fliers and newspapers of that time.7 Everyone has heard of it, yet no one personally witnessed it, so what was rumored to be general practice might have happened in a few desperate cases. We must nevertheless note that Kerssenbroch cites a particular case, that of Councilor Menken’s wife, who pickled and ate her newborn triplets. And Kerssenbroch, as a classical Schulmeister trained to be conscientious, certainly must have known what serious blame he laid upon the well-respected name. Be that as it may, the irrefutable facts which were actually recorded certainly suffice. Starvation dries the skin and gives it a bluish-gray hue; malnutrition causes boils everywhere. “The skin,” reports a contemporary flyer, “hangs dry on the flesh, which in turn hangs dry and wilted on bare bones, while the head sits on a stock as would a cabbage. Ears, cheeks, lips and noses were more transparent than paper.” War Commissioner Justinian von Holtzhausen from Frankfurt who participated in the siege and had faced deserters often enough, reports that those coming out of the city “were white as sheets, with swollen legs and bellies,” hence they came running into the bishop’s camp with all the symptoms of starvation edema. Children driven by their raging hunger eat whitewash which they have scratched from the walls, and since Bockelson had prophesied that stones would turn to bread, people who were once sober, industrious merchants and craftsmen throw themselves to the ground, snatching at cobblestones and then begin to sob bitterly because, alas, stone does remain stone. Those who can still walk at all drag themselves along on crutches, but more and more adults simply drop dead on the street. The knacker’s cart roves the alleys and, just as in time of plague, gathers bodies while the mass graves in which they are dumped remain open until they are completely filled—just as in time of plague. In these last months of Bockelson’s regime the population diminishes horribly, and later, after Münster has fallen and the exiles return, they find their former haunts nearly empty, and Gresbeck even asserts that, after removing those who had fallen in the siege, only six or seven

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Münster citizens survived that summer of 1535. Never before on German soil had the Totentanz (dance of death or Danse macabre) been danced so furiously to the last breath, never before had it been danced so close to the threshold of an insane asylum.8 The man whom history will hold responsible for all of this, this man sits in his well-stocked palace protected by his well-fed bodyguards, and he still stifles any attempt at open rebellion with the might of his sword. Just recently Bockelson rebuffs a messenger sent by Wirich von Dhaun with the proclamation that “they intend to hold the city even if they have to eat dirt.” 9 Which of course they are already doing, perhaps justifying the assumption that this horrible man with his unbreakable will to survive might still have quietly hoped for military relief and a blasting of the surrounding siege army even as late as June,10 when the Reichstag in Worms had mobilized all the financial resources of the entire German realm against Münster. At least publicly, Bockelson still speaks of salvation, even at this stage. He is seen running around on the ramparts and shouting to the hapless people there that this salvation will soon be at hand. All of which makes less of an impression on those who are starving to death than it does on the enemy who sees him and shouts taunts that His Majesty should really lay down and get some sleep. But the rumor of salvation still haunts the preachers, and even talk of a mass exodus is not to be silenced. In the meantime the state of Bockelson’s sanity might best be described by the following: In May of 1535 he subdivides the city into twelve districts in order to maintain iron discipline and places each of these districts under a “duke,” these [dukes] being de facto craftsmen, merchants, clerics gone to seed, and fallen noblemen. He then proceeds to reward each one of them with a German state when the Reich is reconstructed, since of course the current rulers will be banished after the Anabaptist victory. So this dressmaker, generous soul that he is, grants the duchy of Sachsen to Johannes Dencker, Braunschweig to Bernhard thor Moer, Westphalia to Christian Kerkerinck, Jülich and Cleves to our old friend Redeker, Geldern and Utrecht to Johann Palck, the Bishopric of Cologne to Duke Meier who had come to Münster from Ledde and was doubtless a very decent man.11 In those days before the gathering storm that’s how it was with this strange man called Bockelson. In those days when death was already rapping at the window, the rest of the Reich’s lands are given away as well: Spa Mainz and the Bishopric of Osnabrück, Bremen, Hildesheim, Magdeburg, East and West Friesland. Beyond that, according to this plan, only the House of Brabant in Hesse is

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allowed to continue ruling—governed by that same Dear Philipp for whom the tavern keeper from Leyden still has an undying, albeit unrequited, predilection right up to the end. That’s how it is with this strangest of all kings ever to rule over German subjects. History chooses, if only at the end of an episode, to insert a satirical, even grotesque play before the finale, that horrible finale. Just as at the end the great Napoleon endows his trusted followers with devalued paper; and just as this once-deified hero finds himself forced to scurry up to the coachman’s seat just to escape the people’s rage on the journey to Elba; and just as here in the dying city of Münster right before the end, there begins yet another maniacal hunter’s chase after ghostly shadows before which we stand shuddering as one would before the mythical creations of Konrad Witz.12 or Matthias Grünewald. Now, when there is barely enough manpower left to occupy the ramparts, suddenly street and gate names must be changed, and now we see that under penalty of death one must not refer to desecrated churches as anything other than gravel pits, although all of this may be nothing more than one of the many Anabaptist peculiarities. While a bony fist is already knocking on all of the city’s Silver and Golden Gates, there awakens in the barkeep a memory from the past, a memory of Leyden and the times in his ale house “The Silver Lily” when flutes and lutes were playing for courting lovers, a memory of the nearly forgotten Chamber of Rhetoricians and of his own days of literary glory—His Majesty of Münster orders the play of poor Lazarus and the rich man to be staged in the cathedral.13 In the cathedral, in the ravaged cathedral where during winter the snow-squalls howl through the broken windows in the cathedral with its orphaned altars and defiled vaults and empty reliquaries—in the very same cathedral which for the past year has been used as an outhouse by people and by dogs and rats as an arena for their various wedding ceremonies. This is where the play is performed. They play on scaffolding draped with curtains, they play to the clumsy sarabands of the recorder, they play with a rich assortment of extras in the roles of devils and demons who came to fetch the rich man at the drama’s conclusion. How pray tell, you keeper of harems and larders, how do you figure that it won’t be you yourself amidst your starving subjects who is this unfortunate wealthy man? “At the very end there came devils and fetched the rich man’s body and soul and led him behind the curtain.” Yes, but won’t your end be precisely the same, that devils will also drag you “behind the curtain?” “There was great laughter in the cathedral. This play was for some their cooked and fried food.” So

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now we have ersatz cooked and fried foods since His Majesty took away our soup meat and roasts. And since in addition to this Mysterienspiel (biblical play) a satirical drama has also started, the King suddenly delights in having the actor portraying the rich man arrested straight off the stage—for allegedly planning to desert—and without delay has him strung up right on Cathedral Square. Whereby the performance is appropriately concluded. It is well known that since the Anabaptist leadership finds itself forced to use such performances to distract the public from its nutritional anguish, the cathedral soon becomes an arena for a worse sort of clowning.14 Using boards and blankets, they improvise an altar there, and in the presence of the King, his court, and the entire congregation, His Royal Majesty’s lackeys celebrate a mass. A mass, of course, in our own “Münster style,” since we have transcended the pagan ritual of the papists and only want to show our congregation what sort of papist mumbo-jumbo the former mass had been. There they are—court jester, servant, and hog butcher—standing at the altar in their stolen vestments, bawling out their version of the “Introit” and the “Gloria in Excelsis” and the “Et in Terra Rex Hominibus,” when suddenly one of the “pig-priests” turns around and fires off at the congregation not holy prayers but rather a stream of scatological obscenities. Afterwards the King, his royal wives, and the entire congregation make sacrificial offerings at the altar consisting of dead rats, decaying cats’ heads, dead mice, and the hooves of slaughtered horses. The officiating priest stands by, maniple slung around his hand, permitting that his hands be kissed. When his robes are lifted it becomes apparent, to the delight of all present, he is wearing nothing underneath, sticking his bare bottom out at the congregation while kissing the altar. Then, so as to fill the cup of blasphemous insanity, they all begin to throw the offerings of cat-skins and rats’ heads at one another and then after pouring a finger of sugar on the cat and mouse cadavers, they wolf them down on the spot. Finally, Dear Rothmann preaches about the meaning of the mock mass, and the orgy ends with a sword dance performed by the King’s men-atarms to the sounds of the royal orchestra. So that is how it is in Münster toward the end. When the citizen Klaus Northorn can no longer endure the hunger gripping the city, the King beheads him for his intended desertion and hacks him into twelve pieces. He is barely finished when the greedy onlookers tear heart and liver from the corpse to fry and eat at home. One day a deserter from the bishop’s army gone mad with hunger appears before the King himself and screams: “Herr König, I must eat,” bearing his

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teeth in ravenous agony, “as though he actually wanted to eat the King”—just as though he wanted to take a bite out of His Majesty King of Münster. “Finally he was permitted to go, just as he had come. And he got nothing to eat from the King either,” remarks Meister Gresbeck. This is how low Münster, once a wealthy and most comfortable city, has sunk. Things have finally reached the point where the streets are filled with screams of despair. Hunger has even killed the lust for polygamy, and in the very last days the King himself dismisses his wives, with the exception of Divara. “So it seems that the King and all the others with so many wives began to get tired of beautiful women and of populating the world with them. Some of the Anabaptists would have certainly traded a wife for a piece of bread to anyone who would have offered it to them.” Only there was no man left in Münster who would have offered a treasure such as a piece of bread for one of those emaciated Anabaptist women. Yes, that’s what it has come down to. We have sunk as low as we can. The King senses resistance growing all around, and he knows that in the long run even terror won’t help. In order to distract the people, the King has earthen lunettes put up in front of all the city gates. And because it seems that hands have too little to do and mouths too much, Bockelson also orders the demolition of the Jakobi Church and finally finds himself forced to clear the miserable food budget of any superfluous eaters. The King announces, in contrast to his earlier principles, that anyone desiring a “vacation” may leave the city, meaning that whoever wants out need only apply for safe conduct at city hall within the next eight days.15 And so they come, the starving and desperate men and women. They come with emaciated faces and can barely drag themselves up the steps of city hall, all the while not quite sure why they had to come here at all, when they all could have left town just as easily without the blessing of city scribes. There is of course a reason for this, “and though they were freely permitted to ask for leave, they would never be allowed to return home again.” It’s fine with us that you should want to leave, but you have completely violated a royal decree, “so can you possibly expect us to let you make off with all those belongings which you have amassed during your long years here in Münster?” Hence they plunder these desperate people just about down to their last shirt, confiscate everything that they are carrying, confiscate, as I have said, most of their clothing, then they confiscate that which was left in their homes and then finally confiscate the houses

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themselves and any other immovable possessions. The poor wretches then drag themselves, screaming for mercy and waving white flags, toward enemy lines, where all the men are immediately killed by Landsknechte. The women are robbed of their last meager possessions but are not killed for obvious reasons that need no explanation, and from then until the fall of Münster they continue to live out a ghostly existence in the no-man’s-land between the lines, euphemistically called “the kingdom.” At night the plaintive animal howling of these desperate women can be heard coming from the no-man’s-land, and in the early morning fog the bishop’s watch see these ragged shapes roaming about in their own personal Hades, crawling around on all fours eating grass. But since their weakened intestines are unable to keep this coarse fare down, these leather-covered skeletons crawl up to the guards to beg.16 Now and then a crust of bread is tossed to them, and they fight over it like a pack of starving wild dogs. So that is what has become of human beings who just two years ago, satisfied or not, at least had a roof over their heads, clothing for their bodies, and food on their tables. “All of this,” writes Gresbeck, “is the fault of Parson Rothmann,” that same Rothmann, with his enormous pastoral vanity, whom the all-too-kind nineteenth-century observers like to call “the fiery young preacher of Zion.” Münster has now rid itself of some useless eaters and so drifts unencumbered toward its horrible end. The surrounding ring of siege has now become a hermetic seal which neither scavengers nor apostles can penetrate, and even the few pathetic cows that have not yet been slaughtered and graze on the kingdom’s pastures are driven off by the merciless siege army. To be sure, terror still reigns inside the city, and there are more executions than ever right up to the end, more and more often carried out by the King himself. But the fierce old fighting spirit of the previous year is at an end, and even the terrorists are weary, while for the victims life and death have become matters of complete indifference. The psychosis is dissipating and behind the distorting veils of mass insanity there are beacons appearing from afar, something like a sense of proportions and objectives inherent in all human affairs. When things have gone this far, terror no longer helps; when things have gone this far, it is time for the Thermidor or, in this case, a Midsummer’s Eve. We still have the election of these dukes with names like Palck and Kock and Meier and Katerberg, conducted with all due ceremony. The King has—just as will the Prussian kings later with the newly chosen Knights of the Black Eagle17—granted the recently elected men the “Accolade.” They embrace and the King bestows upon them

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the kiss on the cheek with which the princes of the early baroque period pay homage to successors to the throne. And afterwards, right in the midst of all this starvation, there was a banquet. But the lights at this sumptuous banquet table might well have shone a little dimmer, the orchestra’s chaccones and sarabands might have been interrupted now and then by the agonizing screams of those starving to death just outside. The game is coming to an end. At the parade after the election the King gives yet another speech in which he declares that anyone wishing to leave may do so with his blessing, as “God will never leave his little congregation.” Further, Bockelson states that if need be, he will defend the city by himself. Of late no one dares to leave the city. But within the city they are complaining all the louder about the banquet and the golden chains-of-office and the precious gems which the King has bestowed upon the dukes as a token of the offices they were to hold. Did we really donate our precious metals back then just to see them now adorning these paper dukes? In fact, the grumbling gets so loud that the dukes no longer dare to wear their chains and medals. Indeed it gets so bad that even the King himself deems it wise to leave that famous gold chain with its sword-pierced globe at home. But human beings, especially in a mob, are inconsistent creatures and in times of panic quite illogical and even childish creatures, so it happens that Münster, having just complained about the abundance of jewelry, lately complains about the lack of such tokens of splendor and further sees in this lack a reflection of sinking spirits and dwindling confidence. It has come to the point that the King himself must rebuke people he encounters on the street. He knows that people will talk whether he wears his chain or not, and he is not about to ask anyone’s permission; after all, he was made King by none other than God Himself. So says Bockelson, and from that point on he starts wearing his beautiful gold chain again. At the last parade Rothmann asked that very same mob whether they were ready for the sake of God to suffer everything—hunger, sorrow, and death—now that the hour of the final trial has arrived, and once again, as in the early days of May, the masses silently raise their hands, as was the old German custom when swearing an oath.18 But their spirit is broken, and the August days of heroic resistance are long past. Desertion and death have so thinned the ranks of those able to fight that, though the enemy does not yet know, as early as May large sections of the ramparts remain unmanned. And since the herd of cows grazing outside in “the kingdom” is now far more important than anything else, and reliable manpower is in

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short supply, the dukes—these presumptive heirs to the thrones of Sachsen, Braunschweig, and Kurmainz—are to be seen in the early days of June tending the cattle, still wearing their ducal caps, chainsof-office, and gems. No longer do people run through the nowdeserted and overgrown streets with cries of penance and divine visions, no more Knipperdolling dancing before the King’s throne, which itself now stands in the marketplace orphaned and bereft of its carpets and purple blankets. Even Dear Rothmann, who could never before get enough of hearing his own cultured parson’s voice, finally keeps his mouth shut in the name of God. Münster is silent, Münster now sounds hollow like an empty barrel. The Kingdom of God is like a barren, soiled banquet table from which everything has been eaten, and the lackeys have drunk themselves blind after the masters have left; and now, as they sit sheepishly in the dimming light, now the hour will soon be at hand when the master returns home and sits in judgment. “At last,” says Gresbeck, who will himself soon leave the city, “at last they were ready to beg for mercy, and at one time they might have even gotten it, but the door of mercy was now closed.” Now it is only the King who occasionally remarks that he will “never, never ask anyone for mercy.” That will prove to be more easily said than done in this case. A strange silence now surrounds him. The executioner’s sword still flashes with desperate frequency, flashes even more now because treason and opposition only increase with the rising poverty. And he, this father of all mortal sins, uses his sword more passionately than ever in these last weeks of his reign. The standard-bearer Johann von Jülich and the soldier Heinrich Randau are planning to desert and defect to the other side, but they end up paying with their lives. Oddly enough, the traitor Heinrich Graes’s wife, who had remained in Münster, is only now executed. Klaus Northorn—also a conspirator and whose heart and liver will be consumed by the hungry people of Münster— even facing the chopping block still roars at the regal executioner, calling him a desperate bloodhound and even asking him who the hell had made him King anyway and also, even more embarrassing, what ever happened to the promised salvation which was to have arrived at Easter and finally daring Bockelson to face God Himself on Judgment Day. Whereupon Bockelson tauntingly asks Northorn whether “he really intended to wait that long” and decapitates him lege artis (according to the laws of art). Women who have held back their jewelry or threatened their husbands in a quarrel join in this final Danse macabre, as do the royal bodyguards who had negotiated with the enemy and tried to drive

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those irreplaceable cows over to the enemy or to abscond with the royal jewelry. Niklaus Snider wrote a letter to the enemy; the tanner Floer intends to flee without royal permission; Alexander von dem Bussche, a lackey in the King’s harem, tries to escape after having said “the King’s teachings are nothing but a sham.” They all die by the King’s hand, and in the first two thirds of June, shortly before the final cataclysm, there is an execution on practically every day—on some days even two! Nor should we forget the May execution of the royal concubine Elisabeth Wantscherer for gross insubordination, which the other “queens” are forced to witness under penalty of death should they close their eyes. And it pleases His Royal Highness to call his former bedmate a whore before decapitating her with two strikes. After her head has fallen he stomps her torso with his royal feet, whereupon the royal harem breaks out in the fitting hymn “Praise God in the Highest,” singing it in a shrill, fear-inspired warble. So this is the finale of that wayward king named Bockelson who had been crowned by Satan himself. It appears that the sheer number of those killed and buried on city grounds since the beginning of his

Figure 8.1 Jan van Leiden beheading one of his wives, Elisabeth Wantscherer, 1535; copper etching from Lambertius Hortensius’s History of the Anabaptists, 1694 (courtesy of the Granger Collection).

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reign finally begins to unsettle him, so in the last days of his regime he orders that they be reburied just outside in front of the city gates. Even Cathedral Square may have had too many subterranean inhabitants since the blacksmith Rüscher and the gunsmith Mollenhecke and his comrades were planted there a year ago.19 If appearances do not deceive, Bockelson, armed with an unbridled lust for life, really did hope for relief troops—though this had been a lost cause since April right up to his last day as King. And only at the very end, when all around him the once so vital Kingdom of God has sunken into apathy, and the fiery signs of ruin are to be seen across the skies, only then does Gresbeck see him sitting there, head in hand and staring into space, “when he finally realized how things stood— that all of it could only come to a bad ending.” And no one comes to a worse end than he who was only feared and never loved. Notes 1. Hitler had used the threat of suicide twice—once in December 1932 and also on January 3, 1936—when he felt that the Nazi Party was coming apart. Both times were at meetings attended by party members, and the threats became public knowledge. Both instances predated Reck’s completion of Bockelson (Toland, 275, 282, 380). 2. Reck’s Diary entry for September 1941 includes the notation that “Herr Hitler has his own private vegetable farm at Solln, near Munich, where SS guards patrol an electrically charged fence enclosing the hothouses of our vegetarian Tamerlane” (Diary, 137). 3. Needless to say, Hitler and his retinue at Obersalzberg and elsewhere dined extremely well, at a time when the general populace had been subjected to rationing. 4. Though not of the same grisly urgency, it is interesting to note that some five years after writing “Fames,” Reck would note in his Diary: “In the meantime the plebs are feeling the full fury of a German food industry gone chemical-crazy. Sugar is now made out of fir-wood pulp, sausage out of beech-wood pulp, and the beer is a stinking brew made of whey. Yeast is made out of a chemical, and marmalade is colored to fool people into thinking it is the real thing. The same for butter, except that the coloring matter here also contains a vile and indigestible substance poisonous to the liver and doubtlessly responsible for the biliousness so common today” (Diary, 137). 5. In his Diary entry for September 1941, Reck tells of something similarly unthinkable “which happened locally. The son of a povertystricken peasant family returned home recently from America . . . , [and] during the evening he had exhibited several hundred-dollar bills. The parents debated the matter for a long time while the son slept.

