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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts FROM MORAL REFORM TO CIVIC LUTHERANISM: PROTESTANT IDENTITY IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY LÜBECK A Dissertation in History and Religious Studies by Jason L. Strandquist © 2012 Jason L. Strandquist Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2012 ii The dissertation of Jason L. Strandquist was reviewed and approved* by the following: R. Po-chia Hsia Edwin Earle Sparks Professor of History Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee A. Gregg Roeber Professor of Early Modern History and Religious Studies Daniel C. Beaver Associate Professor of History Charlotte M. Houghton Associate Professor of Art History Michael Kulikowski Professor of History and Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies Head, Department of History and Program in Religious Studies *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT The following study suggests that social change in seventeenth-century German cities cannot be understood apart from community religious identity. By reconstructing the overlapping crises of the seventeenth century as they occurred in Lübeck, the capital city of the Hanseatic League, I argue that structural crisis alone did not cause permanent changes in the ordering of urban politics and religious life inherited from the late middle ages and Reformation. In fact, the “Little Ice Age” (c. 1570-1630) and Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) elicited very different responses from the city’s Lutheran pastors and oligarchic magistrates. In contrast to better-studied cities like Augsburg and Frankfurt, dramatic change came to Lübeck only when guildsmen mounted a series of overlapping attacks on elite property and religious non-conformists in the 1660s. These attacks drove the city council to make unprecedented political concessions to the guilds in 1669, and to impose new legal restrictions on other, “unorthodox” religious practices during the ensuing decades. These were more than pragmatic expedients: urban elites also cooperated closely with the clergy in everyday religious life, and became enthusiastic patrons of Lutheran music and art after mid-century. By 1700, new consensus regarding their shared “civic Lutheran” identity enabled magistrates, pastors, and guildsmen to collectively depict their city as stable and prosperous, despite a long-term decline in Lübeck’s international influence. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… vi List of Abbreviations …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… vii Introduction: “The Queen is Dead” …………………………………………………………………………………………………....... 1 Chapter One - “The Shepherds of Souls”: Lutheran Pastors in a Crisis Century ……………………………………. 21 The Clergy and Their Office …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 23 Clergy and Magistrates in the Seventeenth Century ………..…………………………………………………….. 41 Chapter Two - “In Times of General Need”: Lübeck in the Little Ice Age, 1580-1620 .............................. 69 Hanseatic Decline and the Little Ice Age …………………………………………………………………………………. 70 Struggles Over Reform ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 85 Chapter Three - “The Rod and Bloody Sword”: Lübeck in the Thirty Years’ War, 1620-1650 ……………… 114 Lübeck a War Zone ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 116 Magistrates and Ministry in the Thirty Years’ War ………………………………………………………………… 139 Chapter Four - “The Fire of Discord”: Constitutional and Religious Turmoil, 1650-1670 ……………………. 164 Patrician Privilege vs. Burgher Tradition ……………………………………………………………………………….. 167 Calvinists, Sectarians, and Early Conventicles ……………………………………………………………………….. 197 Chapter Five - “A Grand Seat of the Pure Teaching”: Economic Re-orientation and Civic Lutheranism, 1670-1700 ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 217 Urban Tradition and Economic Innovation ……………………………………………………………………………. 220 The Origins of Civic Lutheranism …………………………………………………………………………………………… 235 Chapter Six – “Buried Between Heaven and Earth”: Burgher Patronage and Material Culture …….……. 259 The Visual Aspects of Sacral Culture ……………………………………………………………………………………… 263 Burgher Patronage and the “Age of Buxtehude” …………………………………………………………………… 278 v Conclusion – “On Account of Pressing Need” ……………………………………………………………………………………. 303 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……. 310 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: The Redoubts of Lübeck (1662) …..…………………………………………………………………………………………… 2 Figure 2: Ruins of the Marienkirche, 1942 .………………………………………………………………………………………….. 18 Figure 3: Title page of A Christian Sermon of the Three-Part Shepherd, by Michael Siricius …………..……. 22 Figure 4: Portrait of Pastor Johannes Reich (detail) …………………………………………………………………………. 