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BR 325 ,B6313 1916
Boehmer, Heinrich,
1869-
1927.
Luther in light of
recent
■r <a c £i a r- r- V»
Xutber in Xigbtot
IRecent IReeearcb
BY
HEINRIGH BOHMER
Marburg University
TRANSLATED BY
CARL F. HUTH, Jr.
University of Chicago
1916
THE CHRISTIAN HERALD
NEW YORK
Copyright 1916
By The Christian Herald
FOREWORD.
By Prof. James Harvey Robinson,
Columbia University.
T T is a great pleasure to introduce this book to the
â– *â– intelhgent American reader. Everyone who has
even a modicum of historical interest finds his cm*iosity
aroused by Luther, and welcomes more information
in regard to this German national hero whose influ-
ence has spread so far beyond the bounds of his own
land. We may be attracted or repelled by what wc
know of his teachings and personality, but he can
hardly leave anyone indifferent and neutral. Thft
volume of which this is a translation appears in one of
those excellent series designed for the cultivated Ger-
man public, similar to our "Home University
Library." The author seems to me particularly well
qualified by knowledge, temperament and style to
give us a fresh and stimulating conception of Luther.
He is broadly sympathetic but no hero worshiper.
There is no trace of religious partisanship in him. He
feels that he can afford to tell all the varied truth
without suppression or distortion. He is well aware
of the widely divergent judgments that have been
passed upon Luther by Protestant, Catholic and so-
called "rationaMstic" writers during the four cen-
turies which have elapsed since Luther began to criti-
cize the existing order, and no small part of the in-
terest of his book lies in the dexterous manner in which
he gives the reader an idea of the conflicting interpre-
tations which have been placed upon the Reformer's
deeds and sayings. His consistent aim is to place
liimself in the milieu in which Luther lived and
worked. He judges him not from the standpoint of
to-day but from that of the first half of the sixteenth
century. He is critical without any tendency to lapse
into mere negativity. To him and his readers Luther
is always the livest man possible. His style is clear
and cogent, with a certain familiar homeliness, sug-
gesting that of Luther himself. No matter how wide
or how narrow has been one's reading in regard to
Luther, Professor Bohmer will give the reader new
facts, new judgments and new points of view. He is
able to take the beginner in hand and at the same time
to instruct the historical student who may think that
he already knows as much about Luther as he cares to.
Professor Huth's translation seems to me not only
correct and intelligent, but it reproduces with skill
the spirit of the original style. If he now and then
permits the German idiom to show through, that will
not disturb the reader but will serve rather to
strengthen his confidence in the fidelity of the ren-
dermg. James Harvey Robinson.
u
CHAPTER I.
The Old Portrait of Luther and the Development of
Research on Luther.
Open your eyes and see me as I am. — Dantb.
"\/f ARTIN LUTHER voluntarily sat for a por-
"*• trait perhaps only once in his life — at the time
of his wedding. Nevertheless, even to-day every half-
way educated person is quite familiar with his fea-
tures. In Germany the school children know his face
so well that they can point to it without difficulty in
paintings representing many characters. Indeed,
little girls need sometimes only to determine with a
rapid glance "what the man in the picture is wearing"
to know : that is Doctor Luther. This knowledge and
acuteness, especially on the part of the female portion
of our offspring, certainly is quite pleasing, though
it surely is partially due to the fact that the pictures of
the Reformer which they see in school and at home
are all so much alike. Almost every one of them
shows a man in the portliness of advanced years, with
a broad peasant countenance, unusually well devel-
oped jaws, peculiarly full brown, curly hair, small
gentle eyes and on the whole rather pudgy features.
But is the Luther of these pictures really the
Reformer Luther? Without doubt it is the Luther
one expects to see in approaching a monument or
portrait of him, the Luther whom Rietschel after some
hesitation chose as model when he created his famous
statue, though he knew very well that the real Luther
1
2 LUTHER IN LIGHT OF RECENT RESEARCH
in 1521 looked very different. It is the Luther whom
even the most extravagantly modern artists with
astonishing consistency ever again portray, and from
whose skull formation physiognomists and race theo-
rists readily and unconcernedly, as is the custom in
their blythe science, have so often proven that the
Reformer had Slavic blood in his veins. For did not
this Luther have a round skull, and whoever has a
round skull is at least one half Slav, even though, as
in this case, German peasants were his ancestors,
and the Reformer hailed from a region in which
hitherto no trace of Slavic settlements or admixture
of Slavic blood has been found.
