Ulrich von Hutten was my idol, the Pope and his clerics my enemies

I tried to work up the requisite hatred for the reputed blue-bloods, but in fact I was torn. From the period of my mental excursions into the dark corners - and enlightened ones - of German history I had retained my admiration for the Hohenstaufen line of Emperors; I would have been only too happy to serve as a squire to Frederick II in thirteenth-century Palermo. And when it came to the Peasant Wars  a few centuries later, I was not only a fan of Thomas Muntzer's, I also sided with the upper-class ringleaders of the insurrection, men with noble names like Franz von Sickingen, Georg von Frundsberg, and Gorz von Berlichingen. Ulrich von Hutten was my idol, the Pope and his clerics my enemies. 

G. Grass, Peeling the onion (2006), tr. M.H. Heim (2007), 90-91