Page:Thirty-five years of Luther research.djvu/44

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Thirty-Five Years of Luther Research

for the period between 1883 and 1908 (Theol. Studien und Kritiken, 1908, p. 354), exclusive of the thirty letters which the aged Burckhardt contributed to the "Archiv fuer Reformationsgeschichte," volume IV, pp. 184 ff., and the new material in Enders', shortly to be mentioned, "Luther's Korrespondenz." In the year 1913 P. Flemming contributed five unknown letters from the Roerer manuscript at Jena (Theol. Stud. u. Krit., 1913, p. 288 ff.). O. Clemen published another unknown letter of Luther to Gabriel Zwilling from 1526 (Zeitschr. f. Kirchengesch., vol. 34, pp. 93 ff.), while O. Albrecht already in 1907 in "Theol. Stud. u. Krit.," pp. 564 ff., had made an investigation concerning the collection of Luther letters by Michael Stiefel.

In 1884 Enders took up anew the plan of Burckhardt, and contributed to the Luther edition of Erlangen the part entitled "Luther's Korrespondenz." With this he accomplished a stupendous piece of work. Ten volumes were completed, when death, in 1906, claimed this unassuming man and thorough student of Luther, a man who was ever ready to assist, as we can vouch for from our own experience. Kawerau followed up with the eleventh volume, edited according to the principles laid down by Enders; a little later on he published the twelfth to fourteenth volumes, so that soon the entire work will be completed. Kawerau was exactly the right man to continue the work of Enders, not only because he had published in 1884 and 1885 the letters of Justus Jonas, but because, together with Kolde he must be reckoned as the most thorough and all-sided student of the history of the Reformation that the Church possessed in these thirty-five years. He proved this not only through his excellent "Geschichte der Reformation und Gegenrefor-