The majority of people lived in the countryside 500 years ago. Most of them were farmers. Many of them were in serfdom - especially in Upper Swabia. Life was hard for the farmers and their freedom was severely restricted.

For example, in addition to the landlord, the church also demanded a tithe, strict rules applied to marriages and the use of forest and pasture land was increasingly restricted. From the middle of the 15th century, the population also grew significantly. In poor harvest years, this could lead to famine. As there were hardly any opportunities for farmers to defend themselves against the grievances, it was only a matter of time before things began to boil over ...

Memmingen in 1525: a flourishing trading center with around 5,000 inhabitants, as an imperial city subject only to the emperor, the fate of the city was largely determined by the guilds. The Reformation arrived in Memmingen at an early stage. The sermons of the reformer Christoph Schappeler against what he saw as the unjust policies of the council were very popular.

But there was also trouble in the countryside. Many dissatisfied peasants had organized themselves into "piles" and - also influenced by the Reformation - made their first demands of the authorities.

For its part, the authorities did not remain inactive: The Swabian League, founded in 1488 as a union of lordships, towns and territories, was already joining forces in the background.

Both the compromising attitude of the town council and the pro-reformation reputation had contributed to Memmingen becoming the focus of the rebellious peasants in the spring of 1525.

In March, delegates from the Baltringer Haufens, the Bodensee Haufens and the Allgäu Haufens gathered in the Kramerzunftstube at the Weinmarkt and negotiated their next steps. At the end of the negotiations, the farmers joined together to form a "Christian Association" and adopted a kind of basic program with the "Federal Order". A certain furrier and lay theologian from Memmingen - Sebastian Lotzer (around 1490 - after 1525) - became increasingly prominent in those days.

The war was over, tens of thousands of farmers dead. What remained of the peasants' demands in the end?

Not least out of fear of a new escalation, the authorities were soon prepared to make concessions to the peasants: in some territories, new contractual arrangements were made for living together - with improvements for the peasants. So it had not all been in vain!

The events of 1525 remained in people's memories, especially in the main areas of the uprisings. Many places of remembrance have been created since then, also in and around Memmingen.

In March 1525, the representatives of the three peasant groups gathered in Memmingen's Kramerzunftstube. This makes it an "authentic site" of the Peasants' War.

The guild hall can be visited as part of the Bavarian exhibition. If you enter the guild hall today, you will notice that hardly anything on the outside is reminiscent of those days. Only the historic wooden ceiling is the last witness to the events of 500 years ago! It will tell visitors what it experienced ...