Grounding Community

Eckhartian Mysticism and Social Reform from the Late Middle Ages to the Fin de Siècle

By (author) Hans Martin Pech

Book cover: Grounding Community

Paperback (Forthcoming)

(April 2027)

ISBN: 9783847120216

Price: $57.00

On Mystics and Revolutionaries: Meister Eckhart’s Legacy from the Monastery to Anarchism


How did the thought of Meister Eckhart shape visions of new communities? This study traces the influence of Eckhartian mysticism on reformist, revolutionary, and utopian thought across six centuries, from the Grüne Wörth monastery in fourteenth-century Strasbourg, through Thomas Müntzer’s apostolic theology, Johann Arndt’s devotional writings and the Rosicrucian fictions of Johann Valentin Andreae, and concluding with Gustav Landauer’s anarchist-socialist reading of Eckhart. Across historically disparate discourses, this reception history reveals the pastoral relationship between spiritual guide and less-advanced hopeful of mystical experience as a recurring model of communal organization.

Hans Martin Pech holds a PhD in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Harvard University (2023). His research spans medieval and early modern literature, focusing on mysticism, and linguistics.

  • By (author) Hans Martin Pech