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12. 13.

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Then . . . the mother got a long kitchen knife and slit open her son’s throat for the sake of the money: honest people, otherwise upright people . . .” (Diary, 124). Reck’s interpretation of the inevitable fall of the Third Reich anticipates similar responses at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials after World War II. Antonius Corvinus (1501–1553) was a Catholic monk in Loccum who converted to evangelical Lutheranism and was subsequently a pastor in Goslar and Witzenhausen. In January 1536, Landgrave Philipp of Hesse sent Corvinus, along with the Hessian pastor Kymeus, to interrogate and convert Bockelson, Knipperdolling, and Krechting. In its capacity as a warning to the German Volk, Reck’s Bockelson—as horribly dramatic as it was—could not project the sheer magnitude of the Third Reich Totentanz that was about to begin and that would claim Reck himself as a victim. Bockelson’s refusal to reach a negotiated surrender when the Anabaptist situation had become completely hopeless reflects that of Hitler, who to the very end of World War II ultimately rejected any attempts at an armistice, even as Berlin was crashing down around his bunker. Just as Bockelson had to retain a glimmer of hope for a Dutch or Friesian attack on the bishop’s army, so Hitler and his staff grasped at ridiculous straws, such as last-minute coalitions with the Soviet Union or, for that matter, with Great Britain. And as the Anabaptists were hoping against hope to break out of their completely surrounded city, so Berliners desperately sought an opening in the RussianAmerican circle around Berlin. Bockelson’s appointees’ names change with different sources, but this constant appointment-and-termination strategy is very reflective of Hitler’s management style during good times and especially during bad. In both Hitler’s and Bockelson’s cases, growing panic necessitated a rapid change of the “dukes” as a means of diversion and to squelch any rebellion, be it from within the ranks or among the populace at large. In his November 9, 1940 Diary entry, Reck notes: “Munich’s sense of humor found expression recently when a whole flock of field marshals and other new demigods were created by the regime. To satisfy Göring and his insatiable hunger for titles, the position of World Marshal was created . . . [and] Goebbels was named Half-World Marshal . . .” (Diary, 117). Konrad Witz (ca. 1395–1447) was an important painter of the North German Renaissance. This is a parable related by Jesus to the Pharisees telling them of the Lord’s displeasure with those who lust after money; it is found in the Bible at Luke 16:19–31.

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14. The use of comedic, slapstick, musical, and dance performances in order to distract the Anabaptists from their horrible plight parallels Hitler and Goebbels’s use of film in the same capacity. The greater number of films released in the years of the Third Reich were not political or blatantly anti-Semitic but rather comedies, musical/ dance, and romance films. 15. One cannot help but be reminded of the late German Democratic Republic (1949–1990), another socialist state shut off from the outside world at its borders and willing to release those of its citizens who had become an economic burden (i.e., elderly Staatsbürger). 16. “. . . begern/dass man sie dafuer tot schlage/wollen vil lieber sterben/ den wieder in die stat gen” (“. . . beg that they be killed for this, because they’d much rather die than be forced to go back into the city”) reports Wirich von Dhaun on May 13 to Philipp Landgrave of Hesse (Reck, 209). 17. Der Hohe Orden vom Schwarzen Adler (The Exalted Order of the Black Eagle) was the highest Prussian order awarded. Founded by Kurfürst Friedrich III upon his becoming the first King of Prussia (January 18, 1701), it was awarded based on nobility of birth rather than for specific acts of heroism, etc. The order existed until the death of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1941. 18. Reck’s clear allusion to a similar custom in the Third Reich is yet another example of his literary courage within the context of a personal “inner emigration.” 19. Reck anticipates the end of Third Reich when, as Russians and Americans approached, the SS desperately sought to eradicate traces of mass killings and starving, mistreated prisoners at death camps throughout the Reich. It is tragically ironic that Fritz ReckMalleczewen would himself be interred in a mass grave at Dachau, from which his family has never been able to recover his remains.

Chapter 9

Day of Wrath (Dies Irae)

Knipperdolling, oh Knipperdolling what a strange dance you danced. From a chronicle

T

he sixteen-month siege of Münster brought no crown of glory to the commander [the bishop]. Twice in the summer of 1534 he attempts to storm the Anabaptist ramparts with a force easily three to four times greater than that of the defenders, whose artillery could hardly have been particularly impressive given the Anabaptists’ notorious lack of ammunition, and on both occasions the siege army encounters little success and more headaches. In order to completely surround and seal off the city, the siege army must build, as it were, a second fortress, requiring a full twelve months to erect an even halfway effective blockade. And where do things stand now in the sixteenth month of this game? Despite all the deserters and mediators running back and forth between city and camp, the military intelligence during these last weeks must have been miserable, as both sides find themselves groping in the dark. A strange picture begins to emerge. Wirich von Dhaun, who has been formally installed as imperial commander at the Reichstag in Worms, does not know how weak the city is at this point; Bockelson for his part doesn’t realize the sheer magnitude of the forces which have been gathered against him. It is true that since May the bishop’s Landsknechte engage in skirmishes recklessly close to the Anabaptist bastions, but it is also true that their officers are tormented by thoughts of a massive exodus which the raging Anabaptists intend to undertake after burning their city to the ground. Bockelson pales when he hears from an envoy about the Reichstag in Worms and about the economic might of the entire Reich which has been

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summoned against him. Right at this time, however, ten days before the fall of Münster, the normally quite optimistic Justinian von Holtzhausen—whom we’ve met before—writes that this glorious siege will probably endure until long after the summer “unless we are aided by treason.” It is impossible to speculate just how long the struggle would have lasted had it not been for the treason that actually did occur, but the very same Holtzhausen writes that up to this point a total of six thousand lives had been the price. And then there is the Landsknecht with the gangster-name Hänsgen von der Langestrate, an unreliable beggar of dubious character who deserted from the bishop’s army in 1534 and defected to the city, even becoming one of the royal men-at-arms. But now with the onset of famine he finds his stay in the city to be uncomfortable, hence he deserts for a second time, now from Münster back to the bishop’s siege army, where of course he isn’t particularly well liked. That is Hänsgen von der Langestrate. Then there is Heinrich Gresbeck, our trusty Münster carpenter. Certainly we have heard often enough the candid words which he used after the fall of Bockelson’s kingdom to describe this strange dynasty, yet there are details to the chronicler’s own personal history which bear telling. Gresbeck, apparently a smallholder of old Westphalian gentry, came to Münster on business in early 1534, thereby landing amidst the growing unrest. He did not, however, leave the city with the banished Old Believers but rather stayed right there, married, and had himself baptized so as to avoid trouble with those in power. But now that Münster’s terrible end is in sight, he writes to his old overlord whom he knows to be out there amongst the siege army. In this letter he makes an early sheepish plea for mercy. That is Heinrich Gresbeck. More nimble than the monumental words of his chronicle would lead one to believe, he writes—still a member of Bockelson’s royal guard—to “his Dear Junker” that he is a sentry just across from the Cleves guardhouse near the Kreuztor, but that under no circumstances should he be called by his real name, as he has apparently been living in Münster under an assumed identity. He writes this in a letter composed probably as early as April, and in so doing he begins to prepare the treason that shall ultimately cause the fall of the city on Midsummer’s Night.1 On May 2 five men desert, among them Gresbeck, Hänsgen von der Langestrate, and a man named Sobbe. Despite the darkness they are all spotted from the Münster entrenchments. In that all male deserters are subject to the death penalty, they lose their courage in the middle of “the kingdom” and decide to separate. Along with a comrade, Hänsgen von der

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Langestrate creeps straight ahead, Gresbeck heads for the Geldern pillbox that he had mentioned in his letter but loses his way and suddenly finds himself lying in a ditch right under the bishop’s outworks. Off to the side where Hänsgen von der Langestrate has come up to enemy lines, some grazing horses shy and an alarm of drum-rolls is sounded. But here in his ditch sits Gresbeck; right above him he sees a few soldiers who haven’t yet noticed him. He stays quiet as a mouse and knows that he can no longer return to the city and knows just as well that death is almost certain here with his “Dear Junker.” He was “alive and dead at the same time,” hence in a state which allowed him neither to live nor to die, so great was his fear. But since it cannot go on like this forever, Gresbeck gathers his courage, climbs out of the ditch, and walks toward the pillbox. In the early light of dawn he is spotted and recognized by those looking out from the city ramparts, just as the deserter Ramert had been earlier in the year, and the Münster sentries call out to him that he should return immediately, while he is simultaneously spotted by the Landsknechte on the other side and told as well to come to them. Of course Gresbeck prefers to continue his march to the Landsknechte; trembling, he realizes that a gun is trained on him, more than ready to shoot him full of holes, and he is “so unnerved by this that he feels himself to be half-dead and does not know what to say.” He begins by telling them that he too had once been a Landsknecht, and after robbing him down to his very shirt, they do indeed spare his life, “since he is after all still so young.” They transport him over the ditch and the thorn-embankment and bring him to the commandant. At first the commandant tears into him, but then he has food and drink brought to the starving man, who wolfs it all down to the amusement of those looking on, and then he asks clemency for his comrades who at the moment must still be somewhere out there in “the kingdom.” When the name Hänsgen von der Langestrate is mentioned, which still has an evil reputation in this camp, threats are made that if Hänsgen should be caught, he would be stante pede (while still standing) hacked to pieces. But the search for the experienced old deserter is in vain, as he has long since slipped through enemy lines and only later shows up again in Hamm. The others, when apprehended, are allowed to live, as had been Gresbeck. In the meantime two higher officers who have apparently heard of the deserter’s arrival come riding up to the pillbox, interrogate the man thoroughly, have him brought before the high command and the bishop, where Count Robert Manderscheid, who in fact may have been Gresbeck’s “Dear Junker,” puts in a good word for him. In the

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ensuing interrogation Meister Gresbeck puts all his cards on the table: he meticulously describes the conditions of the city’s fortification and the insufficient number of guards; he claims that taking the city is now child’s play and proudly asserts that he is the very first to give them enough information to take the city of Münster. During Gresbeck’s interrogation there was a skirmish in “the kingdom” with some aggressive Anabaptists who were captured and, on this occasion, allowed to live; they are brought along with Gresbeck to Wolbeck, where he is detained under strict security. While there he constructs from clay a detailed model of Münster’s fortifications and explains them once again to aid in the officers’ orientation. One night he is brought before the city’s walls, where in the presence of several high officers he must crawl up to the city’s outworks; then as a trial run he must swim the moat and clamber up the fortifications while the officers look on from the other side of the moat. All of which was surely no pleasant task for a deserter but which succeeds completely because since May there is an alarming shortage of Anabaptist sentries guarding the ramparts—no alarm is sounded and no one grabs the deserter by the collar to bring him back to the city, which doubtless would have had dire consequences for Meister Gresbeck. Having returned to the bishop’s side of the moat, he tells the gentlemen that if there had been a suitable fighting force at the spot where he just was, they could have taken the city with no further ado. This fact must by now be clear to the gentlemen, and it is this fact which decides Gresbeck’s fate—in the course of his interrogations he described the actual weakness of the city with stories that after a while must have sounded like tall tales to the bishop’s officers, and he would have been decapitated as a worthless braggart had the above-described experiment turned out differently. But it was successful, and from here on he is no longer a prisoner but rather enjoys quite a few liberties and is brought to Bevergern where to his amazement he reconnects with Hänsgen von der Langestrate, whom he had believed to be dead. Hänsgen, if the chronicles do not lie, appears to have escaped to Hamm, where he too described Münster’s desperate situation to Captain Meinhard. Hänsgen was presumably put to the test and granted clemency as had been Gresbeck: You keep on living if what you say proves to be true, and you lose your head, as will soon become quite clear, if you have lied to us. Or something to that effect. Later, after the fall of Münster, Hänsgen writes a receipt for fifty Emden florins which he received for his services.

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An important council of war is held in Brevergern in the presence of the two deserters, where there is a heated discussion of a surprise attack on the city. But for all this new information, these gentlemen are still unsure. Rumors that the King has been dethroned circulate—such rumors having been schlepped into the camp by a female deserter—then are denied, as it turns out that the King has not abdicated his throne, but rather he has named Bernhard Krechting as his first lieutenant, the same Krechting who, according to Gresbeck, “sat in the King’s basket” and was therefore an enfant gaté (spoiled child). All that—along with persistent rumors of an exodus from the city and the frequent alarm bells being rung over there in the bishop’s camp—is making the officers nervous; memory of the first two failed attempts at storming the city weighs heavily on them. The commissar from Cleves in particular, along with Wirich von Dhaun, emphatically advises against any rash undertaking and, last but not least, it is pointed out time and again that both deserters—especially Hänsgen von der Langestrate, who enjoys a very unfavorable reputation in the bishop’s camp—could very well be setting a trap for the siege army. In any case the storming of the city is finally set for Johannisnacht. Peasants are immediately hired to do the initial groundwork, while in Goerde storming-ladders and two movable moat-bridges are constructed according to the two deserters’ specifications. A strict order is issued to the entire camp that—in painful memory of the dismal attack last Pentecost—there shall be no sale of alcohol in any form, “so that the Landsknechte should not drink themselves into a stupor.” On June 22 Wirich von Dhaun once again demands surrender of the city, whereby immunity is guaranteed only when the ringleaders are turned over to the bishop. Once again Münster declines through Rothmann, who cannot deny himself the opportunity to insult the Kaiser, the Reich, and all of its princes. On the evening before the planned attack a violent thunderstorm breaks, accompanied by hail and winds which manage to drown out all the preparatory noises, leaving the night pitch black and foggy, thus assisting with all the traps which are being laid in front of the bastions at Kreuztor and Judefelder Tor. Over on the ramparts the few scant Anabaptists left to stand watch—wet through and through, frozen and starving, they have crawled into their sheds. “Earth” is the Anabaptist password tonight, while it is “Maria” on the side of the siege army. Nor does this last night braid any garlands for the siege army— rather it burdens, at least the mid-level command, if not the commander himself, with reproaches for unfathomable incompetence. At first everything goes according to plan. At eleven o’clock Gresbeck

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swims across the moat to the Kreuztor, pulling one of the peasants’ bridges behind him on a rope and then fastens it to the ramparts on the other side. While Gresbeck himself remains in the water, Hänsgen von der Langestrate leads a vanguard of thirty-five officers across the bridge, and the main body of the attack-force—a troop strength of about four hundred—follows under the command of Wilkin Steding. The ladders are soon in place, the earthen ramparts of the outworks in front of the actual gates are quickly climbed, negligible resistance is encountered and there is no sounding of an alarm: the few sentries still remaining are all slain in their sleep with the exception of the tanner Schulten, who buys his life by betraying the Anabaptist password “earth.” What next happens is simply unbelievable—Wilkin Steding proceeds to march on without having secured the gate that is his only avenue of retreat. As we shall see, the Anabaptists in the area now finally awaken and close the trap behind Wilkin Steding. He in turn marches on without any means of egress—most probably in order to be the first in the looting party—into the nocturnal labyrinth of alleys, encountering some resistance only upon reaching Cathedral Square. Now the city has awakened and is truly an agitated hornets’ nest. Since everyone knows that it is now a matter of life and death, barricades go up with the speed of the wind, entrances to the marketplace and the Lamberti Quarter are sealed off, the St. Margaret Chapel is transformed into an armed fortress, and finally a desperate counterattack sweeps the intruders off of Cathedral Square. That all happens at one in the morning in the continued darkness. In the meantime the Anabaptists have slammed the Kreuztor shut and secured it behind Wilkin Steding, and up on the ramparts their raging, fanatical women shout over to the bishop’s camp to go ahead and get “the great Hansen” . . . but anyone who touches God’s own city will suffer a miserable fate . . . That is heard by Wirich von Dhaun who, leading the main army, has stopped outside between Kreuztor and Judefelder Tor, and who will himself receive no laurels on this night, having allowed contact with the rear of Wilkin Steding’s troops to be severed, and von Dhaun should never have allowed Steding’s vanguard to disappear out from under his nose into the night and fog. Now he stands here, hears the women screaming, hears from a distance the noise of battle and notices that his men are starting to become uneasy. Again they talk about treason and about a trap set by Wilkin Steding, and Hänsgen von der Langestrate—who had led the vanguard into the city—they

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call a traitor; and even Gresbeck—who emerges from the water freezing and is given a coat by a compassionate officer to protect him against the cold night—is nearly stabbed to death by the agitated soldiers. Meanwhile in the city, Wilkin Steding is run off of Cathedral Square into the southern part of the city, ending up completely surrounded in the narrow alley known today as “die Bux”2 and can only save himself by most ingloriously reaching Pferdegasse through the backdoors, backcourts, and hidden pathways. Existing reports do not give us a clear picture of Steding’s battles, but in the darkness there may well have been—as is the case with all nocturnal battles—utter confusion among the intertwined drainpipes of the Altstadt. The fact is that Steding regroups on Cathedral Square and receives from Bockelson—who in the reports shows up here for the first time—a peace offer stipulating unconditional surrender. Steding is well aware of what Bockelson means by unconditional surrender and declines, hence back-and-forth negotiations which last for quite some time. In any case, it appears that this is the third time that the weapons of professional soldiers will shatter at the resistance of these fanatical Anabaptists and that the bishop’s siege army will once again be the laughing stock of the whole world as they, backed by the resources of the entire Reich, break one tooth after another trying for the past sixteen months to crack this nut called Münster. Yet again it is coming down to this, and one dares not imagine what might have happened had Zion’s weapons also triumphed on this night—whether or not it would have caused the complete dissolution of the bishop’s attacking army and a terrible, all-consuming revolution in northern Germany. It might have even happened that way, and the fact that it didn’t is not because of that thing called chance, which simply doesn’t exist in history in the eyes of those who study it closely. Rather it is because the fever has died down in the ailing town of Münster, time is ripe, and from now on all those interconnections and coincidences which appear to be inconceivable strokes of fate only serve to reap the bloody harvest that history is preparing at this moment. Just how the flag-bearer Johann von Twinkel gets through this impossible street battle to the rampart by Judefelder Tor is unknown. During this chaotic fight in the dark alleys, he may have gotten separated from his unit and ended up at the rampart. In any case, at the first light of dawn the man stands on the battlements, waving his banner and shouting to the main army outside: “Waldeck, Waldeck, Münster is ours, come on ahead, my dear Landsknechte.”

