This 2005 Berlin dissertation tries to answer a specific question: is there a direct connection between historiography and confessionalisation in German Lutheranism? The period considered is that from the beginning of the Smalkaldic War to the eve of the Thirty Years War. Pohlig divides his work into three parts. His introduction discusses the nature of the problem, the sources used and his methodology. The substance of the volume, ‘Lutheran historiography in the age of confessionalisation’, is divided into eight chapters which range from a discussion of the practice of writing history during that period and the difference between church history and universal history to the problem of Lutheran calendars of history between humanism and hagiography. Pohlig correctly stresses the importance of commentaries on the Apocalypses for the development of Lutheran historiography. Compared to the bulk of the book the last part, ‘Results and prospects’, only fifteen pages long, is sobering. Pohlig acknowledges that there is no definite answer to his introductory question. Confessional identity can be demonstrated in the topics addressed and the methodology of the Lutheran writers but there are other influences as well.

The book gives a splendid overall view of history writing in Lutheran Germany in the age of confessionalisation. The list of authors (fifteen pages in small print) testifies to the broad range of sources that Pohlig uses. The list of secondary literature includes English and Italian titles, something still not customary in German research. On the other hand Pohlig writes in so complex and dense a style that even German readers will have difficulty in following him.