Michael Gaismair was the son of a mining entrepreneur, who became secretary of the powerful bishop of Brixen. In 1525 he came in contact with the ideas of the Anabaptists Felix Manz and Jörg Blaurock, who worked in the Eisacktal and Graubünden and soon afterwards, in May, he received news of the German Peasants' War in Germany, and the activities in Saxony of the radical preacher Thomas Müntzer, who shared some ideas with the Anabaptists. Shortly hereafter Tyrol which was under Habsburg rule became a powder keg of popular uprisings, especially in the Eisacktal and Puster Valley. These peasant revolts were captained by a certain Peter Passler and Gaismair: Brixen and Neustift were occupied and looted. The rebels, reinforced by local miners and survivors of the Battle of Frankenhausen, resisted the Habsburg army counterattacks. Gaismair dreamed of founding a democratic republic in the area, he envisaged the abolition of the Catholic Church and its rituals, replaced by a faith based on a direct contactwith God, through the personal interpretation of Scripture. He also envisioned a utopian elimination of titles of nobility, the nationalization of land and mines, the establishment of schools, hospitals, old people’s homes etc. To overcome the differences the leaders of the revolt were invited to the regional diet of Innsbruck by Crown PrinceFerdinand of Habsburg. Gaismair also went there, but in August he was jailed for treason. After two months, he managed to escape, travelling to Graubünden, Switzerland. Gaismair established contact with the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli, with the plan of a new democratic order in Tyrol and Salzburg by the example of Grisons and Venice. Among other things, by the disappointing experience of the parliamentary debates Gaismair evolved from reformer to revolutionary social rebel. In his draft of a new order of Tyrol in May 1526 Gaismair designed an egalitarian, democratic, Christian state. Gaismair again gained followers, and in the spring of 1526 assisted the revolt of the peasants in Salzburg. Despite the victories on the field, Gaismair and his army were forced to retreat through the territory of the Republic of Venice, then at war with the Habsburgs. The Bauernführer, as Gaismair was called, then turned to the DogeAndrea Gritti to convince him to support a military revolt in Tyrol, but he failed in his intent. He died in 1532 in Padua, in Prato della Valle murdered at the hands of two soldiers who wanted to collect the bounty placed on his head by Ferdinand I. The movement of Gaismair was then done, but not the religious turmoil of Tyrol, which in the same years saw the development of Anabaptist preaching by Jakob Hutter.
Historiography
Because of his struggle against Church and Monarchy, Gaismair was ignored by historians of his time. In the twentieth century, his figure got more purchasing reputation, coming in first by the Communist, and by the Nazis. It is only since the second half of the twentieth century that scholars have tried to evaluate the story of Michael Gaismair from a nonideological perspective, especially promoted by the Michael Gaismair Gesellschaft, founded in 1976.
