CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Blood, Henry Phillip |
|---|---|
| Title | Religious History in an Atheist State: Teaching the Reformation in the German Democratic Republic |
| Summary | Religious history and a Marxist education seem diametrically opposed to one another. Yet, the German Democratic Republic rooted its very identity, its moral and revolutionary character in the Reformation period of the early sixteenth century and in the Peasants’ War. While Martin Luther is the historical figure most associated with the Reformation in the West, in the German Democratic Republic the person of veneration was the apocalyptic preacher, Thomas Müntzer. The German Democratic Republic did not only understand itself as the homeland of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As a nation, the German Democratic Republic was the land in which the revolutionary spirit and vision of Thomas Müntzer had come to fruition. This thesis explores how the history of Thomas Müntzer and the Reformation period was portrayed in the textbooks used in the classrooms that the citizens of the German Democratic Republic attended. This study takes the textbooks and teaching plans used throughout the entire duration of the German Democratic Republic as a lens through which to better understand how the regime’s conceptualization of the Reformation was mobilized for contemporary political and national narratives, and how that narrative changed. In the early years of the regime, Reformation history was employed to legitimate both the new political system and the new political borders, harnessing previous Marxist scholarship for contemporary circumstances. As the German Democratic Republic sought to stabilize its position, it attempted to use history to convince its citizens to cultivate an identity tied to the state, and to achieve this aim, the conception of the Early Bourgeois Revolution developed, and the legacy of Martin Luther changed. |
| Supervisor | Riedl, Matthias |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/blood_henry.pdf |
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