Writing in 1957, Leonard Krieger famously argued that Lutheranism was “not itself central” to what he called the “problem of political liberty” in the German lands during the nineteenth century. By downplaying the influence of Luther's teachings on German political thought, Krieger tacitly aimed to refute the controversial “from Luther to Hitler thesis” proposed by some historians in an effort to identify the ideological roots of National Socialism. Contrary to these scholars, Krieger blamed the emergence of Germany's “peculiar 19th century version of political freedom” not on religious doctrine, but on a complex of political and socioeconomic circumstances that, he argued, were unique to central Europe. Scholars have almost universally followed Krieger's line of interpretation. Recent debate focuses not on whether he was correct to argue that political and socioeconomic factors were primarily responsible for engendering a distinctively German species of liberalism, but rather on the question of which of these factors was paramount. As a consequence, religion's role in the making of early German liberalism seldom receives serious consideration today.