Chapter excerpt · The Lives Before Us
The Breach
Thomas Wolffhart, the eldest known son of Hans and Barbara, was born ca. 1506–1508. His younger brother Michael followed between 1515 and 1520. An older family history made Michael a son of Thomas, apparently to support the claims of Michael’s descendants to an educational foundation. A document dated May 27, 1549, instead identifies Hans and Michael as brothers; together with the remaining evidence, it establishes Thomas, Hans, and Michael as brothers, sons of the elder Hans.
Thomas was about ten when Martin Luther challenged the sale of indulgences in 1517. He was still a child within his father’s Catholic household. All the familiar practices of previous generations formed the Christian world he knew.
Luther’s protest did not remain a dispute about indulgences. It became an argument about grace, Scripture, priesthood, sacraments, and the authority of the pope. Printing carried the controversy rapidly through the German-speaking lands. Catholic theologians answered Luther. Luther answered Rome. Reformers disagreed with one another. Questions once argued primarily in universities and church councils entered nearly every sphere of German life.
Thomas came of age amid those arguments. The controversy also entered his extended family. In 1525 his aunt Anna Kühorn left the Poor Clares at Esslingen because of what she later called the “disputed religion,” together with other compelling reasons. The Reformation was no longer something happening only in Wittenberg or among princes. It had reached the convent, the household, and the bonds of kinship.
Religious uncertainty soon joined political upheaval. Duke Ulrich lost Württemberg in 1519, and Habsburg authority replaced him. The territory’s ruler, political allegiance, and religious future became uncertain together. The church promised continuity, yet princes and armies could alter the political order within which the church lived.
Then came the Peasants’ Revolt. In 1525, Thomas was approximately eighteen and apparently had not established an independent household. He still lived within the world governed by his father’s generation when peasants and townspeople across the German lands challenged burdens placed upon their communities.
They protested rents, tithes, labor obligations, restrictions upon common lands, and the erosion of customary rights. They also spoke in the language of faith, appealing to Scripture against unjust burdens imposed by custom or lordship. Christian freedom became a basis for challenging the treatment of farming households and seeking a voice in choosing their pastors. The demand for an intelligible gospel joined a demand for recognizable justice.
The revolt revealed how religious reform could unsettle the relationships governing ordinary life. Reform gave people new language for judging inherited authority, but no one agreed about how far Christian freedom extended. What Luther located primarily in the conscience, some peasants applied to the structures governing daily life.
For the Wolffhardts, the crisis cut in more than one direction. Hans belonged to Waiblingen’s property-holding and governing community. As a judge, he bore responsibility for preserving order. Thomas was young enough to belong to the generation coming of age amid reform, yet he belonged to a family with property and civic standing to protect.
Whatever father and son thought or said about the revolt remains private. I envision them on opposite sides of a generational threshold. Hans represented a religious and civic order that still claimed obedience. Thomas entered adulthood as the authority of that order fractured. The revolt failed. Thousands died in its suppression. The questions that helped produce it survived.
