The Reformation was a tense process that produced a variety of confessional contexts and forms. The historical dissertation under review exemplifies this with the example of Upper Lusatia. In doing so, it takes as its object of study a territory that ‘has received little scholarly attention, especially by Anglophone historians’, and which at the same time can be considered as ‘a further example of a region where a clear confessionalization process is difficult to detect’ (p. 14).

For this reason, the monograph examines how religious coexistence in Upper Lusatia developed and how exactly a religious change took place in the period ‘from the first Lutheran stirrings in the early 1520s to the change of rulership from the Bohemian crown to the Saxon dukes in 1635’ (p. 15). The study focuses specifically ‘on the ways in which the religious plurality influenced belief systems’, describing ‘how men and women of different religious groups … influenced each other's practices, spaces, and identities’ (p. 15). The study is based on three basic methodological decisions: firstly, it places its main focus on two religious parties, namely Lutherans and Catholics; secondly, it seeks to capture the reciprocal processes of influence with the concept of ‘syncretism’; thirdly, the monograph takes a personal history approach (p. 24).

The book is divided as follows: after an introduction presenting a research overview, source basis and structure as well as clarifying the conceptual framework and dating issues (pp. 1–28), the following eight main chapters, with a personal-historical orientation, present various exemplary ‘syncretistic religiosities’, asking ‘why and how they came into existence, as well as which boundaries could not be crossed’ (p. 21). Each chapter is drawn together with a short summary. The conclusion, which skilfully summarises the course of the study and its results (pp. 221–8), is followed by a list of sources and a bibliography (pp. 229–57) and a concise index listing places, persons and selected objects (pp. 259–61). A short list of illustrations, maps, abbreviations and conventions is also included (pp. xi–xii).

The first main chapter (pp. 29–50) illustrates the many faces of the Lusatian Reformation using the examples of the first Lutheran priest in Zittau Lorenz Heidenreich (1460–1557) and the Zwinglian town clerk Oswald Pergener (1490s–1546). At the same time, it gives ‘an overview of the Reformation in the six [Lusatian] towns and shows how the lack of a political centre led to ever new compromises’ (p. 25). In response to the question of ‘when the religious change turned into the process known as the “introduction of Lutheranism”’, it shows that ‘the six towns took individualistic and partly unique paths to implement the Reformation’ (p. 25).

The second chapter (pp. 51–72) ‘explores the early Reformation years as a time of confessional uncertainties’ (p. 26). The chapter focuses on the councillor and chronicler Johannes Hess (c. 1476–1544) ‘who incorporated minor elements of Lutheranism into his religiosity and at the same time saw himself as a Catholic’ (p. 25). The next chapter (pp. 72–91) ‘approaches the continuities and ruptures in the municipal governments of the Lusatian cities via the last Catholic mayor of Kamenz, Andreas Günther (1502–1570)’ (p. 26). His example ‘illustrates how the urban elites tried to strengthen their position’ (p. 90) vis-à-vis a Lutheranism that was becoming stronger in the city.

The fourth chapter (pp. 92–114) thereupon deals with learning, teaching and remembering in the towns of the Lusatian League. The focus is on the Lutheran mayor Bartolomäus Scultetus (1540–1614), who as a Lutheran was responsible for the introduction of the originally Catholic Gregorian calendar into Lusatia, which again is an example of ‘cross-community exchange’.

The following chapter (pp. 115–52) ‘focuses on later Catholic reactions to the increasingly Lutheran environment’ (p. 26). For example, the Catholic dean of the biconfessional Bautzen, Johann Leisentrit (1527–86), compromised in favour of the Lutherans with regard to the Lord's Supper and baptism in order to maintain peace in the city at a time of increasing re-Catholicisation. This shows that in Upper Lusatia Lutherans and Catholics found a workable modus vivendi through written agreements and regular negotiations, which included not least the mutual adoption of religious elements, and makes clear that ‘confessional boundaries remained permeable towards the end of the sixteenth century’ (p. 152). Chapter vi (pp. 153–74) then focuses on the shared use and Lutheran reinterpretation of formerly Catholic spaces and objects, which reveals ‘the complex nature of religious change’ (p. 174). The Lutheran pastor Sigismund Suevus (1526–96) is used as an example to illustrate the way of dealing with spaces of a different confession. The seventh chapter (pp. 175–93) uses the example of Martin Moller (1547–1606), who was accused of ‘crypto-Calvinism’, to show that ‘a peaceful coexistence of Lutherans and Catholics … never meant toleration of all religious groups in Upper Lusatia’ (p. 27). At this point it becomes clear that Melanchthon was immensely influential in Upper Lusatia, as he was in Bohemia, among other regions. Finally, the last chapter (pp. 193–220) ‘focuses on the Bautzen preacher Friedrich Fischer (1558–1623) and the changing political and religious landscape of the early seventeenth century, which led to a repositioning of Lutheranism’ (p. 27).

The study concludes that ‘[r]eligious change in Upper Lusatia was slow and incomplete’ (p. 222). Nevertheless, one cannot speak of a ‘late Reformation’ in this case, rather ‘[t]he mixed confessional milieu … led to a syncretistic Reformation’ (p. 71), which in turn – according to the study's findings – produced denominational profiles that appear ambiguous to us today. However, the fact that these are then assigned to a ‘Lutheranism that included Catholic elements’ or a ‘Catholicism which contained Lutheran elements’ (p. 50) reflects a basic heuristic assumption that proves to be somewhat obstructive: the heuristic assumption of the existence of different denominations in the early years of the Reformation contradicts the view of the incompleteness and the fluidity of processes of religious formation in the early modern period, which is otherwise assumed in the study and with which it ultimately rightly questions the confessionalisation thesis. Nevertheless, the monograph provides excellent evidence that religious change in Upper Lusatia took place under its own conditions and followed its own dynamics. At the same time, it illustrates the complexity, fluidity and temporal extension of religious formation processes in the early modern period, to which it undoubtedly makes an important contribution.