MEMORIALSINEISLEBEN – UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE

The town of Eisleben is occasionally referred to as the reformer’s Bethlehem and Jerusalem. On 10 November 1483 Martin Luther was born in the road then known as “Lange Gasse” and was christened the next day in the nearby Church of St. Peter and Paul. His parents moved from the Thuringian town of Möhra to the county of Mansfeld as his father found a way to earn his living in the local mining industry. Very early on the residents of Eisleben started to treasure the memory of their greatest son in the house where he was born. The current appearance of the building is due to renovation work carried out after the town fire in 1689. On the ground floor the rooms have the typical layout of a town house at the end of the Middle Ages. The exhibition documents the childhood and youth of the reformer in the Mansfeld region and gives an insight into the spiritual environment in which Martin was raised. The lovely hall on the top floor has been used since 1693 as a special place for worshipping Luther. On 18 February 1546 the cycle of Martin Luther’s life was completed in his birthplace. Discussions between the warring land-owning families provided the reason for Luther to spend the last three weeks of his life in Eisleben. He wanted “to see his dear lords reconciled before he went to his grave”. On 16 and 17 February after painstaking discussions the agreements were finally signed. The house in St Andrew’s Church Square (Andreaskirchplatz) only came to public attention in the 19th century. In 1862 it was purchased from a private owner by the Prussian government. In the following years, the house was restored to its original late Gothic style and was opened to the public for the first time. Today, the house is a memorial to Luther’s death. The exhibition gives an insight into Martin Luther’s bonds with his homeland, his thoughts on death and dying, and his last resting place. The exhibition also covers the themes of “Luther and mining” and “Luther and the Bible”. The late Gothic church of St. Andrew, the place where Luther gave his last four sermons and where the first two memorial services for the Reformer were held, is only a short distance from the house where he died.

The kitchen in the house where Luther was born The Church of St. Andrew— chancel and pulpit where Luther gave his sermons The museum “Luthers Sterbehaus”