Luthers Leiden: Die Krankheitsgeschichte des Reformators (review)

The author, a professor and maxillofacial surgeon at the teaching hospital of the Humboldt University in Berlin, presents a retrospective historia morbis of Martin Luther (1483–1546) based on published sixteenth-century sources, which include self-reports in the correspondence with Philip Melanchthon and the Ratzeberger MS published in 1850. Neumann wishes to use current medical knowledge to elucidate and disentangle the multiplicity of reported signs and symptoms that beset the German reformer. Within the limits of a prudent retrospective, such a reassessment would not be unreasonable in view of the wide range of historiographical positions explaining or discrediting specific behaviors and a life course that was one of the main influences on early modern European history.

Neumann, himself writing in a context of cognitive and historical transition, differentiates between a range of morbid conditions apparently affecting Luther beginning in midlife; to mention only the more serious and chronic complaints, these include an unexplained seizure disorder, well-known episodes of gout and associated kidney and bladder stones, the perennial and serious constipation besetting the sedentary clergy, angina, and, most specifically, Ménière’s disease. The author distances himself sharply from both psychohistory and strictly psychosomatic explanations of Luther’s personality, but the claim to an objective evaluation of contemporary descriptions often gives way to an insistence on specific diagnoses and comorbidities.

Despite poor source notes, which should probably be laid at the door of the publisher, the value of the book lies in drawing attention to a small but interesting secondary literature, ranging from a 1750 publication by the famous Michael Alberti at Halle, to evaluative studies by several reputable German physicians in the late nineteenth century. The book features numerous reproductions of portraits of Luther and his contemporaries by the painters of the German Renaissance, from Dürer to Lucas Cranach. These, in addition to their personal and artistic interest, draw attention to the considerable wealth of the German territories and imperial cities throughout the sixteenth century. The relative splendor of this period is often overshadowed by the decline in the seventeenth century, due in part to the very confessional struggles and reforms initiated by the subject of this volume.