Ernst Simon Bloch was a German Marxist philosopher. Bloch was influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, as well as by apocalyptic and religious thinkers such as Thomas Müntzer, Paracelsus, and Jacob Böhme. He established friendships with György Lukács, Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno. Bloch's work focuses on an optimistic teleology of the history of mankind.
Bloch in 1954
Endlose Treppe by Max Bill, which is dedicated to the Principle of Hope by Bloch
Thomas Müntzer was a German preacher and theologian of the early Reformation whose opposition to both Martin Luther and the Roman Catholic Church led to his open defiance of late-feudal authority in central Germany. Müntzer was foremost amongst those reformers who took issue with Luther's compromises with feudal authority. He was a leader of the German peasant and plebeian uprising of 1525 commonly known as the German Peasants' War.
Müntzer, imagined in a 1608 engraving by Christoffel Van Sichem
St Katharine's Church in Zwickau, where Thomas Müntzer preached
The castle at Allstedt
Rebellious peasants of 1525