Martin Luther

Not to be confused with Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther
Martin Luther, painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder
Religion	Christian
Church	Lutheran
Date of birth	(1483-11-10)November 10, 1483
Place of birth	Eisleben
Date of death	February 18, 1546(1546-02-18) (aged 62)
Place of death	Eisleben
Nationality	German
Known for	Starting the Protestant Reformation
Written works	The 95 Theses
Quotation	"I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen." (at the Diet of Worms)

Martin Luther (November 10, 1483 ‒ February 18, 1546) was a German monk and theologian of Christianity credited with leading the Protestant Reformation, a movement that marked the start of Protestantism. Luther founded the Lutheran Church, the first large Protestant church.

Early life

Martin Luther studied philosophy at the University of Erfurt. In 1505, he entered into the Augustinian Order as a monk. Luther studied theology and ancient languages in Erfurt. In 1512 he became a doctor of theology in Wittenberg and began his lectures on the Psalms and the Letters of Saint Paul.

Break with Catholicism

Ninety-Five Theses

In October 1517, Luther wrote his Ninety-Five Theses. Many people think that he put them on the door of a church in Wittenberg, but no one said so at the time and so that may be a myth. Instead, he published a copy and presented it to church officials at Worms Cathedral. Luther called it The Disputation of Doctor Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences. It questioned the teaching of the Catholic Church, its ideas about penance, the authority of the Pope, and the usefulness of indulgences.

The Catholic Church was selling indulgences to get out of purgatory and to go right to heaven after death. Indulgences were sold for money for the dead so that they could go to heaven faster. Poor people could not be able to go to heaven as quickly, but the priests in the church could be rich from selling them. Luther thought that all of that was wrong and against the Bible.

Five solas

Further information: Five solas

After studying the Letters of Paul, especially the Letter to Romans, Luther came up with the idea sola fide. That means that only by faith can people get salvation by God. That would mean that many of the Church's customs were useless and so should be cast away. Luther at first believed that he could reform the Church from the inside and wanted to stay part of it, but the papacy considered his Theses to be as heresy and excommunicated him on June 15, 1520, with a paper saying that he did not have its permission to go to heaven. In October, Luther burned the paper in public and showed he would not obey it unless it accepted his words.

Emperor Charles V opened the imperial Diet of Worms on January 22, 1521 to hear the case. For Luther, it was the last chance to say that he had been wrong. However, he did not change his mind and so the Diet declared Luther an outlaw.

Church activities

With the help of a friend, Luther hid in Wartburg Castle, near Erfurt. There, he translated the Bible. He wrote the New Testament in German, instead of the original Greek. Later, he translated the Old Testament into German from Hebrew. Until then, the Mass and the Bible were usually in Latin, which very few people understood. That made most people going to Mass not understand what the priest was saying. Luther translated the Bible so that more people could read and understand it. They now no longer depended on the priest to tell them what was in the Bible, but they could read it themselves.

Luther started his own church, the Lutheran Church, with his friend Philip Melanchthon. Luther strongly believed that his cause was righteous. He wrote harsh criticism against his enemies, especially Catholics and Jews, who he believed to be false prophets from the Devil. He rejected Jewish beliefs about the Old Testament and accused Jewish leaders of lying. He advised rulers to deal violently with the Jews in their realms. Those arguments make him controversial.

Later life

From the Bible, Luther formed firm ideas about families. Luther knew that what a child learned at home would greatly influence his life. He said in Table Talks, "Sermons very little edify children, who learn little thereby; it is more needful they be taught and well instructed in schools, and at home, and that they be learned and examined what they have learned; this way profits much; 'tis very wearisome, but very necessary." Luther also preached against the Catholic Church's refusal to let priests marry. After hearing his preaching, many nuns wrote to him to ask for help in escaping their convents. Luther helped nine nuns escape from a convent. On April 4, 1524, Luther had a friend help the nuns sneak over the wall and hid them in barrels on a wagon until they were out of the city. One of the nuns was Katherine von Bora.

Portrait of Catherine von Bora by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1526.

After finding husbands for the nuns whose families would not accept them, Luther had to find a husband for Katherine. Katherine, however, rejected a match that Luther had arranged for her, and said that she would accept only Luther or another pastor, Nicolaus von Amsdorf, as her husband.

