LUTHER’S LEGACY, HALF A MILLENNIUM LATER.
On July 2, 1505, a young law student in central Germany was walking from Mansfeld, where he’d visited his family, to Erfurt, the university town where he studied. He was almost there when a thunderstorm hit. A flash of lightning struck the ground near him. Thunder exploded in his eardrums. As the 22-year-old lay in a field, raindrops pelting his body, he cried out. “Help me, St. Anne,” he said, referring to the saint with a reputation for saving people in mortal danger. “I will become a monk!”
The man’s name was Martin Luther. Two weeks later, he walked into an Augustine monastery in Erfurt to fulfill his promise and went on to teach theology in Wittenberg. Following a stint in Rome, he grew frustrated with the corruption he saw in the Catholic Church of the time. On Oct. 31, 1517, Luther nailed a compendium of criticisms and changes that he wanted to see within the church — known as his 95 Theses — to the doors of the Castle Church in Wittenberg.
This seemingly simple act — after all, church doors served as town bulletin boards in the late Middle Ages — would change history.
With the approach of the 500th anniversary of this historic hammering, I wanted to pay homage to Luther’s achievements. Working on my master’s degree in Central European history, I spent countless late nights in cafes and libraries reading about the Protestant Reformation. He has some questionable opinions, particularly about Jews, but he also changed the world. Now, I wanted to gain deeper insight into this revolutionary man.
I planned a trip to four towns in Germany — Erfurt, Wittenberg, Eisenach and Eisleben — to visit the churches where Luther preached, the rooms where he studied, and the pubs where he ate and drank (apparently with as much eyebrow-raising fury as his preaching had).
Erfurt
A 7-foot-high, gravestonelike rock with Luther’s plea to St. Anne engraved on it commemorates the spot, about 7 miles outside of Erfurt, where he asked St. Anne for help. After visiting the monument, I met with Carsten Fromm, the curator of the St. Augustine Monastery. Today, it’s a Protestant center that attracts legions of Lutheran devotees who stroll the grounds, taking in the medieval church with its 700-year-old stained glass windows and lingering in the intimate, dark-wood-clad Renaissance courtyard.
“The moment in the thunderstorm was an important point for humanity,” Fromm said. “It wasn’t just the beginning of the Reformation. We’re so concerned about freedom in the modern world. Well, this was the origin of freedom: freedom of speech and freedom of thought.”
Luther’s actions resulted in a break from the Catholic Church, which until that moment was the only church in the land — an institution so powerful that people believed it could determine the fate of one’s soul. In critiquing church practices, Luther traveled where no human had gone without meeting a flaming stake.
Luther didn’t want to cause a schism in the church; he only wanted to weed out the corruption. Yet, the second the hammer hit the nail on that church door in Wittenberg, the reformer tapped into a zeitgeist — a desire for change that had been simmering throughout much of Europe.
Wittenberg
Whether you’re a Lutheran pilgrim or simply a history geek like me, Wittenberg’s appeal is as the epicenter of all things Reformation. Luther lived here most of his life. His house, a former monastery, is now a museum; the church where he frequently preached is called the Mother Church of the Reformation; and the site of the famed doors, as well as his grave, is at Castle Church. The buildings are all a pleasant stroll from each other.
I got my first look at the doors on my morning jog. As I trotted through a square, I glanced at a Gothic church on my left and stopped. There, 10 feet from me, was Castle Church, its bronze doors inscribed with Luther’s 95 Theses. These doors, I learned, stand in place of the original wooden doors, which burned in the 18th century.
That afternoon, I wandered through Old Town, where bakeries lurked around every block and wafts of buttery goods drifted through the streets like edible spirits. Souvenir shops hawked Lutherrelated paraphernalia, and a food cart offered sausages named after Luther.
A voracious eater and imbiber of beer, Luther is said to have turned up occasionally at a bar called Schwarzer Bär (black bear) and had long, beer-fueled, theological discussions past closing time. Tour guides tell a tale about how he reportedly once skipped out on his tab. One afternoon, I sat in the 1720sera Goldener Adler restaurant, sipping a pint of Pilsner and thinking about the late-night chats Luther might have had in this town, when 14 American tourists interrupted my reverie. Sitting around a large table, their schweinehaxenbraten (pork knuckle) and pints of beer in front of them, they joined hands and began singing, “The Lord Is Good to Me.”
