Luther House Eisenach

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Luther House Eisenach
Luther House DSCN3667.jpg
Data
place Eisenach
Art
museum
opening 1956 (first opening)
2015 (reopening)
Number of visitors (annually) approx. 40,000
management
Jochen Birkenmeier
Website
ISIL DE-MUS-868311

The Lutherhaus in Eisenach is one of the oldest preserved half-timbered houses in Thuringia . According to tradition , Martin Luther lived here with the Cotta family during his school days from 1498 to 1501.

Historical basis

Martin Luther stayed several times in his "dear city" Eisenach. Here he spent three years of his school days and translated the New Testament at the Wartburg .

Martin Luther as a student in Eisenach (1498 to 1501)

Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483 in Eisleben . Luther first attended the Mansfeld Latin School before moving to Magdeburg for a year in 1497 and attending the cathedral school there. Just a year later, the young Luther moved to Eisenach. In his mother's hometown, he initially stayed with relatives of the family. Nevertheless, he still had to earn some living for himself, which is why he - at that time not uncommon for schoolchildren - moved from house to house as a carolers singer . According to Luther's first biographer, Johann Mathesius , the pupil's singing was so popular with an “authentic matron” that she accepted him into her house. The matron was the young councilor's wife Ursula Cotta, who was married to Conrad I. (Cunz) Cotta and a daughter of Heinrich Schalbe. Her father was one of the most influential Eisenachers of his time. The Cottas also had a lot of influence and possessions in Eisenach at that time. At the beginning of the 16th century, they owned several houses in the city, including today's Lutherhaus. It is therefore very likely that Martin Luther found temporary living and lodging there as a student. In addition to school lessons at the St. Georg parish school, his time in Eisenach was particularly influenced by the spiritual experiences at the Collegium schalbense . This pious circle of lay people around Heinrich Schalbe was in close contact with the Franciscans and was shaped by their piety. In addition, Luther took part in meetings in the house of the secular priest Johannes Braun, where musicians were made, prayed and discussed both spiritual and humanistic books. In the spring of 1501 Luther left Eisenach to study at the University of Erfurt . Luther always had positive memories of his school days “in my dear town” and he stayed in contact with some Eisenachers throughout his life.

Luther at the Wartburg (1521 to 1522)

In March 1521 Martin Luther was quoted before the Reichstag in Worms by the newly elected Emperor Charles V because of his reformatory writings . Here he was asked to revoke his writings (April 17, 1521), which the Wittenberg monk refused after a day's reflection (April 18, 1521). On April 26, 1521, Martin Luther left Worms again and made his way back to Wittenberg. On May 4, 1521, he and his companions were forced to stop at Altenstein Castle by armed horsemen. Luther, who had been initiated in advance, was "kidnapped" by them and taken to the Wartburg. In fact, he was hidden for his own safety, since he was threatened with ban from the Reich as a result of the refusal to revoke in Worms. With the Edict of Worms published a short time later , Luther himself was not only banned and declared a heretic, but the production and distribution of his writings was officially prohibited from then on. Luther used the time of loneliness and seclusion at the Wartburg, who - in reference to Saint George , the city saints of Eisenach and Mansfeld - had taken on the cover name "Junker Jörg" to study the New Testament scriptures of the Bible intensively. When the Altenstein attacked, he quickly took the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament with him. With their help, Luther initially continued his interpretations of individual biblical passages before he began his epoch-making work: From mid-December 1521, he translated the entire New Testament from Greek into “German” within just eleven weeks. Since there was no uniform German language at that time, Luther used the Saxon office language for his translation , which was relatively widespread due to its use in diplomatic correspondence. Unlike his predecessors, Luther did not translate the Bible on the basis of the Latin Vulgate , but rather went from the original Greek text and only added the Vulgate as a supplement. This enabled him to break away from the Latin language and create a catchy, but nevertheless demanding Bible text. In the course of translating the Bible, Luther created numerous new words and idioms because he could not find any suitable equivalents in the German language for many biblical terms. When Luther returned to Wittenberg at the beginning of March 1522 because riots had broken out there, he already had the completed translation manuscript in his luggage. Together with Philipp Melanchthon , who was professor of Greek in Wittenberg and at the same time a confidante of Luther, he subjected it to a thorough revision before taking it to Melchior Lotter the Elder that summer . J. was in print. On September 20, 1522 then the first edition of the so-called. Published September Testament . Meanwhile, Luther had already turned to the translation of the Old Testament . However, it was not until 1534 that Luther, in collaboration with numerous experts, was able to present a complete translation of the Bible.

