Did Luther Really Say? Contexts for Luther’s Comments on the Wends

This article by David Zersen first appeared in the Fall 2017 issue of Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly. It is printed here by permission of the author.

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People checking the back pages of denominational publications or church newspapers this year may find numerous invitations to join a study/travel-group to Luther-land. They are being encouraged to explore the world in which 500 years ago Martin Luther issued his “Ninety-Five Theses about Indulgences,” allegedly nailing them to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Additionally, many journal articles and books being published in 2017 are rich with interesting or controversial approaches that explore themes related to the Quincentenary.[i] This article can be seen as supporting that trend.

Among Luther studies that continue to seek a following this year are those addressing his later views on the Jews[ii] or aspects of his personality that had a seismic effect on the world.[iii]  Such studies draw interest largely because their impact was first explored within the context of some much later event. Johannes Wallmann, for example, argues that Luther’s so-called antisemitism of the 1540s never drew significant interest until Hitler’s henchmen used it in their inhuman propaganda of the 1940s.[iv] Likewise, Luther’s complex personality never received much professional attention until in 1958 it was explored by Erik Erikson, a Danish psychoanalyst[v] and, subsequently, in 1961, popularized in a Broadway play.[vi] Other critical studies of Luther all-too-often find fault because a writer may not take seriously the historical, literary, or religious contexts in which Luther’s remarks were first made.[vii] This article seeks to address that shortcoming.

Criticisms made of Luther’s invectives

Some examples of old and continuing criticisms of Luther’s language will be shared first, not because they are the main subject of this article, but because they imply that his invectives against individuals or groups were intended quite personally rather than participating in speech patterns known in his context. Additionally, Luther’s condescending views of diverse ethnic and cultural groups are often regarded from a modern perspective as racist prejudices rather than as off-the-cuff comments known among people in his area. These introductory comments will now provide perspective as this article begins to look more specifically at Luther’s use of language, especially as he seems to excoriate the Wends, also known as Sorbs.[viii]

Many have criticized Luther’s language saying that at times he writes as one who is “bull-headed, course-tongued, and intemperate.”[ix] For example, he felt justified in demanding that the pope and the riffraff that surrounded him should have their tongues torn out and be nailed to the gallows. He dismissed scriptural interpretations by the Jews as so much “piss and sh–.” As he grew older, he became so disillusioned about the Gospel’s rejection by the Jews and the Roman hierarchy that he believed they were in league with Satan and even unrefined language could be used appropriately to attack them. He likewise considered his headaches, insomnia, and temptation (Anfechtung) to be plagues of the Devil that justified all the barbs that language could fashion. “I am fed up with the world, and it is fed up with me,” he wrote to his wife, Katie. “I am like a ripe stool, and the world is like a giant anus, and so we’re about to let go of each other.” Although the many intellectually challenging monographs and lovely meditations found in Luther’s voluminous writings far outnumber these examples of Bierstube banter, many have been troubled by such uncouth vocabulary. Luther justified his words, however, by saying, that his enemies “assail me so atrociously… that they carried me [in my use of language] beyond the bounds of moderation.”[x]

In addition to being appalled by Luther’s unrefined use of language, others have been troubled by the condescension he seems to show with respect to people outside of his circle of family and colleagues. In addition to the castigating remarks made about the Jews and the Roman hierarchy referred to above, Luther often employed offensive words against debating partners, colleagues with whom he disagreed, the Turks, the Muslims, provinces in Germany outside Thuringia and Saxony, the Saxons themselves, the Wends, the citizens of Wittenberg, the members of his parish, and others.[xi] In reflection, later in life Luther wrote, “I have often tried to serve the world with outward dignity and holy seriousness. But God has not allowed it![xii]

As appreciation for  individualism asserted itself in Germany’s Renaissance (Fifteenth-Sixteenth centuries), and the languages of various countries gradually came to replace Latin as the language of scholars, curiosity about uniqueness sometimes vented itself in negative forms. Luther did have an inquisitive mind, and surely was fascinated at times by what he heard about the world outside Saxony. He had visited only Switzerland and Italy. What he knew of others was often hearsay and conjecture. He ruminated on the rumors in his free-wheeling comments during the dinner hour. Students and guests who lived at the former Black Cloister, remembered in disparate ways these reflections now published in the Table Talk volume of Luther’s Works (LW). One can’t miss the abusive nature of many of his judgements.[xiii] He notes that the “Bohemians gobble their food, the Wends steal, and the Germans get drunk.”[xiv] Luther’s negative views of Saxon Wittenberg at times echoed the remarks of contemporaries. Some of his friends wondered why a university should have been established in such a remote place and why God should choose it to be the starting point for the dissemination of His Word. It was, wrote Dr. Mellerstadt, as if [we live] in a slaughter yard where people survive without culture, civilization or discipline.[xv] Luther perhaps built on such biases that we today find surprising. Given the aura of distinction that Wittenberg has achieved in the last 500 years, it is difficult to imagine the disillusionment he shared with his wife, Katie when,  in 1545, he wrote that he wanted to leave this worthless little backwater in Saxony where only drunken, boorish and hypocritically pious people live.[xvi] Down through the years, especially since the publication of the Table Talk, many have been shocked to learn that Luther was rough-on-the-edges, and some of his critics have used these examples to assert that Luther was not a fit spiritual leader, perhaps even bordering on insanity.[xvii]

