This collection of essays owes its existence to the combined support of the Society for Thuringian Church History, the International Martin Luther Foundation (IMLS, which also oversaw a related exhibition) and the Chair of Church History at the University of Jena. Divided into three parts dedicated to the early modern origins, recent development and future trajectories of the Lutheran parsonage, the book offers a broad spectrum of perspectives on this almost ‘heavenly institution’ (blurb), often praised as a religious, educational and intellectual hub in German communities. Naturally, the Reformation looms large: suddenly, local rectories came to be occupied by clerical families rather than single Catholic priests. As a result, parishes and Church/State authorities faced unprecedented problems such as higher living costs and widows’ pensions which took decades to resolve. Over the centuries, these households evolved into beacons of bourgeois values and Protestant culture, reflecting the greater secular embedding of the Lutheran clergy, but simultaneously subjecting inhabitants to incessant external scrutiny. Many of the contributions emphasise just how hard it is for ministers, wives and their children to live up to exalted expectations about personal conduct and/or to cope with the pressures of running permanently ‘open houses’. Starting with pioneering figures like Walpurga Bugenhagen at Wittenberg and Katharina Schütz Zell at Strasbourg (rather than – as Christoph Spehr reminds us – Katharina von Bora, whose husband was a preacher and professor rather than a parson) via eighteenth-century representatives (studied in their private and public personae by Christel Köhle-Hezinger and Susanne Schuster) to the present, generations of women have wrestled with the multiple challenges of being spouses, mothers, pastoral assistants, community leaders and – especially from the watershed 1960s, viewed very critically by Doris Riemann – independent wage-earners at the same time. In the course of the volume, the style shifts from scholarly investigations – illuminating, for example, the pastors’ role in memorial culture (Stefan Dornheim) and political resistance (Luise Schorn-Schütte) – towards more essayistic writing, with several contributors (Andrea Hauser, Axel Noack and the Saxon bishop Jochen Bohl) reflecting on new phenomena like multi-confessional frameworks, ministers’ husbands (Pfarrmänner), clerical households formed of same-sex couples and the ‘depopulation’ of vast swathes of rural Germany, especially in areas of the former GDR. No wonder that current job profiles, according to Klaus Raschzok, require radically different life skills. For an even fuller picture, readers may wish to consult the exhibition catalogue (whose aim to reveal an ‘inner picture’ is sketched here by Bodo-Michael Baumunk) and its companion collection Leben nach Luther (Berlin 2013; featuring comparative glances into Catholic contexts and the Church of England). In spite of some repetitions and the absence of concluding remarks, Das evangelische Pfarrhaus provides a valuable overview of long-term trends and the rather uncertain future of this venerable institution.