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His cries finally set the “dear Landsknechte” in motion. Wirich von Dhaun moves in—something that he could just as well have done a few hours ago—kills everything that gets in his way, and frees Steding from his precarious position. Together they force entry into the market and the Lamberti parish, which has been the breeding ground of the most fanatical Anabaptism since those long bygone days of February last year. And here where this Anabaptism was born, so shall it die. We don’t know much about Bockelson’s agony; we don’t even know if the King, who only a short while ago had conducted negotiations on Cathedral Square, even fought here. We only know that in the twilight a horrible slaughter broke out, and that it was in all likelihood here that fate caught up with Dear Rothmann. A very merciful fate, by the way, because orders had been given to capture him alive, and according to a report from Dorpius to Luther, “the one who started this game and king of all rogues, Rothmann, would now have to dance the dance as well”—the same dance of torture that Bockelson, Knipperdolling, and Krechting would later be forced to perform. Just how Rothmann met his death will never be known for sure. Certainly this is where he was last seen, and according to some macabre tale, he received a horrible sword wound to the shoulder and two spear stabs in the chest. We have to assume that this is how it happened, because after searching under heaps of corpses for ten days, they were still unable to find him. Here is where fate allowed him to drop out of the game, and it really makes no difference how it happened. Exit Rothmannus, defunctus et extinctus est and beyond that only a single dark tale remains. Rumor has it that Rothmann survived the fall of Münster by a good many years, ending his days old and broken as the guest of a Friesian nobleman but not before having been spotted in Rostock, Lübeck, and perhaps in Wismar. A wanted poster which has come down to us was sent out from Münster as late as 1537 and remains the last tangible document of his time here on earth. “He is a person of stocky build, light-colored eyes, straight dark brown hair, usually wears a Spanish beret.” So much for the wanted poster. And Lübeck, where this wanted poster is sent, does its best to locate him but, unfortunately, only manages to arrest not the missing pastor but rather a physician from Arnheim by the name of Heinrich Bentinck. And of course they have to let him go, sending in his stead a hefty bill for the cost of detaining him. Yes indeed, that is the end of Dear Rothmann. But we have not yet come to that point in time when stout patrician fathers, and good Catholics to boot, send out wanted posters for

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the Anabaptist prophets and preachers from their gothic city hall. For the moment this city hall looks down upon a marketplace where the merciless slaughter of a few hundred starving Anabaptists3 against several thousand professional soldiers filled to the brim with pumpernickel, beef, and sweet dark beer is just starting up. On that same clean marketplace where before the war [World War I] shining Wilhelminian cuirassiers rode to the sounds of tubas and drums, where now yellow lacquered streetcars and heavily laden trucks from the Ruhr rumble by. But here on this eerie night there was torture and stabbing, screaming and bloody steam rising from pools of gore. The bishop’s soldiers remember their many comrades who have fallen at Münster, and they might well have been angered—as any professional soldier would be—by these good citizens gone mad, and the soldiers show no mercy. And it does the Anabaptists no good whatsoever when they scream, incensed that they are little more than cattle to be slaughtered, they are not after all Turks and Scythians, that this is no way to rage in a holy city, and that they simply forbid such hideous slaughter. No, none of that helps them. At the end the Anabaptists retreat into the citadel of wagons driven together to form a heavily armed fortress, and they manage to triumph over their enemy one last time. One last time the siege army—wanting to avoid the bloody sacrifice which this furious battle would surely demand—negotiates with Krechting, who is in command. For one last time he negotiates free passage for all survivors and enumerates the countless breaches of negotiations which have been committed during the past year-and-ahalf on both sides. He allows those tortured, dead-tired Anabaptists limping home to be attacked on the street, snatched from their living quarters, and finally to be slaughtered almost to the very last man by the furious Landsknechte. There is no holding them back now, no subordination, and in the dusk of the summer solstice (Johannisnacht) we see these Anabaptists disappear, one man after another, bearers of the wellknown—famous and infamous—Anabaptist names. Near the Aegidi Convent the Landsknechte catch up with former mayor Tilbeck, who on that fateful night in February had played the city into the hands of the Anabaptists. They stab him to death and then toss him “like a dead donkey,” as Kerssenbroch describes this funeral, into the nearest ditch. There is Duke Heinrich Xantus, who is slaughtered at the marketplace, and the royal butcher Boentrup, who pleads in vain and is cut down near the pillory. There is someone who might have resembled a cleric—with his white hair and narrow, beardless face—who is

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pretending to be one of the surviving prelates, but he is recognized and slain. There is Mayor Kibbenbroch, elected in February of 1534 and now stabbed to death, and over there that “terribly long cyclops” Tile Bussenschute is being is being hacked to pieces, the same Tile Bussenschute who in defiance of the bishop was sent by Münster eighteen months ago as a delegate to the Wolbeck conference and on whom His Grace turned his back as an unworthy representative. He is butchered on the small bridge over the Aa and thrown into the water. Countless others—the dukes, the lesser prophets, the deacons, and the “masters of the fat and lean diets”—they are all dragged from the attic of city hall and thrown into the street. “Who or whatever was hidden,” says an old pamphlet, “is diligently sought, dragged or driven out, and stabbed or hacked to pieces without so much as a hearing. There was no mercy, no human kindness—only ten days of searching, murder, and strangulation.” The Anabaptist sentries at the Lamberti Tower fly brevi manu (without hesitation) from the watchtower into the waiting lances of the Landsknechte below. There is no hiding or disguise, as the emaciated Anabaptists are easily recognized by their lead-grey faces and killed wherever they are found. Whole clumps of cadavers are left in the streets for many days, befouling the air horribly. “At this point peasants were let into the city to bury the bodies and remove the dreadful stench. The peasants stripped the dead of all clothing, robbed them, dug large holes in the churchyard, and threw the naked corpses in, one on top of another, as though they had been beasts.” This happened on Cathedral Square, which in the past year-and-a-half had actually become quite crowded with silent inhabitants such as these.4 The night brings to a close the great slaughter of this day, yet as we shall see, it was by no means over with the dawning of a new day and indeed continued on for a good week or more. Only the women were spared and only to the extent that they were willing to renounce Anabaptism. But we should make note of the fact that far from all the ladies of Münster were persuaded by the deaths of their men to convert back, and some of the them—like the previously mentioned Fräulein von der Recke—remained intransigent, leaving the city as homeless sectarians who were lost and forgotten out there in their misery. Otherwise, the event could hardly be called a conquest but rather unrestrained annihilation, a total eradication. Yet in reading the reports one can be almost beneficently moved by the occasional odd episode that is not entirely spattered with blood. There is a Landsknecht, and at one time he was a steward at one of the Latin schools and therefore knows his way around the city. The man, eager

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for some plunder, sneaks away from the battle-lines to the royal palace, breaks in under cover of darkness, but finds no red-grey lackeys, no bodyguards, no king dressed in white damask, nor does he find a well-stocked harem. But instead he finds here a sickly looking twelve-year-old boy wandering through the desolate rooms, whom the Landsknecht orders to take him immediately to the vault with all of the crown jewels. So there they are, the famous three-tiered golden crown and the equally famous chain with its golden globe pierced by two swords; there, along with all the countless jewels, rings, pendants, and commemorative coins, lies the state seal. And “God’s Power” is no longer “My Power,” God’s power has left the last son of Hades, to the extent that it was ever with him in the first place, and there is no longer a king . . . No king, no governor, no Queen Divara, no Keeper of the Great Seal, and the Landsknecht steals rings, medallions, and commemorative coins to his heart’s content and bids farewell to the crown—as he us unable to stuff it into his pockets—by energetically trampling it under his boot-heels, thereby ruining it completely. Whereupon he returns to the marketplace carrying sacks overflowing with plunder and simply rejoins the battle. That happens tonight on one of the side stages, and God only knows what happened on all the countless others, while on the main stage, the old gothic market, a great bloody opera is being played out as a prelude to the Saint Bartholomew’s Massacre. But now it has gotten light out, and a brand new day breaks under God’s sun. And after eighteen bitter months in which we of the siege army became the laughing stock of the entire Reich, victory finally arrives—the victory that we were denied for so long. Yet now it has come, and the time has come to call for the commander-in-chief and show him the humiliated city. And in the first light of day a rider saddles the fastest nag that he can find, flies over puddles of blood, mountains of carcasses, broken household utensils, and discarded weapons and races to the bishop. “Halokanti tai Attanai” (“the Athenians have been taken”) was what the Spartans wrote in awkward soldier’s-Greek on the dispatch after they had taken Athens in the Peloponnesian War. And here it may have been a similarly laconic message, one that did not yet betray the orgies of blood to the mild-mannered bishop. Waldeck, Waldeck, Münster is now yours! And after four days, when at least the main streets had been somewhat cleared of those mountains of corpses, a coach surrounded

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by Landsknechte and cavaliers in black velvet came rumbling over Münster’s grass-covered pavement. It stopped at the marketplace where officers waited with victory-trophies—the King’s trampled crown, golden spurs, and the gold-covered ceremonial sword of Zion. The man to whom all these sparkling objects are handed over was Franz von Waldeck, bishop of Münster and victor at last over a city gone mad with demonic heresies. Notes 1. Johannisnacht or Midsummer’s Night (the Summer Solstice) is traditionally celebrated on the eve of June 23, which is followed by the feast day of John the Baptist on June 24. 2. Münster City archivist Irmgard Pelster explains that “die Buxe” or “Buckse” is a small alley known today as Margarenthengang which connects Domplatz and Rothenburg. The name derives from a field called “die Buxe” which belonged to the Margarethenkapelle (Chapel of St. Margaret). 3. Descriptions of the strength of the Anabaptist army during that last battle vary. It is said to have been between 200 and 800 men (Reck, 210). 4. Reck’s description of a devastated Münster affords an eerie preview to his impressions of Munich on October 9, 1944: “As I write, I can smell the stench of decaying bodies, because under the ruins are the corpses of seventeen bank employees who were buried by the rubble. In pious commemoration . . . the survivors have placed a cross on top of the rubble heap, and the rats, grown plump with much gorging on corpses, rustle undisturbed over ruins and cross” (Diary, 204).

Chapter 10

Lest I Be Burned in Eternal Fire (Ne Perenni Cremer Igni)

Thus became the King a monster and a spectacle. From a contemporary report

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t should be noted that the bishop’s entry into the city does not take place until four days after the city’s fall because of the danger of infection emanating from the countless dead bodies. During this time Münster must suffer nearly everything that any conquered city had to suffer after a long and costly siege: house-to-house searches, citizens informing on each other, an abundance of murder, and, last but not least, a downright thorough job of looting. “The daily searching and stabbing continues,” wrote Holtzhausen to Frankfurt. And therefore many an Anabaptist who has remained hidden for days in the attic or cellar is eventually driven by hunger and thirst into the daylight and thus into the spears of the murderous Soldatska.1 Those who are removed from such things may frown. But he who takes the circumstances of that age into consideration or who has experienced similar situations, that person realizes that an army is a mass-entity which, after street-fighting with heavy losses, all too readily works off its nervous tension. Anyway . . . “The conquered city was horrible to behold, with dead bodies lying in every alley. Women’s screaming was to be heard everywhere. In many houses there remained piles of those who had starved to death, stacked one on top of the other and waiting to be buried. There was a terrible stench and many other calamities in the city and great lamentation.” Which is really no wonder given the diligence with which Anabaptists are being arrested, executed, and looted. And

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since Anabaptist property—moveable and immoveable—is immediately confiscated in order to somewhat offset the high cost of the siege, the few Anabaptist survivors are robbed of everything . . . absolutely everything. Especially household utensils snatched by the Landsknechte from the houses are later strewn to the four winds and into the farthest corners of the Reich. In the next few months, implements that had once lain in the nooks and crannies of Münster houses show up at auctions, rag-fairs, and flea-markets as far away as southern Germany. Moreover, the plunder, which was supposed to be divided between the bishop as commander and the Landsknechte, in no way fulfilled their high expectations. In the trenches before the city they had spoken of the fabulous gold treasures supposedly piled up in city hall— they had accumulated debt in anticipation of these incredible riches and are now quite disappointed to find not one tenth of what they had hoped for. But the Landsknechte become furious when one of them who had been a prisoner of the Anabaptists for quite some time gets drunk and reveals that he himself had seen much more in city hall, which has now surely been skimmed off by the bishop’s bootymaster to avoid having to share it. “So the Landsknechte began to run amok and threaten even Wilken Steding such that he must flee the city. And fifty of them break into the state treasury where the gold is kept but are caught and must pay dearly. Seven are executed, and the rest are driven from the city wearing nothing but their shirts.” All of which does nothing to improve the mood of the others. Feeling, of course, that they have been deceived by everyone, they threaten their officers, overpower the booty-masters, and even torture two of them to obtain the hiding place of the embezzled gold, which also fails to produce the desired treasure. When they start to riot and even decide to torch the entire city, they must be forcibly disarmed and driven from the city. Sixteen florins is the entire profit that each of them gets. Wirich von Dhaun, according to a letter he wrote, turns a blind eye to much of this, because he “prefers to go to sleep with his skin intact.” The bishop ultimately retains under his banner only two companies of the restless, undisciplined army, and, to keep the unpredictable city under control, has two forts built inside Münster’s walls. For in a recently conquered city where order must be imposed upon the unholy chaos that has reigned for two years, there is naturally a great deal to be done by the ruling authority, and there is also much to be done—as must be the case in this first phase—by the executioners and military police. And especially now that the men

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have all been killed, there are these raving Anabaptist shrews, 2 who, as the bishop writes to his allies, “are as guilty as and in some cases more guilty than the men,” and who now, if they are unwilling to convert, must “be forcibly removed from the city . . .”3 Some of these are urgent, serious cases. There is, after the other royal ladies appear to have escaped, the beautiful Queen Divara, there is Knipperdolling’s wife, there is the late Tilbeck’s sister, and a whole array of fanatical women who, in the interest of public safety, really cannot be pardoned and who in the first days of July are executed. And then above all else there are those three poor sinners sitting in detention who were once King, Governor, and First Lieutenant of that crazed Zion, and who are now once again Bockelson, Knipperdolling, and Bernd Krechting, and who since there is still a great deal of useful information to be heard from them, shall be the last to perform in Münster’s protracted dance of death. For there are other, more important things to be done now, and from the first day on, there are a great many problems that weigh heavily on the bishop, “through whose behind” angry Anabaptists had once and probably still wanted to “pull a rope of hair,” and who is basically a mild, somewhat easy-going Grandseigneur who might even flirt a little with Protestantism. There are heavy debts that he has now incurred on account of this insane city as well as the difficult task of reorganizing administrative order. There is, for example, this Überwasser Convent that the bishop does not want to reopen because its inhabitants “had lusted after indecent men,” although it has been a refuge for Westphalian noblewomen, and all of knighthood now protests the bishop’s decision. There are the émigrés wishing to return to their property, there are exiled clerics who have been left homeless, there are pensioners and others who had held sinecure positions, all of whose papers had been burned.4 The Reichstag, which meets again in Worms four months after the fall of Münster, makes radical decisions on all of these questions. The Archbishop of Cologne and the fanatically Catholic Duke of Cleves rule that the deeply indebted Bishop Franz von Waldeck, whom they felt to have been much too tolerant and neglectful, would from now on be under their economic control. Further, all of the émigrés who had ever flirted with or supported Anabaptism are dispossessed, while all of those who had remained faithful to Catholicism—landowners, clerics, pensioners—were restored to their former rights: In cases of doubt, a commission would decide who was a traitor and who was beyond reproach. And Protestantism? The imperial cities, Philipp of Hesse, and Saxony—all put in more than a good word for it, but the

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Reichstag overrules all the protests. Protestantism, in the opinion of the Catholic majority, bears the brunt of the blame for all of the terrible excesses; there will be no place for it in Münster from now on. As far as is known, there was not a single Protestant church service in Münster until the end of the eighteenth century, yet even today the liberation from Anabaptist rule is solemnly observed in the cathedral.5 All of that, however, is not negotiated and decided until November, and the most pressing matter is what to do with the three ringleaders who watched Zion’s glory sink so precipitously into the mud, and who disappeared so suddenly right before our eyes into that bloody night. As far as Knipperdolling is concerned, we may assume that, as is stated in almost all of the contemporary reports, he took part in that final battle on the marketplace, and we will soon see how the remainder of his fate takes shape. But as for this king, who had emphasized so often his Divine Rights and his own divine mission for God, might we not expect from him some proof of his royal dignity, a fight to the death, a departure accompanied by thunder and lightning? Are we correct in assuming that it is the immediate presence of danger, possibly of death itself, which demonstrates whether the one who was crowned king is truly a king or merely the incidental bearer of a golden ornament called a crown? What we learn of Bockelson’s departure from the notes of a Landsknecht named Röchell—who ends his days as sexton of the Münster Cathedral—is really quite shattering and clears up any doubt that might still remain as to the true character of this man so often and so lovingly pardoned by historians. With halberd in hand, Bockelson flees—probably at the first sign of the enemy’s advance into the city—to his abandoned palace with Röchell in hot pursuit. The King makes his way into a chamber on the upper floor, slamming the door behind him, while the Landsknecht pursues him like a man possessed, crashes through the door, charges to the middle of the room and at first doesn’t see that the King, who had hidden behind the opened door, has managed to escape by means of a narrow gothic spiral staircase that leads from the top storey downward, and here, in fear for his life, Bockelson throws his halberd behind him, thus blocking Röchell’s way and escaping with a considerable head start across the Aegidi churchyard to a gate by the same name [Aegiditor] where he hides again. But it is here that he is taken prisoner.6 A source reporting this capture tells how Bockelson warns the Landsknechte not to touch him, bragging loudly about the anointed sanctity of his person. He is seized anyway and delivered first into the hands of

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Wirich von Dhaun, from whom he is “wrested away,” much to von Dhaun’s annoyance, by Steding’s troops. It appears from this that the prisoner is viewed from the very beginning as a curiosity—a rare menagerie-beast to be put on show. For about a month, the three prisoners—Bockelson, Knipperdolling, and the King’s first lieutenant Bernhard Krechting—sit in Münster’s custody, and it almost seems as if no one had given them the details of the punishment being rained down upon their kingdom during those days.7 The bishop cannot deny himself the pleasure of visiting the imprisoned king in person, but the impressions that he receives from this visit are hardly pleasant—the dethroned tailor is careful to demand that he be treated as a sovereign who is only by dint unfortunate circumstances prevented from ruling. Waldeck, however, from his perspective as bishop and imperial prince sees in Bockelson nothing more than a political gangster. “Are you a king?” asks the bishop in a manner more perplexed than haughty, and “Are you a bishop?” is the prompt reply of the former member of the Leyden Rhetoricians Club. A further discussion that the two gentlemen devote to this tricky subject yields the following: His Grace was only appointed by the Kaiser and the Pope, while His Majesty was presumably called to the throne by God Himself and by His prophets. And when the bishop points out the horrendous expenses with which the chaos in Münster has burdened the country, he is informed by the King that he, Bockelson, would gladly make him rich again; the bishop need only parade him around the countryside in an iron cage and charge admission.8 Those not yet acquainted with the psychological and sociological prerequisites of these rousing words will be awed by such glibness. But this is not the proud contempt in the face of death with which Marie Antoinette stood before the revolutionary tribunal and dismissed Jacobin Hébert; nor is it the arrogance of Danton who, accused and condemned by the same tribunal, mocked the bureaucratic mediocrity of the court clerk who asked about his name and was told: “Danton, a name which has become widely known in revolutionary history.” Today, at a sufficient distance of time from the execution, this comes across as a little bit of cynicism and a considerable measure of impudence. Anyone who has ever interrogated a con-man or even political gangsters knows this and will agree with me. Yet Bockelson’s wish to be shown throughout the countryside as a curiosity shall be fulfilled soon enough. In July the allies meet in Neuss, where Cologne and Cleves, as the most irreconcilable of Münster’s former enemies, demand the speedy transfer of the three

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prisoners to a safe place as well as their immediate interrogation, and on July twenty-second they are taken to Dülmen; and this is done so as to comply with Bockelson’s above-stated suggestion. The contemporary account, that he was tied to the tail of a horse that was kept at a constant trot, may be an exaggeration, although such actions were not out of keeping with the customs of the time. It seems more likely that they were fitted with a neck-iron and led off on leashes like hunting dogs. Incidently, each of them set on a different path as the bishop had ordered that they were not to speak to each other. But Herr Christian Kerkerinck, the fourth in this pack of two-legged hounds, would not have been able to converse very long anyway, since along the way in loco amoeno et herbido—that is, in a lovely meadow—he was unshackled and beheaded; then off to Dülmen with the others. With respect to Bockelson, the Archbishop of Cologne was motivated by only the kindest of intentions. In the instructions he gives to his delegates in Münster he expresses the wish “not to kill the would-be king right away, but rather to make of him an example for the world by placing him for three to six months, harmless, in a large basket with enough room to lie down, and also to suspend him from his shortened tongue, feeding him just enough to keep him alive.” And in fact, to jump ahead of the story a bit, Waldeck did at least send the dethroned king to the Duke of Cleves for the latter’s amusement at Castle Sparenburg in Bielefeld, although we have no record of how this meeting went between the fanatical Catholic and the quick-witted heretic. But this does not take place until much later in the fall, and now, in late July, the three prisoners arrive at Dülmen, and it is here, surrounded by a gawking crowd, that Bockelson permits himself a cheap joke in keeping with his character, when he answers the question as to whether he had really had so many women with, “They were hardly women when I took them, but rather girls who were made into women.” This too was Bockelson. That is the cynical adventurer lifted on high by his need for admiration and by pure luck. It is not, however, the poor wretch who sits miserably freezing in his cell in the fall of 1535 and who is really already a dying man. One of the few things that we know about death is that it is received by the dying man as a harbinger of some far-reaching light. We know the incisive changes it can produce sub finem vitae (prior to one’s death) in one’s soul, we see it chisel away all that is insubstantial, and the death mask that we hold in our hands afterwards reveals a true likeliness of the essence that remains.

