Philipp Melanchthon: Zur populären Rezeption des Reformators ed. by Stefan Rhein and Martin Treu (review)

In 2015 Beata Kobler published a dissertation mapping out what its title claimed was the "Origins of the Negative Picture of Melanchthon" (Die Entstehung des negativen Melanchthonsbildes [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck]), a contentious and ill-conceived recitation of most of the negative comments about Melanchthon made during his lifetime. (See my review of that volume, Lutheran Quarterly 29 [2015]: 335–37.) Now, a year later, a collection of essays (none of which cites Kobler) takes a far more balanced look at a related topic: the popular reception of Melanchthon in various literary and artistic forms. Without denying the sometimes ambiguous view of Wittenberg's other reformer both during his lifetime and after his death in 1560, these authors collaborate in analyzing the vast sources that map out the complicated story of how later generations dealt with one of the Reformation's most influential figures.

Sebastian Kranich leads with a helpful summary of Melanchthon's life and influence, which includes this remarkable claim: "In early-modern Europe, Melanchthon had a greater resonance than Luther" (12). Hans-Rüdiger Schwab offers a fascinating look at twentieth-century German literature, beginning with a consideration of two opposing views of Melanchthon produced during the Nazi rule: one (by a Nazi sympathizer) depicting Melanchthon as impeding the German hero, Luther, and the other (by an opponent of Fascism) attributing to Melanchthon (in conversation with the Nuremberg abbess, Caritas Pirckheimer) an insistence on the limits of governmental power. This is followed by Marita Rödszus-Hecker's glimpse into twentieth-century edification literature, comparing Thomas Mann's approach to educated personalities in his Dr. Faustus to the works of Eva Hoffmann-Aleith on Melanchthon. In the end her works demarcate a now-lost time when such books could still edify a reader's heart and mind. Martin Jung's careful overview of Melanchthon's place in school textbooks demonstrates how, compared to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century texts, Melanchthon disappeared from more recent accounts of the Reformation, beginning in Nazi Germany, where the "Germanic," war-like Luther was preferred over the effete, compromising Melanchthon and including post-war images of Master Philip as little more than a friend and assistant to Luther or, sometimes, even Luther's betrayer (at Augsburg). A separate analysis of "evangelische" textbooks shows a similar decline in interest, parallel to Barth's lower valuation of church history's role in theology.

A second section, enriched with numerous photographs, examines Melanchthon's depiction in graphic art with Maria Lucia Weigel's examination of 17th- and 18th-century illustrations, Stefan Rhein's look at Melanchthon busts, and Gerhard Seib's account of 19th-century souvenirs. Esther Wipfler examines Melanchthon in film and Jan Scheunemann describes museums and memorials dedicated to Melanchthon. Specific articles on Melanchthon's home in Wittenberg by Silvio Reichelt, on Melanchthon's birthplace, Bretten, by Peter Bahn, and on Melanchthon's contacts in Nuremberg by Martina Switalski allow readers to see how cultural and geographical contexts influence historical memories. A final article by Günter Frank on Melanchthon curios (township, pear and pocket watch bearing his name) provides a fascinating peek at some of the most unusual receptions of Melanchthon in popular culture.

Missing is a summary of commonalities among these essays, where the editor could have pointed to the contributions of nineteenth- century Romanticism on telling history "wie es eigentlich geschehen ist" (as it actually happened), to negative views of Melanchthon especially put forward by Albrecht Ritschl and Karl Holl, and to the powerful cultural values that often transformed the nineteenth century's positive views of Melanchthon into the more skeptical views of the twentieth, while, at the same time, continuing to depict Melanchthon using the earliest portrayals of the sixteenth century. In any case, this eclectic collection of essays should be required reading for anyone who wants to write about or lecture on Melanchthon, because it provides a cautionary tale for those who imagine that...