Continuing our trip: Eisleben and Wittenberg

After staying overnight in Eisleben, we set out a bit earlier the next day (Wednesday, Feb. 20th) to see if anything would be open before 10. It turned out not to be the case, but we walked to St. Anne's and back and got some pictures of the outside. The congregation had been the first to accept the Reformation. It wasn't high on our priority list, but it was something to see when everything else was closed. It wasn't open, but we saw it from the outside.

We first visited Luther's birth house, which had been turned into a museum. We were pleased; it was a well-thought out museum and had enough to interest us, especially about Luther's parents and his youth in Eisleben and the nearby Mansfeld. The nearby St. Peter and Paul church was going under some renovation, but they let us in. It looked pretty new; there was no longer a baptismal font, but a baptismal pool in the floor near the chancel. I don't think they have the baptismal font in which Luther was baptized. Then we head back to the market plaza to see if St. Andrew's Church would be open, but it was not- it's closed from Nov. until March due to the heating costs. It's where Luther preached his last sermon. Nearby is his death house, and the museum that they're building there. This museum wasn't impressive at all. They had some displays about death in general and thoughts about it, but there wasn't as much about Luther as I'd hoped. We saw a copy of his death mask, as well as other artifacts, but it was disappointing.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of these places, since they're all on my parents' camera. I tended not to take outside pictures with my iPad when it was snowy outside. You'll see them soon when I get them all posted to Facebook.

Then we made our way back to the train station and rode to Wittenberg. This was the only day in which we saw more than one city, and part of me wishes that we could've slowed down a bit here, but it was either fit the two smallest cities into one day, or cut one out of our itenerary. So we basically had an afternoon to see Wittenberg.

This wasn't so bad, but I'd forgotten that everything closes earlier in the winter. We made it to our first destination just fine: the Luther House. This was probably our best museum of the whole trip. We all enjoyed it, and it had the most artifacts and the most complete history of any city that we visited. I can't recommend this museum enough, especially to those who are going on Luther tours. Here are some of the pictures that I took while we were there.

Dad in front of the pulpit that Luther would preach from.

An interesting mural from the house about the Ten Commandments

Martin Luther wearing his "doctor's hat" (and looking quite young)

Luther and Hus communing various princes

An original room in which Luther would have worked

And, of course, a beer mug from which Luther had drunk

And finally, we saw a Luther library with every copy of the compilation of Luther's works. Can you name the various collections?

Next we tried to make it into the city church, St. Mary's, but it was already locked at 4pm! We were obviously disappointed, but our disappointment increased when we noticed that the Castle Church was also closed, but this time due to renovation! This also meant that there was scaffolding that almost covered the famous castle church door and its famous mural above the door. This is supposedly the place where Luther nailed the 95 Theses, but that history is debateable. Nonetheless, I'll post the pictures later, since they were taken with the camera. Obviously winter is not the time to travel Germany.

Finally we walked back to the Melanchthon House, hoping that it would be open, which it was. It wasn't the most spectacular museum, but they're renovating it too, getting ready for the 500th Anniversity of the Reformation. If anything, it was simplistic. They covered the basics of Melanchthon's life and works, but there wasn't a lot of historical information. His changing of the Augsburg Confession was seen as "ecumenical," so I was particularly disappointed about that.

If you want to know what he looked like.

The Unaltered Augsburg Confession (what the LCMS subscribes to)

The Altered Augsburg Confession

That's about it between Eisleben and Wittenberg. It'd be worth it for me to come back to Wittenberg at least, which I may still do. It was quite an exhausting day visiting two cities, so I welcomed our stay in Leipzig. The hotel accomodated the three of us in one room, but we had to walk quite a way to get there. My parents were troopers though, and we made it without too much trouble.

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