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Of course no one made a death mask of this strangest of all kings, and even reports of his final hours do not agree in every aspect. That he was a miserable son of chaos from childhood on has been seen in protocols that were recorded, and perhaps better yet from the last conversations that he had with visiting clergymen. For the interrogation of the three ringleaders, the Kurfürst of Cologne has put together a long list of questions that will be put to the prisoners in Dülmen. The court wants to know how such a strange creature as Bockelson grew up, how he came to know the scriptures and Anabaptism, and whether he would deny being solely responsible for polygamy and all the confusion arising from it. But above all else, “whether his initial goal had not been to obtain all the kudos, glory, and sensuality this world has to offer and to make himself a great lord.” In other words, was it not really his immense appetite for admiration that was responsible for his sectarianism, his move to Münster, his rise as king, and everything else that went along with it? This is what we will ask Bockelson. But from you, Bernd Knipperdolling, we want to know how many people you beheaded with your own hands, why did you destroy all those documents, whether they really ate little children in Münster, and whether the king had a richly set table while everyone else was starving. And finally: whether you “didn’t cause this uprising against the bishop of Münster out of pure hatred and spite because of your previous imprisonment . . .,” whether or not everything you did was motivated by a lust for revenge9 and a complete inability to forget an insult, just as Bockelson acted out of vanity and a hunger for adulation. All of this we want to know from you two. So after we have asked you the why and wherefore of the matter, you should be ready to answer some of the more ticklish questions, and surely you know the equipment that stands ready to wrest an answer from you if need be. Hence we want to know where this whole movement began, where Münster’s underground connections led to, who were your friends and fellow-travelers in Amsterdam, Wesel, Maastricht, Aachen, Essen and Hamm—in Soest and Lippe and, of course, also in our city of Cologne. And finally we turn to you, Bernd Knipperdolling—the solid citizen well-bred by good parents—with a question that you might want to answer together with this Krechting, a question that is of course most interesting to us, the imperial princes. How is it that Johann von Leyden, “an unprincipled scoundrel and foreigner,”10 was placed above Knipperdolling, Rothmann, and all the others in the royal regiment?

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So these are the questions that are to be put to the prisoners, and here they stand now, face-to-face with the “great Hanseatic princes” whom they have despised for so long, and all they have to do is preserve their dignity, that dignity that is so very hard to preserve, the dignity of a man who has been defeated. Dignity in such an hour is probably synonymous with the courage to be truthful. We only wash our hands of a criminal when the man in the prisoner’s dock no longer resembles the free man of yesterday, when the brutal maniac of yesterday turns sentimental, when the blasphemer becomes a man of excessive piety, when the bold criminal who only yesterday challenged all of mankind begins to tremble as a coward before the judge. If we read the questions put together by the bishop of Cologne from this perspective, we see very quickly that this interrogation contained at least one point for each of the three prisoners where he had to reveal himself undisguised and show his true colors. Reading the answers given here, it does not take long to reach the conclusion that Knipperdolling came across much better than did the King. As for Knipperdolling, he might well have admitted to fewer decapitations than he actually performed or described his role in the kingdom as less important than it was—he nevertheless remains the man we know him to be. He remains the stubborn, ponderous, and obstinate sectarian, the man “who was suddenly possessed by an alien dark being, hence did not know what he was doing.” He never divulges outside contacts or fellow-believers in any of his protocols, neither in this one nor in two taken just before his execution, the last one in agony on the rack. Nothing of the kind—not from him and not from Krechting. To the awkward question of whether for him it had all been a matter of revenge, Knipperdolling gives a good, straightforward answer: “It was never because of the imprisonment that he had become Bockelson’s disciple, he had not wanted to avenge himself on the bishop or on the knights, even when he had the opportunity to do so.” That is the renunciation of mitigating circumstances, and we shall see that Knipperdolling only becomes more stubborn the closer he comes to death. But Bockelson? He is much more loquacious from the start, telling of his parents and their strange union, his schooling, his travels to England, Flanders, and Lübeck, how his wife in Leyden protested when he squandered their money. He does not mention the Rhetoricians’ Club, tells nothing of his literary phase and even less about his tavern,

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“The Silver Lily.” Nor is he brimming with information concerning the origins of his Anabaptism and his calling to that faith. He says only that he went to Münster against his first wife’s wishes, because he had heard that “there were some courageous preachers there.” He speaks a little about his first stay in the city, his return home, tells of Matthys and Melchior Hoffman and the former’s order that Bockelson go to Münster for a second time. And then came everything that we already know—the outbreak of the Münster orgies, Knipperdolling’s visions, and the one that he himself had had in foretelling Matthys’s terrible death. Yes, but hadn’t the bishop of Cologne specifically asked whether or not he had essentially acted out pure vanity, and wasn’t this bishop giving him, the accused, the cue to deliver a truly rousing apologia, as had Savonarola,11 as Danton in the face of death would shout at his judges, as Luther had just recently done with the ten marvelously stammered words “that here he stands and may God help him now.”12 So it was with other accused men. But Bockelson . . . isn’t he a king who rules over the lives of his subjects, who spilled blood, who received from God the crown forged from confiscated gold ducats and who received as well from God himself advice on all sorts of matters, yes, so is it not God himself who will now speak through Bockelson? But nothing of the kind in these hours of trial! God does not speak, God does not assist with big words. No apologia, no rousing speeches, no, not even dignified silence. Yet later on he often stings with verbal barbs, when he is paraded around the countryside like an animal in chains, demonstrating the quick wit that never abandons the born man of letters. One word, however, which might even have been expected, which by the sheer weight of its truth could force one to one’s knees, no such word is ever spoken. Everything—these eternal and eventually exhausting references to inner visions—all that was make-believe fire to heat up the kettles of mass-psychosis. Look! There is really a nothing standing behind those bars—a bastard with the bastard’s eternal resentment and unquenchable thirst for recognition of the misbegotten;13 a silver-tongued man of letters who reigned by terror and in time of hunger filled his own larders, hiding himself away in the hour of reckoning.14 An unrestrained psychopath, whom history permitted to play with the levers of its grand machinery, thereby causing a great deal of mischief and whom it will now have mercilessly skinned alive. But as I said at the outset, it is not the man himself who is so interesting, but rather that which he was able to bring about in this most stolid and level-headed corner of Germany.

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In the fall the prisoners are separated—Knipperdolling and Krechting are transported to Horstmar, while Bockelson is taken to Castle Bevergern, where the garrison has been fortified for any eventuality. Later, toward the end, they are interrogated a second time and then a third time on the day before their deaths in Münster, and here—although I am again getting ahead of my story—I would like to offer a few observations about these interrogations. No, the prisoners know nothing of the rumor going around that toward the end of the siege they had mixed poison into the flour to get rid of those bothersome eaters; they also know nothing of the much discussed cannibalism in the besieged kingdom. Bockelson had in no way made himself king but rather had been truly called to the office; Knipperdolling, more sinister and obstinate than ever, had himself never ordered the destruction of churches and at most had only assisted with it. “For the Whore of Babylon had to be toppled.” And by “Whore of Babylon,” Knipperdolling meant anything having to do with Catholicism. “Had he considered the Pope’s way and the Christian order to be the right path, he would never have converted to Anabaptism and the new faith. When he is asked what he holds of other Christians, he replies that he considers them to be what God considers them to be, but he prefers to live and die by his own faith.” Earlier he had been asked whether in fact he did not consider all these Münster visions and prophesies to be shams and trickery. Whereupon he answers that he would hardly have obeyed these visions and prophesies if he had thought them to be shams and trickery. We should not forget that all these answers are given under torture, and that to give them must have taken a good measure of courage as well as a contempt for physical pain. In any case, he remained in this hour what he had always been—stubborn and odd up to the brink of psychosis, yet basically more honest than anyone or anything that had drifted into Anabaptism and Münster during that year. It is true that he was of the type that in times of general unrest can cause great disturbances within a community, but in all truth you couldn’t call him despicable. And history will draw a kinder picture of him than of all the other preachers of the “Kingdom of Zion,” who, like Dear Rothmann, can only partially hide their pastoral vanity behind a facade of rapture. All of these statements are not made until January 1536, directly before the executions, some of them even after the transfer to Münster three days earlier. Before that, however, while they are still in Bevergern and Horstmar, other protocols are taken by men who did not come to interrogate with pain, but rather to speak humanely to those who had

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gone astray and, in keeping with the times, to lead them from the mazes of their tormented souls back to the bright light of Lutheranism. It is the previously mentioned preachers Corvinus and Kymeus, probably sent by “Dear Philipp” to be introduced to the King and to speak with him. So Bockelson sits down with them by the fire, complains about the bitter cold in his cell and his heart problems, yet he intends to endure all of this “with patience and according to God’s will.” The two clerics, however, immediately embroil him in a theological discussion that they report almost verbatim to Georg Spalatin,15 having found Bockelson to be not quite in the rosiest of moods. “As concerned Kymeus and me, we attempted to lead the prisoner back onto the [right] path with kindness that could not have been greater had he been our own brother. We came together with the King and in a conversation about Christ’s kingdom, about authority, about justification and Baptism, about Holy Communion, about Christ’s human nature, and about marriage. When speaking of Christ’s Kingdom, dear God, what rubbish he was ranting! How he distorted the scriptures to fit his dreams, and how he filled the room with his blather. One was truly reminded of the Dodonean Oracle.”16 And so on it went in that lofty metaphorical baroque style that we have already encountered in Kerssenbroch. And what happened? The overstated dialectics of contemporary theologians of the period, so incomprehensible to us today, met head-on with the gloomy, somewhat nebulous dream world of the Leyden rhetorician, and so both sides continued to speak above and beyond one and other in the most elegant of prose. On the question of polygamy he refers to the biblical patriarchs, much to the annoyance of the two pastors and “with the same ignorance he babbled on about authority, and although he recognized it as an order from God, he condoned rebellion when [authority] demanded anything against Christ’s teachings—supported by Peter’s statement that one must obey God before man. To our reply that this could not possibly mean that private citizens be allowed to meet violence with even more violence, he answered . . . I don’t know what he said . . . something about the tyranny of those who gave cause to the opposition in the first place.” And a speaker to the masses around 1900 who had been educated in the Social Democrats’ school of oratory could not have been more glib. As far as child baptism is concerned, he cannot be moved. When the ticklish question of holy communion is brought up and the two preachers fence with him most admirably, using all the nimble moves

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that the foils of their dialectics could muster—then the debate simply breaks off. In any case, the King answered: “Just as I, for my part, offer you to believe in this or that, so you must suffer me to be happy with my opinion.” Thus ends the first conversation, which appears to have taken place under some unlucky stars. With Knipperdolling and Krechting, whom the two gentlemen also visit, it is even worse, and they are forced to write, “that both gave truly inept answers and show no sign of penitence,” and “that this Knipperdolling is much better suited for a gladiator’s battle than a theological discourse.” Which, given all that we know of the bellicose cloth merchant, we are quite prepared to believe. “Knipperdolling and Krechting could not match the cunning and dexterity of the King’s rhetoric, yet they filled us with even greater disgust and revulsion. Should anyone wish for a description of this Knipperdolling—well, Sallust wrote nothing of Catilina that did not fit him down to the smallest detail.17 Knipperdolling’s malevolence and audacity are criticized even by the King.” As for Krechting, however, who found the art of writing to be at odds with Anabaptism, hence reverting to illiteracy—so with Krechting it hardly goes any better. “With respect to obstinacy and agitation, Krechting had found a compatible neighbor in Knipperdolling. To these monsters there has been passed down . . . good God, what nonsense , what ridiculous rubbish, what contradictions to the scriptures we had to listen to!” Attempts at religious conversion of Knipperdolling and Krechting are also doomed to fail, and both gentlemen [Corvinus and Kymeus] would probably have left for Hesse, had it not been for a call from Bockelson that reached them in the last hour. He promises now to be more forthcoming, and the reason for this new spirit of cooperation soon becomes obvious. You see, that unrelenting preacher known as Death is pounding at his cell door, and it is the unbridled will to live that stirs within the prisoner, while naked fear screams from his being. But did this second dialogue bring about a true conversion, a catharsis in the measure of a Greek tragedy? “If mercy were to be shown him, he would, with Melchior Hoffman and his [Bockelson’s] queen Divara18 persuade all Anabaptists—of which there were many, many in Holland, Brabant, England, and Friesland—to be quiet and obedient, in other words to cause no trouble, but rather to silently comply and have their children baptized.” If this is what happened, then it is certainly, in the face of the gallows, a humiliating break with one’s own cause, a denial of one’s own person, a fall into the sewer of shame.

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Here and in every other aspect of the conversation: “Though we are not able to compare ourselves to Christ’s rule on earth, which in his opinion should last a thousand years, he still offered that the Kingdom of Münster was but a mirage. With respect to secular authority, the King admitted that he had unjustly defied it, and if he had had the understanding then which God has given him now, he would never have done so in the first place. Of authority he professes now that it is God’s order which must be obeyed for God’s sake, even if it were to pertain only to Turks and rogues.” This is what Bockelson has come to. “He also says that he knows how to convince the Anabaptists that they never baptized properly and are therefore guilty, that they should keep faith in their hearts and baptize their children.” This is perhaps the most pitiful statement of all, and at this utterance all of the Münster fatalities—the blacksmith Rüscher, the weapons-maker Mollenhecke and his bloody gang, Jan Matthys and Hille Feiken and all those burned and beheaded apostles—they should have entered his cell and demanded to know to what end their suffering and dying had been, now that the King—the leader of the congregation and highest on Mount Zion—had denied them. “Though we found him to be much more agreeable than before, we could not discern anything more in him than that he sought to save his own life.” This is what the two preachers reported of their conversation with Bockelson which, for the sake of accuracy, they had recorded for the authorities as a protocol. “I, Johann von Leyden, signed by my own hand.” Which will unfortunately be of no help. The executioner is already at the door. It is almost a miracle that in spite of all the impatient urging of Cleves and Cologne, the execution does not take place until later in January, and the wretched King is even given the opportunity to have the discussions just described. But now the stay of execution is over, and on January 19 [1536] the prisoners are brought to Münster. The days before the fateful morning of January 22 are taken up with the final interrogation described above, and it is noteworthy that Knipperdolling, unlike Bockelson and Krechting, is tortured during his interrogation because he is suspected of having knowledge of outside connections to the city. Given the cloth merchant’s unmanageable and taciturn character, it is doubtful that much was learned, while the King’s glib tongue and quick wit spared him from torture. When asked if he would like to see a Catholic priest, he happily agrees, and on the day before his execution he receives the bishop’s chaplain Johann von Syburg, who

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spends a rather long time with the condemned. Kerssenbroch, loathing the poor wretch to the very end, asserts that the King used this opportunity to ask the chaplain for an extremely strange favor with respect to Divara, whom he believes to be still alive. It is a favor that is thoroughly obscene and not at all appropriate for a cleric’s ears and that which even 400 years later is difficult to commit to paper.19 We would rather leave unclear whether this really happened or not. Kerssenbroch had little good to say about the poor sinners and sometimes laid it on a bit too thick. And the clergyman would hardly have deigned to pass on such details from the last confession of a man about to die. We do know that von Syburg left the cell deeply moved— shaken by the remorse of this man who only months before had been master over life and death in Münster. The other delinquents testily refused any spiritual comfort, answering in the tenor of good Protestantism that “God was with them in their cells and no one else was needed.” The King, on the other hand, expresses great regrets that he had so casually rejected the well-meaning proposals from the Landgrave of Hesse—he is surely thinking of their exchange of notes around the new year of 1535. Were the Landgrave now present, Bockelson would fall to his knees and beg his forgiveness. He does not, however, renounce his beliefs with respect to child baptism and the human nature of Christ. It is apparent that in death’s immediate proximity his bearing has become simpler, more straightforward. The execution, which must directly follow the actual sentencing, took place on January 22 at eight in the morning. Before that, the bishop entered the city with a cavalcade of three hundred mounted soldiers as well as the commissioners of Jülich and Cologne. Behind him, the gates were hermetically sealed for the duration of the event, while the walls were guarded twice as closely as ever before. The court convenes at the marketplace, the charges read are crimes against God and state, crimes against life and property, defilement of churches, unlawful assembly, and presumption of royal office. There stands Bockelson, seeing his old nemesis the bishop seated imperiously at the window of the Holthusen house, seeing as well the two camp stoves upon whose coals the executioners are holding their glowing pliers. He admits to the judge that he was wrong to oppose the authorities, yet he denies any transgression against God. The other two sullenly admit their guilt. When these poor wretches raise their eyes they can see the iron cages that have been wrought in Dortmund and shipped to Münster, and in which their mutilated bodies will this very day hang from the Lamberti tower.

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Modern man is quick to condemn medieval law and punishments as cruel and barbaric, yet he fails to question, and question he should, whether the social conditions created by capitalism in its heyday—say, life in the slums of Chicago or the latest smear campaign by the press—whether they really attest to the much touted progress of humanity and civilization. Bockelson is the first to be bound to a post and grasped three times by the executor’s glowing pliers.20 Flames shoot from his flesh as a terrible stench assaults the gaping crowd. If several reports can be believed, Bockelson bore up well under this torture, which lasted for an hour. “And while they went on torturing the King,” says a contemporary pamphlet, “he neither spoke nor did he cry out, yet afterwards he kept calling out to God with words such as ‘Father, have mercy on me!’” If reports do not deceive us, a dagger to the chest—as was done with the other delinquents—put an end to his suffering. “When he realized that his life was almost at an end, he shouted: ‘Father, I commend my spirit into your hands!’ And thus he came to his end.” When Knipperdolling is led to the actual gallows and sees the preparations for his torture, he tries to strangle himself with the neck-iron that they were all forced to wear, but he is prevented by the executioners from such a hasty demise. A contemporary report has the impression that Knipperdolling and Krechting are both “grasped much harder with the glowing pliers than was the King,” presumably because of their obstinacy during the last interrogations. Corvinus, who witnessed the entire spectacle, writes that Knipperdolling dies with the words: “May God have mercy on this poor sinner.” Only Krechting moans and cries: “Oh Father, oh Father!” as Corvinus venomously contends, “most certainly to the great applause and delight of the priests, of which Münster has always had a great number. They could want for nothing more, except that Lutherans be exterminated with the same punishment.” That may have been an exaggeration, in that at least Bishop Franz himself was in his heart not so distant from Lutheranism. The burned and torn bodies are placed standing into the three waiting cages, which are hung from the west side of the Lamberti steeple—the King, as is only fitting for a king, in a somewhat larger cage in the middle. The stench plagues the city streets for a month. It appears that only after a year and a day were the remains finally removed and buried in the knacker’s yard. The pliers and cages have been preserved and kept to this very day.21 And this is the end of the strangest kingdom ever to have existed on German soil.

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It is also the end of the mass psychosis that has been discussed here. And that which later emerges in the Netherlands, in England, and even in far-off America, that which was later organized by the mild-mannered Menno Simons22 —what does all that have to do with the black-bearded prophet Matthys and his violent heresy or with his heir Bockelson, who now hangs tortured, torn, and burned from the Lamberti steeple? It is true that the blow that swept down on Münster never wiped out every trace of contentious Anabaptism in all its haunts. It is true that sects led by Batheburg, Joris and Ubbe in Friesland, 23 in Holland and also underground in Westphalia lived on for a time, and it fills Münster’s records for an entire century to follow. It fills them with protocols of Batheburg’s acts of terror, with judgments against participants in the Münster chaos who were apprehended later, with bishops’ warnings to the various diocese magistrates that they should remain extremely vigilant with respect to those who give themselves away as Anabaptists by their dress or greetings or secret signs, to watch out for such surprises as those occurring in 1534 . . . Only after a full decade does Münster regain the privileges that had of course been taken from it. In the meantime the emperor writes harsh letters because the reinstatement of the Catholic religion has made too little progress. A chaplain is reprimanded for expressing from the pulpit his doubt regarding the dogma of purgatory. And even as late as 1625, almost a century after Bockelson, the vicar-general of Münster reminds the citizenry that under no circumstances are they to grant refuge to Anabaptists who still keep cropping up. All that is true, just as true as the conspiracy by Gracchus Baboeuf after the Thermidor in France. As Carlyle states, the Parisian Jacobin Club survived well into the fourth decade of the nineteenth century and perhaps beyond. Yet what does this still all mean? Baboeuf’s conspiracy was only a matter of a few days. Citizen Tallien was a broken, ruined man when a raid by the Paris police happened to find him in December 1812 hiding in an attic.24 And the Jacobins of 1835 whom Carlyle mentions might have been just a peaceful ale-house club of stolid old gentlemen with imposing beer-bellies and bank accounts and grand memories of those glorious days gone by. This is how it goes with mass-psychoses that experience youth just as individuals do when they want to unhinge the entire world and are as irresistible as furious archangels. Later comes a time when their poison weakens and amongst all of those hallucinations the first treetops of sanity begin to emerge, and those affected gradually feel their way back to the world of sober, healthy reality.

