Komerad Martin: Luther as an East(ern) German

Abstract

Martin Luther was an east German, a fact often overlooked or ignored. He was born and died in Eisleben, studied in Erfurt, and launched what would become the Reformation in Wittenberg, broadly dated with the posting of the Ninety-five Theses on the door of the Castle Church in 1517. He was sequestered as “Junker Jörg” in Eisenach, his mother’s hometown, because of his refusal to recant his theology at the Diet of Worms (1521). While there (more precisely at the Wartburg), he translated the New Testament into German (1522). Luther used a form of middle German spoken in the Saxon court, which Luther claimed was the most widespread dialect. He used popular German, rather than scientific or academic German. By the end of the 1520s, over 10,000 copies of his translation of the New Testament had been sold throughout Germany. Also in eastern Germany, Luther and Philip Melanchthon composed the so-called Torgau Articles, the basis of the Augsburg Confession (1530), in Torgau, where Luther’s wife, Katharina of Bora, is buried. The present study discusses resources on Luther’s life and teaching within the geographical context of the former German Democratic Republic. Also included is a survey of East German historiography on the Wittenberg Reformer.