This Luther therefore undoubtedly is a type,
namely, a figure, the features of which have become
us fixed to the artists and their public as for instance
those of the "Germania," the "Helvetia" and other
allegoric females. However, though this Luther is
a type, he certainly is not a freely invented wholly
unhistoric one like the Apostle Peter or the Charle-
magne of mediaeval art, but the idealized reproduc-
tion of an historical portrait like the ''Old Fritz" of
Menzel and the "Queen Louise" of Ranch. Every-
body knows that in the last analysis this conventional
representation is based on the well-nigh innumerable
portraits of the Reformer by the great master Lucas
Cranach, and that it is found in a truly classic example
in the most famous painting by tliis artist, the altar
picture in the city church at Weimar. "WTio has not
repeatedly even in quite modern "highly scientific
works" about Cranach and about Luther read this in
DEVELOPMENT OF RESEARCH 3
black and white? In fact this still is the prevailing
opinion of to-day.
However, what "everybody" believes to be true
usually is not true. If under an expert guidance we
submit the artistic legacy of the elder Cranach to an
unprejudiced investigation we experience one sur-
prise after the other and meet with disappointment
upon disappointment. We note in the first place with
considerable misgiving that despite decades of study
of the history of art this legacy has not yet been care-
fully sifted. In the second place, we notice that so
far only four portraits of Luther, two paintings in oil
and two copper etchings, have been proven to be indu-
bitably genuine works of Cranach. Lastly, we find
that the classic representation of the type, the picture
in the altar at Weimar, was not created by the elder
Cranach, but evidently was made two years after
Cranach's and fully nine years after Luther's death
by Lucas Cranach the Younger.*
*The four genuine portraits are: Luther as monk, front view,
copper etching of 1520; Luther as monk, in profile, copper etching
of 1521. Luther as Squire George, oil painting, done in December.
1521, poorly preserved, now in the City Library at Leipzig; oil
painting, front view, of 1526, in the Kaufmann Gallery at Berlin.
To these possibly may be added the small, very poorly preserred
round portrait in the Luther Hall at Wittenberg, and an oil painting
discovered only this year (1913) by Hans von Cranach, Head Cas-
tellan of the Wartburg, about which discussion is not closed as yet.
This latter painting represents the aged, gray-haired Luther,
though minus the big wart which is visible in the Epitaphium. It
is the prototype of many modern portraits. Excellent reproduc-
tions may be had directly from Herr von Cranach. Compare also
Eduard Flechsig: Cranachstudien, vol. 1, 1897, pp. 257 ff ; Cranach-
werk of the Saxon Historical Commission, plates 74, 84, 85; Hans
Preuss: Lutherbildnisse, pp. 27, 30, 32, 34, 35, and ibid., a tracing
very probably executed by Hans Cranach after which portraits of
Luther were manufactured in the atelier of the Cranachs. On page
40 is a reproduction of the Epitaphium; on page 42 the Weimar
altar painting.
4 LUTHER IN LIGHT OF RECENT RESEARCH
Now, if we examine the few admittedly genuine
Cranachs we notice further that the typical Luther
head certainly does not go back to these, but rather to
some later works from the workshop of the Cranachs
about the origin of which the final word has not yet
been spoken. The most important of these are the
so-called Epitaphium, a woodcut with a lament on
Luther's death, and a recently discovered beautifully
preserved oil painting. The "type" in the former
still makes quite a different impression from that in
the altar painting at Weimar, or even in the well-
known likenesses by Schwerdgeburth, Gustav Koenig,
Ludwig Richter and Spangenberg. The features are
much sharper and more energetic, the mouth is firmly
closed. On the forehead the hair forms a loose curl
(cowlick), a furrow of anger appears between the
brows and above the right eye a tremendous wart
glowers.