Figure 10.1 Contemporary Flugschrift (Flier) depicting the executed Bockelson, Knipperdolling, and Bernd Krechting hanging in cages from the Lamberti Church steeple, 1536 (courtesy of the Münster City Archives).

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They also resemble physical sicknesses in that the younger and stronger the affected organism is, the higher its fever climbs, so that at the onset it always appears as if the fever intends to burn up the patient’s entire body. If the crisis is survived, then the hallucinations and delirium are incomprehensible to the patient himself, who shrugs his shoulders and proceeds to put them in the past. But if a people as young as the Germans of the late Middle Ages could be so severely infected by the alien spiritual virus of the Renaissance, the removal of God, the secularization of thought, and the onset of capitalism, then it could not have fallen prey to this infection without the two great fever crises known as the Peasants’ War and the Zion of Münster. We would perhaps do well to hunt for the infectious germs of the entire movement not in religious but rather in anticapitalistic problems, not in the controversial theological questions but rather in the dreary social longings of the late-medieval masses, and finally in the fulfillment of those wishes through the communism that manifested itself in the Anabaptist rule of Münster.25 It was never the religious monomaniac Knipperdolling who determined the course of events, but rather it was Bockelson, risen from the sewer, who, as well we saw, offers in his last hours to squelch all of Anabaptism in exchange for his life. It was not religious visions and hallucinations that motivated this first soviet republic, but rather it came to these end-products of mass-hysteria only because the era in all of its social and class structure was coming apart at the seams. That there was a great political gangster fanning the flames under his witches’ cauldron was the accursed fate of this city that had to pay so dearly for all of it. Today, recuperating from the nineteenth century, we see this thing commonly called the Renaissance quite differently than did our progress-worshiping forefathers. We are fumbling our way back to the wisdom that the landscape of a given people is one and the same as the fate of that people, and that these deadly boils erupt where a people attempts to live “against its geography.” For all of its great beacons and signals, the Renaissance was for Germany tantamount to the invasion of an alien sense of life. It unleashed this Münster tempest whose total impact, where it did not falsify, then muddled and confused four centuries of German history. To be able to read its gradual decline on the most sensitive barometers of the time presents a great hope that just might be the hope of a generation which is ready to suffer and must now begin the process of healing.

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Notes 1. Soldatska was a derogatory term for the lowest and most brutal of mercenary soldiers. Its negative connotation is even more extreme than Landsknecht and is applied especially to bands of soldiers who roamed German lands killing, looting, and raping during the Thirty Years War. 2. In Reck’s eyes these “raving Anabaptist shrews” are nothing more or less than a prototype for the most committed daughters of the Third Reich; in his August 16, 1944 Diary entry (some six years after completing Bockelson) Reck describes the leader of a local women’s organization as follows: “This lovely lady is no creature of my imagination. I saw her with my own eyes: a golden-tanned forty-year-old with the insane eyes of all this type—I remind you that next to the schoolteachers these female hyenas are among the most rabid of our Hitlerite whirling dervishes” (Diary, 199). 3. The bishop had the women brought before him when he was back in the city. He reproached them for the confusion and demanded their renunciation. Only a few of them followed that demand, as most of them preferred poverty and exile to the demands of penitence. Many of them went to Holland, some to England, and some even to America. Members of the commission that was to conduct the distribution of their properties were Johann von Merfeld, the two new mayors of Münster and Coesfeld, and Rotger Schmising, whom we know from that ominous night in February (Reck, 210). 4. The problems encountered by the return of Münster’s dispossessed bring to mind the gargantuan task undertaken by the Treuhandanstalt after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, adjudicating claims made by those who had lost property when East Germany became the German Democratic Republic in 1949. 5. Cardinal Clemens August Graf von Galen—the legendary “Lion of Münster” (der “Löwe von Münster”)—was Münster’s bishop throughout the Third Reich, and he remained a fearless and outspoken opponent of the Hitler regime’s encroachments upon the Catholic church. In his June 1, 1935 announcement of the impending four-hundredth anniversary of the expulsion of the Anabaptists from Münster, he leaves little doubt as to his perception of the relationship between the Anabaptists and the Nazis with respect to the fate of Münster: On June 25 of this year . . . it will be 400 years since the Bishopric of Münster was after a long struggle, freed from the rule of the Anabaptists. . . . When we think back to what great dangers and threats to their Catholic beliefs were forced on our forefathers, then we have occasion to thank the Lord God, whose presence saved the city and diocese of Münster. Divine Providence holds the reins of history and fate. To be sure it lets the storms come which give us the opportunity to preserve our faith. But ‘he who

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6.

7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

13.

holds out to the end will be saved’ (Matthew 24: 13). That was true then, it is true today, it will always be true (von Galen, 223). As with Rothmann, the search for Bockelson among the bodies went on for days. Then they looked for him in a hermetically sealed quarter of the city. Utterly exhausted from battle, he had hidden in the house of Frau Katharina Hobbels, who betrayed him after several days to the commander of the troops. In so doing, she is said to have bought safety for herself and her property (Reck, 210). From a later conversation between Bockelson and the two predicants Corvinus and Kymeus, we can conclude that even Bockelson did not know of Divara’s execution that had taken place six months earlier in July (Reck, 210). Bockelson’s half-jest of being put on show in a cage became a reality for a period of time, while one of Hitler’s greatest fears in the last days of the Third Reich was that he be captured alive by the Russians, “allowing Stalin to exhibit him in a cage” (Toland, 878). In his January 1942 Diary entry, Reck relates “I joined a table of regular customers at the Cafe Helbig, at which the argument of the Catholic theologians present centered about various techniques of punishment [for leading Nazis]. For Herr Propaganda Minister, an appearance, naked, in the monkey cage at the Hellabrunn Zoo at increased prices. . . . For the Great Man himself, nothing less than a world tour, in a cage ‘with rings on his fingers and bells on his toes.’ The precedent here would be the punishment of Bockelson, king of the Anabaptists, whom medieval authorities had put in a cage and exchanged among one another like a canary . . . to enliven things with his gallows humor and saucy bons mots before being put to death” (Diary, 142). In 1527 Knipperdolling had taken part in the rescue of a citizen who had been imprisoned by a predecessor of Bishop Franz von Waldeck. He was jailed for one year and had to buy his freedom with a considerable sum of money (Reck, 210). Another thinly veiled characterization of Austrian Hitler in the guise of Bockelson. Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) was a Dominican monk who sought to reform the Catholic church in Renaissance Italy. He opposed the extravagant di Medicis and even ruled Florence for a short time after their overthrow as leaders of the republic, but he was ultimately excommunicated and burned at the stake by di Medici Pope Alexander VI. He is often characterized as a direct predecessor to Martin Luther. Here Reck is referring to Martin Luther’s reported words of defiance to Kaiser Karl V at the Diet of Worms in 1521: “Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir. Amen.” (“Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen”). On October 30, 1944, Reck writes of Hitler: “With the hatred of the illegitimate, he hates everything that belongs among the precious

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14.

15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

20.

21.

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elements of our tradition, and which does not flatter his vanity” (Diary, 161). Reck’s essential vision of Bockelson as Hitler (as he wrote in 1936– 1937) never falters—“Herr Hitler happened to be in Munich the night of the air raid, and before the alarm had been sounded for the misera plebs, he was already safely tucked away in a private shelter complete with rugs on the floors, baths, and, reportedly, even a movie-projection room. Thus, while the hundreds and hundreds of people buried under rubble struggled horribly to breathe, he might well have been watching a movie . . .” (Diary, October 30, 1942, 160). Georg Spalatin (1484–1545) was a critically important figure in the Protestant Reformation and a close ally of Martin Luther. Of particular significance was his position as secretary and court pastor to Frederick III of Saxony (Friedrich der Weise von Sachsen), acting as an intermediary between Luther and Frederick, without whose friendship and influence Luther would most probably have met with failure or even death. Spalatin’s Annales reformationis is a valuable source of information concerning Luther and the Reformation. The Dodonean Oracle is first mentioned in a poem by Hesiod in the early seventh century BC, telling of an idyllic land called Ellopia that so pleased Zeus that he designated it the land of his own Oracle, which was centered at an ancient fagus oak tree. Gaius Sallustus Crispus (86–35, BC) was a Roman historian and follower of Caesar whose first work, Bellum Catilinae, told of a conspiracy planned by Lucius Sergius Catilina, a Roman patrician who hoped to stage a revolt and take power in 63 BC. Again, it can be observed that Bockelson did not know that Divara had died six months earlier. Kerssenbroch relates this portion of Bockelson’s renunciation of misdeeds and false teachings as follows: “At the same time he wished that Divara, his wife, could be brought to a similar repentance of depravities which she had committed; and when von Syburg expressed his willingness to do so, Bockelson spoke thusly: ‘She will not believe you when you say this, and it will not be easy to convince her that I have recanted my teachings as having been in error, unless you prove your words by evoking a particular sign,’ which sign he then related—that she held the light while he [Bockelson] shaved his pubic hair, wherein crablice were to be found.” (Kerssenbroch, 210, our translation). It appears that the executions took place some time apart from each other. Bockelson died first, but the other two did not witness his torture and death (Reck, 210). The original pliers and other instruments of torture are to be found in the Münster Stadtmuseum, along with copies of the original cages

186

22.

23.

24.

25.

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(made in 1888). The actual cages that contained the bodies of Bockelson, Knipperdolling, and Bernd Krechting still hang from the Lamberti Church tower. Menno Simons (1496–1561) was born in Friesland, ordained as a Catholic priest in 1524, left the priesthood, and was ordained by Obbe [Ubbe] Philips as an Anabaptist minister in 1537. He was a follower of Melchior Hoffman’s peaceful arm of the Anabaptist movement, rejecting the violence and fanaticism of the MatthysBockelson community. He became the most influential leader of the Dutch Anabaptist movement, such that the word “Mennonite” became synonymous with “Anabaptist.” Mennonites were to spread throughout the world and exist to this day in America and elsewhere. The sect of Batheburg was nothing other than a direct offshoot of Bockelson’s community. It was the only Anabaptist enclave that continued to support a doctrine of terror and brutality in keeping with Matthys’s and Bockelson’s teachings. Batheburg was executed in 1537 (Reck, 211). David Joris (ca. 1501–1556) began life as a glass painter, then in 1533 became an Anabaptist, also baptized by Obbe [Ubbo] Philips. He too rejected the violent Matthys-Bockelson variation of Anabaptism, but on certain matters of dogma came into conflict with the more influential Menno Simons and fled to Basel. Three years after his death in 1556 he was found guilty of heresy, whereby his body was exhumed and burned at the stake in Basel. Obbe (also Ubbo) Philips (ca. 1500–1568) also began his spiritual life as a Catholic priest and subsequently fell under the influence of Melchior Hoffman in 1531, while later rejecting the violence of MatthysBockelson Anabaptism. He encouraged and supported Menno Simons as leader of the Anabaptist movement, but later disagreed with Simons and left the Mennonites. Jean Lambert Tallien (1767–1820) was an extreme radical and an important, largely successful figure in the French Revolution. That he survived until 1820 was itself an accomplishment, although his prestige waned considerably in the postrevolutionary nineteenth century. Monarchist Reck-Malleczewen hated all incarnations of socialism, especially that of National Socialism, yet this sentence could also be interpreted as still another vilification of Soviet communism.

Works Cited/Consulted

Arthur, Anthony. The Tailor King. The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 1999. Crowley, Jason. “Hating the Mob.” The New Statesman (March 6, 2000): 53–54. Dethlefs, Gerd. “Das Wiedertäuferreich in Münster 1534/35.” Die Wiedertäufer in Münster. Stadtmuseum Münster. Katalog der Eröffnungsausstellung vom 1. Okt. 1982 bis 27. Feb. 1983. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 1983. 19–36. Donahue, Neil H., and Doris Kirchner, eds. Flight of Fantasy. New Perspectives on Inner Emigration in German Literature 1933–1945. New York: Berghahn, 2003. Galen, Bischof Clemens August Graf von. Akten, Briefe, und Predigten 1933– 1945. Ed. Peter Löffler. Paderborn, Germany: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1996. Galen, Hans, ed. Die Wiedertäufer in Münster. Stadtmuseum Münster. Katalog der Eröffnungsausstellung vom 1. Okt. 1982 bis 27. Feb. 1983. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 1983. Gresbeck, Heinrich. Meister Heinrich Gresbecks Bericht von der Wiedertaufe in Münster. In Berichte der Augenzeugen über das Münsterische Wiedertäuferreich. Geschichtsquellen des Bistums Münster. Bd. 2. Ed. C. A. Cornelius. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 1853, rpr. 1965. 1–214. Harrary, Keith. “The Truth About Jonestown.” Religious Cults in America. Ed. Robert Emmet Long. New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1994. 10–20. Holy Bible, Revised Standard Edition. New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1952. Holy Bible, Translated from the Latin Vulgate. Douay Version (Old Testament). New York: Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1950. Jaszai, Geza. Gotische Skulpturen, 1300–1450. Bildhefte des Westfälischen Landesmuseums für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte 29. Greven/Münster, Germany: Druckhaus Cramer, 1990. Juenger, Ernst. On the Marble Cliffs. Trans. S.O. Hood. Hammondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1970. Kerssenbroch, Hermann von. Geschichte der Wiedertäufer zu Münster in Westfalen. Trans. from Latin to German by E.P. Widman. Münster, Germany: Verlag der Aschendorffschen Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1929.

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WORKS CIT ED

Lang, Jochen. The Secretary: The Man Who Manipulated Hitler. Trans. Christa Armstrong and Peter White. New York: Random House, 1979. Ranke, Leopold von. History of the Reformation in Germany. Trans. Sarah Austen, ed. Robert A. Johnson. London: George Routledge and Sons, 1905. Reck-Malleczewen, Friedrich Percyval. Bockelson: Geschichte eines Massenwahns. 1937. Stuttgart, Germany: Henry Goverts Verlag, 1968. ———. Charlotte Corday. Geschichte eines Attentats. Berlin, Germany: Schützen-Verlag, 1938. ———. Diary of a Man in Despair. Trans. Paul Rubens. New York: Macmillan, 1970. ———. Tagebuch eines Verzweifelten. 1947, Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Eichborn Verlag, 2000. Rost, Nico. Goethe in Dachau. Ein Tagebuch. 1948. Berlin, Germany: Verlag Volk und Welt, 2000. Schmeling, Max. Max Schmeling. An Autobiography. Trans. George B. von der Lippe. Chicago, IL: Bonus Books, 1998. Williams, George Huntston. The Radical Reformation. 1962. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1992.

Works Cited in the Translator’s Preface Arthur, Anthony. The Tailor King. The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 1999. Cowley, Jason. “Hating the Mob.” The New Statesman (March 6, 2000): 53–54. Donahue, Neil H., and Doris Kirchner, eds. Flight of Fantasy: New Perspectives on Inner Emigration in German Literature 1933–1945. New York: Berghahn Books, 2003. Reck-Malleczewen, Friedrich. Bockelson. Geschichte eines Massenwahns. Stuttgart: Henry Goverts Verlag, 1968. ———. Diary of a Man in Despair. Trans. Paul Rubens. London: Macmillan, 1970. Reck-Malleczewen, Irmgard. “In Memoriam. Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen.” Bockelson. Geschichte eines Massenwahns. Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen. Stuttgart: Henry Goverts Verlag, 1968. Rost, Nico. Goethe in Dachau. Ein Tagebuch. Berlin: Verlag Volk & Welt, 1999; originally published 1948.

Works Cited by Karl-Heinz Schoeps Barbian, Jan-Pieter. Literaturpolitik im “Dritten Reich”: Institutionen, Kompetenzen, Betätigungsfehler. Munich, Germany: dtv, 1995. Dülmen, Richard van. Reformation als Revolution. Soziale Bewegung und religiöser Radikalismus in der deutschen Reformation. Munich, Germany: dtv., 1977.

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Dürrenmatt, Friedrich. Werkausgabe in dreissig Bänden. Edited in collaboration with the author. Vol. 1, Es steht geschrieben. Der Blinde. Zurich, Switzerland: Diogenes, 1980. Goertz, Hans-Jürgen. Translated by Trevor Johnson. London, New York: Routledge, 1996. [Orig. Die Täufer. Geschichte und Deutung. Munich: Beck, 1980, 1988]. Klötzer, Ralf. “Hoffnung auf eine andere Wirklichkeit. Die Erwartungshorizonte in der Täuferstadt Münster 1534/35.” In Aussenseiter zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit. Festschrift für Hans-Jürgen Goertz zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Norbert Fischer and Marion KobeltGroch. Leiden, New York, and Cologne: Brill, 1997. Klemperer, Viktor. LTI. Notizbuch eines Philologen. Leipzig: Reklam, 1946; 5th ed. 1978. Laubach, Ernst. “Reformation und Täuferherrschaft.” In Geschichte der Stadt Münster, ed. Franz-Josef Jakobi. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 1993. Ranke, Leopold. Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation. Vol. 3. 2nd ed. Berlin, Germany: Dunker and Humboldt, 1843. Reck-Malleczewen, Friedrich Percyval. Bockelson. Geschichte eines Massenwahns. Wiesenheid: Droemersche Verlagsanstalt, 1946. ———. Diary of a Man in Despair. Trans. Paul Rubens. London: Macmillan, 1970. ———. Tagebuch eines Verzweifelten. Lorch and Württemburg-Stuttgart: Metzler, 1976. Schnell, Ralf. Literarische Innere Emigration. 1933–1945. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1976. Scholdt, Günter: “Wiedertäufer und Drittes Reich. Zu einer Verschlüsselung im literarischen Widerstand.” In Literatur und Sprache im historischen Prozess. Vorträge des Deutschen Germanistentages in Aachen 1982, ed. Thomas Cramer. Vol. 1. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1983.

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Anabaptist Bibliography

Anthony, Dick, and Thomas Robbins. “Religious Totalism, Exemplary Dualism, and the Waco Tragedy.” Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem: Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements. Ed. Thomas Robbins and Susan J. Palmer. New York and London: Routlegde, 1997. 261–284. Arthur, Anthony. The Tailor-King: The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 1999. Bahlmann, Paul. “Die Wiedertäufer zu Münster. Eine bibliographische Zusammenstellung.” Westfälische Zeitschrift 51 (1893): 119–174. Bakker, William de. “Bernhard Rothmann.” Radikale Reformationen. Ed. H.J. Goertz. Munich, Germany: Beck, 1978. 167–178. Barret, Pierre, and Jean-Noel Gurgand. Der König der letzten Tage. (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Ullstein, 1984); originally published as Le Roi des Derniers Jours. Paris: Hachette Littérature Général 1981. Baumann, Clarence. Gewaltlosigkeit im Täufertum. Studies in the History of Christian Thought. Leiden: Brill, 1967. Bax, Ernest Belfort. The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists. New York: American Scholar Publications, 1966; originally published in 1903. Baylor, Michael G. The Radical Reformation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Bender, Mary Eleanor. The Sixteenth-Century Anabaptists as a Theme in Twentieth-Century German Literature. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991; originally diss. Indiana University, 1959. “Bibliography of Anabaptist Materials (16th Century).” The Mennonite Quarterly Review (2002): 1–27. www.goshen.edu/mqr/enganbib.html. Blanke, Friedrich. “Das Reich der Wiedertäufer zu Münster 1534/35. Die äusseren Vorgänge.” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 37 (1940): 13–37. Bolandus. Motus Monasteriensis. Cologne, Germany: 1546. ———. Briefe Lening und Fabricius an den Landgrafen von Hessen. Archiv zu Kassel, 1553. Brecht, Martin. “Die Lieder der Täufer zu Münster und ihr Gesangbuch.” Jahrbuchfür Westf. Kirchengeschichte 78 (1985): 43–48. ———. “Die Theologie Bernhard Rothmanns.” Jahrbuch für Westf. Kirchengeschichte 78 (1985): 49–82.

