“Misunderstandings and Appalling Disunity”: Negotiating Confessional Coexistence in Augsburg after 1648

The 1648 Peace of Westphalia provided for formal political parity between Lutherans and Catholics in Augsburg and established ownership of disputed church properties. But the provisions of the treaty had to square with the messy reality of confessional diversity and overlapping layers of religious and political authority. This paper will examine one explosive situation – the reconstruction of a Lutheran church destroyed during the war – to see how stakeholders at various levels of society attempted to interpret the treaty’s provisions to their own advantage and protect their own interests while negotiating the establishment of Lutheran-Catholic “parity” in Augsburg.

The reconstruction of the Lutheran Heilig-Kreuz Kirche caused consternation among the monks of the Augustianian priory that directly bordered the proposed new building. They argued to secular and religious leaders of both confessions for a strict interpretation of the treaty’s provisions to limit the size and constrain the design of the church or to move it elsewhere. Lutheran religious and secular authorities took a broader view of the treaty’s meaning but fought among themselves about how and where to construct a building that would symbolize the post-war restoration of the Lutheran community in Augsburg. Lutheran parishioners, incited by the parish pastor, posted pasquilles and assaulted city officials of their own confessional persuasion who they felt had been overly conciliatory to Catholic complaints or who interfered with the popular vision for the new church. The picture that emerges is not only one of negotiating Catholic-Lutheran boundaries, but an intra-confessional fight over Lutheran confessional identity and religious authority.