Page:Thirty-five years of Luther research.djvu/29

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Why New Period of Luther Research
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ble Scheurl's "Geschichtbuch der Christenheit vin 1511 bis 1521," also a number of documents pertaining to the Diet of Augsburg of 1518. For his own particular studies he collected one of the greatest and most valuable collections of prints from the sixteenth century. In 1876 there appeared in "Zeitschrift fuer lutherische Theologie und Kirche" a critical review of more than forty pages of Koestlin's "Martin Luther," in which Knaake proved himself the superior of Koestlin in the matter of detail. Enders, of Oberrad, near Frankfurt on the Main, since 1882 was active with the revision of the Luther edition of Erlangen, and since the appearance of the new editions of "Vermischte Predigten" (1877) had revealed a rare knowledge of the literature of this age, and in this edition he also published for the first time a large number of hitherto unknown sermons taken from a valuable manuscript at Wolfenbuettel.

At this time other promising young men also entered the field. Most prominent among them was Theodor Kolde, who had been appointed lecturer in Marburg in 1876, and had then followed a call to Erlangen in 1881. Barely twenty-four years of age, he erected a memorial to a maternal ancestor, the famous Saxon chancellor Brueck, in "Kanzler Brueck und seine Bedeutung fuer die Entwicklung der Reformation," in "Zeitschrift fuer historische Theologie" (1874); in 1876 he discussed Luther's position over against Council and Church until the Diet of Worms in a study bearing this title. Finally, in 1879 he established his reputation as a historian through the excellent writing, "Die deutsche Augustiner Kongregation und Johannes von Staupitz," a rare specimen eruditionis, in which he strictly applied the methods of the Rankean school and in careful detail set forth