65 Figure 5: Dr. Nicolaus Hunnius, The Fifth Superintendent of Lübeck ….…………………..………………………..… 145 Figure 6: Portrait of Gottschalk von Wickeden (1557-1667) ……………………………………………………………… 171 Figure 7: Dr. Johann Wilhelm Petersen ….…………….…………………………………………………………………………… 236 Figure 8: August Pfeiffer: Doctor of Theology and Superintendent of the Lübeck Ministry, by Johann Georg Mentzel …………………………………………….……………………………………….…………………………… 239 Figure 9: Frontispiece of The Blessed and Ornamented City of Lübeck, by Johann Krüger ………...….…… 262 Figure 10: Domkirche pew-end belonging to the Lübeck cooper's guild …….…………………………………….… 270 Figure 11: The Domkirche pulpit ……………….…………………………………………………………………………………….… 283 Figure 12: Retable of the "Marian Altar" in St. Mary's church ……….…………..………………..……………….…… 285 Figure 13: The Fredenhagen Altar …………………………..……………………………………………………………………….… 287 Figure 14: Cenotaph of Hermann von Dorne .….………………………………………………………………………………… 293 Figure 15: Epitaph of Hartwich von Stiten ……………………………………………………………………………………….… 298 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ADB – Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie AHL – Archiv der Hansestadt Lübeck HAB – Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel JdSMB – Jahrbuch des St. Marien Bauvereins LBl – Lübeckische Blätter MVLGA – Mitteilungen des Vereins für Lübeckisches Geschichte und Altertumskunde NDB – Neue Deutsche Biographie NLB – Neue Lübeckische Blätter SbL – Stadtbibliothek Lübeck SVshK – Schriften des Vereins für Schleswig-Holsteinische Kirchengeschichte ZVLGA – Zeitschrift des Vereins für Lübeckische Geschichte und Altertumskunde viii “Great things were happening while Hanno played. War broke out, victory was uncertain, and then was decided. Hanno Buddenbrook’s hometown, having shrewdly sided with Prussia, could gaze with some satisfaction on rich Frankfurt, which was now made to pay for its faith in Austria and was no longer a free city. But in July, shortly before the armistice, a large wholesale house in Frankfurt declared bankruptcy, and at one blow the firm of Johann Buddenbrook lost the round sum of twenty thousand thalers courant.” -Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks 1 Introduction “The Queen is Dead”: Lübeck’s Century of Crisis As magistrates and guild leaders struggled over constitutional reform in the Free and Imperial city of Lübeck, the wealthy patrician Gottschalk Kirchring (1639-1705) concluded his Compendium of the Chronicles of Lübeck with a bleak portrayal of the city’s recent history: “Herewith is this year 1663 departed in the continued smoldering of the ashes of internal unrest in Lübeck and the fire of discord, and because the business and events at Lübeck in subsequent years, into the present time, transpired in such an intricate, nebulous, vexatious, and odious manner, that one considers whether to immerse himself further therein, but rather thereof resolves, to abandon this work at this time, and to relinquish to another the description of the subsequent remarkable years full of disquiet and misfortune.”1 Kirchring published his Compendium in 1678, and though he went on to serve as city council member (Ratsherr) and mayor (Bürgermeister), he never extended his digest beyond the onset of Lübeck's worst internal crisis since the middle ages.2 His pessimism was justified: the “internal unrest” he described for 1663 continued to escalate even after the council agreed to cooperative financial management two years later, and was only quelled in late 1668, after the Holy Roman Emperor intervened to restore peace between the guilds and the city council. In the intervening years, the “fire of discord” spread into the city’s religious life. In 1666, mobs of irate guildsmen rioted against the mystical “conventicles” that had recently taken root in Lübeck, which were some of the first such piety movements in Lutheran Germany.3 Though smaller in scale, 1 Gottschalk Kirchring and Gottschalk Müller, Compendium Chronicae Lubecensis, Oder Auszug und Historischer-Kern Lübischer Chronicken (Hamburg: Georg Rebelein, 1678), pp. 329-330:“Hiemit hat dies 1663 Jahr / unter continuirlicher Glimmung des in der Aschen liegenden innerlichen Lübischen Unruhe und Zwaytrachts Feurs / auch seinen Abschied genommen / und weil in folgenden Jahren biß in diesen Zeiten die Händel und Begebnissen zu Lübeck / dermassen intricat, verworren/ verdrießlich / und odios vorfallen / als hat man Bedencken getragen sich weiter darin zu vertieffen / sondern dannenhero resolviret / bor dißmal dieser Arbeit abzubrechen / und die Beschreibung der folgenden gantz merck-würdigen / Unruhe … einem andern zu überlassen.” 2 Gottschalk (also: Gotthard) Kirchring became a member of the patrician “Society of the Circle” (Zirkel-Gesellschaft) in 1669, at the age of thirty. This association assisted his election to the council in 1680, and his