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Brendler, Gerhard. Das Täuferreich zu Münster 1534–35. Berlin, Germany: Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1966. Burke, Peter. Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800. New York: Harper, 1978. Clasen, Claus Peter. Anabaptism: A Social History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972. Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millennium. Fairlawn, NJ: Essential Books, 1957. Contamine, Philippe. War in the Middle Ages. Trans. Michael Jones. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993. Cornelius, C.A., ed. Berichte der Augenzeugen über das Münsterische Wiedertäuferreich. Die Geschichtsquellen des Bisthums Münster. Bd. 2. 1853. Münster, Germany: Aschendorffische Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1965. Corvinus, Antonius: Acta—Handlungen—Legation und schrifft um der Münsterschen sache geschehn. Wittenberg, Germany: Georg Rhaw, 1536. Deppermann, Klaus, and Benjamin Drewery. Melchior Hoffmann; Social Unrest and Apocalyptic Visions in the Age of Reformation. 1979. Edinburgh, UK: T.&T. Clark, 1987. Dethlefs, Gerd. “Das Wiedertäuferreich in Münster 1534/35.” Die Wiedertäufer in Münster. Stadtmuseum Münster. Katalog der Eröffnungsausstellung vom 1. Okt. 1982 bis 27. Feb. 1983. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 1983. 19–36. ———. “Eine Stadt gegen die Welt: Ende der Wiedertäufer vor 450 Jahren.”Westfälische Nachrichten 22 (Juni, 1985). Detmer, Heinrich. Bilder aus den religiösen und Sozialen Unruhen in Münster während des 16. Jahrhunderts. Münster, Germany: Coppenrath, 1903. ———. “Ungedruckte Quellen zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer in Münster.” Westfälische Zeitschrift 51 (1893): 90–118. Dorpius, Henricus. Die Wiedertäufer in Münster. 1536. Magdeburg, Germany: Heinrichshofen, 1847. ———. “Wahrhafftige historie, wie das Evangelium zu Münster angefangen und darnach durch die Widderteuffer verstöret wieder aufgehört hat.” 1536. Magdeburg, Germany: Ausgabe Merschmann, 1847. Dülmen, Richard van., ed. Das Täuferreich zu Münster 1534–1535. Berichte und Dokumente. München, Germany: dtv, 1974. ———. Reformation als Revolution. Soziale Bewegung und Religiöser Radikalismus in der Deutschen Reformation. Munich, Germany: dtv, 1977. Dürrenmatt, Friedrich. Es steht geschrieben. 1947. Zürich, Switzerland: Arche, 1963. ———. Die Wiedertäufer. Eine Komödie in zwei Teilen. Zurich, Switzerland: Arche, 1967. Estep, William Roscoe. “The Anabaptist Beginnings” (1523–1533). A Source Book. Nieuwkoop, Netherlands: B. de Graaf, 1976. ———. The Anabaptist Story: An Introduction to Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism. 1975. Grand Rapids, MI: Erdmans, 1996.

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Fast, H. Der linke Flügel der Reformation: Glaubenszeugnisse der Täufer, Spiritualisten, Schwärmer und Antitrinitarier. Bremen, Germany: Schemann, 1962. Galen, Bischof Clemens August Graf von. Akten, Briefe, und Predigten 1933–1945. Ed. Peter Löffler. Paderborn, Germany: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1996. Galen, Hans, ed. Die Wiedertäufer in Münster. Stadtmuseum Münster. Katalog der Eröffnungsausstellung vom 1. Okt. 1982 bis 27. Feb. 1983. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 1983. ———. Münster 800–1800. Tausend Jahre Geschichte der Stadt. Ausstellungskatalog des Stadtmuseums Münster, 1984–85. Münster, Germany: Stadtmuseum Münster, 1984. Geisberg, Max. “Die Nachgrabungen am alten Kreuzthor zu Münster und deren Ergebnisse.” Mitteilungen der westfälischen Altertumskommission 1 (1899): 77–98. Geschichtsquellen des Bistums Münster. Bd. 1. Die Münsterschen Chroniken des Mittelalters. Ed. Julius Ficker; Bd.2. Berichte der Augenzeugen über das Münsterische Wiedertäuferreich. Ed. C.A. Cornelius. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 1853. Bd. 3. Die Münsterischen Chroniken von Röchel, Stevermann und Corfey. Ed. Johann Janssen. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, n.d. Goertz, Hans-Jürgen. The Anabaptists. Trans. Trevor Johnson. New York: Routledge, 1996. ———. Die Täufer. Geschichte und Deutung. München, Germany: C.H. Beck, 1980. ———. Umstrittenes Täufertum 1535. Neue Forschungen. Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1975. Gresbeck, Heinrich. “Meister Gresbecks Berichte von der Wiedertaufe in Münster.” Berichte der Augenzeugen über das Münsterische Wiederäuferreich. Die Geschichtsquellen des Bistums Münster. Ed. C.A. Cornelius. Bd. 2. Münster, Germany: 1853; rpr. Münster: Aschendorff’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1965. 1–214. Grieser, Dale J. Seducers of the Simple Folk. The Polemical War Against Anabaptism (1525–1540). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Grosso, Michael. The Millennium Myth: Love and Death at the End of Times. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 1994. Guderian, Hans. Die Täufer in Augsburg. Ihre Geschichte und ihr Erbe. Pfaffenhofen, Germany: W. Ludwig Verlag, 1984. Halbe-Bauer, Ulrike. Propheten im Dunkel. Münster, Germany: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 1995. Haller, Bertram. “Bernhard Rothmanns gedruckte Schriften. Ein Bestandsverzeichnis.” Jahrbuch für Westf. Kirchengeschichte 78 (1985): 83–102. Harrary, Keith. “The Truth about Jonestown.” Religious Cults in America. Ed. Robert Emmet Long. New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1994.

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Haude, Sigrun. In the Shadow of ‘Savage Wolves’; Anabaptist Münster and the German Reformation during the 1530s. Boston, MA: Humanities Press, 2000. Hennig, Matthias. “Askese und Ausschweifung. Zum Verständnis der Vielweiberei im Täuferreich zu Münster 1534–35.” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter 40 (1983): 25–45. Hillerbrand, Hans Joachim. Anabaptist Bibliography, 1520–1630. St Louis, MO: Center of Reformation Research, 1991. ———. Bibliographie des Täufertums. (1520–1630). Gütersloh, Germany: G. Mohn, 1962. ———. A Bibliography of Anabaptism. Elkhart, IN: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1962. ———. A Bibliography of Anabaptism, 1520–1630. A Sequel: 1962–1974 Sixteenth- Century Bibliography 1. St Louis, MO: Center of Reformation Research, 1975. ———., comp. The Protestant Reformation. New York: Harper & Row, 1968. Hollstein, F.W. German Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts ca., 1400–1700. Bd.1. Amsterdam: M. Hertzberger, 1954. Holy Bible, Revised Standard Edition. New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1952. Holy Bible, Translated from the Latin Vulgate. Douay Version (Old Testament). New York: Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1950. Homann, Hermann. Aufstieg und Fall des Wiedertäuferreiches in Münster 1534–35. Münster, Germany: F. Coppenrath, 1977. Jaszai, Geza. Gotische Skulpturen, 1300–1450. Bildhefte des Westfälischen Landesmuseums für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Nr. 29. Greven/Münster, Germany: Druckhaus Cramer, 1990. Kerssenbroch, Hermann von. Anabaptistici furoris: monasterium inclitam westphaliae metropolim evertentis historico narratio; im Auftrage des Vereins für Vaterländische Geschichte und Altertumskunde herausgegeben von H. Detmer (Historical Narrative of the Anabaptist Uproar in the Westphalian City of Münster; commissioned by the Association of National History and Archaeology, ed. H. Detmer), 2 vols. Münster, Germany: Theissing, 1899–1900. ———. Geschichte der Wiedertäufer zu Münster in Westfalen. Trans. S.P. Widmann. 1771. Münster: Verlag der Aschendorffschen Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1929. Kirchhoff, Karl-Heinz. “Die Belagerung und Eroberung, Münsters 1534/35” Westfälische Zeitschrift 112 (1962). ———. Die Täufer in Münster 1534–35. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 1973. ———. Die Wiedertäufer-Käfige in Münster. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 1996. ———. “Gab es eine friedliche Täufergemeindschaft in Münster 1534?” Jahrbuch für Westf. Kirchengeschichte 56 (1962–63): 7–21.

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———. “Was there a Peaceful Anabaptist Congregation in Münster in 1535?” Mennonite Quarterly Review 44 (October 1970): 359–370. Klaassen, Walter. Living at the End of the Ages. Apocalyptic Expectation in the Radical Reformation. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992. ———, ed. Anabaptism in Outline: Selected Primary Sources. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1981. Klötzer, Rolf. Die Wiedertäuferherrschaft von Münster: Stadtreformation und Welterneuerung. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 1992. Kluge, Dietrich. “Die Vorbereitung der Täuferherrschaft in Münster.” Jahrbuch für Westf. Kirchengeschichte 68 (1975): 23–38. ———. “Kirchenordnung und Sittenzucht in Münster.” Jahrbuch für Westf. Kirchengeschichte 67 (1974): 219–235. ———. “Die Rechts- und Sittenordnung des Täuferreiches zu Münster.” Jahrbuch für Westf. Kirchengeschichte 69 (1976): 75–100. Kobelt Groch, Marion. Aufsässige Töchter Gottes: Frauen im Bauernkrieg und in den Täuferbewegungen. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1993. Lang, Jochen. The Secretary: The Man Who Manipulated Hitler. Trans. Christa Armstrong and Peter White. New York: Random House, 1979. List, Günther. Chiliastische Utopie und Radikale Reformation. Erneuerung der Idee vom Tausendjährigen Reich im 16. Jahrhundert. Munich, Germany: n.p., 1973. Luckhard, Jochen., ed. “Heinrich Aldegrever und die Bildnisse der Wiedertäufer.” Ausstellungskatalog des Westf. Landesmuseums für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte. Münster, Germany: Westfälische Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, 1973. Meyer zur Capellen, Jürg, Christine Pielken, and Alfred Hrdlicka. Die Ästhetik des Grauens: Die Wiedertäufer. Münster, Germany: RhemaVerlag, 2003. Neuhaus, Helmut. “Das Reich der Wiedertäufer von Münster.” Westf. Zeitschrift 133 (1983): 9–36. Oer, Rudolfine Freiin von. “Das Täuferreich von Münster und die Frauen.” Geschichte lernen und lehren—am Beispiel der Stadt Münster. Ed. U. Kröll. Münster, Germany: n.p., 1985. 410–415. Oman, Charles. A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century. London: Methuen, 1937. Ozment, Steven, E. Mysticism and Dissention. Religious Ideology and Social Protest In the Sixteenth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973. Paulus, Helmut. Die Tönernen Füsse. Bonn, Germany: Vink, 1953. Pfeiffer, Gerhard, ed. Nürnberg—Geschichte einer europäischen Stadt. Munich, Germany: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1971. Plümper, H.D. Die Gütergemeinschaft bei den Täufern des 16. Jahrhunderts. Göppingen: A. Kümmerle, 1972.

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Poeschke, Joachim, Candida Syndikus, and Thomas Weigel. Mittelalterliche Kirchen in Münster. Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 1993. Prinz, Joseph. “Bernd Knipperdolling und seine Sippschaft.” Westfalen 40 (1962): 96–116. Ranke, Leopold von. History of the Reformation in Germany. Trans. Sarah Austin. Ed. Robert A. Johnson. London: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1905. Reck-Malleczewen, Friedrich Percyval. Bockelson: Geschichte eines Massenwahns. Stuttgart, Germany: Henry Goverts, 1968; originally published in 1937. Robbins, Thomas, and Susan J. Palmer, eds. Millennium, Messias and Mayhem: Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements. New York and London: Routledge, 1977. Roth, John D., and James M. Stayer, eds. A Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521–1700. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007. Rothert, Hermann, and Karl-Heinz Kirchoff. Das Reich der “Wiedertäufer” zu Münster. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 1984. Seifert, Thomas. Die Täufer zu Münster. Münster, Germany: Agenda Verlag, 1993. Stayer, James M. Anabaptists and the Sword. Lawrence, KS: Coronado Press, 1972. ———. The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods. Montreal, Canada/Buffalo, NY: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991. Stupperich, Robert. Das Münsterische Täufertum. Ergebnisse und Probleme der Neueren Forschung. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff. 1958. ———. Die Schriften der Münsterischen Täufer und ihrer Gegner. 3 vols. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 1980. ———. “Landgraf Philip von Hessen und das münsterische Täufertum.” Festgabe für W.F. Dankbaar. Amsterdam, Netherlands: n.p., 1977, 98–115. Thompson, Stephen, P. The Reformation. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Van Sittart, Peter. The Siege. New York: Walker, 1962. Warnke, Martin. “Durchbrochene Geschichte. Die Bilderstürme der Wiedertäufer in Münster 1534/35.” Bildersturm, Zerstörung der Kunstwerke. Ed. Martin Warnke. Munich, Germany: Karl Hanser. 1973. 65–98. Williams, George Huntston. The Radical Reformation. 1962. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1992. Wolgast, Eike. “Herrschaftsorganisation und Herrschaftskrisen im Täuferreich von Münster 1534/35.” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 69. 179–201. Zuck, Lowell H. Christianity and Revolution: Radical Christian Testimonies 1520–1650. Philadelphia, PA: Temple Press, 1975.

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Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen’s Original Bibliography for Bockelson: Geschichte eines Massenwahns (Bockelson: A Tale of Mass Insanity) Bolandus. Motus Monasteriensis. Cologne, Germany: 1546. ———. Briefe Lening und Fabricius an den Landgrafen von Hessen. Archiv zu Kassel, 1553. Corvinus, Antonius: Acta—Handlungen—Legation und schrifft um der Münsterschen sache geschehn. Wittenberg, Germany: Georg Rhaw, 1536. Dorpius, Henricus. Wahraftige Historie, wie das Evangelim zu Münster angefangen und danach durch die Wiedertäufer verstöret wieder aufgehört hat. 1536. Magdeburg, Germany: Ausgabe Merschmann, 1847. Fässer. Geschichte der Münsterischen Wiedertäufer. Münster: Theissig, 1852. Geschichtsquellen des Bistums Münster. Bd. 1. Die Münsterschen Chroniken des Mittelalters. Ed. Julius Ficker; Bd. 2. Berichte der Augenzeugen über das Münsterische Wiedertäuferreich. Ed. C.A. Cornelius. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 1853; Bd. 3. Die Münsterischen Chroniken von Röchel, Stevermann und Corfey. Ed. Johann Janssen. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, n.d. Gespräche und Disputation Antonii Corvini und Joannis Kymei mit dem Münstischen König. 1536. Hammelmann. “Ecclesiasticae de renato evangelio et motu postea incepto in urbe Monasteriensi explicato brevis.” Kerssenbroch, Hermann von. Anabaptistici furoris Monastium inclitam Westphaliae Metropolim evertentis historica narratio. Kommentierte Ausgabe Detmer, Geschichtsquellen des Bistums Münster. Bd. 6. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 1899. Löffler, Klemens, ed. Berichte Aussagen und Aktenstücke von Augenzeugen und Zeitgenossen. Jena, Germany: Diederichs, 1923. Niesert, Joseph. Münsterische Urkundensammlung. Bd. 1. Coesfeld: Wittreven, 1826. Neudecker, Christian Gotthold. Urkunden aus der Reformationszeit. Cassel 1836. Ranke, Leopold von. Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation. Bd. 3. Berlin: Drucker & Humboldt, 1839–1847.

Flugschriften der Zeit (Fliers of the Period) “Kurtze historia vom anfang, mittel und ausgang des königreiches zu Münster.” Münster, Germany 1536. “Der gantze handel und geschicht von der stat Münster.” Münster, Germany: 1536. “Historia der belagerung und eroberung der stat Münster.” Münster 1535.

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Inner Emigration Bibliography

Adorno, T. Minima Moralia. Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben (Gesammelte Schriften 4) Ed. R. Tiedemann. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1997. Albrecht, Friedrich. Deutsche Schriftsteller in der Entscheidung. Wege zur Arbeiterklasse 1918–1933. Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau, 1970. Aman, Klaus. Der “Anschluss” der österreichischen Schriftsteller an das Dritte Reich. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: n.p. 1988. Amtzen, H., ed. Ursprung der Gegenwart: Zur Bewusstseinsgeschichte der Dreissiger Jahre in Deutschland. Weinheim, Germany: Beltz Athenäum: 1995. Aspetsberger, Friedbert. Literarisches Leben im Austrofaschismus. Der Staatspreis. Königstein, Switzerland: Hain, 1980. ———. Bürokratie und Konkurrenz—eine Möglichkeit des (literarischen) Überlebens? Zu Arnolt Bronnen während der NS-Herrschaft. In Macht Literatur Krieg. Österreichische Literatur im Nationalsozialismus. Ed. Uwe Baur, Karin Gradwohl Schlachter, Sabine Fuchs. Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau, 1998. 202–226. Assmann, M., and H. Heckmann, eds. Zwischen Kritik und Zuversicht: 50 Jahre Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung. Göttingen, Germany: Wallstein, 1999. Baird, Jay W. “Hitler’s Muse. The Political Aesthetics of the Poet and Playwright Eberhard Wolfgang Moeller.” German Studies Review 17 (1994): 269–285. Bänzinger, Hans. “Literarische Konsequenzen einer nationalistischen Utopie: Jacob Schaffner.” Autoren, damals und heute. Literaturgeschichte Beispiele veränderter Wirkungshorizonte. Ed. Gerhard P. Knapp. Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1991. 489–512. Barbian, J. P. Literaturpolitik im “Dritten Reich”: Institutionen, Kompetenzen, Betätigungsfelder. Munich, Germany: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1995. Basker, David. “‘I Mounted Resistance, Though I Hid the Fact’: Versions of Wolfgang Koeppen’s Early Biography.” Flight of Fantasy: New Perspectives on Inner Emigration in German Literature, 1933–1945. Ed. Neil H. Donahue and Doris Kirchner. New York: Berghahn, 2003. 258–268. ———. Chaos, Control and Consistency: The Narrative Vision of Wolfgang Koeppen. Bern and New York: Peter Lang, 1993.

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Basker, David. Literaturpolitik im “Dritten Reich,” Institutionen, Kompetenzen, Betätigungsfelder. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: n.p. 1993. Bathrick, David. “State of the Art as Art of the Nazi State: The Limits of Cinematic Resistance.” Flight of Fantasy: New Perspectives on Inner Emigration in German Literature, 1933–1945. Ed. Neil H. Donahue and Doris Kirchner. New York: Berghahn, 2003. 292–302. Becker, Wolfgang. Film und Herrschaft. Organisationsprinzipien und Organisationsstrukturen der nationalsozialistischen Filmpropaganda. Berlin, Germany: n.p. 1973. Behn, Manfred. “Diskrete Transaktionen. Bürgermeister Winkler und die Cautio.” Das Ufa-Buch. Kunst und Krisen, Stars und Regisseure, Wirtschaft und Politik. Ed. V. Hans-Michael Bock and Michael Töteberg. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Hamburgisches Centrum für Filmforschung e.V., 1992. 388–390. Bermann Fischer, Gottfried. Bedroht—Bewahrt. Der Weg eines Verlegers. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: S. Fischer, 1971. Bialas, Wolfgang, and Anson Rabinach. Nazi Germany and the Humanities. Oxford: Oneworld, 2007. Bluhm, L. Das Tagebuch zum Dritten Reich: Zeugnisse der Inneren Emigration von Jochen Klepper bis Ernst Juenger. Bonn, Germany: Bouvier, 1991. Blunck, Hans Friedrich. Deutsche Schicksalsgedichte. Oldenburg, Germany: G. Stalling, 1935. Bock, S., and M. Hahn, eds. Erfahrung Nazideutschland. Romane in Deutschland. Berlin, Germany: Aufbau Verlag, 1987. Brekle, W. Schriftsteller im antifaschistischen Widerstand 1933–1945 in Deutschland. Berlin, Germany: Aufbau Verlag, 1985. Brockmann, Stephen. “Inner Emigration and Its Origins in Postwar Debates.” Flight of Fantasy: New Perspectives on Inner Emigration in German Literature, 1933–1945. Ed. Neil H. Donahue and Doris Kirchner. New York: Berghahn, 2003. 11–26. Bronnen, Arnolt. Tage mit Bertolt Brecht. Geschichte einer unvollendeten Freundschaft. Vienna, Munich, Basel: K. Desch, 1960. Bungert, Heike. “Deutsche Emigranten im amerikanischen Kalkül. Die Regierung in Washington, Thomas Mann und die Gründung eines Emigranten Komitees 1943.” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 16 (1998): 253–268. Caemmerer, C., and W. Delabar, eds. Dichtung im Dritten Reich? Zur Literatur in Deutschland 1933–1945. Opladen, Germany: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1996. Crowley, Jason. “Hating the Mob,” The New Statesman (March 6, 2000): 53–54. Cuomo, G. National Socialist Cutltural Policy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. ———. “Opposition or Opportunism? Günther Eich’s Status as Inner Emigrant.” Flight of Fantasy; New Perspectives on Inner Emigration in German Literature, 1933–1945. Ed. Neil H. Donahue and Doris Kirchner. New York: Berghahn, 2003. 176–187.

