The theme of the Vienna Humanities Festival 2025 is “On Edge/Unbehagen.” Life-changing technological innovation is advancing at an often unpredictable pace. Liberalism is under sustained attack, as is faith in basic scientific principles. Compassion is increasingly displaced by brutal transactional values. Can humanity remain human under such strenuous circumstances? This year's Humanities Festival will contribute to the discussion of these impediments and the questions they give rise to, by inviting the public to reflect with intellectuals, scientists, writers, and artists.
The first keynote lecture will be held by Historian Lyndal Roper on the political legacy of the German Peasants’ War.
For many years, historians dismissed the German Peasants’ War of 1525 as a brief sideshow of the early Reformation. Following Friedrich Engels, Marxist historians in the German Democratic Republic later assigned exaggerated importance to the war for political purposes. Having researched all available archives, Professor Lyndal Roper reveals the true significance of these dramatic events and their protagonists. Although this extraordinary uprising was ultimately defeated, it demonstrated the political intelligence of a neglected class which took Martin Luther’s revolutionary teachings at his word. The war also proved a turning point in Luther’s own political thought as the threat of social change persuaded him to stand against the rebels.
Lyndal Roper is the first woman to be appointed Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford. She is a fellow of the British Academy, the Australian Academy and the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Her work on Germany in the early modern period has won her numerous awards and honorary doctorates. Her 2016 biography of Martin Luther is widely hailed as the definitive account of his life and the development of his social and political thought.
