N recent years scholarly work on the German Peasants' War of 1525 has expanded so rapidly that a fairy ring of review essays has sprung up as a form of tertiary literature. 1 At the risk of contributing to a quaternary genre of commentary on the commentaries, it may be useful to note that the usual form of these literature reviews is a comparison of East German contributions with those of West German scholars. Unfortunately, the contrasts that emerge usually prompt an