Open Access

Manfred G. Raupp, Holger Müller, Johannes Ehmann

• In 1599, the Staffort Book was produced in the Staffort Castle printing shop by order of Margrave Ernst Friedrich of Baden-Durlach. Obviously intended as an attempt at reconciliation between Lutherans and Calvinists, the book led to considerable academic theological disputes between the two Protestant denominations. The Margrave of Baden, who had Catholic neighbours in his fragmented dominion (Anterior Austria), Evangelical Lutheran (Württemberg) and Evangelical Reformed (Electoral Palatinate), was obviously attempting to create a liberal theological balance that would also be acceptable to the diplomatic secular power claims towards the neighbours. This first attempt at an agreement between the Protestant confessions in Baden can be understood as a failure, since the book triggered considerable controversy and did not receive any lasting support due to the margrave‘s early death. The matter was initially shelved, and it was to take another 222 years until the two Protestant confessions in Baden were united in 1821. The Staffort Book always played a role in local history lessons and in the religious history of Baden. However, it was often reduced to the apparent incompatibility of the Lutheran communion formula “this is my body” and the Calvinist-Zwinglian formula “this means my body”.When Dr Holger Müller presented the first pages of a translation of the Staffort Book that could be understood by lay people, it became clear that − 422 years after its printing and 200 years after the union of the Protestant Christians in Baden − the right time had come to publish this historically important and often contested book in up-to-date German that could be understood by non-theologians.