Revisiting the cultural contexts of Luther’s remarks about the Wends

These critical concerns raised by people troubled with Luther’s occasional coarseness provide helpful background for the real purpose of this article, an exploration of the context within which Martin Luther seems to have excoriated the Wends, Slavs who had a visible yet declining impact in Wittenberg and its environs. While useful for any student of Luther’s language and perspectives, this article also has special meaning in English-speaking countries like the United States and Australia, the two largest countries to which Wendish emigration extended itself in the mid-nineteenth century. Scattered groups of Wends settled in Nebraska and Iowa, but the largest immigration of 764 people established a colony in Lee County, Texas, in 1854. The Australian settlements took place over a ten-year period in Southern Australia beginning in 1848.[xviii] These nineteenth century immigrants in both countries knew themselves as Lutheran Wends and many thousands of their descendants are still proud of their heritage and continue to use this ethno-religious designation. They have a special reason for wanting to know why Luther, their 16^th century spiritual mentor, had such negative things to say about them.

            Did Luther really say that Wends laugh at the Word of God after the church service, are as dumb and foolish as cattle, and have no humor and vitality? Did he really say that they steal, are unfaithful and starve out the Wittenberg citizenry?[xix] Did he say that, in short, they are the worst and most evil of people?[xx] Scholars have accepted the challenge to understand why Luther might have said such things and under what circumstances. Two studies by Wendish scholars in 1936 and 1962 drew a number of conclusions about the reasons for Luther’s remarks. These studies were later challenged in a 1983 article in the European academic journal, Letopis.[xxi] In this article, never translated into English, “Die Beziehung Martin Luthers zu den Sorben” (The Relationship of Martin Luther to the Sorbs), Jan Malink asserts that because the two studies were based on questionable sources they should be reviewed. The implication of his own review is important for Luther studies because it demonstrates why Luther’s abusive words about the Wends need to be understood within their original context.

            As an aside, it should be noted that Luther’s main negative references to the Wends are found in the Tischreden,[xxii] but the American Edition of Luther’s Works (LW) has published only one-tenth of the commentary attributed to Luther in the German edition.  Therefore, Luther’s comments about the Wends in this article, including those in the first paragraph of this section, are translations made by the author either from the Weimarer Ausgabe (WA) or from the Malink German article. [xxiii]

In seeking to understand the original context for Luther’s remarks on the Wends, it is worth noting that until 1508 at the age of 24, he would have had little or no contact with Wends.  Before he received the opportunity to teach in Wittenberg, an area that had some history with the Wends, he had lived in Eisleben, Mansfeld, Magdeburg, Eisenach and Erfurt, all outside the Wendish territory. Wittenberg itself, when first appearing in history in 1180, was well-within the Wendish territory. Germanization in the Wittenberg area was strengthened when after 1293 it became a town and the residence of the Dukes and, subsequently, the Electors of Saxony.[xxiv] Writers who have ignored the chronological, geographical and cultural context have all too often implied that Luther’s language about the Wends was a reaction to their oppressive strength in Wittenberg. At his time, however, this was probably not likely.

 Malink explores this assumption when he questions the Mětšk and Wićaz explanations for Luther’s views of the Wends.  They believed that his personal interaction with Wends in Wittenberg, once a Wendish stronghold, led to his views. Malink specifically questions their overestimating the number of Wends in Wittenberg at Luther’s time.[xxv] The implication of this for Luther’s personal views of Wends is important. Mětšk and Wićaz place strong emphasis on a Ratzeberger version of the Table Talk in which Luther is supposed to have said to Martin Bucer, a reformer in southern Germany, “the largest numbers of people in my Wittenberg parish are poor laymen and Wends.” However, other more reliable versions of the 1540 conversation do not place Wends in his parish: “Dear God, in [my] church come girls under 16, women and old men, who don’t understand lofty words.” [xxvi]

            Malink pursues this matter diligently by giving four reasons for questioning the Ratzeberger version used by Mětšk and Wićaz:

1. Since the twelfth century, there were significant groups from the West settling north-east of Wittenberg contributing to a Germanizing effect in the surrounding area, reducing the strength of the original Wendish presence.
2. The sixteenth and seventeenth century documents about the visitations that took place in the Wittenberg judicatory provide no references to Wendish issues.
3. A Saxon church officer, H. W. Kirchhof, writing in 1526, says that east of Torgau (30 miles from Wittenberg), near the forest, some farmers still seek to be and to speak Wendish (implying that they lived at a distance from Wittenberg).
4. Luther never mentions anywhere in his writings that he did any pastoral counseling with a Wendish-speaking person.[xxvii]

In general, then, Malink believes that the 1936 and 1963 studies paid too much attention to misleading information in questionable sources and are not a reliable witness to Luther’s contact with Wends, either in Wittenberg generally, or in his parish, St. Mary’s. The implication, then, is that Luther’s comments about the Wends pass on long-standing, traditional hearsay common in the greater Wittenberg area, and are not personal vindictive views of Luther.

            Secondly, Malink believes that although large numbers of Wends are known to have studied to be Lutheran pastors at the Leukorea,[xxviii] there is little written evidence that Luther had personal relationships with many of them. An exception he gives is Johannes Briessman (1520-1523), who became responsible for the spread of the Reformation in Latvia. Malink concludes that the paucity of references in Luther’s writings to Wendish students has to imply that the Germanization of the areas from which students around Wittenberg came was already quite thorough.[xxix] Based on what is available in Luther’s own writings, this may be a valid conclusion. However, there is additional information that should be considered in order to form a broader assessment of the original context.

In the first place, numbers are important in this discussion. The population of Wittenberg when Luther arrived in 1512 was around 3000[xxx] and the student enrollment by then was about 1000. Roughly one-third of the community was populated by students. By contrast, Erfurt, the city from which Luther had come, had 18,000 residents in 1512, and was among the largest cities in the Holy Roman Empire.[xxxi] Wittenberg may have seemed like a backwater to Luther, but it is hard to believe that with the growing numbers of students, he encountered very few Wends in his classes. Gerald Stone addresses this issue in his new work, Slav Outposts in Central European History.[xxxii] With the early insistence on the vernacular in the Reformation, Wendish parishes wanting to move in the new reformed direction found themselves without clergy. The new university in Wittenberg, Stone writes, proceeded to supply them.[xxxiii] Some of them were ordained by Luther himself, as well as by Johannes Bugenhagen and Paul Eber, who kept explicit notes about the ordinands.[xxxiv] Interestingly, some of them, whom Luther himself ordained, were not graduates of Wittenberg or of any university, but because of the desperate need, they merely came to be tested and ordained. They came from many backgrounds, including those of sexton, schoolmaster, verger, cloth-maker, barrel-maker, rope-maker, window-maker, furrier, bookbinder and printer. Some were previously Roman Catholic priests. These included Wends like Paul Bossack, Johann Axt, Bartel Span, Nicolaus Poster and Gregorius Kirst. The notes kept by those ordaining the candidates often showed that the ordinand was going out to preach the Gospel in Wendish.[xxxv] The need to have pastors who could serve in the Wendish language for parishes in the process of reformation is made clear from this decree issued by the Upper Lusatian Estates in 1538:

Particularly since in the country and in the towns hitherto we have had to suffer a great shortage of pastors and clergymen on account of the Wendish language, every serf shall be diligently admonished by his masters, and from the pulpit too, so that if anyone has a friend or sons who are proficient in school-work and quick to learn, then he or they should with the utmost diligence be kept at school and not be suffered to lack any possible financial support and promotion. [xxxvi]

Records in Wittenberg show that by 1545 Wendish ordinands were being dispatched to numerous parishes.[xxxvii] While Saxony was at the forefront of the Reformation, the Lusatias[xxxviii] were close behind.[xxxix] Clearly, therefore, while Malink’s point may be correct that Wittenberg itself was no longer in Luther’s day a Wendish stronghold, the University had an important role in serving the needs of far-flung Wendish parishes, whether in towns or in the countryside. The fact that Luther made little mention of these potential ordinands may prove, not that he had no contact with them, but that his contact was self-understood and supportive. If that is the case– that in terms of personal relationships Luther may have had a positive view of the Wends–  and then his coarse remarks about them can’t be explained by saying that it is easy to be negative about people you don’t really know.