At first, Luther did not really like Katherine and thought that "she was proud and haughty." His feelings changed, however, and they married on June 13, 1525. Luther later said, "And thank God it hath turned out well; for I have a pious (holy, God-loving) and faithful wife, to whom one may safely commit (give) his heart." They had six children. On June 6, 1526, Luther wrote, "I am a happy husband... for from the most precious woman, my best of wives, I have received, by the blessing of God, a little son, John Luther, and, by God's wonderful grace, I have become a father."

The firstborn was John Luther. The next was a daughter, Elizabeth, but she died when she was just eight months old, and Luther wrote in a letter, "My little daughter Elizabeth is taken from me, and hath left me with a bleeding and almost womanly heart, so sad am I on her account. I never thought the heart of a father was so tender towards his children. Pray the Lord for me." A third child, Magdalene, also died young. Then came Martin, then Paul, and finally Margaret. It was for his children that Luther wrote the Small Catechism, a book showing the basics of Lutheran beliefs.

Death

Luther died in 1546 of natural causes.

Antisemitism

Despite his historical contributions to Christianity and important role in European history, Luther held highly problematic views about Jews. On the Jews and Their Lies (1543), a 65,000-word thesis written by Luther, a 16th-century Christian reformer, consists of accusations of "Jewish conspiracy against Christianity" and incitement to extreme violence towards Jews. The claims in Luther's 16th-century book are still being promoted by some influencers.

In his book, he classified Jews as the biggest threat to Christianity and called for these actions against them:

• First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools [...] This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians [...]
• Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed.
• Sixth, I advise that [...] all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them [...]
• But if we are afraid that they might harm us [...] then let us emulate the common sense of other nations such as France, Spain, Bohemia [...] eject them forever from the country.

In his sermon Warning against the Jews on February 18, 1546, Luther said,

They are our public enemies. They do not stop blaspheming our Lord Christ, calling the Virgin Mary a whore [. ...] If they could kill us all, they would gladly do it. They do it often, especially those who pose as physicians [...] administer poison to someone from which he could die in an hour, a month, a year, ten or twenty years.

Meanwhile, Luther was a folk hero in Nazi Germany, and his teachings were widely circulated among the public. Luther's statues were also built across Nazi Germany, along with regular celebrations of "German Luther Day", a national holiday designated by Adolf Hitler in 1933.

A Nazi German postcard of Martin Luther.

An antisemitic mural featuring a quote from On the Jews and Their Lies published as a postcard for propaganda purposes.

German Christians celebrating German Luther Day in Berlin in 1933, speech by Bishop Hossenfelder.

Statue of Martin Luther in the ruins of Dresden after WWII.

It is important to note, however, that modern-day Lutherans do not uphold Luther's anti-semitism; the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod "deeply regrets, deplores, and repudiates" it. Similarly, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America does not approve of Luther's attacks against Jewish people.

Johannes Wallman (1930–2021), a professor of church history at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, wrote in 1987:

The assertion that Luther's expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment have been of major and persistent influence in the centuries after the Reformation and that there exists a continuity between Protestant anti-Judaism and modern racially oriented anti-Semitism, is at present wide-spread in the literature; since the Second World War it has understandably become the prevailing opinion.

Richard Steigmann-Gall, a history professor at Kent State University, wrote in his 2003 book The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945:

The leadership of the Protestant League espoused a similar view. Fahrenhorst, who was on the planning committee of the Luthertag, called Luther "the first German spiritual Führer" [. ...] Fahrenhorst invited Hitler to become the official patron of the Luthertag [. ...] Fahrenhorst repeatedly voiced the notion that reverence for Luther could somehow cross confessional boundaries: "Luther is truly not only the founder of a Christian confession [...] his ideas had a fruitful impact on all Christianity [sic] in Germany.

Movies

Since the time of the silent movies, 28 movies about Luther that have been made. The newest one, Luther, was released in 2003.

Related pages

• Jan Hus
• John Calvin
• Huldrych Zwingli
• Anti-Judaism and antisemitism
• Comparison among Protestants

Other websites

• Martin Luther - Eine Bibliographie (German) Archived 2005-11-24 at the Wayback Machine
• Full text in English of the 95 theses Archived 2006-11-11 at the Wayback Machine
• Disputatione pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum (95 Theses, in Latin, at Wikisource)
• Project Wittenberg, a collection of Luther's text
• Repository of Luther's works at Project Gutenberg