This joint biography by an editor of the new critical edition of Müntzer's works (the final volume is at last scheduled to appear in mid-2017) and a former professor of history at the Humboldt University in Berlin has its origins in a dialogue between Christians and Marxists in which Bräuer and Vogler have been engaged over many decades. Alas, the publishers claim the volume as the first ever full-length scholarly source-based biography of Müntzer, which is only accurate if by that the use of unpublished archival material is meant. Yet major new sources on Müntzer's maddeningly elusive career are unlikely to be discovered and certainly are absent here. Rather, what stands out in this biography is the meticulous exposure of false or superficial assumptions about his life and work, to the point where, paradoxically, so many sources are interrogated only to be dismissed that readers are left knowing less about the contours of his career than when they began. That is not to say that Bräuer and Vogler's approach yields no new insights: On counterfeit faith is now plausibly shown to have been composed after, not before, Müntzer's Protestation or proposition: as much can be gleaned from Müntzer's letters as from his theological tracts, especially his correspondence with Christoph Meinhard in Eisleben; Müntzer's reservations about infant baptism are carefully explored (and qualify the often repeated contention that he was an Anabaptist avant la lettre); and the correct relationship between the four versions of the so-called Prague manifesto is convincingly expounded. The authors are to be commended for their clear and straightforward prose (no theological jargon here), with technical or Latin phrases explained as they arise. This is a biography which is intended to appeal beyond the confines of a scholarly readership.

Yet this achievement comes at a price. The development of and inconsistencies within Müntzer's theology are barely explored or else smoothed over: for instance, the tension between mysticism and apocalypticism; the shifting perception of who were to be reckoned as the elect; what Müntzer understood by godly law and its application. Here readers should have recourse to the numerous studies of Hans-Jürgen Goertz, especially his most recent (2015) biography of Müntzer. A further problem arises over Müntzer's vision of a new society – after all, the book carries the subtitle (in translation) ‘to make a new order in the world’, which in itself must qualify his eschatology. It has been remarked that the trajectory of Müntzer's theological development and his personal life experience reveal uncanny similarities, but very little is said about Müntzer's involvement in politics until his arrival in Mühlhausen in autumn 1524. Bräuer and Vogler deserve full credit for emphasising the centrality of Müntzer's liturgical reform in his previous station, Allstedt – possibly his most important achievement – but he also sought to transform that small peasant-burgher town into a perfect Christian commonwealth en miniature, to which end he founded several leagues. To these the authors devote perfunctory attention, even though the function and purpose of the leagues changed perceptibly over time (and remain contested among scholars). Boldly, Bräuer and Vogler declare that Müntzer had no concrete plan of society (a verdict with which I concur), but that should not have absolved them from discussing the implications of the so-called Constitutional draft, in effect a blueprint for the recasting of society, not least since its ascription to Müntzer remains controversial. Müntzer's vision of a new society may have been provisional and susceptible to change, but that is no excuse for the failure to examine closely the curious and seemingly contradictory utterances that he made under interrogation after his arrest following the battle of Frankenhausen. The insertion in his confession of the Latin phrase omnia sunt communia is passed over in silence, as if its meaning and context were self-explanatory. Here the reader will be better guided by Eike Wolgast's article in Lutherjahrbuch 1989.

In their desire not to get bogged down in arcane controversies and scholarly minutiae Bräuer and Vogler fail to engage with (as opposed to merely citing) the considerable body of detailed research on Müntzer's thought and practical expression (with the exception of Ulrich Bubenheimer's pioneering discoveries about Müntzer's contacts in Braunschweig and Nuremberg). Müntzer almost comes across as a conventional radical, whereas, to take an obvious example to which Peter Matheson has drawn attention, Müntzer's bizarre use of language and metaphor marks him out as someone truly extraordinary, whose capacity, moreover, for forging friendships and then renouncing them was unprecedented. His ‘unruly spirit’ (as Luther dubbed it) was surely more than the outcome of an unwavering theological determination: it suggests a disturbed personality. As a result, this biography leaves the reader with a sense of dissatisfaction, with too many questions left hanging in the air.