It is impossible for us now to determine whether
this really is the true face of Doctor Martin. On the
other hand, we can say with assurance that not one of
the undoubtedly genuine portraits by the elder Cran-
ach wholly agrees with the descriptions of Luther's
face and figure which have been handed down to us
by Mosellan, Kessler, Melanchthon and other contem-
poraries. None shows the peculiar erect bearing,
bordering on stiffness — "so that he seemed rather
to be bending backward than forward" — none even
remotely conveys an idea of the expression in the
dark demoniac eyes, "which sparkle and twinkle
like a star, so that one cannot well bear their
DEVELOPMENT OF RESEARCH 5
gaze." These falcon's eyes, lion's eyes, basilisk's
eyes, which immediately drew the attention of
everyone, and this highly characteristic and impos-
ing heroic presence are left to the imagination
even in these portraits. Unfortunately imagination
never quite makes up for the missing concrete repre-
sentation. No matter, therefore, how well drawn even
these genuine Cranachs may be, they are certainly not
successful portraits. Nevertheless, the elder Cranach
was by far the ablest of the few artists who personally
met Luther. The younger Lucas possessed much less
ability, though after all a good deal more than the
painter of the well-known picture representing
"Luther on the Deathbed," now in the Dresden gal-
lery, the false perspective and bungling execution of
which immediately disturbs even a layman, or the
anonymous artist in wax who created the famous
death mask in the Library of St. Mary in Halle.*
The really great German portrait artists of the
sixteenth century, Diirer, Holbein and Amberger,
to whom we owe so many portraits of famous contem-
poraries, unhappily never had an opportunity to see
the most renowned of all, Doctor Martin. True,
Diirer had the sincere intention "in everlasting mem-
ory to portray and make an etching in copper of the
God-inspired man who had helped him out of great
*This mask is frequently regarded as the most faithful repre-
sentation of Luther's features. It was, however, taken four days
after Luther's death, at a time when decomposition had al-
ready set in. Luther succumbed to a stroke of paralysis, and in
such cases deterioration is very rapid. Besides, the mask was
damaged in the course of time and has evidently been patched con-
siderably about the mouth and nose.
6 LUTHER IN LIGHT OF RECENT RESEARCH
tribulations," but unfortunately he also never came
to Saxony. The extent of our loss, owing to the fact
that these great artists did not have a chance to por-
tray Luther, may in a measure be judged from a com-
parison of the portraits of Melanchthon from the
atelier of the Cranachs with the well-known copper
etching by Diirer and the red pencil drawing by
Holbein in Windsor. In the former Magister Philipp
always appears so starved, miserable and wretched
that one's heart almost aches at the sight. Even in
the best picture, that at the Wartburg, he utterly fails
to impress us as a great man. Diirer and Holbein,
on the contrary, make it immediately evident that the
Preceptor Germaniae was an unusually learned and
bright person, so much better were these great artists
able to reproduce the spiritual expression in a face.
Hence we must familiarize ourselves with the idea
that we possess not many but very few portraits of
Luther from the hand of the elder Cranach and that
among these few, though they are mostly excellent in
technique, there is not a single good likeness. In other
words, we must confess that we do not any more ex-
actly know how Luther looked. Nevertheless, we will
do well henceforth to picture him to ourselves only
as he is depicted in those few unquestionably genuine
Cranachs from the second decade of the sixteenth
century. If, besides, we desire to have before our eyes
also the aging Luther we may add to these the recently
discovered oil painting and the Epitaphium of 1546.
But we will for all time strike from our memory the
affable and corpulent gentleman of fifty with immacu-
DEVELOPMENT OF EESEARCH 7
lately groomed hair who was gradually made up by
idealization from the type furnished by artists who
were more well-meaning than expert. We will
also consign to oblivion the new, so-called historic
Luther whom Hans Fechner produced in 1905 by
combining several portraits by Cranach. (Helio-
gravure published by Stalling in Oldenburg.)
After all, what difference does it make if we no
more know and probably never will know exactly
how Luther looked, if only we know precisely
what he did, was, thought and wished to achieve?
This indeed is vastly more important. However,
it is not by any chance an easy matter to give a
rapid and correct report of what he did, was,
thought and wished to achieve. The hterature
about Luther has grown to such proportions that
with its two thousand volumes, large and small,
it forms a complete moderately sized library. Withal
it is so many-tongued, so multiform and varied that
one is struck with fear after a mere cursory glance
through the endless list of titles, or upon attempting
merely to remember the names of the authors of the
more than two hundred biographies of Luther in
Latin, German, French, English, Danish, Swedish,
Italian, Spanish, Russian, Polish and Lithuanian.
