The Reformation of the Dead: Death and Ritual in Early Modern Germany, 1450-1700 (review)

The Reformation of the Dead: Death and Ritual in Early Modern Germany, 1450--1700. By Craig M. Koslofsky (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1999) 219 pp. $59.95

In recent years, the question of the relation of "theory"--encompassing work in such diverse fields as literature and anthropology--to "history" has led to bitter divisions. "Theory" often seems to be treated as an entity that rose, fully formed, out of nothing; for those trained in the disciplines of philosophy, literature, sociology, or anthropology, theories are known to be the product of observation and analysis using methods that are also the product of reflection.

Koslofsky's study of funerals and cemeteries in early modern Leipzig and Berlin employs sociological terms and categories articulated by Hertz, developed from analysis of a culture different in time (late-nineteenth-century), language (Malayo-Polynesian), and religious tradition (non--Judeo-Christian).¹ Like so many recent works, Koslofsky's adoption of those terms rests upon the unexamined assumption of a common human nature, a normative set of reactions across cultures and languages to, in this case, death.

Hertz articulated three sets of relationships--body/soul; individual/community; and living dead (7). Koslofsky takes up these pairings, with no acknowledgement of the differences between Galenic and Malayo-Polynesian conceptions of the body; between diverse Christian understandings of an immortal soul and those of a culture apparently untouched by Christianity; and between nonparallel conceptualizations of kinship, self, individual, communities of the living or the dead. Nor does he address whether Hertz's control group conceived of any sort of afterlife, let alone the complex articulation in word and image of heaven and purgatory specific to Christianity.

It is unclear what exactly Koslofsky is arguing. At one point, he argues "that the Reformation helped separate the living from the dead both spiritually and physically, and that this parallel separation was fundamental to the development of the Reformation" (19). At another, he states, "This parallel separation of the souls and bodies of the dead from the world of the living was an essential cultural precondition of the German Reformation as well as one of its most profound consequences" (41). Later, he states, "In Protestant territories, the dead were transformed from 'poor souls' into dangerous, marginal figures: the souls of the dead were cut off from human intercession while their bodies were banned from the space of the living and buried in extramural cemeteries" (156).

Koslofsky's evidence demonstrates much less than these claims. Overcrowding, plague, and early modern epidemiology led cities increasingly to move the bodies of the dead outside the walls (41--45)--except for those many groups in early modern cities who had the right to be buried in the crypts in churches within the walls.

Koslofsky's conclusions rest upon quicksand. He fails to integrate core beliefs of early modern Christians into the conceptual categories and relations that he adopts from Hertz. Most Protestants still recite the Nicene Creed: "We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come." Koslofsky's choice to adopt Hertz's pairings without substantial qualification denies the complex interconnections of "body" and immortal "soul," as well as the atemporality of the community of the saved that is central to Christian belief, be it Protestant or Catholic. Koslofsky's analysis ignores the multiple ways in which the doctrine of resurrection confounds any simple construction of the "body" or death. How can one argue for such a reductionist division of the living from the dead, when living Christians of all confessions considered death to be a transient state, believed that they would be resurrected at the Last Judgment, and hoped that they would be reunited with their predeceased loved ones in a life to come?

Lee Palmer Wandel
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Note

1. Robert Hertz (trans. Rodney and Claudia Needham...