Zacharias Werner’s Martin Luther, or Clowning Around with German National Identity

Zacharias Werner’s The Consecration of Power ( Die Weihe der Kraft) was written for the National Theater in Berlin and premiered there in 1806. Werner’s depiction of Martin Luther as a hero empowered to withstand imperial overreach resonated with Prussia’s militaristic patriotism, but the play’s consecration of Luther’s power through his marriage vexed masculine heroism and dignity. Attentive to the power implicit in “clownishness,” and drawing on both Theodor Adorno’s sense of the term and Jane Bennett’s reading of Adorno, this essay takes seriously the idea of a tender nationalism and reads The Consecration of Power as a comedy. The essay explores the comedic-humanistic vision of Luther that infused the play’s composition and paratextual framing and shows how theories of comedy from Diderot to Frye reveal a hitherto unrecognized coherence in the work. A daring vision of a nation built on love and communal spirit briefly emerges before the play’s promotion, critical reception, and public responses restore the tragedy of militant German national identity.