Talk:German Peasants' War

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Bray shawn 2016.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:18, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

do not merge with Peasants War
this article should not be merged with Peasants War. That article discusses Marx and Engel's interpretations of the causes of the Peasant War but has nothing about the actual German Peasants' War. Attempts to fix it, in terms of its title, have not worked. They have all been reversed. Furthermore, it is one of the worst articles I have ever read on wikipedia in terms of citations, attribution, and other style and attribution, reliability, etc. requirements. It is soooo bad that fixing it would be more difficult than simply writing a new one. I have removed the military history project banner until this article is actually ready for assessment. Auntieruth55 (talk) 20:07, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Merger proposal
Both articles are absolutely about the same subject. It's like having a Revolutionary War and American Revolutionary War articles about the same things. Even the content is duplicated. This fork should get erased.-Ilhador- (talk) 23:27, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

No one appears, so I will do the move.-Ilhador- (talk) 23:51, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Copyedit
Upon request, I ran through this. Comments:


 * My reorg moved the event-related stuff out of the class definitions and created an explicit background section for everything other than the events of the war.


 * I'm not an expert, but it sure seems like this takes the class struggle view, rather than balancing that view with others.


 * The article remains filled with uncited claims. I didn't mark them to spare the reader. If I had, the patrician section would look like this:


 * As the guilds grew and urban populations rose, the town patricians faced increasing opposition. The patricians consisted of wealthy families that sat alone in the town councils and held all the administrative offices. Like the princes, they could seek to secure revenues from their peasants by any possible means. Arbitrary road, bridge, and gate tolls could be instituted at will. They gradually revoked the common lands and made it illegal for a farmer to fish or log wood from these lands. Guild taxes were exacted. No revenues collected were subject to formal administration, and civic accounts were neglected. Thus embezzlement andfraud were commonly practiced and the patrician class, bound by family ties, became ever richer and more exploitative.


 * I wasn't clear about land ownership. Did the peasants or the lords own it? If "The lord had the right to use his peasant’s land as he wished" in what sense did the peasant own it? I left the language intact.


 * Was four guilders a substantial wage?


 * "Some bands could number about 4,000; others, such as the peasant force atFrankenhausen, could gather 8,000." It would be more informative to include a representative range.


 * Positions such as pillage master need descriptions. Also, it's worth describing how the peasant units managed to adopt a consistent organizational structure, given their limited means of communicating with each other and the absence of a higher level command.
 * Given the alleged importance of the work of Franz, Blickle, Scribner, Stalmetz and Bernecke it is odd that Engels is cited more often than the others combined.
 * Cheers. Lfstevens (talk) 17:53, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Luther and Muentzer Section
Why is MacCulloch's opinion on Muentzer quoted at length, thus giving him implicit authority? His is only one voice in a very long--and still ongoing--debate on Muentzer's role in the War. By quoting him at length, the article is probably in violation of Wikipedia's political neutrality rules, since MacCulloch's view is clearly and openly anti-Marxist and anti-communist (and is thus identical, by the way, to that of Norman Cohn's liberal anti-communist attack on Muentzer in The Pursuit of the Millennium). To be fair, the article should either cut the MacCulloch quotation, or include a counterbalancing quotation from a scholar--e.g., Albert Toscano in his book Fanaticism--who argues that liberals have often critiqued Muentzer's role in the War in an attempt to prove that their own moderate, reformist, enlightened liberalism is the only viable alternative to Muentzer's "fanaticism." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.36.228.164 (talk) 21:15, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Adding New Sources
Hello I have a project where I am supposed to add new information to this article, particularly using different sources to help input new research, I am going to post my sources here. Feel free to give me any critiques as I will be adding(or taking away) more sources based on their effectiveness in adding reliable information to this post.

Parker, Charles H., and Jerry H. Bentley. Between the Middle Ages and Modernity: Individual and Community in the Early Modern World. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. Print. Moxey, Keith P. F. Peasants, Warriors, and Wives: Popular Imagery in the Reformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Print. Sea, Thomas F.. 1999. “The Swabian League and Peasant Disobedience Before the German Peasants' War of 1525”. The Sixteenth Century Journal 30 (1). The Sixteenth Century Journal: 89–111. doi:10.2307/2544901. Sea, Thomas F. "The German Princes' Responses to the Peasants' Revolt of 1525." Central European History 40, no. 2 (06, 2007): 219-240. http://search.proquest.com/docview/214224814?accountid=13758. Bray shawn 2016 (talk) 05:05, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Review of Shawn's Contributions
° Under the "Ultimate Failure of the Rebellion" section, the "(albeit in fewer numbers)" language almost sounds like it's written in essay style, to me at least. I would suggest : " The main causes of the failure of the rebellion was the lack of communication between the peasant bands [DUE TO] territorial divisions AND their military inferiority. While Landschkenkt, [include a number??] professional soldiers and knights joined the peasants in their effort, [BUT] the Swabian League had a better grasp of military technology, strategy and experience."

