An essay by Christian Schröder

A theatre of fervour and hysteria

Meyerbeer’s LE PROPHETE revisits one of the most spectacular chapters in the history of the Reformation – the period of Anabaptist rule in Münster. But what really happened back then?

Christian Schröder, born 1965, writes in the arts and culture section of the “Tagesspiegel”, focusing on cinema, pop music and historical subjects. He has studied history of art and written a biography on Hildegard Knef.

The end was nigh – and redemption was nigh, too. The end arrived, but redemption did not. Jan Matthys, a Dutch baker, had risen to become the leader of the Anabaptist movement and the ruling figure in Münster and was now prophesying that the world would come to an end at Easter 1534. Only people who had lived in a manner that found favour with God would be admitted into paradise. For Matthys and his followers, who had driven out the bishop and then the Lutherans even before Matthys’s arrival, Münster, a Hanseatic town in Westphalia, was the new Jerusalem. In this Christian republic of 11,000 souls, in the words of the chief preacher Bernd Rothmann, the “hitherto hidden rule of Christ” was already manifest.

Matthys had called on his followers to execute the godless as a way of purging the town “of all that is unclean”. In the end they were merely compelled to leave Münster. Anyone staying behind had to submit to being baptised for a second time – hence the term ‘anabaptism’, or (Greek) ‘re-baptism’. A community of goods and property was established. Food stocks and all money had to be surrendered to the community and documents and promissory notes were destroyed. All books with the exception of the Bible were burnt. This militant proto-communism was not about class warfare but rather the desire to live as the early Christians had lived. A preacher called Stutenbernt proclaimed that “the possessions of Christian brothers and sisters belong to each and every Christian. What belongs to one, belongs to everyone.”

Humility and modesty were considered the highest of virtues. It was also God’s will that the Anabaptists multiply and go forth into the world. Complying with this second directive proved increasingly difficult as the town was besieged by Catholic and Protestant troops. The first directive was more a question of biology. Polygamy, denounced by the Anabaptists’ opponents as a particularly venal sin, was a response to the surplus of women in the community, which numbered around 8,000 women but only 3,000 men. Jan van Leiden, another leader, was husband to sixteen women, two of whom he had beheaded for failing to follow his instructions.

The Anabaptists rampage through churches and monasteries, destroying religious works of art.
 

To get an idea of what Münster would have been like under the Anabaptists, we can conjure up in our mind’s eye an open-air theatre in which a play packed with fear, fervour, bloodshed and hysteria is being staged. Cultural historian Richard van Dülmen has identified three separate phases of evolution in a story of ever-increasing tension: a general acknowledgement of the Reformation in 1532, the falling-out with the Evangelical and Radical groupings and rejection of child baptism, and the take-over by the Anabaptists in 1533. The Anabaptists refer to themselves as Christians and to the others as the Ungodly, whose spirits are to be banished from the town. A campaign of destruction directed at icons and works of art in churches and monasteries seeks to eradicate traces of the past. An eyewitness describes how “they broke caskets open, took the gold and silver and pearls from the skeletons they bedecked, threw the bones out into the streets and trampled them underfoot.”

The furore also targeted buildings, and people began to demolish churches. Before they submitted again “to papal authority and the abuses perpetrated by clerics”, they would “rather eat their own unborn children and perish to the last man”. Thus runs the message from the town’s inhabitants to the emissary of the Landgrave of Hesse, who has entered the town to negotiate. The visiting dignitary argues that if they are to listen to sermons, there have to be pulpits and churches. “If we want sermons, we’ll go to the market to listen to them” is the riposte. “We won’t be deterred by wind and rain and we know full well that the sermon won’t burden us with difficult tasks.” The Anabaptists live in the full certainty that they are the protected ones. Fires light up the heavens. The sun burns so brightly as a result that everyone in the marketplace, “when beheld by them, appeared golden.” The children of God, the people of God.

It is not the world that comes to an end, though. A few short weeks after the Easter festival of 1534 has been and gone without the pearly gates opening, Jan Matthys mounts his horse and, with a few others, attempts to escape from the besieged town – a suicidal venture. A skirmish ensues in which the prophet and mayor is “gored with a lance. […] The foot soldiers hacked his head off, cut him into a hundred pieces, threw the bits at one another and then stuck his head on a pole.” A terrorising deterrent reminiscent of “Islamic State”.

Jan van Leiden © akg Images
 

Matthys’s successor is his protégé Jan van Leiden, a former landlord and minstrel. He has himself crowned king and declares Münster to be the Kingdom of the Last Days. Leiden sees himself as the new King David and Messiah, as “the supreme authority”. As food shortages began to pinch, he and his court of 135 followers surround themselves in luxury. According to one contemporary chronicler, the king “rides around town atop a pale horse decked out in dark green velvet, wears a golden crown on his head and places little trust in his subjects.”

Three iron cages still dangling from the steeple of St Lambert’s church today are testimony to the end of the Anabaptist kingdom. They are symbols of a horrific event that unfolded. In June 1535 Münster is taken by the siege troops and the ring leaders Bernhard Krechting, Bernd Knipperdolling and Jan van Leiden are condemned to death. The sentence is carried out over a period of several hours. “Their flesh was ripped from their body with red-hot tongs and then throat and heart were thrust through with red-hot rods.” Their mortal remains are locked into the cages. Luther was glad that the Devil, whom he described as having personally kept court in Münster, had been vanquished thanks to the “great grace of God”. The vision of creating paradise on earth came to nothing - on that occasion. But the vision persisted. To date, however, all attempts at forcing such happiness on people have ended in bloodshed.

First printed in the Deutsche Oper Berlin supplement in the Tagesspiegel, September 2017

 

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