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. A flash of lightning struck the ground near him. “Help me, St. Anne,” he said, referring to the saint with a reputation for saving people in mortal danger. Two weeks later, he walked into an Augustine monastery in Erfurt to fulfill his promise and went on to teach theology in Wittenberg. 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. 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. 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. 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. Souvenir shops hawked Luther-related 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. 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. 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. For my final stop, I took the train to this town of some 24,000 people. 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. 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. 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.
Comment on Following in Martin Luther’s 500-year-old footsteps
By David Farley, San Francisco Chronicle: Travel
Sun, 06/25/2017 - 11:06am
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