Martin Luther Is About Nationalism, Not About Religion

The Lutheran schism was the first manifestation of German nationalism according to the historian Maria Elvira Roca Barela writing in the leftwing Spanish daily El País (July 23). Roca states that interpreting Luther as a religious phenomenon does not help to understand him. For her "Luther was the great defender of the oligarchies, the religious guarantor of a late feudalism that kept Germany in backwardness and poverty."

Roca notices Luther's hatred for the non-German world, among them Jews, and recalls that the Kristallnacht on 9-10 November 1938 during which Jewish property was destroyed in Germany, was explicitly connected to the 450 birthday of Martin Luther.

Nevertheless the big assumption of the Luther jubilee is that Protestant Germany is morally superior to the non-Protestant world according to Roca.

Picture: Martin Luther, #newsNwicigkmsq