Lesson 4
Reformed Confessionalisation in Germany and Upper Germany
   (Print) (Debate plattforrm)

1. Introduction
2. Martin Bucer and Strasbourg
3. Johannes a Lasco and East Friesland
4. The counties of Bentheim, Steinfurt and Tecklenburg
5. Lingen
6. Lippe
7. Rhineland and the Lower Rhine Valley
8. The Wetterau Association of Counts (Wittgenstein, Nassau-Dillenburg-Siegen, Wied)
9. Hessen-Cassel
10. The Electoral Palatinate and Baden
11. East Germany
12. Huguenots in Germany
13. Literature

1. Introduction

In Lessons 2 and 3 of the basic course, the beginnings of the Reformed Reformation in Switzerland and Geneva were discussed (with a brief look at France).
This lesson shall deal with the question of how the Reformation of Reformed character became established in individual parts of Germany. It will be seen that this was not a uniform occurrence. For one, there was the phenomenon that individual regions, which had turned in the first place to the Lutheran Reformation, became Reformed in the course of the sixteenth Century, e.g. the counties of Bentheim and Lippe or the Electoral Palatinate. Besides this, there were also regions that experienced a reformation of a Reformed character from the beginning, e.g. Upper Germany, or that initially existed as much under Lutheran as Reformed influence, e.g. the Palatinate. And there were in Germany numerous congregations of refugees (above all Huguenots and Waldenses). All this makes it difficult to grasp the entire occurrence in one concept. The suggestion, discussed a great deal around 1985, to name the whole occurrence a “second Reformation” after a first Lutheran Reformation, must be viewed as a failure. For it makes into a rule a sequence which was present in only some areas, of first Lutheran and then Reformed confessionalisation. It is therefore more fitting, with regard to Germany, to speak somewhat more diffusely of the “Reformed confessionalisation” and the history of Reformed churches and congregations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Therefore, because of the very different ways in which the Reformed congregations originated in Germany, there are relatively many sections in this lesson standing independently of each other. They reflect the diversity but also demonstrate the complexity of the historical developments.
The Reformed church was first officially acknowledged in Germany in 1648 by the Peace Treaty of Westphalia in Munster and Osnabrueck, which ended the Thirty Years’ War. Before this, there was an important event in the year of 1555. In the Religious Peace Treaty of Augsburg, two decisions were reached among others. For one, general peace was guaranteed for the members of the Augsburg Confession. For another, the so-called “ius reformandi” was confirmed. As a result, the regional rulers, counts and estates could determine the confession of their country (which later arrived at the formula “cuius regio eius religio” – “he to whom the region belongs defines also the religion”). The fact that the Reformed confession was related to the Augsburg Confession gave the regional rulers who were becoming Reformed the freedom to introduce it into their areas. For the Reformed confession, confessionalisation reached from 1563 (when the Electoral Palatinate became Reformed) to the Peace Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. There, on the one hand, the same right was granted to the Reformed as to the Catholics and Lutherans. And on the other hand, the “ius reformandi” was limited so that a change of confession of the regional ruler no longer had to be followed by that of his region.