Eisenach
After Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther in 1521, Saxon elector Frederich III directed some of his soldiers to kidnap the revolutionary for his own protection and take him to Wartburg Castle, a medieval fortress towering above Eisenach. Luther holed up here for 10 months, part of the time assuming the alias of Junker Jörg (Knight George). During this time, he spent 11 weeks translating the New Testament of the Bible from Greek into German. (He later translated the Old Testament as well.)
Arriving in Eisenach, I forewent the city bus that snakes up to the castle and opted to trek the Luther Adventure Trail, a steep climb that I figured would offset all the sausages and beer I’d been consuming. By the time I huffed my way to the castle, I realized the only adventure was for one’s respiratory system. I caught my breath and took in the well-preserved structure, with its turrets sporting rippling pointy flags, watchtowers and a chesspiece-like keep seeming straight out of a children’s fairy tale. It was easy to imagine Luther traversing the premises, hands clasped behind his back, deep in thought. I was in time for an English-language tour of the castle, and a guide, Hendrikje Doebert, led our group of Americans and Britons through various rooms. We patiently listened to her throughout the hour-long tour, but we all had come here to see one thing: Luther’s room.
We stood solemnly at the room’s doorway, gazing at the main attraction: a sturdy wooden desk.
“Most ordinary people in the 16th century didn’t know Latin” or Greek, Doebert said. “So, by translating the Bible into German, Luther opened up people’s worlds. He gave them freedom.” There was that word again. She continued: “Today, I see people coming here from all over the world, tracing their Protestant roots, all because of what Luther did in this room right here.”
Luther eventually left Wartburg Castle, returning to Wittenberg to help direct the Reformation. In 1525, he married Katharina von Bora, a former nun, and the couple had five children. In 1546, at age 63, Luther traveled to Eisleben, the town where he was born, to conduct some business. It was to be his final journey.
Eisleben
For my final stop, I took the train to this town of some 24,000 people. I followed the signs to the city center, descending into a wooded valley. Tall pine trees gave way to Baroque- and Renaissance-era burgher houses, and before I knew it, I was standing in Eisleben’s main square. A larger-than-life bronze statue of Martin Luther on a pedestal stared down at me.
Later that afternoon, I met Klaus, a local resident who owns a bed-and-breakfast here and is a friend of a friend. He took me on a walking tour of his hometown, starting at Luther’s birth house (a museum since 1693), then moving on to the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul, where Luther was baptized. Today, a Jacuzzi-size pool for baptisms stands in front of the altar. We zigzagged through the town’s narrow cobbled streets until we arrived at the Gothic Church of St. Andreas to see the pulpit where Luther gave his final four sermons.
Outside, Klaus pointed to the gorgeous late-Gothic doorway of a building across the square. Ornate lines bedecked its characteristic apex, a hallmark of an era on the threshold of the Renaissance.
“Two days before Luther died,” Klaus said, “he’s said to have founded a school for girls in that building.” We may take this idea for granted in the contemporary world, but it was almost unheard of in that time. “Luther said he translated the Bible into German, and, therefore, people — boys and girls — should be able to read it,” Klaus said.
A few minutes later, having entered the house of Luther’s death (also a museum), we stood before the black shroud that had draped Luther’s coffin. Klaus said that on Luther’s way from Wittenberg to Eisleben for the last time, he had a heart attack.
“Oh, so that’s what killed him?” I asked.
Klaus, who was a dead ringer for Bob Newhart but with a German accent, deadpanned: “No, he had heart attacks all the time.”
The heart attack that historians believe did kill Luther occurred two weeks after his arrival in Eisleben, sending him to that meat and beer hall in the sky where there is no closing time.
“Luther was finally free,” Klaus said.
I said goodbye to Klaus and, as Luther might have done, walked to a nearby pub to have a beer and ponder, what else? Freedom. I’m not a Lutheran — I don’t even subscribe to an organized religion — but spending a week in Luther’s footsteps made me realize how much of a giant he was. And how, at first, his momentous task probably seemed Sisyphean. He never did see the full effects of what he started, but, alive or dead, he got to the top of the mountain.