Lutherhaus Eisenach

About

Lutherhaus Eisenach is one of the oldest surviving half-timbered houses in Thuringia. Tradition holds that Martin Luther lived there with the Cotta family during his schooldays in Eisenach from 1498 to 1501. The Lutherhaus has been one of the most important historic Reformation sites since the 19th century and, as such, was designated a "European cultural heritage site" in 2011. The Lutherhaus has been run as a cultural history museum since 1956.

Martin Luther resided in his "beloved town" of Eisenach several times in his life. He spent three years of his schooldays there and translated the New Testament in Wartburg Castle.

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 attended the Latin school in the neighboring city of Mansfeld, before moving to Magdeburg where he attended the cathedral school for one year in 1497. The next year, Luther moved to Eisenach, where he initially lived with family relatives in his mother's hometown. Since he still had to earn something for his keep, he went from house to house as a choirboy – quite common for school students in that day. Luther's first biographer, Johann Mathesius, recounts that the young woman Ursula Cotta was so pleased by the schoolboy's singing that she took him into her home. She was the wife of city councilman Conrad (Cunz) Cotta and a daughter of Heinrich Schalbe. Her father was one of the most influential residents of Eisenach in his day. At that time, the Cottas also had extensive influence and property in Eisenach. 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.

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. This circle of pious laity around Heinrich Schalbe had close ties to the Franciscans and was shaped by their piety. 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. Luther departed Eisenach in early 1501 in order to attend the university in Erfurt. He always remembered his schooldays "ynn meiner lieben Stad" (in my beloved town) fondly and remained in contact with several residents of Eisenach all his life.

In Wartburg Castle (May 1521 to March 1522)

The newly elected Holy Roman Emperor Karl V summoned Luther before the Imperial Diet in Worms in March 1521 because of his Reformation writings. Luther was called upon to recant his writings on April 17, 1521, but, after being given a day to consider, he refused. Luther departed from Worms on April 26 and headed back to Wittenberg. On May 4, armed horsemen forced his escorts and him to stop near Altenstein Palace in the Thuringian Forest. They "abducted" Luther, who had foreknowledge of the plan, and brought him to Wartburg Castle above Eisenach. He was in fact being hidden for his own safety since he was the endangered by the imperial ban as a result of his refusal to recant in Worms. 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.

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. When he was ambushed near Altenstein, he had quickly grabbed the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament. 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. Since there was no standard German language in his day, Luther used the language of the Saxon chancellery for his translation, which was relative widespread through its use in diplomatic correspondence. Unlike his predecessors, Luther did not translate the Bible on the basis of the Latin Vulgate. Instead, he took the original Greek text as his starting point and only consulted the Vulgate as a supplement. This enabled him to free himself from the characteristic Latin style and create a readable but nevertheless elegant Bible text. Unable to find any exact German equivalents for many biblical terms, Luther created numerous new words and idiomatic expressions while translating the Bible.

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. The first edition of the so-called September Testament was published on September 20, 1522. Luther had already turned to translating the Old Testament in the meantime. Luther needed until 1534 before he was able to present a complete translation of the Bible with the collaboration of numerous experts.

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 attended the Latin school in the neighboring city of Mansfeld, before moving to Magdeburg where he attended the cathedral school for one year in 1497. The next year, Luther moved to Eisenach, where he initially lived with family relatives in his mother's hometown. Since he still had to earn something for his keep, he went from house to house as a choirboy – quite common for school students in that day. Luther's first biographer, Johann Mathesius, recounts that the young woman Ursula Cotta was so pleased by the schoolboy's singing that she took him into her home. She was the wife of city councilman Conrad (Cunz) Cotta and a daughter of Heinrich Schalbe. Her father was one of the most influential residents of Eisenach in his day. At that time, the Cottas also had extensive influence and property in Eisenach. 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.

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. This circle of pious laity around Heinrich Schalbe had close ties to the Franciscans and was shaped by their piety. 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. Luther departed Eisenach in early 1501 in order to attend the university in Erfurt. He always remembered his schooldays "ynn meiner lieben Stad" (in my beloved town) fondly and remained in contact with several residents of Eisenach all his life.

