Doubt about a life after death
F. E. A. Heydenreich 101 ) already stated that the idea of resurrection as taught by the Church, that is, the idea of a continued life after death and an afterlife, remains rather unclear to peasants. The idea of resurrection is easily shaken; peasants tend to doubt it because they see the bodies of the deceased decomposing.
Paul Gerade 10 *) mentioned that North German peasants, when consolingly pointed out by the priest that a relative died of a death, the possibility of a reunion after death, often replied, "Yes, who knows if that's true?"—One has to believe it. Hermann Gebhardt 108 ) reported from the Thuringian peasantry that belief in immortality had increased compared to earlier times, but that bliss in heaven meant little to the peasant, and that doubts about a resurrection of the dead continually arose; after funerals one could hear: "If only it were true! No one has come back yet" or "We'll see if there is any truth to it." An unnamed Baden pastor 104 ) found reflection and doubt among the Odenwald peasantry as to whether and how a "resurrection of the flesh" was possible. Paul Drews 105 ) wrote that Saxon peasants often doubted that life continued after death. According to Julius Boehmer 106 , the opinion is widespread among farmers in the Potsdam district that with death, "everything is over," or at least the view that an afterlife is uncertain. E. Kern reports from a mountain village in Franconian Switzerland 107 that farmers occasionally expressed doubts about the resurrection because no one had ever returned. In the Franconian Aischtal, farmers tend to say, as Ernst Weeth 108 , regarding ideas about resurrection and the afterlife: "No one has ever been over there and seen it; not even the pastor."
Such doubts about the resurrection and church-going farmers, and farmers who are Christian believers in all other things, are expressed or at least quietly considered. I have explained (p. 76 ff.) that three ideas contribute to the average farmer's belief in an afterlife: the idea of an eternity for the clan, the idea of well-deserved rest for a lifetime of hard work, and the idea of a just judgment on the good and the evil. However, such ideas are constantly fought against in the peasant mind by the doubt about life after death.
Gustav Frenssen (109) has, according to his observations among the Holstein peasants, recorded a number of contradictions that arise between peasant values and church teachings, in which he has attempted to characterize what the peasant, according to his views, must be missing in the teachings of Christianity. The Holstein peasant, Frenssen explains, finds in the Christian doctrines “little or nothing of the natural joy and defense of this life,—little or nothing of the praise of work, of serious foresight and concern, little or nothing of justice and generosity towards those of different faiths,... little or nothing of brave resistance against the inferior and evil, little or nothing of the motherhood of woman, little or nothing of confidence in the good in man, little or nothing of the wild possibility and proud voluntariness to be without thanks and reward from God.”—In view of this Frenssen interpretation, one may doubt whether even a significant A minority of Holstein peasants, like Frenssen himself, reflect on contradictions between their views and church teachings; but one must admit that semi-conscious and rarely considered objections of the peasants—and not only the Holstein and not only the Protestant—against Christian teachings arise from contradictions such as those cited by Frenssen.
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