How Luther Became the Reformer2019

No story has been more foundational to triumphalist accounts of Western modernity than that of Martin Luther, the heroic individual, standing before the tribunes of medieval authoritarianism to proclaim his religious and intellectual freedom, "Here I stand!" How Luther Became the Reformer returns to the birthplace of this origin myth, Germany in the late nineteenth century, and traces its development from the end of World War I through the rise of National Socialism. Why were German intellectuals--especially Protestant scholars of religion, culture, and theology--in this turbulent period so committed to this version of Luther's story? Luther was touted as the mythological figure to promote the cultural unity of Germany as a modern nation; in the myth's many retellings, from the time of the...