Hans Zeiss and Thomas Müntzer: Strange Bedfellows during the German Peasants’ War of 1525

Abstract The name of Thomas Müntzer is relatively well-known, but the names and lives of several of his contacts are not. Among these was Hans Zeiss, the tax-collector in the town of Allstedt where Müntzer was preacher for eighteen months. Caught between his responsibilities as the local representative of the princes of Saxony and his enthusiasm for Müntzer’s radical theology, as tensions grew between Müntzer and the local and regional nobility, Zeiss found himself obliged to procrastinate. And as discontent erupted into open rebellion, he – like many others – had to choose between his livelihood and the radical German Reformation.