Stranger sensations still take hold of one when dip-
ping into a few dozen of these biographies in addition
to half a dozen novels on Luther and dramas about
him. The most immediate impression derived from
this process is that there are as many Luthers as books
about him; so widely divergent are the views of the
8 LUTHER IN LIGHT OF EECENT RESEARCH
writers about the essence and worth of Luther's per-
son and work. To the one he appears as a prophet of
God, to the other as a changeling of Satan ; for one he
is a model citizen, excellent father, and affectionate
husband, for the other a criminal of the deepest moral
depravity; for some a productive genius of the fore-
most order, for others an intellectually inferior, or at
least anormal individual; to some he is one of the
foremost enlighteners of all times, to others an Obscur-
antist, a henchman of the princes and a firebrand of
the worst type.
Was Luther in reality such a complicated and ill-
defined character, or is the tradition about his life so
scant, open to so many different interpretations and so
vague that historians of necessity arrived at such
radically varying conclusions? By no means. Our
sources are in this instance as ample, clear and con-
nected as we could wish them to be, and the character
of Luther in the genuine documents in no way conveys
the impression of being complicated. Hence the fault
this time lies with the historians. Some would not,
others could not see the real character of Luther.
And why ? Because they approached the records with
concrete, preconceived opinions, and therefore natur-
ally saw only what seemed to suit their view. This
failing, however, must not be laid at their door alone.
Most of them worked under the influence of a psycho-
logical force from which they found it difficult to
emancipate themselves. They allowed their judg-
ments to be guided by the ideas and ideals of their
religious belief and their age and involuntarily inter-
DEVELOPMENT OF RESEARCH 9
preted the sources accordingly. If this fact be taken
into account the grotesque differences of conception
become psychologically quite intelligible, then this
chaos presents a measure of order, sequence and devel-
opment, and the reader learns to value even the most
peculiar products of this literature, if not as scientific
achievements, at least as historical documents, as
records for the history of the religious, philosophical,
political and social ideas since the days of the Refor-
mation.
In the early years of the movement the Evangelical
faction generally looked upon Luther as a prophet of
God. Indeed sober men like Albrecht Diirer spoke
of him outright as an inspired personality. Less well-
balanced natures sought and found in the Bible and
the utterances of mediaeval prophets predictions
pointing to him and his work. Enthusiastic artists
went so far as to represent him with the dove of
the Holy Ghost or with a halo about his head.
In the two earliest evangelical biographies of
Luther, the Luther Sermons by Cyriacus Spangen-
berg and John Mathesius, this view still prevails,
though it did not cloud the authors' perception of the
faults and weaknesses of the Reformer, nor prejudice
their judgment with regard to them.
But already Mathesius occasionally emphasizes as
the most noteworthy service of his hero the fact "that
he again scoured the doctrine clean." Herein a new
view of Luther's person and work makes its appear-
ance, one which by this time had become prevalent in
wide circles and was destined to maintain itself in the
10 LUTHER IN LIGHT OF RECENT RESEARCH
Lutheran Church down to the last decades of the
seventeenth century. It is the dogmatic conception of
Lutheran Orthodoxy. This view clung to the belief
that the Reformer was the prophet of Germany. The
chief proof of his prophetic mission for these orthodox
groups was the agreement of his doctrines with the
teachings of God's Word. Involuntarily the picture
of the Reformer was modeled on the outlines of the
traditional Catholic conception of a church father.
The Lutheran people, however, at the same time
revered this father of the church as a veritable saint.
They told wonderful tales about his prophecies, his
miracles and his pictures, and diligently cut splinters
from the wooden columns in the house of Luther at
Wittenberg ; for as in Catholic lands the relics of Saint
Apollonia, so in Lutheran territory these slivers were
accounted wonderfully efficacious as remedies for
toothache. Pietism broke away from the habits and
point of view of Orthodoxy in these matters also. It
discovered the difference between Luther and Luther-
anism and occasionally played off the former effec-
tively against contemporary manifestations of the
latter. Besides, it distinguished a young, middle-
aged and old Luther, and very freely criticized the last
two by calling the early Luther to witness against
them. With the Luther of the middle period, of the
Marburg Colloquy, almost no Pietist would have any
dealings. To the old Luther most of them, with
Albrecht Bengel, the mild patriarch of the Swabian
Hour Men (Stundejileute) , gave the grade Good.
