This volume grew out of a series of panels on “conversion in the German-speaking lands in the wake of the Reformation” (ix), which took place at the German Studies Association annual meeting in 2008. It has three thematic sections: two essays on terminological and conceptual questions in the first; four essays discussing the relationship between conversion and politics on different levels of the empire in the second; and three essays on irenicism and Pietism during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the third. An introduction by David Luebke and an afterword by Jared Poley frame these essays. In his introduction, Luebke touches on three major themes. He discusses the problem of conversion narratives and of memory in the process of conversion, criticizes the confessionalization paradigm as inadequate to explain the “full complexity” (4) of conversion, and calls into doubt the notion that “absolutism” generally “eased religious tensions” (7). These three themes are also directly reflected in the volume's essays.
In the first section, Duane J. Corpis's chapter on “Paths of Salvation and Boundaries of Belief: Spatial Discourse and the Meanings of Conversion in Early Modern Germany” introduces a crucial terminological and conceptual distinction by differentiating between “intrareligious” and “interreligious” conversion. The former denotes inner spiritual transformation without a change in religious affiliation; the latter refers to a process in which a person becomes a member of a new religious group. Eric-Oliver Mader argues in his essay, “Conversion Concepts in Early Modern Germany,” that Protestants in early modern Germany regarded conversion as an act of God and the convert as passive, whereas Catholics emphasized the role played by the convert's will. From this observation, Mader derives a thesis about the missionary impetus of the two confessions. More research needs to be done, however, on how early modern Protestants and Catholics understood conversion, and European comparisons imply that the case is not as clear-cut as Mader claims.
The second thematic section begins with an essay by Jesse Spohnholz, “Turning Dutch? Conversion in Early Modern Wesel.” He argues that the conversion of Wesel's population from Lutheranism to Calvinism was not the result of a top-down process of confessionalization, or one of inner transformation, but rather “of war, which transformed the town's demographics, polarized religious viewpoints, and introduced a new political authority in the duchy of Cleves” (60). While Spohnholz's chapter is well argued and convincing, it is ironic that, while rejecting the notion of a process of confessionalization, a concept that explains confessional developments in early modern Germany from a macrohistorical perspective, he nevertheless regards macrohistorical processes as solely responsible for Wesel's conversion.
The second essay in this section, Ralf-Peter Fuchs's “The Right to Be Catholic—The Right to Be Protestant?,” discusses the so-called normative year principle in the Peace of Westphalia and its consequences. Fuchs argues that the normative year principle, by trying to “freeze” confessional allegiances in Germany, was instrumental in securing religious peace after 1648. There can be no doubt that this legal provision helped stabilize the German lands after the Thirty Years' War; it seems curious, however, that Fuchs does not consider other factors as well, notably the fatigue and the exhaustion (on more than one level) after a long war that surely contributed much to the fact that the religious parties were willing to “quarrel for ‘their properties’ before the Imperial Diet and the judges” (81).
The third chapter in this section, Daniel Riches's essay “Conversion and Diplomacy in Absolutist Northern Europe,” discusses the conversion to Calvinism of the Swedish wife of Brandenburg's ambassador to Sweden. In 1690, Emilie von Dohna caused a political crisis between Sweden and Brandenburg when both rulers felt the need to assert their rights over her as a subject, thereby exposing, as Riches shows, the problematic sides of absolutist rule and “monarchical image projection” (87): the conflict over Emilie's conversion threatened Sweden's and Brandenburg's cooperation against French aggression. Riches's approach to his subject fits very well with the overall concept of this volume; the case of Emilie von Dohna, though, raises other, fascinating questions about gender relations and conversion. The last essay of this section, Alexander Schunka's “Irenicism and the Challenges of Conversion in the Early Eighteenth Century,” discusses the repercussions from the conversion of Elisabeth Christine of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel to Catholicism in order to marry the future Emperor Charles IV in 1708. The ensuing pamphlet war destroyed plans for Protestant irenicism and, as Schunka argues, “illustrates the ongoing durability of confessional boundaries well into the eighteenth century” (113).
The final section of the volume is concerned with the politics of toleration and Pietism in the eighteenth century. Benjamin Marschke analyzes King Frederick William I's relationship with Lutheran Pietists, arguing that it was fraught with conflicts about the monarch's Irenicism and the Pietists' resistance to a union of the Protestant confessions. Whereas Frederick William was genuinely interested in furthering tolerance and, ultimately, in forging a union between Lutherans and Calvinists in Prussia, Lutherans regarded the king's efforts as a threat to their identity and existence. Although this essay clearly lays out the motives of the different actors, the reader is hard pressed to understand why, as Marschke claims, this eighteenth-century case study challenges the concept of confessionalization, which is concerned with the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In contrast, one could argue that Frederick William's failed attempt at enforcing “confessional flexibility”(119) proved the success of the prior confessionalization process (in this case “from below”): Lutherans in Prussia had developed such a strong confessional identity that they resisted any perceived threats to it.
The last two contributions to this volume focus on Pietist conversion narratives but, though fascinating in their detailed analysis of narrative strategies, do not deal with political aspects of conversion at all and therefore seem somewhat out of place in a volume titled Conversion and the Politics of Religion. Jonathan Strom discusses the “highly stylized accounts” (135) of Pietist conversion experiences that were written by members of the Pietist clergy and meant to reinforce Lutheran confessional identity. Douglas H. Shantz shows how the autobiography of the radical Enlightenment thinker Johann Christian Edelmann “retained the Pietist language of conversion, new birth, and deliverance in describing his discovery of rationalism and reason” (163).
Overall, this is an engaging volume of essays that makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion about the meaning of conversion in early modern Germany and Europe, especially with regard to the definition of conversion, the relationship between political developments and the conversion of individuals and groups, as well as to the question of the role of religion in the eighteenth century.
