Lutherhaus Eisenach
Son of Hans (1459–1530) and Margarethe Luder, née Lindemann (1459–1531), Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483, in the Central German city of Eisleben.
Luther's first biographer, Johann Mathesius, recounts that the young woman Ursula Cotta [de] was so pleased by the schoolboy's singing that she took him into her home.
Since they owned several houses in the city, including the present-day Lutherhaus, in the early 16th century, it is highly probable that Luther found room and board there for a while.
[4] In addition what he learned at St. George's parochial school, above all, his spiritual growth during his days in Eisenach was especially influenced by the Collegium schalbense.
Luther also attended meetings at the home of the diocesan priest Johannes Braun, where those gathered made music, prayed, and discussed religious as well as humanist books.
He always remembered his schooldays "ynn meiner lieben Stad" (in my beloved town)[6] fondly and remained in contact with several residents of Eisenach all his life.
[7] The newly elected Holy Roman Emperor Karl V summoned Luther before the Imperial Diet in Worms in March 1521 because of his Reformation writings.
The Edict of Worms issued a short time later not only placed Luther under the ban and declared him a heretic but also officially forbade the printing and dissemination of his writings.
[8] Luther, who had assumed the alias "Junker Jörg" in allusion to St. George, patron saint of the city of Eisenach and Mansfeld, used the period of solitude and seclusion in Wartburg Castle to study the New Testament texts of the Bible intensively.
Luther initially used them to continue his exegesis of individual Bible passages before beginning his epochal labor: From mid-December 1521 onward, he translated the entire New Testament from the Greek into "German" in just eleven weeks.
Unable to find any exact German equivalents for many biblical terms, Luther created numerous new words and idiomatic expressions while translating the Bible.
[9] Luther had the finished translation manuscript in his baggage when he returned to Wittenberg in early March 1522 to confront the unrest that had broken out there.
He revised the manuscript thoroughly together with Philipp Melanchthon, professor of Greek in Wittenberg and simultaneously one of Luther's confidants, before delivering it to Melchior Lotter the Younger for printing in the summer.
Whereas older depictions of the Lutherhaus claim it had not been erected until after the conflagration of the city in 1636,[14] current analyses suggest that the construction work had already been completed in the 16th century.
After part of the family had fled to West Germany, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia rented space in the house in 1955.
The Lutherhaus was given its first full-time director and curator, Dr. Jochen Birkenmeier, who also designed the look and content of the redesigned museum and current permanent exhibition "Luther and the Bible".
The permanent exhibition "Luther and the Bible", on display since 2015, explores Luther's historic translation of the Bible on three floors, presenting many historical treasures such as several paintings from the Cranach School, masterpieces from the Römhilder Textilschatz, and the parish register with the entry recording Johann Sebastian Bach’s baptism.
[23] The exhibition begins on the ground floor and presents a look at Luther’s cultural world around 1500 and the forms of piety and religious practices he encountered.
Since 2019, the Lutherhaus has a second major theme in addition to the history of the Reformation, the scholarly treatment and confrontation of the anti-Semitic “Dejudaization Institute”, which was active in Eisenach between 1939 and 1945.
It examines the institute's historico-political origins and intellectual roots, the impact of its work, and the arduous path to confronting its history after 1945.
In 2019, the Stiftung Lutherhaus Eisenach succeeded in acquiring the sculpture man in a cube, which Ai Weiwei had created for the exhibition Luther and the Avant-Garde put on in Wittenberg during the 2017 quincentenary of the Reformation.
That figure is the likeness of myself during my eighty-one days under secret detention in 2011.”[26] Concentrating on ideas and language helped Ai Weiwei endure his imprisonment.
He was also intrigued by the connectedness of freedom, language, and ideas in Martin Luther, to whom he explicitly paid tribute with man in a cube.
In addition, regular events, including the annual museum party on Luther's birthday (November 10), the KinderKulturNacht (Children's Culture Night), readings, concerts and lectures are held at the Lutherhaus.
The Church’s “Dejudaization Institute”, 1939–1945 and Ai Weiwei's sculpture man in a cube, which make the respective subjects approachable.
Angermann had announced at the clergy convention in Giessen one year earlier that he planned to assemble a collection on the history and significance of the Protestant parsonage.
By 1931, the collection already consisted of over 1300 individual items (paintings, drawings, etchings, photos, books, letters, manuscripts, badges, coins, medals, family registers, etc.).
Instead, the holdings of the Protestant Parsonage Archive were brought to Eisenach in 1947 or 1948 at the urging of Dr. Moritz Mitzenheim, Bishop of the Regional Church of Thuringia.
