Mother, Martyr and Mary Magdalene: German Female Pamphleteers and their Self‐images

Female pamphleteers who involved themselves in the German Reformation faced a double challenge: they had to argue why a lay person needed to enter into public debate and, still more controversially, why a woman should brave the consequences of going into print. In this article two noblewomen, Argula von Grumbach and Elisabeth von Braunschweig‐Lüneburg, and two middle‐class Protestants, Katharina Schütz Zell and Ursula Weida, serve as case studies of how women with noticeably different backgrounds dealt with the challenge. The article focuses on the images they projected of themselves. While some of these images derived from traditional idealized and biblical female figures, others show a creative attempt to argue the case for long‐term participation in public debate. The most striking concept within this second category is Katharina Schütz Zell's role as ‘ Kirchenmutter ’ (Churchmother). The impact of such an image becomes obvious when Katharina Schütz Zell is compared with the Nuremberg shoemaker‐poet, Hans Sachs. An equally outspoken lay participant of the Reformation, his mounting disappointment with religious politics and the decline of his home town led him to withdraw into privacy. In contrast, Katharina Schütz Zell, whose remit was the more closely defined Strasbourg parish, remained actively involved until her death.