As we look forward to the quincentennial commemoration of the Protestant Reformation, a glance back to past celebrations of this event is very instructive. Thomas Albert Howard provides such a survey, beginning with the first commemoration in 1617 and leading the readers via 1717, 1817 and 1883 up to the commemorative events of the twentieth century, the so-called Reformation or Luther jubilees of 1917, 1933, 1946, 1967 and 1983. In all cases, the author has attempted to sum up insights provided by recent research, but for some of the events he has not been able to provide the necessary historical contextualisation. As regards 1617, for example, he fails to underscore the ways in which confessional camps were prepared to fight for ultimate supremacy. By contrast, a hundred years later, in 1717, the protagonists of the Protestant camp were well aware of past Catholic victories and made sure that the Catholic side was not provoked by any sort of Protestant triumphalism. Looking back on the commemorative activities of Protestants in 1817 and in 1883, the author is on much safer ground. He demonstrates that each of the different groups within Protestantism had its own view of the founder of their churches. Even though he is mainly interested in the celebrations within Germany, he also addresses Luther commemorations in the United States. Through this, he provides a very welcome comparative and international perspective.

Unfortunately, in my view, he sums up the various twentieth-century celebrations under one heading: ‘A Memory Still Mutating’. Each one of these events would actually have deserved a chapter of its own. Take 1917: the tercentenary of the Protestant Reformation in the third year of the Great War. The United States had entered the war on the side of the Entente half a year earlier, while Germany was suffering from immense losses. German propaganda, however, made people believe that if they showed the courage that Luther demonstrated at Worms and if they trusted the leadership of General Hindenberg, God would grant them an overwhelming victory after all. Or 1933, Luther's 450th birthday: in the year of the triumph of Nazism the so-called German Christians were convinced that Hitler was called by God to fulfil Luther's legacy, while those Protestants who were about to assemble in the so-called Confessing Church were unable, with few exceptions, to distance themselves from a nationalistic view of Luther. Finally 1946, the 400th anniversary of Luther's death: while Reformed Protestants were convinced that Hitler's rise to power had only been possible because of Lutheran blind obedience to the state authorities (Obrigkeitsgehorsam), Lutheran pastors pointed out that the Hohenzollern had been members of the Reformed Church and that the disaster of German politics was a result of Prussian militarism.

Post-1945 Germany was politically divided until 1989/90. Accordingly, the commemoration of the Protestant Reformation was quite different in West Germany and in East Germany. Thomas Albert Howard is mainly interested in the Luther- und Reformationsjubiläen staged in East Germany, in 1967 and in 1983. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, German communists had followed Friedrich Engels' verdict that Thomas Müntzer was the true hero of the Common Man while Martin Luther should be remembered as a servant of the princes and a slaughterer of the peasants (Fürstenknecht und Bauernschlächter). As Howard points out, this attitude began to change in East Germany in 1967, resulting in a full rehabilitation of Martin Luther in East Germany in 1983. The hope that many tourists from the West would bring a much-needed boost to the East German economy was one motive, the hope that East German Protestants would develop a stronger loyalty for the so-called ‘first socialist state on German soil’ another. Howard also observes the much more positive Catholic view of Luther since Vatican II.

In his final chapter Thomas Albert Howard proposes that several ‘historical forces and circumstances in our day merit considering in 2017’. First, he mentions ‘economic interest’ (the tourist industry!). Second, ‘the sheer volume of the scholarship and the plurality of outlooks’ that may, in his view, provide ‘some degree of immunity from brazenly ideological or monetary interests’. Third, ‘in a churningly religious world’ Europe's ‘protracted struggle with confessional polemics and violence after the Reformation’ may offer ‘lessons about and possible remedies for global conflicts today’. He argues that in this context the ‘unsavoury aspects of the Reformation – what today would be called Islamophobia and anti-Semitism – certainly deserve attention in 2017’. According to Howard, this may help us ‘to grasp the dark history behind contemporary religious frictions and misunderstandings’. Fourth, ‘the globalization of Protestantism’ should be celebrated: ‘More Lutherans worship on Sunday in a handful of African countries than in all of the traditional Lutheran state-church societies of northern Europe combined’. Finally, as ‘fraternal relations among Christians’ ought ‘to be a model for human cooperation and good will in general’, the remembrance of the Reformation in 2017 might provide ‘the impetus for narrowing the gap’ between the churches (pp. 152–5). In remembering the Reformation in the past, as he concludes, ‘partisan, xenophobic, and narrowly time-bound concerns’ had often prevailed. I share his hope ‘that this time around things will be different’ (p. 157).