Building history of the Lutherhaus

Lutherhaus Eisenach (GDR postage stamp, stamp series: Half-timbered buildings in the GDR , 1978)

In the run-up to the extensive restoration and refurbishment of the Luther House (2013–2015), a comprehensive structural history study of the historic building took place, which was recorded in a documentation. The dendrochronological investigations carried out in this context have shown that the smaller previous building goes back to the year 1269. This makes the Eisenacher Lutherhaus one of the oldest half-timbered houses in Thuringia. In 1356 the southern farm building was expanded considerably and the Lutherhaus was enlarged to its current cubage. When exactly the Lutherhaus, which initially consisted of several individual buildings, came into the possession of the Cotta family cannot be documented. What is certain, however, is that today's Luther House was owned by the Cottas around 1500. In the early 1560s, the Eisenach Renaissance master builder Hans Leonhard acquired the building, which was then used as a brewery. For a long time it was assumed that it was also Leonhard who created the magnificent Renaissance facade of the Lutherhaus. However, more recent research into the history of architecture also suggests that the renaissance portal came from his hand, but originally belonged to the adjacent electoral residence and was only attached to the Lutherhaus after its demolition in 1742. The timing of the truss attachment is also controversial. While older depictions of the Luther House claim that it was only built after the great city fire of 1636, current studies suggest that this building measure was carried out as early as the 16th century. In the course of the early modern period , the Lutherhaus changed hands many times, which also resulted in different uses. Since 1898 there was a restaurant, the so-called "Lutherkeller", in the building. The landlord, Adolf Lukaß, furnished his restaurant in the “old German style” and, for a surcharge, also showed his guests the historical “Luther rooms” in which Luther is said to have lived as a student. Up until the Second World War , the Luther House had survived all wars and city fires largely unscathed. On November 23, 1944, however, a British air mine detonated over Lutherplatz. The detonation damaged the north facade of the building considerably, but the southern part, in which the Luther rooms and the half-timbered hall are located, remained intact. After the end of the war, the damaged house was quickly repaired.

Museum history

The Lutherhaus from 1956 to 2013

Luther House, 1956

After the house was rebuilt, the Lukaß family (Lucas, Lukass) continued to run the "Lutherkeller" as a restaurant until 1953. After part of the family fled to the Federal Republic, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia rented the house in 1955. It expanded the existing Luther memorial, housed the "Evangelical Rectory Archive" here and opened a memorial site in the Luther House in 1956, which represented a mixture of memorial, collection and museum. In 1965, the Thuringian regional church received half of the house as a bequest from Karoline Schneider, widowed Lukaß, who owned half of the house until her death. The church acquired the second part in 1997 from the heirs of the Lukaß family. Even after reunification, the Lutherhaus remained in the possession of the Thuringian regional church and was used as a Reformation site. From 2006 to 2013 the Lutherhaus was operated by Wartburg Verlag GmbH . Despite multiple restorations and renovations (including 1976/77, 1983), the house soon reached its structural limits. The storage conditions for the holdings of the rectory archive also turned out to be unsuitable. One of the last modernization measures was the permanent exhibition “Rediscover Martin Luther”, which was completely redesigned in 1996, was state-of-the-art at the time and served as a model for the modernization of the Luther House in Wittenberg . Over the years, however, the Lutherhaus lost its attractiveness and modernity compared to other Reformation sites.

The new Lutherhaus (2013 to today)

Lutherhaus Eisenach, 2016

In the run-up to the Reformation anniversary in 2017, the Evangelical Church in Central Germany , which was created in 2009 through the merger of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia and the Evangelical Church of the Church Province of Saxony , launched the "Lutherhaus Eisenach Foundation" in 2013 with the aim of developing a modern museum that conforms to international museum standards. The holdings of the Evangelical Parsonage Archives, which were previously owned by the Association of Evangelical Pastors in Germany eV , were transferred to the newly established foundation and have since formed the museum's collection base. With Jochen Birkenmeier, the Lutherhaus received a full-time scientific director and curator for the first time, who also conceived and designed the redesign of the museum and the current permanent exhibition "Luther and the Bible". From 2013 to 2015 the Lutherhaus was extensively renovated and restored. During this time, the museum's educational work and the administration of the Lutherhaus took place in the nearby Creutznacher Haus . On September 26, 2015, the new Lutherhaus was reopened with a large festive service and a subsequent dedication ceremony. The museum was able to set a new visitor record in 2017 in the course of the Reformation anniversary, when over 71,000 visitors came to the Lutherhaus.

