Martin Luther Monument
Item
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Title
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Martin Luther Monument
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Creator/author/artist of the original item
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Johann Gottfried Schadow
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Date
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1821
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Description
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Pictured here is the oldest monument dedicated to Martin Luther, located in Wittenberg, Germany. Unveiled in 1821, it was designed by Johann Gottfried Schadow and is similar to several subsequent Luther statues that present him in a castle structure in order to nod to his prominent hymn “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” (“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”). Wittenberg is a key place in the history of the Reformation as Luther was a professor of theology at Wittenberg University. A major part of Luther’s lore as a hero of religious freedom is the story of how he posted his Ninety-Five Theses upon the door of the Castle Church on October 31, 1517. In truth, Luther’s first serious action against the church was his letter to Archbishop Albert of Brandenburg, written in the form of ninety-five theses. Although later biographies claimed he had boldly nailed these theses to the door of the Castle Church, Luther’s theses were written in Latin for an audience learned in theology, making them fairly inaccessible to the ordinary church-goer (Wiesner-Hanks 168). Nonetheless, Luther’s writings decried the Catholic Church’s hypocrisy, corruption, and practice of selling indulgences (certificates that could be purchased in order to reduce the punishment for sins in purgatory) while emphasizing following the scripture before institutions like the church with human actors that can be corrupted. Ultimately, Luther’s efforts turned into a movement (in no small part thanks to the innovation of the printing press) and Europe found itself embroiled in an internal conflict as “Protestant and Catholic political authorities all thought that their territories should have one official state church” and groups who “were considered radical…were intensely persecuted and often forced to flee from one place to another” (Wiesner-Hanks 197). As the Reformation spread, more than a century of religious war broke out, beginning in Germany and Switzerland and then also affecting France and the Netherlands.
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Place
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Wittenberg, Germany
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Source Citation
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Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. *Early Modern Europe, 1450-1789*. 3rd ed. of *Cambridge History of Europe*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
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Johann Gottfried Schadow, *Luther Monument*, 1821, Statue, Wittenberg, Germany
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Rights / License
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This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
