Known worldwide as theologian and reformer

Martin Luther
(Lucas Cranach d.Ä.1529)

" In 1483 , Martin Luther was born by my father Johannes Luther and my mother Margaretha. My home county was Eisleben."

• 10th of November 1483 Luther was born in Eisleben

• 11th of November Luther was baptized in St. Peter and Paul

• 1505 friar in Erfurt

• 1512 Doctor of theology

• 31. October 1517 attachment of the theses

• 1521 proscription and escape to the Wartburg

• 1522 comeback to Wittenberg

• 1525 marriage with Katharina von Bora

• 1534 publication of the New Testament in German

• 18th February 1546 death of Martin Luthers in Eisleben (house of last residence)
  

  
  

   

Martin Luther was born on the10th of November 1483 in the former Langen Gasse ( long lane) in Eisleben and baptized the following day in St. Peter und Paul on the name of Martin of Tours.

His father , Hans Luther, was the oldest son of a farmer family that lived in between Salzungen and Eisenach in Thuringia for many generations. His mother, Margaretha, nee Lindmann, comes probably from a well known commoner family from Eisenach.

The farmers of the westthuringian areas only bequeathed the farmyard to the youngest son. So Hans Luther had to find a job of his own. That's why he moved with his wife to Mansfeld in the summer of 1484. Here his economic and social rising started. So the childhood of Martin Luther was affected by the high working pressure of his parents. With only five years Martin attended the Latin school in Mansfeld, then the cathedral school in Magdeburg, later on the St. Georges parochial school in Eisenach. Since 1501 he studied law in Erfurt like his father had wanted him to. But this wish had never been fulfilled. On the second of July 1505 the 21-year old Luther got into a thunderstrom close to Stotternheim just in front of Erfurt after he had visited his parents in Mansfeld and yelled out "Help me Saint Anna and I want to become a friar!" Despite the protest of his father Martin Luther joines the strongly ascetic Augustinian-Eremitian-friary of Erfurt. Here he spent the most time with bible studies. From then on his live was filled out with his search of a merciful God and his will. His development to the great church reformer has started. Negative impressions with the methods of mercy caused a growing critic on the grievances of the church and fundamental disagreements with the midieval theology.

The official critic of the indulgence abuse 1517 leaded to the opening of a heretic lawsuit instead of the agurmental conversation he hoped for. It ended with the promulgation of the anathema through papal conflict and the ban of the Empire 1521. Kurfürst Friedrich pretended a holdup to save Luther's life. Almost a year Luther lived as Junker Jörg on the Wartburg, where he translated the New Testament into German.

The most visible brake in the personal life of Luther as a friar was the marriage with the former nun Katharina von Bora in June of 1525. This was the beginning of the protestant rectory. After the peasant uprising of 1525 which Luther opposed the reformer assisted to build a new protestant church with visitaions and church order.

On the 18th of February in 1546 the life of Luther ended. Arguments between the counts of Mansfeld who where at odds at that time made Luther come to Eisleben again and spend three weeks here. He wanted "to see his counts in harmony before he went to lie down in a grave." When he arrived in his hometown on the 18th of February to settle those arguments he already was fatally ill. For his time there he stayed at his best friends home the town chronicler Albrecht, in a house across from St. Andrews. On the 16th and 17th of February after exhausting negotiations and Luther collapsing during his last homily in St. Andreas because of weakness, pacts were signed to found a "fine Latin school" (todays Luther grammar school). Luther died February 18th 1546 in the house of his friend Albrecht.

Luther achieved all time fame with his translation of the Bible into German because he unficated the German language. Today the Lutheran church counts 70 million believers on five continents.