The current permanent exhibition "Luther and the Bible"

During the renovation and renovation work on the building, the interior of the house and the exhibition were also redesigned. The new permanent exhibition "Luther and the Bible" is dedicated to Luther's world-historical translation of the Bible on three floors and presents many (art) historical treasures such as B. several paintings from the Cranach school , showpieces from the Römhild textile treasure or the church book with the baptism entry of Johann Sebastian Bach . There are also numerous other exhibits and modern media stations that give museum visitors interactive access to the subject of the exhibition. As a result of the renovation work, the Luther House is largely barrier-free for the first time in its history and the arcade in the inner courtyard is also fully accessible for the first time.

ground floor

The exhibition begins on the ground floor and shows what Luther's world looked like around 1500, what forms of piety and religious practices he encountered. His school days in Eisenach are discussed as well as his path to becoming a monk and the development of his Reformation insights.

Mezzanine

The translation of the Bible is undoubtedly one of Luther's most important and formative achievements. On the mezzanine floor of the Luther House, the difficulties and challenges of translation are discussed. The linguistic diversity of "German" is clearly conveyed and Luther's own statements about "interpreting" are also taken up. At the same time, it shows the role played by the numerous experts with whom Luther worked on his translation of the Bible. In addition, the historical Luther rooms can be visited on the mezzanine.

First floor

With Luther's death in 1546, neither the Reformation nor the history of the impact of his translation of the Bible ended. Rather, Luther's translation of the Bible in particular has shaped the German language , literature and music to this day, which can be seen on the upper floor using many individual examples. The founding of the Canstein Bible Institute and the development of the standing sentence were of great importance for the distribution and long-term success of the Luther Bible , because it was only through these technical innovations that the Bible became a mass product, which was distributed throughout the world in the course of the Pietistically inspired missionary movement . Even the darkest chapter in the reception of Luther's Bible and his writings has its place in the permanent exhibition: in the Third Reich , Luther's anti-Jewish statements were often taken up and made usable for Nazi propaganda . The Institute for Research into and Elimination of the Jewish Influence on German Church Life ("Entjudungsinstitut"), founded in 1939 at the Wartburg , set itself the task of writing a new edition of the New Testament Gospels , in which all references to Judaism and history Israel should be stamped out. With the outbreak of World War II, the activities of the Entjudungsinstitut were only for a short time. The institution's publications were z. Partly printed in very high editions, so far there is no reliable knowledge about their actual distribution. In the last exhibition room the current meaning of the (Luther) Bible and the challenges of the current revision of the Luther Bible (Bible revision) are shown.

"Entjudungsinstitut"

In addition to the history of the Reformation, since 2019 the Lutherhaus has had a second thematic focus in dealing with the anti-Semitic “De-Judaism Institute” that was active in Eisenach between 1939 and 1945. In March 2018, Lutherhaus director Jochen Birkenmeier gave the initiative to erect a memorial to the “Entjudungsinstitut” , which was ceremoniously unveiled in Eisenach on May 6, 2019, 80 years after the institute was founded. Since September 19, 2019, the Lutherhaus has been showing the special exhibition Exploration and Disposal. The church "Entjudungsinstitut" 1939-1945 (curated by Jochen Birkenmeier and Michael Weise), which will be on view in the Lutherhaus until the end of 2021. It illuminates the historical-political background and spiritual roots of the institute, the consequences of its work and the arduous path to historical processing after 1945. In addition, the claims of Martin Luther and his anti-Semitic statements by the institute's employees are dealt with.

Special exhibitions and events

Parallel to the renovation work (2013–2015), a private residential and commercial building was built on the wasteland west of the Lutherhaus, which is connected to the historic Lutherhaus by a glass entrance building. The Lutherhaus Eisenach Foundation uses the ground floor of the new building as a reception area and museum shop. The new special exhibition room, in which from 2016 changing special exhibitions can be seen every year, is also located there. There are also regular events in the Lutherhaus. These include the annual museum festival on the occasion of Luther's birthday (November 10th), the KinderKulturNacht as well as readings, concerts and lectures.

Museum education

In addition to the permanent exhibition, groups of visitors can also take advantage of various educational museum offers at the Lutherhaus. This includes “lessons like in Luther's time” and various workshops in the fields of calligraphy and letterpress printing. Inquiries sheets are also made available for schoolchildren and confirmation groups. To the special exhibition Exploration and Elimination. The church "Entjudungsinstitut" 1939-1945 three special educational offers were developed that offer different approaches to the exhibition theme.

