Konfessionskampf und fremde Besatzung. Stadt und Hochstift Hildesheim im Zeitalter der Gegenreformation und des Dreißigjährigen Krieges (ca. 1580-1660) (review)

Christian Plath has studied the Protestant city of Hildesheim and the Catholic territory around it during the period of the Counter-Reformation and the Thirty Years' War. Like a number of recent works, Plath compares the Catholic and Protestant communities, with an eye toward understanding their "experience" (Erfahrung) of both religious reform and war. The concept of "experience" comes out of the German tradition of Alltagsgeschichte (history of everyday life) and seeks to give a social dimension to historical events like the Thirty Years' War. This effort is commendable and, for the most part, Plath succeeds in this endeavor.

The book is divided into two main parts, the first on the "Counter-Reformation" and the second on the Thirty Years' War. The two parts are connected, since Catholic efforts to recapture institutions and populations for the Church occurred during the war itself. On the other hand, each part more of less stands on its own and each has rather different concerns. The first part reads a lot like a traditional study of Tridentine reform. Plath examines the work of bishops and their officials, the influence of the Jesuits, the use of synods and visitations. A strength of this study is that it also examines these developments from the perspective of the Protestant elite and the wider population. We read about Protestant as well as Catholic polemicists in the years leading up to the war, the efforts of the Protestant City Council of Hildesheim to resist the Edict of Restitution (1629), and the development of new forms of piety, in both confessions, in the later years of the war.

Plath's discussion of the Thirty Years' War makes several important points. The war had its particular turning points and rhythms at the local and regional level and the experience of the population was neither uniform nor continuously horrible. In the Hildesheim region, the Edict of Restitution was one turning point, the Swedish invasion (1631-32) a second one, and the Peace of Goslar in 1643 a third. Plath emphasizes that the confessional conflict of the pre-war period meant that both Catholics and Lutherans experienced the early years of the war, until the mid 1630's or so, as a Konfessionskrieg, or religious war. By the 1640's, survival strategies dominated everyone's day-to-day life. At the same time, the experience of the Thirty Years' War varied considerably across social classes and between the confessions. Co-operation between soldiers and civilians and between Catholics and Protestants was not unusual and increased as the war dragged on.

Plath's study is firmly rooted in extensive archival research and based on vast amounts of secondary reading, although regrettably little in non-German-language scholarship. The work is full of interesting stories about the experiences of real people—peasants and artisans, students and teachers, priests and pastors, bishops and town councilors. This is its greatest strength.