Excellent Adventure 2018 Day 8 - Wittenberg or Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Martin Luther But Were Afraid To Ask

We woke up Wednesday morning to an overcast and cool day. How refreshing!

And it stayed that way the entire morning for our walking tour of Wittenberg.

Not being a super fan of Martin Luther myself, I wasn’t at all sure how interesting this was going to be. Turned out to be absolutely fascinating, mostly due to our super star tour guide, Nigel. In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t really talked about the tour guides. This is because they were literally nothing to write home about. Up until now they’ve been almost uniformly mediocre, at best. Besides getting past their accented English (which sometimes sounded like they were translating directly from German in their heads: “We will have good conditions inside”. What does that mean? The building has A/C  and it will be comfortable.), they all have memorized their speeches, which they recite perfectly and perfectly boring.

But Nigel was different. He comes from Ireland, so his English is, well, English. Plus he’s an entertaining person, making the potentially tedious history come to life.

We started at one end of Wittenberg at the Luther House. The end of the tour would be the church 3/4 of a mile away at the other end of town, and we had 2 hours to get there.

Luther House

This Luther's table, with the original table top. They really should dust it every once in a while:

Martin Luther's table (original table top)

At the Luther House, Nigel explained how Martin Luther became a monk (his father wanted him to become a lawyer), then became a professor of theology in Wittenberg, and eventually how he came to post his 95 Theses on the castle church door:

Castle Church door where the 95 Theses were posted

Interesting side note: posting things on that door was a common way for the monks to communicate with each other. And, the likelihood of Luther doing it himself is pretty small - he most likely had one of his students do it.

Another side note from Nigel: Other people declared heretics were arrested and executed and yet Luther was not. He was protected by the Prince Elector of the principality where Luther lived. But this also meant that Luther could never leave his home principality, because otherwise he would be arrested and executed.

Here is a link to some more info on Martin Luther. Without listening to Nigel tell the story, it really isn’t the same.

Lest we think Martin Luther was all goodness and light, we were reminded of his enthusiastic anti-Antisemitism, as well as the general population. This was a stone carving on the cornerstone of a church - highly antisemitic image that was par for the course for the time. And this kind of thing was not unique to Meissen - they could be found all over the country. After WWII, many communities decided to take them down. In Meissen, they decided to leave it to remind them of their past.

Antisemitic cornerstone

Instead, the opted to add a holocaust memorial - in cross representing the church, the secrets of the holocaust bubbling up through the cracks. Secrets cannot stay secrets forever.

Holocaust memorial

After a break, we continued on to the Castle Church where Luther is buried. We did not visit Luther’s grave - inside the castle church where apparently he was contractually obligated to be buried.

The tour seemed to end far too soon - before we knew it, we were back on the bus to the ship.

We decided to sign up for an optional afternoon tour to Torgau, a town about an hour away by bus where the first Lutheran Protestant church was built (as opposed to retro-fitted Catholic Churches) and where Luther’s wife is buried.

Unfortunately, by the 2:00 bus boarding time the sun had come out and the temperature soared into the upper 80s, making the Torgau tour a bit more of a challenge. Our tour guide Mathius, reverted to the pre-Nigel level of mediocrity.

One fun shout out to Viking: there was an older gentleman (never did learn his name) in our group who had wanted to go to Torgau to visit a cousin he hadn't seen in many years. The tour guide (Mathius) and the bus driver, figured out how to make a slight detour to take the older gentleman to the street where his cousin lived. The gentleman and his wife got off the bus, and they strode off into the afternoon heat.

We first stopped in St. Mary’s church, where Luther’s wife, Katarina is buried. It wasn’t a long walk, but the cobble stoned streets combined with the heat made it feel like 2 miles.. Here are some photos of St. Mary’s church:

Katarina's grave in St. Mary's church

Nave of St Mary's Church

Next we went to the town square with the first built-from-scratch Lutheran church. For some unknown reason, there were bears (not kidding, bears) living in the space below:

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Bear

This is the first church built as a Lutheran Protestant church, as opposed to retro-fitted Catholic churches:

First Protestant Church (Castle Church of Torgau)

Andy climbed up to the top of the tower of attached castle and took some photos from up there:

Torgau Castle Courtyard

The last thing we visited was the spot where WWII came to an end - where the Allied forces met the Soviet forces on the field:

End of WWII

While we were waiting for the bus to arrive, the older gentleman we dropped off before the tour was returned to us by his cousin. They had not seen each other in 70 years! I thought it was great that the tour guide and bus driver figured it out to make this reunion happen.

We then headed back to Wittenberg and dinner.

After dinner Benne planned a crazy “Name That Tune” kind of game that, let’s just say, just got a bit crazy. But hilarious.

Tomorrow:  Worlitz gardens