Collection and Protestant rectory archive

The basis of the museum's own collection of the Lutherhaus is the holdings of the Evangelical Parsonage Archives. This was brought into being in 1925 by the pastor August Angermann (1867–1947), who worked in Merseburg . A year earlier, Angermann announced at the Pastors' Day in Giessen that he was planning to build a collection on the history and importance of the Protestant rectory. At the following Pastors 'Day in Hamburg (1925) he was entrusted by the Protestant pastors' associations with the task of putting his plan into practice. In 1931 the collection already comprised more than 1,300 individual items (paintings, drawings, etchings, photos, books, letters, manuscripts, plaques, coins, medals, family records, etc.), and from November 2, 1932, it was in three rooms of the Wittenberg Castle can be seen in public. The collection was closed during the Second World War. After the end of the war it was initially supposed to be brought to Eisleben , but no suitable premises could be found there. Instead, the holdings of the Protestant rectory archives were brought to Eisenach in 1947 or 1948 at the instigation of Thuringian Regional Bishop Moritz Mitzenheim , where they were housed on the Hainstein until 1956. From there, the holdings were brought to the Luther House, where they were presented to the public in the form of a permanent exhibition from May 1, 1956. The contents of the exhibition on the top floor of the Lutherhaus remained largely unchanged until 1995. In 1996, the thoroughly revised and renewed exhibition "A journey through time through the history of the Protestant rectory" was presented. The storage conditions in the historic Lutherhaus, however, turned out to be increasingly problematic for the collections, both spatially and climatically. For this reason, a depot for the Protestant rectory archive was set up in the newly built Landeskirchenarchiv Eisenach in 2014, where the holdings are again accessible for research.

Awards

2011 European Cultural Heritage award

The permanent exhibition of the Lutherhaus was awarded the ICONIC AWARD 2016 in the category "Architecture - Best of Best", the "Thuringian Tourism Award 2016" (special award: "Digital Solutions in Tourism") and a special award within the scope of the museum award of the Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung Hessen- Thuringia 2016 awarded. In October 2017, the Museum Association of Thuringia awarded the Lutherhaus Eisenach the museum seal. The award is given to museums that meet the quality standards of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and the German Association of Museums (DMB) in an exemplary manner. In the same year, the Lutherhaus also received the “Accessibility Tested” certificate.

literature

  • Jochen Birkenmeier: Das / The Lutherhaus in Eisenach. Eisenach 2015.
  • Johann-Friedrich Enke: The Protestant rectory archive. A guide through the permanent exhibition in the Eisenacher Lutherhaus , Jena 1990.
  • Friedrich Henning: Martin Luther as a Latin student in Eisenach. in: Luther 67 (1996), pp. 109-113.
  • Herbert von Hintzenstern : Luther in Eisenach . 5th edition, Jena 1991.
  • Herbert von Hintzenstern : Preludes to the Reformation in Eisenach. in: Official Journal of the Evangelical Lutheran Churches in Thuringia 34 (1981) No. 10, pp. 79–85.
  • Hagen Jäger: Lutherhaus Eisenach , Regensburg 2004.
  • Karl Köthe: Martin Luther and the Luther sites in and around Eisenach. Leipzig 1994.
  • Hans Eberhard Matthes: The Eisenacher Lutherhaus with an appendix 'The Cotta family' , Eisenach 1939.
  • Hans-Dieter Meister: The Luther House in Eisenach. (East) Berlin 1989.
  • Willy Quandt: Martin Luther as a student in Eisenach and the Eisenacher Lutherhaus , (East) Berlin 1965.

