Interim und Apokalypse

At the »Lord God's Chancery« the Antichrist came to a stop. This is how the Protestant theologians who had fled to Magdeburg interpreted the resistance of the city against the Augsburg Interim and the articles presented at the Diet of Leipzig. They perceived the Emperor, the Empire and the theologians in electoral Saxony as servants of the Antichrist and as false prophets against whose attacks Luther's work and legacy had to be preserved.
Anja Moritz examines the aspects and effects of the apocalyptic interpretation in the Magdeburg prints published between 1548 and 1552. Against the backdrop of attempts at religious unification since 1530, she analyzes the reactions to the Interim in the Holy Roman Empire and the political events in and around Magdeburg. She reveals the various modes of perceiving the rise and fall of the Interim and of constructing enemy stereotypes and self-images from the perspective of the »exules«.