{"id":95501,"date":"2022-06-20T14:54:18","date_gmt":"2022-06-20T20:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=95501"},"modified":"2022-06-23T02:02:29","modified_gmt":"2022-06-23T08:02:29","slug":"in-the-footsteps-of-martin-luther","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2022\/06\/in-the-footsteps-of-martin-luther.html","title":{"rendered":"In the footsteps of Martin Luther"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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\"Die<\/a>
The Wartburg. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\"Music<\/a>
Ferdinand Leeke, \u201cTannh\u00e4user und der S\u00e4ngerkrieg auf der Wartburg\u201d (\u201cTannh\u00e4user and the Battle of the Troubadours on the Wartburg\u201d; ca. 1920)
Wikimedia Commons public domain image<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\"Where<\/a>
The Festsaal or Festival Hall in the Wartburg, redesigned by Franz Liszt in the 19th century, where concerts are often given \u2014 including, appropriately, performances of Wagner\u2019s opera \u201cTannh\u00e4user\u201d \u2014 which is partially set in this very hall
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Before leaving for the Wartburg yesterday, we did a guided walking tour within the walls of Rothenburg ob der Tauber.\u00a0 It\u2019s a quaint and picturesque little city, the very image of a late medieval German town.\u00a0 (Or even of a French one.\u00a0 I can easily imagine the story of Beauty and the Beast<\/em> being filmed in Rothenburg o.d.T.)\u00a0 We had visited it only once before, so this brief repeated stay and the excellent local guide who took our group around really helped us to learn more about the place.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The drive from Rothenburg to the Wartburg and on to Lutherstadt Wittenberg was a long one, so, naturally, being precisely the monster of sadistic cruelty that my most keen-eyed online critics intuitively know me to be, I sought to make it yet longer and even more miserable for the hapless members of our tour group.\u00a0 I accomplished my fiendish design by discoursing on the bus about Martin Luther, the Reformation, and, yes, the Wartburg.\u00a0 After all, they had no real means of escape.<\/p>\n

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The Wartburg is an eleventh-century fortress looking down upon the town of Eisenach, where, eventually, Martin Luther would attend school and where, even later, Johann Sebastian Bach would be born.\u00a0 For several years before her death in 1231 at age twenty-four, St. Elizabeth of Hungary (or St. Elizabeth of Thuringia) lived in the fortress.\u00a0 Already by her time, though, the Wartburg had been the scene of the famous S\u00e4ngerkrieg<\/em> (\u201cminstrel contest,\u201d also known as the Wartburgkrieg<\/em>), in 1207.\u00a0 If this competition really occurred at all, which it may not have, it involved such famous genuine medieval Minnes\u00e4nger<\/em> as Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach (the author of Parzifal<\/em>) and the at least semi-fictional magician Klingsor of Hungary and the semi-fictional poet Heinrich von Ofterdingen.\u00a0 Later, it features prominently in a number of important literary works, and in Richard Wagner\u2019s music-drama or opera Tannh\u00e4user<\/em>.\u00a0 (Listen here<\/a> to the majestic \u201cPilgrims\u2019 Chorus\u201d from Wagner\u2019s opera.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 1817, the Wartburg was the site of an important meeting that reflected some of the earliest stirrings of German nationalism and that, though unsuccessful in its own time, marked a milestone on the road to the unification of Germany.<\/p>\n

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But the fortress is most famous as the place where Martin Luther, proclaimed an outlaw by Emperor Charles V, was hidden for the better part of a year (1521-1522) after a feigned kidnapping on the road back from Wurms to Wittenberg, and where, in a remarkable ten or eleven weeks, he translated the New Testament into German.\u00a0 Thereby, he essentially created Hochdeutsch<\/em> (the \u201cHigh German\u201d language) and revolutionized the religious landscape of Europe.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was really pleased for our group to see the Wartburg and to learn something of its remarkable history.\u00a0 It has even been suggested that his time living as a boy in the shadow of the Wartburg and his months living as an adult in the Wartburg under the assumed name of Junker J\u00f6rg (\u201cSquire George\u201d) influenced the formulation of Luther\u2019s most famous hymn, \u201cA Mighty Fortress is Our God\u201d (\u201cEin feste Burg ist unser Gott\u201d).\u00a0 I\u2019m sympathetic to the suggestion.<\/p>\n

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\"Wittenberger<\/a>
Marktplatz, or Market Square, in Wittenberg. In the background are the two towers of the Stadtkirche, also known as the St. Marienkirche, which is considered \u201cthe mother church of the Reformation.\u201d Martin Luther preached in it perhaps two thousand times, and it was the first place where the mass was said in the vernacular language (German, specifically) and where both wafer and wine were administered to the laity.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\"The<\/a>
The Schlosskirche (All Saints\u2019 Church or \u201cCastle Church\u201d) in Wittenberg
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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From the Wartburg, we drove on to Lutherstadt Wittenberg.\u00a0 That\u2019s its official name now: Luther City Wittenberg<\/em>.\u00a0 I\u2019ve wanted to bring a group to Wittenberg ever since I first visited it about seven or eight years ago.\u00a0 In fact, I published an article about the town in the Deseret News<\/em>, back on 13 June 2015:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA small German town with a vast history\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

We arrived in Wittenberg fairly late in the evening.\u00a0 This morning, though, a good local guide joined us for a walking tour of the Altstadt<\/em> or \u201cOld City.\u201d\u00a0 And, this time, I was pleased to be able to go inside the Schlo\u00dfkirche or \u201cCastle Church\u201d where Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon and Friedrich, the Elector of Saxony and Luther\u2019s protector, are buried.\u00a0 The church had been closed for renovations during our prior visit to Wittenberg, because the five hundredth anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation was approaching.\u00a0 And what event was chosen to mark the beginning of Luther\u2019s Reformation?\u00a0 It was Luther\u2019s nailing of his famous \u201cNinety-Five Theses\u201d to the door of precisely this \u201cCastle Church,\u201d on 31 October 1517.\u00a0 After our walking tour had concluded, and after lunch, some of us spent most of our time in Luther\u2019s house, the former Augustinian cloister of Wittenberg, which is now an excellent museum of Luther and the Reformation.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A word about our hotel:\u00a0 To my very great pleasure, our group stayed in the same hotel where my wife and I had lodged during our first visit.\u00a0 I had been disappointed, on that occasion, when I learned that we were going to be staying in the Best Western<\/a> there.\u00a0 But my attitude changed instantly when I grasped where it was, directly next door to Luther\u2019s house, within just a few feet of Melanchthon\u2019s house, and not more than several blocks of level walking from all of the other major Reformation sites in Wittenberg.\u00a0 Location, location, location!\u00a0 Absolutely fabulous.\u00a0 And I was pleased today to find that my memory was correct about one site that, curiously, our walking tour didn\u2019t cover:\u00a0 A few hundred yards from our hotel, in the opposite direction from the former university and the Schlo\u00dfkirche and almost all of the other sites, is a small park marking the place where, in 1520, Luther burned Pope Leo X\u2019s bull of excommunication.\u00a0 I led a small subset of our group to it, and was relieved to find that my memory hadn\u2019t led me (and them) astray.\u00a0 Later, as our bus drove out of the town, we passed by the little park and I was able to point it out to the others.<\/p>\n

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Posted from Berlin, Germany<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 Before leaving for the Wartburg yesterday, we did a guided walking tour within the walls of Rothenburg ob der Tauber.\u00a0 It\u2019s a quaint and picturesque little city, the very image of a late medieval German town.\u00a0 (Or even of a French one.\u00a0 I can easily imagine the story of 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