Scholars have posed several reasons for Luther’s negative comments about the Wends. Some have felt that because of his German self-consciousness, he simply condescended to Slavs in general and that he showed a tendency toward what today might be regarded as racism. While it should be granted that in certain humanistic circles of the Enlightenment there was a tendency toward German nationalism, Malink points out that Luther could also be as hard on the Germans (“a wild, raw, savage people”) as on others. Luther’s comments are better understand, not nationalistically, but both theologically, Malink believes, and in terms of the cultural context of the times.[xl] On the one hand, Luther never spoke negatively about the Wends in sermons, in his letters or in his published works.[xli] Further, his off-the-cuff remarks at the dinner table were ignored for 400 years until the notes and diaries now known as the Table Talk were finally published in 1929 as a part of the WA. Therefore, and importantly, these poignantly-passed lampoons never strengthened negative attitudes towards Wends among local people, German nationalists, or, for that matter, the sixteenth century theologians in Lutheran Orthodoxy. The comments were “dead-in-the-water” in the years following Luther. Although Luther’s reflections about other people may have been more unrefined than those of his contemporaries, in the free-wheeling conversations around the table, and particularly after a couple beers, things were said by Luther that had their counterparts in the vocabulary of his dining companions. His language did not represent condescension, prejudice or racism so much as it employed a hastily concocted and volatile street-talk put together with humor and slang rather than intellectual formulation. Malink himself believes that since words like Bauer (farmer) and Wend were often exchanged colloquially as terms for country people, Luther’s use of Wend may have simply implied a disdain for the boorishness of the uneducated, whatever their ethnic identity.[xlii]

            At a more theological level, Luther seems to have created a Doppelgänger system in which the common people surrounding Jerusalem were akin to the unsophisticated and reactionary types in the Wittenberg area. Acknowledging that Luther did not regard Wittenberg highly, as previously mentioned, one might understand this reference. He felt that the Jews around Jerusalem who were the worst of all people (see Ezekiel 7:24; Mt. 23:27-39), had as their counterpart the Wends around Wittenberg. Just as God chose to fight the Devil and dwell among the lowliest-of–the-low in the Jerusalem area, so also he chose to reveal the Gospel anew and fight the Devil among the rude and rough people in the environs around Wittenberg. Luther was using a medieval literary structure employing symbolic analogies to make his point. The revelation of God to the sinful people in Jerusalem was the prototype for another theological necessitas, this one being in Wittenberg.[xliii]  As previously stated, given the likelihood that famer and Wend had a common meaning for Luther and his contemporaries, this quote from Luther might not be too surprising: “If there had been a people more in need of repentance than the Wends, then the Gospel would have come to them first.”[xliv]

Accepting contexts as better witnesses than words

            That Luther’s words were often coarse and unkind to individuals and ethnic groups has to be taken for granted. However, the original contexts for these words are important and need to be emphasized. Luther lived in an area that was once dominated by rural Slavs who had never explored the values of sophisticated machinery, literary composition or economic philosophy. They had no written language and many could not communicate in German.[xlv] They were largely poverty-stricken.[xlvi]As the Wittenberg area was Germanized, the Wends remained in remote villages in the countryside. Their contact with Wittenberg was largely as farmers who brought meat and produce to the market. Nevertheless, as Luther’s reformation spread, emphasizing the Gospel message, the translation of the Catechism and the Scriptures, and a subsequent written literature, Wends came to see the importance of training pastors and teachers to serve their parishes and schools.[xlvii] That Luther supported this trend is clear, even if all the details of his participation are not known. His comments recorded in the Table Talk are surely part of Luther’s rough and abusive style, but his encouragement for individual Wends in whose ordination he participated provides a counter-balance and context for the coarse and seemingly condescending language for which he was known.[xlviii] Further, Luther would surely want to be understood as a theologian, more than as a linguist or cultural commentator. He knew himself to be fighting, not against ethnic minorities and cultural sub-classes, but against principalities and powers, against Satan and all his minions. For such warfare, he needed the big guns, not only Scripture itself and the power of logical argument. Heiko Oberman summarizes, “In the total historical context… Luther’s scatology-permeated language has to be taken seriously as an expression of the painful battle fought body and soul against the Adversary, who threatens both flesh and spirt.”[xlix] He believes that modern analysts rob Luther’s abusive language of its significance if it is simply written off as bad breeding.[l] Likewise, suggesting that Luther’s negative comments about the Wends imply racism inserts a modern context into a Sixteenth Century one. As an intellectual who championed education and an interpretation of the Gospel that required linguistic and historical insight, he can be forgiven for challenging rural people without a written language who had not yet discovered Grace’s redeeming potential. Two-fistedly, he occasionally snatched-to-hand street-talk and ethnic slurs to make his points. It was a matter of urgency. Luther was not going to give the Devil his due. The Kingdom was at stake.

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