Main Traditions and Marxist Tracks in the Peasants’ War and Thomas Muntzer Historiography Vefa Saygın Öğütle This study does not aim to narrate the history of Peasants’ War and the biography of Thomas Muntzer in detail. Our intention is to compare main traditions in historiographies of the Peasants’ War and Thomas Muntzer, to criticize them and to deepen Marxist paths. It can be said that there are two main traditions in historiography of the Peasants’ War and Muntzer: On the one hand the tradition initiated by Luther and Melanchthon and continued by Leopold von Ranke, on the other, the tradition initiated by young-Hegelian Zimmermann and adopted by Friedrich Engels and Marxist Peasants’ War historiography in general. Therefore this study is, in a sense, a descriptive one. To outline these traditions will provide materials that are necessary to criticize them from the standpoint of Marxist conception of history. In another sense, it is argued that classic Marxist Peasants’ War historiography (especially, in the matter of Muntzer’s position in the Peasants’ War) needs to have some serious revisions. What is required to be revised is primarily Zimmermann’s bad inheritance, that is, idealistic trans-historical status attributed by Zimmermann’s understanding of history to Thomas Muntzer. For this reason, it is attempted to present objective and subjective dimensions, peculiar circumstances and qualitative distinctions of the Peasants’ War and to expel some ‘myths’ and misunderstandings about Muntzer that weaken Marxist Peasants’ War historiography. In conclusion, it is argued that Marxist conception of history has very important possibilities; both because it contacts the past and ‘historical dislocations’ realistically and strongly without mystifying them, and because it provides the possibility of self-reflexivity in order that historians and historiographers realize their social and historical context and participate in ‘today’ actively and politically.