Nietzsche laid it down that Luther was the first to free the German people from Christianity by teaching them to be un-Roman and to say: Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.[1655] He was anxious to make Luther the patron of his newest brand of “Kultur.” But this new, antichristian and atheistic “Kultur” is largely repudiated in Protestant circles. Many, like Walter Köhler, refuse to admit that Luther was in any sense the father of modern freethought; how could he have been, asks Köhler, since he would not sanction any freedom of conscience, and did not even understand what such a thing was?[1656]
Hence Luther makes a rather unsatisfactory “Hero of Kultur.” To depict him in this light his relations with the more favourable side of “Kultur” have to be so much exaggerated and distorted that one almost expects him, the sworn opponent of “fool reason” and champion of the “enslaved will,” to leap from his grave in protest; on the other hand, it is quite impossible to claim Luther as an advocate of that side of modern “Kultur” which is antagonistic to religion and morality. Protestant authorities have also protested against any claim being made on his behalf that he at least abolished that “Kultur which was directed by the Church”; on the contrary, so they declare, the “Kultur” for which he stood was in many respects “still tied up to the one and only Church” and was quite “mediæval in its character.”[1657] Thus, here again, a sort of dual picture, painted partly in the gay colours of the present day, partly in the sombre tints of the past.
A “Political” Luther?—Conclusion
Over and above all the previous presentations of Luther another strange portrait has recently appeared, which finds admirers among lay historians and students of political history. Here Luther’s political traits are emphasised. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, in his much-read work “Grundlagen des 19 Jahrhunderts,” insists on this view of Luther, starting from the assumption which is beyond question “that the separation from Rome for which Luther fought with such passion all his life was in itself the greatest political upheaval that could possibly occur.… However pitiful the later history of the Reformation may have been, still Luther’s deed was an undying one for this reason, that it rested on a firm political groundwork.” Chamberlain quite rightly makes much of Luther’s attempt to link his cause with that of the princes and with the German national sentiment.
“Without the princes,” says Chamberlain, “nothing could have been done. Who seriously believes that the princes who patronised the Reformation were inspired by or acted from religious enthusiasm? The fingers of one hand would be more than enough on which to reckon up those of whom such a thing holds good. Political interest and political ambition backed by the awakening of national sentiment were the determining factors.” “Even in the later wars of religion the political question was paramount.” It was his desire to win over the German statesmen that made Luther “speak so highly of the ‘German nation’ and so disrespectfully of the Papists.” That was why he wrote, for instance: “For my Germans was I born, them will I serve.” He is “more a politician than a theologian.” “Luther is, above all, a political hero.”
This portrait of the “political hero” is not one whit less one-sided than the others; above all, the author, who has no understanding for Christianity and the Church, fails also to see the so-called “religious” side in Luther. It is true that political motives often loomed so large in Luther’s case and in that of the princes who lent him their support as actually to obscure the religious side of the struggle. Luther himself, however, was anything rather than a great politician on the world’s stage. He had, in fact, to quote a Protestant historian, woefully distorted and imperfect views of the actual trend of human events, particularly of the determining personalities and active factors in the politics of that day. Never perhaps has a more childish diagnosis been given than that contained in the advice of the Wittenberg theologian to his sovereigns about their attitude towards Charles V.[1658] The circumstance that he was deficient in political sense may explain to some extent his mistakes and want of logic in this sphere, but cannot excuse the masterful tone in which he so often expresses himself on the public questions of the day. Then again there was his changeableness. Resistance to the Kaiser, which at one time he had declared unlawful, was advised by him later. After he had handed over the rights of the Church to the lawyers he turns on them and denounces them as his worst foes, who must be fought with every weapon for the sake of the independence of the preachers. In the same way, in spite of the religious freedom which he seemed at first to proclaim as a lasting principle for all future government of Church and State, we find him making his own that repellant intolerance, which, at last subsequent to 1530, led him to advocate the death-penalty for those who held “sectarian” doctrines, or any that differed from his own.
Discouraged by the failure of all these attempts to portray Luther others, at present, are inclined to deny him any mark of distinction and, in particular, any creative power, and depict him simply as the sum, or “product, of existing historical forces.” They emphasise strongly the pre-existing factors and regard him less as a mover than as one moved. This view, however, has also been stigmatised by Protestants as “Mythological.” They object that even “the masses also have a certain share in the achievements of genius,” and that genius itself is but “a child of its time.”[1659]
“The literary portraits of Luther,” says the Protestant author of “Luther im Lichte der neueren Forschung,” “are all more or less unlike the original. They are not in the strict sense of the word portraits at all but rather represent a type.… Every age has to some degree altered the traditional picture of the Reformer to make it fit its own ideals.” “The naïve way of idealising which credits the hero of history with our own ideals … is still at work even at the present day. If we cannot claim the whole Luther for ourselves, we can at least claim a bit of Luther.”
“In most of the popular Luther biographies of recent times,” the same author says, “all that is harsh and rude, violent and demagogic, rough and crude in the physiognomy of the Reformer has been obliterated.”[1660]
Adolf Harnack, also, seeks to discourage the practice of “hero painting”; he speaks unkindly of the common, “emotional pictures” of Luther as the reformer of civilisation which are fabricated somehow or other with the help of a select collection of artificial strokes. He adds: “The reformer himself would not recognise such a picture as his.” “Such a thing would be to him,” to quote an expression of Luther’s own, simply “a painted Luther.”[1661]