Four-part television film about the theologian Thomas Müntzer, who became a revolutionary and opponent of Luther during the Peasant War in 1525. December 1520: Martin Luther publicly burns the papal certificate threatening him with excommunication. The papal envoy demands the heretic's extradition to Rome. But the Saxon Elector Friedrich lets Luther grant. On the same day, Luther sends his friend and trailer Müntzer to Zwickau to continue the Reformation there. But Zwickau is also the city of oppressed cloth companions and great poverty. Müntzer consciously encounters the social hardship of the people for the first time and transforms from a pendant to the opponent of Luther. In the German Peasant War, he faces the superior princely army in the decisive battle near Frankenhausen as a leader of the insurgents.