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———. Career at the Cost of Compromise: Günter Eich’s Life and Work in the Years 1933–1945. Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1989. Cziffra, Geza von. Es war eine Rauschende Ballnacht. Eine Sittengeschichte des Deutschen Films. Munich and Berlin: Herbig, 1985. Dahlm, V. “The Limits on the Literary Life in the Third Reich.” Flight of Fantasy: New Perspectives on Inner Emigration in German Literature, 1933–1945. Ed. Neil H. Donahue and Doris Kirchner. New York: Berghahn, 2003. 168–173. Decloedt, Leopold R. G. “Weder Kaiser noch König—sondern ein Führer. Die Funktionalisierung der Geschichte bei Bruno Brehm.” Dichtung im Dritten Reich. Zur Literatur in Deutschland 1914–1945. Ed. Christiane Caemmerer and Walter Delabar. Opladen, Germany: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1966. 205–213. Denk, F. Die Zensur der Nachgeborenen: Zur regimekritischen Literatur im Dritten Reich. Weilheim, Germany: Denk-Verlag, 1996. Denkler, H. “Hellas als Spiegel der Gegenwart in der Literatur des ‘Dritten Reichs.’” Zeitschrift für Germanistik (1999): 11–27. ———. “Janusköpfig: Zur ideologischen Physiognomie der Zeitschrift Das Innere Reich (1934–1944).” Die deutsche Literatur im Dritten Reich. Ed. H. Denkler and K. Prümm. Stuttgart, Germany: Reclam, 1976. Donahue, Neil H., and Doris Kirchner, eds. Flight of Fantasy: New Perspectives on Inner Emigration 1933–1945. New York: Berghahn Books, 2003. Drafz, Helge. “Konvention oder Kollaboration? Zur Langlebigkeit bildungsbürgerlicher Kulturideale am Beispiel der Schriften von Otto Brües.” Dichtung im Dritten Reich. Zur Literatur in Deutschland 1914–1945. Ed. Christiane Caemmerer and Walter Delabar. Opladen, Germany: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1966. 277–291. Drewniak, Boguslaw. Der Deutsche Film 1938–1945. Düsseldorf : Droste, 1987. ———. Das Theater im NS-Staat. Düsseldorf, Germany: Droste, 1983. Durrani, Osman, and Julian Peerce, eds. Travellers in Time and Space: The German Historical Novel/Reisende durch Zeit und Raum: Der deutschsprachige historische Roman. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Rodopi, 2001. Eckhardt, Wolf von. To Stay or Leave Germany’s Inner Emigration. Sound recording: Non-music, lectures, speeches, 1986. Euler, Friederike. “Theater zwischen Anpassung und Widerstand. Die Münchner Kammerspiele im Dritten Reich.” Bayern in der NS Zeit. Ed. Martin Broszat and Elke Fröhlich. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1979. 91–173. Fechter, Paul. Menschen auf meinen Wegen. Begegnungen gestern und heute. Gütersloh, Germany: Bertelsmann, 1955. ———. Geschichte der deutschen Literatur. Gütersloh, Germany: Bertelsmann, 1952. Fechter, Sabine. “Paul Fechter. Wege und Formen der Opposition im Dritten Reich.” Publizistik 9 (1964): 17–39.

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Index

Aa River, 18, 22, 25, 81, 140, 162 Aachen, 121, 171, 189 Accolade, 146 Alexander VI, 9, 15, 184 Alfen, Dietrich von, 105, 115 Alsace, 4 America, 2, 46, 150–152, 180, 183, 186–187, 193, 199 Amphipolis, Battle of, 16 Amsterdam, 102, 122, 128, 171, 194, 196 Anabaptism, 4, 14, 35, 68, 94, 103, 106, 137, 162, 167, 171, 173–174, 176, 180, 182, 186 army, 14, 164 rule of Münster, 182 movement, 4–5, 63, 68, 171, 182, 186, 191, 196 prophets, 4, 17, 21, 27–28, 34, 39, 42, 45, 59–60, 63–64, 66, 73, 77, 82, 86, 94–95, 104, 130, 134, 141, 161, 162, 169 Anabaptist, 8, 12–15, 18–19, 23–25, 28, 35, 37–41, 49, 50–53, 62–66, 67–68, 72, 75, 78–80, 82–83, 85–86, 94–95, 99, 101–103, 105, 108–109, 114–119, 121–122, 124–125, 127, 129–130, 133–134, 137–138, 140, 142–145, 151–153, 156–158, 161–162, 164–168, 176–177, 180, 182–184, 186

community, 1, 4, 44, 50, 54–55, 59, 71, 73, 89, 96, 98, 99, 120, 125, 129, 133, 174, 186 era, 8 kingdom of, 4, 20, 25, 27, 43, 46, 57, 59, 60, 72, 90, 91, 93, 95, 105, 118, 122, 129, 134, 146, 147, 148, 150, 154, 155, 156, 169, 172, 174, 175, 177, 179 leaders, 18, 34, 43, 102, 118, 121, 129, 144, 157, 168, 171 occupation of Münster, 108 peculiarities, 143 polygamy, 4, 6, 71–73, 75, 82, 88, 95, 145, 171, 175 rage, 44, 118, 140 satanic dances, 86 spirit, 85, 99 theology, 26, 94, 95 women, 35, 145 Annexation of Austria, 34 Anti-Bolshevist, 67, 84 Antichrist, 39, 58, 60, 95, 121 Apocalypse, 5, 120 Arnheim, Heinrich von, 79, 160 Arnim, von, 108 Arras, 79 Aryan children, 83 Aspasia, 5, 13 Astronomical Clock, 37 Athens, 16, 163 Augsburg, 12, 63, 68

210 Austrians, 108 Autocracy of prophets, 77 Baal of Nopf, 118 Babeuf, Francois-Noel, 10, 16 Babeuf, Gracchus, Cornelius, 10 Babylon/Babylonians, 118–120, 131, 132, 174, Captivity, 120, 131 Whore of, 174 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 3 Baden Württemberg, 3 Baltic Sea, 32 Baptism, 4, 8, 26, 31, 40, 47, 60, 94–95, 123, 175 of infants, 6, 39, 127, 175, 178 Baptist gentry, 79 oligarchy, 45, 77, 128 reign, 15, 68, 79, 146, 148, 150 Baroque Era, 25, 147 Bartholomew’s Massacre, 18, 34, 163 Basel, 186, 200 Bastille, storming of, 23, 96 Bastwilhelm, 57–58 Batheburg, sect of, 180, 186 acts of terror, 180 Battle of Poltavain, 134 Bazaine, 125 Beckmann, Johann, 90, 105, 11 Beer-Hall Putsch, 35 Bellum Catilinae, 185 Bentheim, Heinrich Count von, 33, 36 Bentinck, Heinrich, 160 Berchtesgaden, 14 Bergengruen, Werner, xxi Berlin, 23, 51, 68, 77, 151 Wall, 188 Berlin’s March of 1848, 77 Besboschnitschestwo (Bolshevik atheism), 41 Bethulia, 36, 64 Bevergern, 33, 66, 156, 157, 174 Biblical patriarchs, 175 Bielefeld, 33, 170

INDEX

Bishop (see also: Waldeck), 6, 12, 14, 18–28, 30, 31, 33, 35–36, 38, 40, 42, 43–46, 53, 55–59, 61–66, 72, 77–81, 85–88, 91–92, 94–95, 100, 102, 104, 106, 114, 115–117, 119–125, 128–129, 132–133, 135, 138, 140–142, 144, 146, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170. 171, 172, 173, 178, 177, 178, 179, 180, 183, 184 army of, 46, 61–62, 66, 78, 88, 121, 122, 134, 140, 142, 144, 146, 151, 153, 154, 157, 159, 161, 163, 166 cousin of, 91 son of, 14, 91 Bismarck, Otto von, 68 Bisping, Hermann, 79, 91 Black marketeering, 51 Bocholt, 42 Bockelson, comparisons to Hitler, xv, 12, 14, 15, 16, 35, 36, 37, 50, 66, 67, 68, 83, 84, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 132, 133, 134, 135, 150, 151, 152, 183, 184, 185 Bockelson, Jan, 5, 7–9, 14, 15, 18, 19, 22, 27, 34, 35, 37, 42, 44, 46, 49, 50, 53, 54–55, 64–66, 77–90, 92, 94, 95, 97–103, 106–111, 113–115, 118, 121, 123, 125–127, 129, 131, 132, 134, 138, 139, 141, 142, 145, 147, 148, 150, 151, 153, 154, 159, 160, 167, 175–186, 188, 189 Bockelson, King, 3, 85, 115, 118 harem, 1, 7, 79, 80, 91, 92, 106, 127, 149, 163 kingdom of, 4, 20, 25, 27, 43, 46, 57, 72, 90, 91, 93, 95, 105, 118, 122, 129, 146, 147, 148, 150, 154, 155, 156, 169, 172, 174, 175, 177, 179

INDEX

Boeckebinder, Barthel, 7 Boentrup, 161 Bohemia, 82 Bolsheviks, 24, 67 Bolshevism, 16, 49, 67 Bolshevist man, 97, 110 Bolswerden, 137 Book of Judges, 41 Borgias, 9, 15 Borken, 116, 128, 129 Bormann, Martin, 83 Brabant, House of, 33, 86, 142, 176 Branch Davidians, xvii, xix–xx Braun, Eva, 108 Braunschweig, 20, 35, 142, 148 Braunschweig-Lüneburg, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of, 35 Brecht, Bertolt, xvii Bremen, 94, 142, 193 British Naval Blockade, WWI, 67, 109 Brown Revolution, 37 Brownshirts (SA), 14, 36, 111 Brumaire, 94, 109 Bülow, von, 108 Bund deutscher Mädel, 109 Bunzelwitz, 125, 133 Büren, Melchior von, 19, 23, 34, 42 Büren, Odinga von, 108 Bussch, 91 Bussche, Alexander von dem, 149 Bussenschute, Tile, 19, 162 Butendieck, Barbara, 93 Byzantine Empire, 12 Caesar, Julius Gaius, 22, 35, 51, 108, 185 Calvin, John, 41, 47, 49, 56, 60 Canaan, 10 Carlyle, Thomas, 180 Carmagnole, 25, 35, 95 Carnival, 12, 20, 27, 28 Carocchino, 126 Carolus, Emperor, see: Charlemagne

211

Carthage, 43, 125 Cassel, 62 Cathedral Square, xvii, xxvii, 21–22, 29, 44, 46, 62, 75, 79, 103–105, 108, 126–127, 138, 140, 144, 150, 158–159, 162 Catholicism/Catholic Church, 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 21, 33, 60, 119, 122, 129, 138, 160, 167, 168, 170, 174, 177, 180, 183, 184, 186 Catilina, Lucius, Sergius, 176, 185 Caucasus Mountains, 67 Chamber of Rhetoricians, 8, 9, 143, 169, 172 Charlemagne, 66, 89 Charles V, 12, 14, 92 Charles XII of Sweden, 126, 134 Cheka, see: Tscheka, 10, 16 Chicago, 179 Christ, 4, 22, 29, 33, 40, 41, 48, 57, 58, 59, 60–61, 68, 95, 110, 118, 119, 120, 122, 178 teachings of, 48, 95, 120, 175 Christianity, 45, 95 Christian Zaubersprüche (magic spells), 100, 110 Cleves, 7, 14, 28, 33, 62, 64, 79, 86, 121, 134, 142, 154, 157, 167, 169, 170, 177 Duke of, 167, 170 Coblenz, 121, 122 Coesfeld, 8, 105, 116, 193 Cologne, 27, 33, 62, 64, 85, 115, 142, 167, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 177, 178 Archbishop of, 33, 85, 115, 167, 170 Bishopric, 142 Kurfürst of, 171 Columbus, Christopher, 2, 46 “Concerning Revenge,” 117, 118, 119 Corday, Charlotte, 64, 68, 69 Corvinus, Antonius, 141, 151, 175, 176, 179, 184

212

INDEX

Corytzer, Captain, 63 Council of Elders, 75 Courland, 9, 13 Cranach, Lucas, 9, 15 Crimes against God and State, 178 Crispus, Gaius, Sallustus see: Sallust Cromwell, Oliver, 56 Czechoslovakia, 34 Dachau, 110, 132, 152 Danton, Georges, 169, 173 Darwin, Charles, 82 David, King, 53, 64, 89, 127 De Bello Gallico, 35 De Cuyper, Willem, 7 Deianira, 69 Demons, 97, 110, 118 Denck, Hans, 68 Dencker, Johann, 142 Deniken, Anton Ivanovitch, 59, 67 Denmark, 134 Deventer, 33, 56, 128 Dhaun, Wirich von, 122, 142, 152, 153, 157, 158, 160, 166, 169 Dialektik (dialectics), 118, 175, 176 Diderot, 38 Diet of Worms, 184 Divara, 73, 74, 80, 92, 93, 104, 145, 163, 167, 178, 185 Divine Empire of Münster, 26 Dodonean Oracle, 175, 185 Don Juan, 9 Don, River, 67 Dorp, 70 Dorpius, Henricus, 83, 160 Dortmund, 178 Dostoevsky, Fydor, 97, 110, 118 Douay-Rhiems Bible, 37 Dreier Woman, 128 Dülmen, 170, 171 Dungel, Provost, 40 Dürrenmatt, Friedrich, xxxii Es steht Geschrieben, xxxii Wiedertäufer, Die, xxxii

Dusentschnuer, 88, 89, 90, 102, 103, 105, 107, 116 Dutch Provinces, 32, 58 Edelboit, Heinrich, 56 Egypt, 104, 131 Elba, 143 Elders, 46, 47, 48, 59, 64, 75, 76, 89 Elizabeth of Hungary, 107 Ellopia, 185 Emden, 156 Empire of God, 48, 64 Encyclopedism, 41, 89 Encyclopedists, 32, 38 England, 8, 123, 172, 178, 180, 181 Enoch, 39 Entente 1918, 123 Erfurt, 63 Essen, 171 Estonia, 13 “Et in Terra Rex Hominibus,” 144 Euphorate, 49, 51 Europe, 13, 50, 94, 132, 134, 140 Evangelicals, 119, 151 Exalted Order of the Black Eagle, 152 Ezekiel, 90, 108, 118, 131 Ezra, 101 Fabricius, Dietrich, 6, 22, 35, 120, 122, 123, 124, 132 Fasching, see: Carnival Fastnacht, see: Carnival Feiken, Hille, 27, 36, 64, 65, 68, 177 “First Lady of the Third Reich”, 108 Flanders, 8, 172 Floer, 149 Florence, 184 Follen, Eberhard, 56 Font of Youth, 83 Fontane, Theodor, 131, 135 France, 29, 32, 34, 35, 38, 59, 123 Franconia, 3 Franco-Prussian War, 68, 133

INDEX

Frank, Sebastian, 131 Franke, Master, 41 Frankfurt, 122, 132, 141, 165 Frederick III of Habsburg, 107 Frederick III of Saxony (Frederick the Wise), 185 Frederick the Great of Prussia, 133, 134 Freedom of Religion, 35 Freisler, Roland, xxvii, 109 French Enlightenment, 38 French Revolution, 16, 35, 50, 68, 84, 94, 109, 186 Friesians, 79, 128 Friesland, 5, 13, 27, 63, 64, 66, 102, 117, 121, 122, 137, 142, 176, 180, 186 Führer, 36, 66, 83, 109, 110 Galen, Clemens-August, Count von, “The Lion of Münster,” 37, 183, 184 Gelderland, 62 Geldern, 122, 142, 155 Geldern, Karl, Duke of, 138 Genesis, 37, 49, 66, 73 German Democratic Republic, 152, 183 German Literary Bourgeois Realism Movement, 135 German Revolution, 35, 123 Germany, 3, 4, 5, 13, 15, 28, 32, 35, 36, 37, 49, 50, 67, 68, 72, 82, 84, 85, 99, 107, 122, 131, 132, 139, 166, 173, 182, 183 Germany’s Second Reich, 68 Gert the Smoker, 46, 60 Gestemer, Ever, 35 Gewandschneider, Bernhard, 55 Geyer, Florian, 67 Girondists, 68, 84 Glandorp, Bernhard, 56 “Gloria In Excelsis”, 144 God’s Kingdom, 43, 46, 93 God’s State, 40 Goebbels, Joseph, 51, 107, 151, 152

213

Goerde, 157 Golden Fleece, 92 Goliath, 53 Göring, Hermann, 151 Goslar, 151 Graes, Heinrich, 105, 116, 117, 128, 129, 130, 133, 135, 148 Gravenhagen, 7 Great Britain, 34, 151 Greek Tragedy, 176 Gresbeck, Heinrich, 3, 12, 40, 43–46, 63, 79, 80–82, 88, 92, 97, 100, 110, 127, 137, 141, 145, 146, 148, 150, 154–159 Grey Monks, 55 Groningen, 122 Grubenhagen, Duke of, 96 Grueter, 45 Grünewald, Matthias, 3, 12, 143 Haarlem, Holland, 13, 47, 53, 74, 75 Hades, 146, 163 Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich Philipp August, 82 Haeckel’s The Riddle of the Universe, 72 Hamlet, 97, 98, 100 Hamm, 155, 156, 171 Hanseatic League or die Hanse, 24, 50 Hanseatic princes, 172 Hansen, 42, 50, 158 Hebert, 169 Hebrews, 49 Helfenstein, Count of, 57, 67 Hellenistic Seleucid Dynasty, 131 Hercules, 69 Herden, Hermann, 35 Hesiod, 185 Hesse, 27, 142 Philipp Landgrave of, 6, 12, 13, 33, 35, 57, 67, 72, 82, 87, 93, 95, 119, 120, 143, 151, 152, 167, 175, 176, 178 War commissioner of, 86, 176

214

INDEX

Hildesheim, 142 Hindenburg, Paul von, 36, 66, 67 History of the Reformation in Germany, 131 Hitler, Adolf, xvii, xviii, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxvi, xxvii, xxix, 12, 14–16, 34–37, 50, 66–68, 83, 84, 106–111, 132–135, 150–152, 183–185, 188 Hitler-Jugend (Hitler Youth) 109 Hitler Regime, 250, 183 Hitler’s Brown Revolution, 37, 109 Hitlerite Whirling Dervishes, 183 Hobbels, Katharina, 184 Hoffman[n], Melchior, 4, 5, 13, 63, 95, 173, 176, 186 Holland, 5, 7, 13, 44, 63, 86, 102, 115, 117, 121, 176, 180, 183 Holocaust, 40 Holofernes, 27, 36, 64 Hölscher, Elisabeth, 93 Holtzhausen, Justinian von, 122, 132, 141, 154 Holy City, 42, 43, 60, 63, 80, 81, 119, 128, 138, 161 Holy Communion, 6, 105, 175 Holy Covenant, 44 Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, 29, 32, 37, 107, 115 Holy Scriptures, 56, 61, 71, 72, 122, 171, 175, 176 Holy Spirit, 8, 53, 120 Holy Supper, 102, 105, 114, 115 Horstmar, 174 Howell, Vernon, see: Koresh, David Hubmaier, Balthasar, 68 Huguenots, 34 Hungary, 82, 107 Hut, Hans, 68 Iburg, 116, 117, 129, 130 Iconoclasm, 2, 12 Inner Emigration, iii, iv, viii, ix, xiv, xix, xxi, xxx, xxxi, xxxv, 36, 38, 49, 109, 152