°  "At the beginning of the revolt[,] the league members had trouble recruiting soldiers from among their own populations[,] particularly among peasant class[, IN] fear of them joining the rebels. As the rebellion expanded[,] many nobles had trouble sending troops to the league armies because they had to combat rebel groups in their own lands.  Another common problem regarding raising armies was that while nobles were obligated to provide troops to a member of the league, they also had other obligations to other lords. These conditions created problems and confusion for the nobles as they tried to gather together forces large enough to put down the revolts."

° Overall, the article is impressive. I think something that could help, though, would be adding to the CAUSES section. The "Class Struggle" section feels a bit lacking. With only one source about a communist philosopher, it seems like there was only one interpretation, which clearly there wasn't. It feels a bit out of place. Maybe add to it or just take it out because there's already a Historiography section.

° Did you use five sources??

RenCorpus (talk) 20:09, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
 * "essay" is a specialized term in Wikipedia that refers to "Personal essays that state your particular feelings about a topic (rather than the opinions of experts)" that issue does not apply here. Rjensen (talk) 21:31, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

section needs more references
In the "Social classes in the 16th century Holy Roman Empire" section, three sub-sections (Patricians, Plebians, and Peasants) have no citations whatsoever. — howcheng  {chat} 06:30, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Intro
In the intro it states "The German Peasants' War was Europe's largest and most widespread popular uprising prior to the French Revolution of 1789." but obviously the English Revolution / English Civil War that culminated in the execution of the king and the foundation of a republic happened in between those dates. I'm not confident enough to just change it but it does seem to me that it happened in Europe and was a successful and widespread popular uprising. Jim Jay (talk) 14:32, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Innacurate rendering of the role of Anabaptists in the Peasants' War
This article states near the beginning that the Anabaptists along with other radical reformers "instigated" the peasant's revolt. The peasant's revolt occurred from 1524-1525 and the Anabaptist movement began in Zurich in January 1525. Though there are definitely some links like Thomas Muntzer between the two movements, and similar values of equality, they differed both in goals and means. The assertion that Anabaptists participated in instigating the revolt cannot be accurate due to the fact that the peasants' revolt predates the Anabaptist movement. It seems that the author of this article should clarify instead of overstating his case by this generalization. Nebstoltzfus (talk) 15:20, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Heller Haufen
I am not sure if "Heller Haufen" may be translated as "Bright Band". I rather presume that it is named after the city of (Schwäbisch) Hall, cf. also the currency unit "Heller" which is named after the Tyrolian city of Hall. But I am not an expert in the naming conventions for these units. Other Haufen were also called after geographical features like the Seehaufen, the Baltringer Haufen or the Allgäuer Haufen and not because of their clothing/appearance or whatever else might have given reason to call them after their "brightness". But to be sure one might need a good source that makes clear that the naming was after Schwäbisch Hall, because from a purely linguistical point of view the interpretation as a bright or white band would be perfectly possible. --Proofreader (talk) 11:58, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I just see that de:Weinsberger Bluttat mentions a paper from 1820 by Kerner titled Bestürmung der württembergischen Stadt Weinsberg durch den Hellen Christlichen Haufen im Jahr 1525 und deren Folgen für diese Stadt. Here the grammar would rather support an interpretation as "bright band" (otherwise the spelling would rather have been "...durch den Heller Christlichen Haufen" but as older use of German grammar may not always be as clearcut as today and especially when influenced by local dialect, this may yet not completely rule out the other interpretation. --Proofreader (talk) 13:03, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * And there was also a "Schwarzer Haufen" (Black company) which makes the interpretation as "bright band/company" look very likely. The German article on the Peasants' War speaks of "Heller Lichter Haufen" which would either combine both meanings (as something like "bright company from Hall") or may be understood as a sort of an intensifier ("very bright company"). "Licht" in any case is clearly an old adjective in the sense of "hell" i.e. "bright", "shining" having the same root and meaning as the English adjective "light". --Proofreader (talk) 13:24, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Background
It strikes me this section needs an overhaul. It's long and clunky, and its synopsis is sorely lacking. Stara Marusya (talk) 15:33, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Zagorin 1984 source inaccurate
The source takes you to pages on the Fronde, and the book does not seem to contain any information having to do with the German Peasants' War 2600:1700:49B0:3280:8CA9:87C3:88E2:E820 (talk) 03:18, 15 May 2024 (UTC)