Web links

Commons : Lutherhaus Eisenach  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martin Brecht : Martin Luther, Vol. 1: His way to the Reformation, 1483-1521. 2nd edition, Stuttgart 1983, pp. 24-28; Thomas Kaufmann : Martin Luther , Munich 2006, p. 28f .; Heinz Schilling : Martin Luther. Rebel in a time of upheaval. Eine Biographie , Munich 2012, pp. 68f.
  2. ↑ Johann Mathesius : Histories of the venerable in godly dear man of God, D. Martin Luther's beginning, teaching, life […] dying , Nuremberg 1588, p. 3r.
  3. ↑ Ernst-Otto Braasch: The Schalbe family in Eisenach , in: Official Journal of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia 34 (1981) No. 10, pp. 85–87, here: p. 86.
  4. ↑ Braasch: Schalbe , p. 86f.
  5. ↑ Jochen Birkenmeier: Das / The Lutherhaus in Eisenach , Eisenach 2015, pp. 9–12; Heinz Schilling : Martin Luther. Rebel in a time of upheaval. A biography. CH Beck, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-63741-4 ; 4th updated edition, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-406-70105-4 , p. 69; Brecht: Luther I , p. 30f.
  6. ↑ Martin Luther: D. Martin Luther's works. Critical Complete Edition , Vol. 30/2, Weimar 1909, p. 576.
  7. ↑ Herbert von Hintzenstern : Preludes to the Reformation in Eisenach , in: Official Journal of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia 34 (1981) No. 10, pp. 79–85, here: p. 81.
  8. ↑ Friedrich Battenberg : Art. Worms , in: Volker Leppin , Gury Schneider-Ludorff (Ed.): Das Luther-Lexikon , Regensburg 2014, p. 773f., Here: p. 774.
  9. ↑ Birkenmeier: Lutherhaus , p. 40f .; Kaufmann: Luther , pp. 64–73.
  10. ^ Heinrich Bornkamm : Martin Luther in the middle of his life. The decade between the Worms and the Augsburg Reichstag . Edited from the estate by v. Karin Bornkamm, Göttingen 1979, p. 81.
  11. ↑ Schilling: Luther , pp. 272f.
  12. ↑ Documentation on the architectural history study of the Luther House in Eisenach. Created by the restoration studio Wolfgang Petzholdt, March 2012.
  13. ↑ Hans Eberhard Matthes: The Eisenacher Lutherhaus with an appendix 'The Cotta family' , Eisenach 1939, p. 25.
  14. ↑ Documentation Petzholdt, p. 45f.
  15. ^ Hans-Dieter Meister: The Luther House in Eisenach , (East) Berlin 1989, pp. 8-10; Willy Quandt: Martin Luther as a student in Eisenach and the Eisenacher Lutherhaus , (East) Berlin 1965, p. 13.
  16. ↑ Documentation Petzholdt, p. 51.
  17. ↑ Jochen Birkenmeier: Das / The Lutherhaus in Eisenach , Eisenach 2015, p. 7.
  18. ↑ Uta Schäfer: The anniversary as an opportunity , in: Glaube + Heimat , October 29, 2010, online at: http://www.glaube-und-heimat.de/2010/10/29/das-jubilaum-als-chance / (accessed December 21, 2015).
  19. ↑ Birkenmeier: Lutherhaus , p. 21f.
  20. ↑ The Luther House in Eisenach is being renovated, rebuilt and expanded Mitteldeutsche-kirchenzeitungen.de on November 30, 2013, accessed on November 12, 2016.
  21. ↑ Heiko Kleinschmidt: Eisenach: The Luther House opened with church service and folk festival , in: Thüringer Allgemeine , September 28, 2015, online at: http://eisenach.thueringer-allgemeine.de/web/eisenach/startseite/detail/-/specific / Eisenach-Mit-Gottesdienst-und-Volksfest-oeffnete-das-Lutherhaus-1892410851 (accessed on December 21, 2015).
  22. ↑ Press release of the Foundation Lutherhaus Eisenach from January 5th, 2018
  23. ↑ Birkenmeier: Lutherhaus , pp. 28–33.
  24. ↑ Birkenmeier: Lutherhaus , pp. 34–58; Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr: Walter Grundmann: New Testament scholar and German Christian. in: Hans-Joachim Döring, Michael Haspel (eds.): Lothar Kreyssig and Walter Grundmann. Two Church Political Protagonists of the 20th Century in Central Germany , Weimar 2014, pp. 28–46, here: pp. 35–38; Oliver Arnhold: "Entjudung" - Kirche im Abgrund, vol. 2. The "Institute for Research and Elimination of the Jewish Influence on German Church Life" 1939–1945 (Studies on Church and Israel 25/2), Berlin 2010, p. 644-648, 680; Dirk Schuster: “Dejudging” as a divine task: the church movement German Christians and the Eisenacher Dejudungsinstitut in the context of the National Socialist policy against Jews , in: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte 106 (2012), pp. 241–255, here; P. 249.
  25. ↑ "We went astray" - Evangelical Church commemorates "Entjudungsinstitut" with a memorial , in: Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk Religion und Gesellschaft dated May 7, 2019 (accessed June 29, 2019).
  26. ↑ "Exploration and Elimination. The church 'Entjudungsinstitut' 1939-1945 ” , website of the Lutherhaus Eisenach Foundation (accessed on June 29, 2019).
  27. ↑ Meister: Lutherhaus , pp. 58–64; Johann-Friedrich Enke: The Protestant rectory archive. A guide through the permanent exhibition in the Eisenacher Lutherhaus , Jena 1990; Birkenmeier: Lutherhaus , pp. 24–27.
  28. ↑ Special Museum Prize for Eisenacher Lutherhaus (accessed October 4, 2016)
  29. ↑ Birgit Schellbach: A Seal for the Luther House , in: Thüringer Allgemeine, October 7, 2017.

Coordinates: 50 ° 58 ′ 23 ″  N , 10 ° 19 ′ 13 ″  E