Introit, 144 Invocavit, 40 Iselmunde, 34 Isenburg, Count of, 186 Israelites, 103, 131, 132 Jacobins, 68, 94, 180 Jan von Leyden, see: Bockelson Jericho, 43 Jesus Christ, 4, 48, 52, 60 Teachings of, 95, 120, 175 Jewish Hasmonean Dynasty, 131 Jews, 49, 68, 83, 95 Johann von Leyden, 241, see also: Bockelson Johannisnacht, 157, 161, 164 John the Baptist, 164 John the Peaceful, (John III the Wise) Duke, 14 Jonestown, xvii Joris, David, 180, 186 Joshua, 101 Judas, 25, 114 Judefeldt, Mayor of Münster, 18, 19, 23, 25, 31 Judgment Day, 13, 40, 148 Judith (Hillle Feiken), 28, 36, 64, 65, 66 Juenger, Ernst, ii, 38 On the Marble Cliffs, 11, 38 Jülich, 14, 32, 142, 178 Jülich, Johann Duke of, 129, 148 Jülich-Cleves-Berg, 14 Karl V, see: Charles V Karneval, see: Carnival Katerberg, 146 Katte, von, 108 Kerkerinck, Christian, 92, 105, 142, 170 Kerssenbroch, Hermann, 8, 12, 13, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 36, 41, 51, 55, 57, 66, 72, 73, 75, 83, 87, 89, 92, 93, 98, 110, 141, 161, 175, 178, 185 Kibbenbrock, 24, 27, 42, 92, 162

INDEX

Kingdom of God, 20, 27, 57, 60, 105, 118, 148, 150 Kleist, von, 108 Kleon, 10, 16 Kleve, see: Cleve Klopriss, 7, 17, 66, 71, 77, 83, 88, 95, 105, 115, 133 Knights of the Black Eagle, 146 Knipperdolling, Bernhard, 7, 9, 11, 14, 15, 18, 19, 22, 23, 27, 39, 42, 47, 48, 55–56, 66, 72, 75–79, 81, 90–92, 97–102, 104, 105, 110, 118, 123, 125, 132, 141, 148, 151, 153, 160, 167, 168, 169, 171–174, 176, 177, 179, 181, 182, 184, 186 Knipperdolling, Clara, 92 Knuppers, Meestress, 81, 92 Kock, 146 Koekenbecker, Katharina, 93 Kohlrübenwinter, see: Turnip Winter Kohues, 45 Koltschak, Alexander Wassilevich, 59, 67 Koresh, David, xix–xx, xxix Kottaner, Helene, 89, 107 Krechting, Bernd, 8, 15, 27, 46, 91, 151, 157, 160, 161, 169, 171, 172, 174, 176, 177, 179 Krechting, Count Heinrich, 167, 181, 186 Krechting, Johann, 56 Kristallnacht, 49 Kruse, 45 Kupperschlaeger, Stephan, 56 Kuritzer, 34 Kurmainz, 148 Kymeus, 151, 175, 176, 184 Ladislaus Posthumous of Hungary, 107 Lamballe, princess de, 79, 84 The Secret Memoirs of, 84 Lamberti church, x, xxiv, 10, 15, 22, 24, 35, 47, 68, 118, 162, 178–181, 186

215

Lamberti parish, 160 Lamberti quarter, 158 Langen von, (Rudolf and family), 19, 29, 34 Langestrate, Hänsgen, von der, 154–158 Latvia, 13 Lazarus, 143 Ledde, 142 Leitgen, Zillis, 113, 133 Lenning, 6 Leyden, Holland, 7, 8, 39, 40, 55, 72, 73, 79, 81, 122, 143, 169, 171, 172, 175 Leyden, Jan van, or Johann von, see: Bockelson Leyden Rhetorician’s Club, 8, 9, 143, 169, 172 Lilie, 141 Limes Romanus, 71 Linteloen, von, 19, 34 Lippe, 27, 171 Lippe, Count von der, 33 Livonia, 5, 13, 32 Loccum, 151 Lodi Bridge, 90, 108 London, 50 Louis, XVI, 35, 77 Löwe von Münster, see: Galen Lübeck, 8, 160, 172 Ludger, Saint, 66 Luke, 151 Luther, Martin, 4, 6, 12, 13, 15, 39, 47, 72, 75, 82, 83, 95, 160, 173, 184, 185 Lutheranism, 6, 151, 175 Lutherans, 7, 14, 15, 35, 60, 95, 119, 133, 179 Lüttich, 122 Luxemburg, Karl IV von, 89, 107 Maastricht, 32, 171 Maccabeans, 118, 131 Maccabee, Judah, 131 Magdeburg, 121, 132, 142 Mainz, 122, 132, 142

216

INDEX

Malmaison, 94 Manderscheid, Robert, Count of, 155 Mann, Thomas, xvii Marat, J. P., 68–69 Mardi Gras, 31 Marie Antoinette, 84, 169 Marie Louise, 90 Marpeck, Pilgram, 68 Marschalk, 66 Marseilles, 50 Martinique, Isle of, 94 Mass Man, 41, 49, 113 Mass psychosis/mania, 1, 4, 27, 28, 55–56, 73, 75, 96, 99, 118, 126, 146, 173, 174, 180 Matthew, 68, 110, 184 Matthys, Jan, 5, 7, 8, 13, 14, 18, 20, 40, 42–44, 47, 53, 54, 60, 66, 73, 80, 92, 95, 173, 177, 180, 186 Matthys-Bockelson Anabaptist community, 186 Maximilian I, “The Last Knight”, 107 Medici di, 184 Meestress Knuppers, 81, 92 Meier, “duke”, 142, 146 Meinhard, Captain, 156 Meister Eckhart, 41 Meister Jakob, 39, 40 Melanchton, Philipp, 5, 13, 72, 82 Menken, 141 Menncken, 56 Mennonites, 186 Merfeld, Dietrich von, 23 Merfeld, Ida von, 18, 19 Merfeld, Johann von, 183 Merincourt Theroigne de, 78, 84 Merode, Scheiffert von, 28, 85, 124, 125, 133 Merseburg, 110 Cathedral, 110 Merseburger Zaubersprüche, 100, 110 Meticulous Neck Ordinance, 72 Metz, 125, 133

Middle Ages, 1, 30, 37, 41, 42, 45, 89, 110, 114, 182 Midsummer Night Eve, 118, 146, 154, 164 Moderson, Margarethe, 92 Mollenhecke, Heinrich, 56, 77, 78, 79, 80, 97, 150, 177 Mons Sacer, 47 Montenotte, 90 Battle of, 108 Montesquieu, 38 Moravia, 63 Mordechai, 101 Morien, Gerhard von, 33 Moring, Officer, 31 Moscow, 20, 41, 59 Moses, 61 Mount Sinai, 47 Mühlberg, 62 Mumme, Bernhard, 29 Munich, 4, 83, 150, 151, 164, 185 Münster, Anabaptism, 12, 13, 15, 51, 67, 68, 82, 109, 131–132, 182, 183 Babylon, 118 Divine Empire, 26, 63 Enclave of, 12, 13, 15, 35, 49, 129 Isle of the Blessed, 73 Israelites, 56 Kingdom of, 89, 90, 95, 113, 129, 145, 177 Prophets of, 45, 53, 57, 85 Zion of, 2, 4, 7, 13, 34, 41, 45, 61, 80, 83, 182 Münsterland, 85, 106 Münzer, Thomas, 3, 12, 107 Mutual Tolerance, 25, 27 Myth of the 20th Century, the, 13, 23 Napoleon, 37, 89, 90, 94, 108, 109, 143 Napoleonic Wars, 37 Nassau Count of, 86 National Socialism, 110, 186 National Socialists, see: Nazis

INDEX

Nazi Party, 150 Nazi Germany, 36, 49, 68, 84 justice, 109 Nazis, 14, 16, 34, 35, 37, 67, 134, 183, 187 Nebuchadnezzar, 36, 131 Nessus, 69 Shirt of, 64, 69 Netherlands, 14, 28, 63, 85, 102, 119, 133, 180 Neuenahr, Count of, 86 Neuss, 64 New Marriage Laws, 72, 75–79, 80–95 New Testament, 37, 68, 132 Night of the Long Knives, 111 Nopf (Memphis), 121 Baal of, 18 Nordrhein-Westfalen, 14, 106 Northern German Renaissance, 12, 15, 151 Northorn, Klaus, 144, 148 Norway, 134 November Revolution, 35, 37 Novgorod, 50 Nuremberg, 45, 50, 109 Laws, 1935, 68, 83 Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 151 Obersachsen, see: Upper Saxony Obersalzberg, 51, 108, 150 Ocken, Eber, 35 Odysseus, 97, 130 Old Covenant, 104 Old High German, 110 Old Testament, 1, 4, 26, 36, 40, 41, 43, 48, 56, 60, 62, 64, 68, 93, 94, 95, 96, 118, 122, 126, 131, 132 Oligarchy, 45, 77, 128 Baptist, 128 Oliphant’s Horn, 103, 110 Olympics 1936, 68 Opposition in Exile, 36 Ori-Flamme, 33, 38 Osnabrück, 8, 105, 116, 128, 129

217

Bishopric of, 93 Osnabrück, Margarethe von, 130 Palck, Johann, 142, 146 Papists, 4, 60, 95, 119, 144 Paris, 20, 25, 33, 34, 42, 43, 45, 50, 61, 68, 79, 94, 125, 180 Parisian Jacobin Club, 180 Party Rally in Nuremberg, 109 Paulken, 21 Paulus, 64 Paulus, Apostle, 129, 135 Peace of Augsburg, 12 Peasants’ War, 1, 2, 12, 13, 36, 49, 67, 89, 182 Peloponnesian War, 163 Pelster, Irmgard, 108, 164 Pentecost, 62, 63, 157 Pericles, 10, 13 Peringstörff Altar, 41 Peringstörff, Master of, 41 Peter, Apostle, 32, 175 Peter the Great, 9, 72 Pfalz, 122 Pharisees, 151 Philips, Ubbe or Obbe, 180, 186 Pickert, Berndt, 35 Pjotr Stepanovich, 110, 118 Plettenberg, 42 Ploniess, Wilbrant, 35 Poland, 82, 134 Policinelle, 10, 16 Polygamy, 4, 6, 71, 73, 75, 82, 83, 95, 145, 171, 175 defense of, 82, 83 enforcement of, 82 of Münster, 73 public, 73 Portugal, 8 Prophetic visions, 4, 5, 33, 39, 45, 48, 55, 73, 102, 123, 127, 148, 173, 174, 182 Prophetocracy, 5 Protestanism, 5, 12, 107, 167, 168, 178, 185 Protestant Reformation, 13, 131, 185

218

INDEX

Protestants, 5, 12, 14, 18, 21, 33, 57 Prussia, 82, 125, 152 Prussian Siege, 133 Prussians, 35, 43, 146, 152 Pugachev Rebellion, 72 Putsch, 21, 35, 78, 111 Raesfeld, Johann von, 33 Ramert, Hermann, 8, 64, 66, 155 Randau, Heinrich, 148 Ranke, Leopold von, 113, 131 Reck-Malleczewen, Friedrich P., ii, iii, iv, vii, ix, xii, xvii, xviii, xix, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, xxix, xxx, xxxi, xxxiv, xxxv, xxxviii, 12, 14, 15, 16, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 50, 51, 66, 67, 68, 69, 83, 84, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 150, 151, 152, 164, 183, 184, 185, 186 Recke, Droste von der, 34, 59 Recke, Johann von der, 28 daughter of, 28, 162 Redeker, Heinrich, 19, 20, 23, 27, 44, 78, 91, 142 Redeker, Hermann, 56 Red Sea, 102 Reformation, 12, 13, 14, 15, 131, 185 Regenwart, Pastor, 105 Reichstag, 14, 36 Fire, 108 Reichstag in Worms, 142, 153, 167, 168 Reims, 33 Renaissance, 2, 12, 15, 31, 41, 49, 151, 182 Italian, 184 Repgow, Eike von, 82 “Restitution”, 96, 120 “Restoration,” 95, 105 Revelations, 48, 51 Reyninck, 45 Rhine, 59–60, 119 Rhineland, 34

Riedesel, 108 Riefenstahl, Leni, 14, 50 Robespierre, 41, 49, 60, 79, 94 Röchell, 168 Röhm Putsch, 111 Rohrbach, Jaecklein, 57, 67 Roll, 7, 17, 19, 31, 32 Rome, 39, 115 Rosenberg, Alfred, 132 Rostock, 160 Rothmann, Bernhard, 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 26, 28, 39, 62, 77, 78, 79, 85, 91, 93, 95, 96, 105, 117–120, 123, 139, 144, 146, 147, 148, 157, 160, 171, 174, 184 Rousseau, 38, 60 Royal Allemand Regiment, 77 Ruhr, 226 Rüscher, Hupert, 44, 61, 150, 177 Russia, 13, 25, 35, 67, 72, 118, 132, 134 Russian Revolution, 25, 35 SA (Sturm Abteilung), 14, 36 Saale, Margarethe von der, 82 Sachsen, see: Saxony Saint Bartholomew’s Massacre, 82 Saint Bernardus, 41 Saint Cloud, 94 Saint Denis, 33, 38, 48 Saint Ludger, 66 Saint Margarethe, 108 Saint Mauritz, 63 Saint Paul, 120, 129, 132, 135 Saint Paul’s Cathedral, 29, 31, 34, 37, 41, 60, 61, 68, 143, 144, 168 Cathedral library, 29, 43 Saint Stephen, 107 Salier, 28, 37 Sallust, Gaius Crispus, 176, 185 Salzburg, 4 Sanscoulottes, 42, 50 Saracens, 95 Saulus, 129, 135

INDEX

Savonarola, Girolamo, 173, 184 Saxon Mirror, 71, 82 Saxony, 3, 4, 32, 167 Duchy of, 142 Saxony, Christine of, 82 Scandinavia, 13 Schauenburg, Count of, 86 Schlachtschaf, Heinrich, 77, 93, 105, 116 Schlebusch, 129 Schlossplatz, Berlin, 23 Schmalkaldic League, 12 Schmalkaldic Riots, 2, 12 Schmeling, Max, 67, 68 Schmising (also: Schmysing), Rotger, 23, 183 Schneider, Rheinhold, xxi Schoeps, Karl-Heinz, 107 Schongauer, Martin, 9, 15 Schöppingen, 8 Schulten, 152 Schumacher, 122 Schwedartho, 24 Scotland, 123 Scripture, 3, 47, 56, 58, 61, 71, 72, 73, 83, 101, 115, 120, 122, 171, 175, 176 Scythians, 161 The Secret Memoires of Princess Lamballe, 84 Seven Years War, 134 Shakespeare, William, 98 Siege of Alesia, 22, 35 Silesia, 82 Silver Lily, The, 143, 173 Simons, Menno, 180, 186 Sneek, 137 Snider, Niklaus, 149 Snyder, Claess, 35 Sobbe, 154 Social Democrats, 175 Soest, 105, 116, 171 Soldatska, 165, 183 Solln, 150 Song of Roland, 110 Soviet Communism, 186

219

Soviet Union, 16, 49, 84, 151 Spalatin, Georg, 175, 185 Sparenburg Castle, 170 Sparta, 16, 51 Spartans, 163 Spee, 91 SS (Sturm Staffel), 83, 110, 150, 152 Stalin, Josef, xvii, 184 Staufer, 28, 37, 89 Stauffenberg, Count Claus Schenk von, 84, 135 Steding, Wilkin, 158–160, 166, 169 Stednick, 34 Storming of the Bastille, 23, 96 Stralen, Gottfried, 17, 22, 105, 115 Strapade, 7, 17 Strasbourg, 5, 13, 63 Sudetenland, 34 Sündermann, 26 Swabia, 3, 4 Swabian Anabaptist communities, 4 Swabian Peasant Army, 89 Sweden, 4, 121, 126, 132, 134 Switzerland, 4 Syburg, Johann von, 3, 177, 178, 185 Syrlins, Jörg the Elder and Younger, 3, 12 Tallien, Jean Lambert, 180, 186 Tamerlane, 150 Tannhäuser, 83 Tautenburg, Schenk von, 122, 137 Telgte, 6, 14, 19, 23, 45 Thermidor, 79, 146, 180 Third Reich, 12, 14, 34, 49, 51, 67, 84, 107, 108, 109, 131, 134, 151, 152, 183, 184 Thirty Years War, 37, 132, 183 Thor Moer, Bernhard, 56, 142 Tilbeck, Mayor of Münster, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 31, 36, 44, 161, 167 Timothy I and II, 120, 132 Tizian, 92

220

INDEX

Toland, John, 15, 50, 84, 132, 150, 184 Toller, Ernst, xvii Tom Kloster, Gert, 7, 8, 18, 91 Tom Ring, Ludger, 124, 133 Totentanz, 142, 151 Treaty of Versailles, 34, 50 Trier, 122 Triumph of the Will, 14, 50 Troy, 125 Truchsess, Georg, 67 Truteling, 44 Tscheka, see also: Cheka, 16, 84 King, 10 Tscheka of Münster, 82 Tschekistenregim, 77 Tuileries, 23, 35, 77 Turks, 95, 122, 161, 177 Turnip Winter, 6 Twelve Elders, 46, 75 Twinkel, Johann von, 159 Ukraine, 82 United States, 67 Upper Saxony, 3 Urals, 59 Utrecht, 159 Varennes, 77 Venusberg, 75, 78, 83 Vielweiberei see: Polygamy Vikings, 2 Vincke, Otto, 129 Vinne, Dionysius, 7, 22, 77, 83, 105 Volga River, 67 Volkssturm, 107 Voltaire, 32 Vosges Mountains, 20, 43 Wagner, Richard, 83 Waitz, Dr. Georg, 110 Waldeck, Christoph von, royal page, 91, 108

Waldeck, Franz Count von, Bishop see also: “Bishop”, 6, 12, 14, 18, 86, 159, 163, 164, 167, 169, 170, 184 Wantscherer, Elisabeth, 149 Warendorf, 88, 103, 105, 115, 116 Weaver’s Guild, 3 Weimar, xxix Weimar Republic, xiii, xiv, 36, 37, 68, 108 Werra Valley, 63 Wesel, 128, 129, 137, 171 Wesling, Dr., 21 Westphalia, 7, 15, 31, 32, 33, 39, 57, 66, 103, 119, 124, 130, 138, 142, 167, 180 Westphalian gentry, 154 Wiechert, Ernst, xxi Wieck, Syndikus, von der, 19, 31, 38 Wied, Count of, 86 Wiedertäufer, see: Anabaptists Wiggers, 5, 13 Wilhelm I, Emperor of Prussia, 68 Wilhelm II, Emperor of Prussia, 152 Wilhelminian cuirassiers, 161 Wismar, 160 Witches’ Sabbath, 100 Witz, Konrad, 143, 151 Witzenhausen, 151 Wodemann, 5 Wolbeck, 19, 27, 33, 57–58, 156, 162 Wolbeck, Drost von, 23 Wördemann, Councilman, 17 World War I, 13, 35, 37, 50, 67, 139, 161 World War II, 37, 132, 151 Worms, Reichstag of, 142, 153, 167 Diet of, 184 Xantus, Heinrich, Duke of, 161 Yssel River, 138 Zacharias, prophesies of, 39 Zeus, 185

INDEX

Zion, Empire of, 4, 23, 24, 26, 27 King of, 1, 26, 89 Kingdom of, 174 Mount, 27, 61, 102, 103, 177 of Münster, 2, 7, 28, 31, 34, 41, 44, 45, 46, 49, 56, 60, 72, 75, 80, 91, 118, 123, 126,

127, 128, 140, 146, 159, 164, 167, 168, 182 New, 6 Prophets of, 28, 128 Zittau, 4, 13 Zoan, 118 Zwinglians, 119

221