Augsburg

Augsburg may be considered the most important place of the Reformation in present-day Bavaria. Two events of the highest significance are inseparably linked to the Swabian imperial city: at a diet, in 1530, the Lutheran imperial estates presented Emperor Charles V (Roman-German king 1519–1556, emperor from 1530) with the “Confessio Augustana”, their fundamental letter of confession. During another diet in 1555, the so-called “Augsburg Peace of the Empire and of Religion” was agreed, recognising the Evangelical-Lutheran faith.

Augsburg had already been in the centre of the Reformation during the diet of 1518, when Martin Luther (1483–1546) had a conversation in the Fugger palace with Cardinal Thomas Cajetan (1469–1534) sent from Rome. Since Luther did not revoke his theses, he was convicted of heresy in the eyes of the Church.

The city of Augsburg, however, introduced the Reformation only in 1534/37 and thus relatively late. Already in 1517/18, reformatory influences had become noticeable, but the city council pursued according to the historian Rolf Kießling a “policy of open-mindedness” and initially behaved neutrally in terms of religious policy.

In addition to the Lutheran-Wittenberg direction, other theological movements also played an important role in the 1520s. The Swiss movement founded by Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) was of importance. From 1525 to 1527, the Anabaptists, the “radical” wing of the Reformation, occupied a particularly strong position.