The Luther Myth

Abstract This study traces the transposition of Luther’s image from religious reformer to völkisch icon in the period from the close of the Napoleonic Wars up through the immediate post-World-War II era. Using evidence drawn from not only theological works and literary and philosophical sources, but also speeches, theatrical works, public celebrations and monuments, it traces the development of Luther’s image within the German Protestant imagination. The study demonstrates how this image evolved within the environment of German nationalist sentiment of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from a religious reformer and advocate of freedom to a symbol of völkisch nationalist identity, such that with the seizure of power by the Nazis, Luther was used to portray a symbiosis between the new regime and the tradition of Protestant religiosity. The study looks particularly at how Protestant Germans styled Luther to affirm the essentialist racial identity politics of the Nazis, the cult of authoritarian leadership around Adolf Hitler, the drive to impose state control over all competing sources of authority, and the victimizing of German Jews.