They all were truly enthusiastic only about the young
DEVELOPMENT OF RESEARCH 11
Luther. Him they extolled not alone as a father of
the faith, a man of spiritual power in prayer, a second
Samson, a victor over parsons and Philistines, but
as the true originator of the pietistic community
ideal of "the little churches within the Church.'*
Indeed the greatest and most highly gifted among
these pietistic venerators of Luther, Ludwig
Zinzendorf, saw salvation for theology only in a
return to the theological method of Doctor Luther,
and himself made several efforts to bring about such
a reform.
The Rationalists stood so far removed from Luther
in their religious views that they were wholly unable
to understand his religious personality. The strug-
gles of his soul were to them a disease, his doctrines of
sin and justification were at best looked upon as a
"perversion," or as "the dangerous dogmatic extrav-
agance of a great and courageous, but at times one-
sided spirit." Even sincere Protestants with Semler
placed "the learned and righteous Erasmus" above
him. Men who were wholly apathetic to religion, as,
for instance, Frederick the Great, judged him to be "a
raving monk and barbarous writer," or taking their
cue from Voltaire spoke of him as a man who had
missed his calling. These radicals, however, found
one phase in the character of the "regenerator of the
church," which appealed to them: his hatred of the
priests and his ardor in the cause of the "freedom of
conscience."
Milder advocates of the faith of reason, though
chiefly admiring the Reformer as an enemy of par-
12 LUTHER IN LIGHT OF RECENT RESEARCH
sons and a restorer of liberty of thought, besides
dehghted in praising the great man as an "affectionate
husband, honest father, magnanimous friend, excel-
lent citizen and as a scholar useful to the public. As
late as the Jubilee of 1817 the addresses and poems
in honor of the occasion were uniformly pitched in this
key. A proof of this is the beautiful "Nightwatch-
man's Hymn for the Year 1817":
List, ye men, and he advised.
No more in shackles the spirit lies.
Remember Luther, the faithful one.
Who hath this freedom for you won.
Guard well the light, the light of truth,
Cruard well the fire, profane it not.
More characteristically perhaps than in these laud-
atory utterances the spirit of the times is revealed in
the critical remarks we encounter occasionally. The
German Rationalists highly praised what had been so
discomforting to the Pietists, Luther's love of song,
the pleasure he found in a game of chess or a drink of
good wine, his mild judgment on dancing and the
theatre. What disturbed them most, however, was the
disrespectful manner in which the Reformer frequent-
ly referred to the princes and bigwigs. Their censure
of his public burning of the bull of excommunication
also was most lively. It above all others was the one
act of the Reformer which ran counter to their concep-
tion of gentility and civic virtue.
Now and then, however, even in the heyday of
DEVELOPMENT OF RESEARCH 13
Rationalism, we meet with instances of a deeper un-
derstanding of Luther's pecuharities. Hamann even
in those days endeavored to grasp the prophetic ele-
ment in the Reformer and also attempted to evaluate
psychologically the harshnesses and paradoxes of his
personality. Young Herder is found trying to cut
loose from all the artificial criteria of Enlightenment,
Pietism and Orthodoxy in forming a judgment about
Luther. He endeavors to appreciate the "patriotic
and great man" from out of the depth of his own per-
sonal being as an independent phenomenon. Never-
theless, for some time no progress was made beyond
these imperfect efforts. Herder himself in his later
years returned to the method and historical point of
view of Rationalism, and even Schiller, who among
the intellectual leaders in the Germany of that day
was most interested in history, finds no higher epithet
of honor for Luther in his "Secular Hymn on the
Year 1800" than that of "a champion of the freedom
of reason against error and the Vatican."
The Romanticists finally showed signs of adopt-
ing a new conception of personality which was likely
to benefit Luther also. They viewed individual
life from the point of view of the aesthetic
ideal. According to this the worth of a human
being lies not in the usefulness of his existence
for the world of his own and later times, nor
even in his moral perfection, but solely in the
originality, fullness and force of his nature ; briefly, in
his genius. The wholly unromantic genius of Luther,
however, kept them from ever really coming into
14 LUTHER IN LIGHT OF RECENT RESEARCH
closer touch with him. Schelling saw in the Reforma-
tion only decline and retrogression, and even Schleier-
macher was so little clear about Luther's religious