The newly elected Holy Roman Emperor Karl V summoned Luther before the Imperial Diet in Worms in March 1521 because of his Reformation writings. Luther was called upon to recant his writings on April 17, 1521, but, after being given a day to consider, he refused. Luther departed from Worms on April 26 and headed back to Wittenberg. On May 4, armed horsemen forced his escorts and him to stop near Altenstein Palace in the Thuringian Forest. They "abducted" Luther, who had foreknowledge of the plan, and brought him to Wartburg Castle above Eisenach. He was in fact being hidden for his own safety since he was the endangered by the imperial ban as a result of his refusal to recant in Worms. 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.

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. When he was ambushed near Altenstein, he had quickly grabbed the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament. 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. Since there was no standard German language in his day, Luther used the language of the Saxon chancellery for his translation, which was relative widespread through its use in diplomatic correspondence. Unlike his predecessors, Luther did not translate the Bible on the basis of the Latin Vulgate. Instead, he took the original Greek text as his starting point and only consulted the Vulgate as a supplement. This enabled him to free himself from the characteristic Latin style and create a readable but nevertheless elegant Bible text. Unable to find any exact German equivalents for many biblical terms, Luther created numerous new words and idiomatic expressions while translating the Bible.

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. The first edition of the so-called September Testament was published on September 20, 1522. Luther had already turned to translating the Old Testament in the meantime. Luther needed until 1534 before he was able to present a complete translation of the Bible with the collaboration of numerous experts.

The architectural history of the historic building was extensively studied and documented prior to the restoration and renovation of the Lutherhaus (2013–2015). The dendrochronological tests performed at this time revealed that the smaller predecessor building dates to 1269. This makes the Lutherhaus in Eisenach one of the oldest- timbered houses in Thuringia. In 1356, the south domestic outbuilding was added onto substantially, thus expanding the Lutherhaus to its present architectural volume. The exact date when the Cotta family came into possession of the Lutherhaus, which initially consisted several individual buildings, is not documented. That the Cottas already owned the present-day Lutherhaus around 1500 is, however, certain.

In the early 1560s, Hans Leonhard, a Renaissance master builder in Eisenach, purchased the building, which was being used as a brewery at that time. Leonhard was long assumed to have created the magnificent Renaissance facade of the Lutherhaus as well, but recent architectural history research suggests that, although he created the Renaissance Portal, the facade was originally part of the adjacent electoral palace and was not added to Lutherhaus until after the demolition of the palace in 1742.

The date of the addition of the half-timbering is also disputed. Whereas older depictions of the Lutherhaus claim it had not been erected until after the conflagration of the city in 1636, current analyses suggest that the construction work had already been completed in the 16th century. The Lutherhaus changed owners frequently during the early modern period, who put it to different uses.

A restaurant, the so-called "Lutherkeller", was located in the building from 1898 onward. The proprietor, Adolf Lukass, decorated his establishment in "old German style" and, for a surcharge, also showed his guests the historic "Luther chambers" in which Luther supposedly lived as a student. The Lutherhaus had survived every war and city fire largely undamaged until World War II. A British blockbuster bomb exploded above Luther Square on November 23, 1944. The explosion damaged the building's north facade substantially. The southern part in which the Luther chambers and the half-timbered hall are located nevertheless remained intact. The damaged building was swiftly repaired after the end of the war.

Once the house had been rebuilt, the Lukass family (Lucas, Lukass) resumed running the "Lutherkeller" restaurant until 1953. After part of the family had fled to West Germany, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia rented space in the house in 1955. It expanded the existing historic Luther site further, housed the "Protestant Parsonage Archive" in it, and opened a site of remembrance in the Lutherhaus in 1956, which was a mixture of historic site, collection, and museum. In 1965, the Thuringian Regional Church received half of the house as a bequest from the wife of the late Mr. Lukass, Karoline Schneider, who had owned one half of the house until her death. The church acquired the other half from the Lukass family heirs in 1997. The Lutherhaus remained in the possession of the Thuringian Regional Church after reunification and was used as a historic Reformation site. The Wartburg Verlag GmbH ran the Lutherhaus from 2006 to 2013.

Despite repeated restoration and renovation (among other times, in 1976-77 and 1983), the house soon reached its architectural limits. The conditions proved to be inadequate for the storage of the Parsonage Archive's holdings, too. The permanent exhibition "Rediscovering Martin Luther", completely redesigned in 1996, was one of the last modernization projects. At that time it was state-of-the-art and served as the model for the modernization of the Lutherhaus in Wittenberg. All the same, the Lutherhaus grew less attractive and less modern than other historic Reformation sites over the years.

The New Lutherhaus (2013 to the present)