The Luther Effect in Eastern Europe. History—Culture—Memory ed. by Joachim Bahlcke, Beate Störtkuhl, and Matthias Weber (review)

Twenty-three essays on topics grouped under the headings of "Competition and Tolerance," "Empire, Lands and Regions," "The Spread of Ideas and Knowledge," "Architecture and Visual Media," and "Reception and Remembrance" bring readers of this richly-illustrated large-format volume into corners of Luther's impact from the Baltic to the Carpathians in a host of cultural settings. The lands in which Lutherans formed a more significant proportion of the population—Estonia, Livonia, Courland, Slovakia—are not ignored but other areas and cultural settings get proportionately more attention, revealing how wide the cultural impact of the Wittenberg Reformer was in the early modern period.

Some comparative overviews provide a broader look at the developments surrounding the spread of the message from Wittenberg in these lands; for instance, Matthias Weber examines the development of tolerance that began in the Hussite settlement of Kutná Hora (1485), continuing in Poland with the Warsaw Confederation (1573) and in Transylvania with the formulation of public policies of religious toleration of Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Reformed, and Unitarians worked out in the Edict of Turda (1568), climaxing with the ill-fated Letter of Majesty for Bohemia and Silesia (1609). Other studies focus more narrowly on specific events, such as Maciej Ptaszyński's finely-honed discussion of the role that the Augsburg Interim of 1548 played in the politics of the Polish monarchy.

Several essays demonstrate that, unlike many parts of the German and the Nordic lands, Lutherans were seldom alone in eastern regions. Ke˛stutis Daugirdas traces the early introduction of the Reformation and its course as Lithuanians turned not only to Luther but also to Calvin and other Reformed theologians as well as Antitrinitarian thinkers. Eva Kowalská surveys the ways in which Lutherans and Reformed became "competitors and allies" within the Kingdom of Hungary in the period of expansion and then persecution from the early sixteenth to the end of the seventeenth century.

The distribution of printed works contributed significantly to the spread of Wittenberg theology and piety in areas to the east of Wittenberg; David Daniel noted years ago that print preceded preaching in many areas in the Kingdom of Hungary as the vehicle of Luther's message, in contrast to most places within the German lands, where "Lutheran" preachers preceded pamphlets from Wittenberg. Three essays focus on both open dissemination and smuggling as means by which pamphlets and books reached eastern European audiences.

The breadth of the impact of Luther's message is illustrated from the realm of the arts. For example, Krista Kodres discusses how architecture and visual media, such as altars, translated this message into the forms native to the eastern Baltic for practical use in worship. Evilin Wetter traces Lutherans' use of vestments to set themselves off from the Reformed and the Antitrinitarians in the sixteenth century and their employment in the nineteenth century to reinforce a Lutheran sense of identity.

This volume demonstrates the international character of the Lutheran Reformation and its continuing impact on aspects of culture in the territories from Tallinn to Sibiu into the twentieth century. It challenges historians of theology to turn to this area as a field of future research to expand our knowledge of how Luther's proclamation of the gospel was processed and translated in theological and devotional writings for the pastors and people of the several cultures of the region and how it took root among them.