German culture, with a vigour which I to-day feel to have been
exaggerated. The catchword which was coined at that time--
'the Eternal German'--has been cut from this edition, without,
of course, neglecting the particular national importance of the
greatest of German theologians. My own theological under-
standing of Luther was considerably deepened by my activity
as editor and critic of the Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte (since
1938), by the preparatory studies for my history of the sixteenth
century (first published in the Propylaenweltgeschichte 1941), and
not least by my active participation in the struggle of the
Church against the National Socialist régime in the thirties.
In retrospect I feel that my book reached full maturity only in
the third and extensively revised edition which appeared in
1943. The world catastrophe which we had already sensed then
and which broke on us in 1945 brought Luther's ideas of the
hidden God and the twilight of world history home to us
Germans with a remarkable actuality. This led me to rewrite
the introduction almost completely in the fourth edition ( 1947).
The aim of the fifth and sixth editions has been to extend the
revision begun in 1943, above all by re-examination of the
conclusion, and to bring out more strongly the universal
significance of the Lutheran prophecy.

Many of the ideas in this book have been developed since in
two essays published in the journal Zeitwende--"'Luthertum,
katholisches und humanistisches Weltbild'" and "'Luther und
die politische Erziehung der Deutschen'"--both appearing in
1946-7, while the former has been reprinted in the collection
of essays Die Weltwirkung der Reformation ( new edition, R.
Oldenbourg, Munich 1959).

Freiburg i. Br., January 1959 GERHARD RITTER

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