The Labor enquirer., 1884-01-12
Life Of a German Labor Re-
former in the Time Of
Luther.
The Real Character Of the Nan
Whose Birth Anniversary
is Celebrated.
How Mnnzer Was Tortured for
Six Long Months and then
Beheaded.

4 i
Translated for Liberty" from lie Reyote,"
The Protestant bourgeoisie is rejoicing.
For several months it has been getting
ready for professions, concerts, and meet
ings, in celebration of the four hundredth
anniversary of the birth Of the great man
who four centuries ago was already the
incarnation of the egoistic type Of the
modern bourgeois.
The thought of Luther, like that of the
bourgeois Of to-day, was superficial; it
never rose to the height of disinter-
ested philosophy exempt from narrow
class prejudices. On the contrary, the
whole reform of Luther took into account
at every step the desires and aspirations
ofthe rich, the mobiles. and the bourgeois.
Far from initiating himself in the faith
of John Huss, burned alive at Constance,
Luther, four centuries before Gambetta,
denied the existence of the social ques-
ton, and summed up all the needs and
duties of man in faith.
Little matters it to him that the poor
suffer all the tortures of Gehenna on this
earth; "let them believe, and they shall
have future life" as reward.
This dogma sums up the whole philoso-
ply of the great reformer, and explains
al the same time his success and the halo
with which the rich surround his
memory. B.. 49,
And who were, in fact, the protectors
and allies of Luther? Princes and bour-
geois to whom 'rape," says NJ. Well in
his History of the War of the Peasants, "
"was gay frolic, and if the father or
brother of the unfortunate victim at
tempted any resistance, he was dragged
into the court iy the the lansquenets OF
the duke and exposed, half naked, and
with hands tied, to the outrages of a
pack of drunken courtiers."
To the friends of Luther,st to his most
powerful disciples, "the peasant is only a
beast of burden wlIich, succumbing un-
der its load, will rise again under the
spur of few lashes on his back"
In rebelling against the pope, Luther
only championed the interests of the
mobiles and the rich, who found it USE
less to have priests and bishops by their
side to extort from the people what would
otherwise 60 into their own pockets.
The dukes and the bourgeois saw in the
reformation only means of getting rid
of an accomplice who subjected them to
severe competition in rape and robbery.
And, in truth, in what is the situation
of the Protestant peasant and laborer
superior to that of the Catholic wage
worker? Does the Lutheran employer
content himself with a smaller profit
than the employer who pays his devo-
tions to the Holy Virgin? Are we not as
much oppressed, hunted down, and
preyed upon by the disciples of Luther
as by the pupils of Loyola? Is not the
Lutheran faith as hostile to science as
the Catholic religion? Is not Lutheran
ism as full of superstitions as Catholi-
cism2 The great reformer believed in
the devil, and to this day they show us
in his chamber the inkstand which he
hurled at the horns of the king of hell.
What then was the progress accom-
plished by the reformation? What is
the value of Luther to- humanity? In
what was he greater than his contempo-
raries, the mobiles and the rich, the ene-
mics of light and of the people who de-
sired to obtain it?
Yes, at that very time the people,
Luther's "heasts of burden" were already
ripe for progress both in religion and in
science and especially in social life.
At that very time the peasants were
already making war upon property and
proclaiming that
Q) "The meadows and pasture lands
usurped by the lords must return to the
commune" -
(2) "That to all belong the birds and
the fish in the rivers and the beasts in
the forests, for to all in the person of the
first man did the Lord give dominion
over animals"
Just as Luther is the representative Of
the bourgeois reforms, Thomas Munzer
is the representative of the sociallstic
aspirations of the peasants. "In him
were concentrated" says his historian,
"those elements of vitality which always
seem to the people the majestic expires.
sion and personifeation of its needs
Powerful, energetic, audacious, endowed
with rude and savage eloquence illu-
minated by proud and inspired looK,
he felt himself called in all the points OF
his being to carry out through the masses
the cherished plans of his heart and
mind. =. II
urged on by the desire for equality,
Munzer travelled through the country,
lighting everywhere the flames which
devoured him. He was to be seen by
turns in the churches, in the cottages by
the roadside, under the eternalS canopy
of the forests, laundering to-day against
the oppressors of the weak, tomorrow
desiring in words of fire the era of fra
ternity and equality which he heralded