The shock administered to the power structure of southern and central German lands by the Peasants' War of 1524–25 had many ramifications. Among the most interesting was the further deterioration in the always tense relationship between the imperial cities of the area and the princes and nobility. This deterioration stemmed directly from a feeling on the part of the latter two groups that the imperial cities had not supported the suppression of the rebellion as fully as they might have. Indeed, despite the fact that only a few imperial cities actually cooperated in any way with the peasants, some princes charged the leadership of all imperial cities with secret support for the rebels.

This paper is an attempt to draw attention to some of the major as well as some of the lesser known collections in the archives of the German Democratic and the German Federal Republics. It will suggest broad topics and areas that might lead to fruitful research, and is not intended as a comprehensive survey of these holdings.

Ever since Heraklites' dictum “panta rhei,” historians have debated the relative priority of continuity and change. Although Nazi and Allied propagandists saw the Third Reich as the fulfillment of earlier traditions, postwar scholars stressed the unprecedented nature of its genocide, political repression, and external aggression. Sensitive to charges of “collective guilt,” many German historians preferred to see the Nazi era as something sui generis, an aberration from and not the culmination of German history. Handicapped by language, culture, and access to sources, American scholars often tended to concentrate on problems and themes within one of several airtight compartments such as the Wilhelmian Empire, Weimar Republic, or Third Reich. Because of efforts to restore the “historical consciousness of [the German] people,” the critical implications of Ludwig Dehio's and Hajo Holborn's revisionism were largely ignored. Hence the scholarly community reacted with anger and disbelief when Fritz Fischer drew attention first to the continuity of German expansionism and then to the continuity of historical apologetics in his provocative book on German Aims in the First World War.