When Luther penned his famous hymn, "A mighty fortress is our God" surely he had the Wartburg in mind.
The Wartburg castle was begun about 1067 by Ludwig the Leaper. Generations later when Ludwig IV died in 1227 on his way to a crusade, his young widow, Elisabeth, left the castle to engage in charity work in the tradition of St Francis of Assisi. Even though she died only four years later at the age of 24, her work was so widely praised that she was soon declared Saint Elisabeth by the pope.
Nearly three centuries later Martin Luther, condemned as a heretic in 1521, was hidden in the Wartburg. Here as a fugitive with a price on his head Luther translated the New Testament. Dr. Zickler of Jenakolleg called Luther "a brilliant linguist": Five hundred years ago there was no language recognized as German. Luther knew the germanic dialects spoken by the farmers of his home town, the miners in his father's copper mines, and the aristocrats at court where he studied law. As a monk, he also knew Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He translated the Greek New Testament without a dictionary in just eleven weeks into his own synthesis of "German", and his New Testament came to define the language we know today.
The Wartburg crests a mountain at 1300 feet high. The castle was built after 1170, but the site was active prior to that time under the control of Count Ludwig der Springer. This castle is probably most known for giving refuge to Martin Luther in 1521-1522 while he translated the New Testament into German. His room remains a prime focus of tours of the castle. It is considered by many to be one of the finest Romanesque structures in Germany.
The Wartburg Castle blends superbly into its forest surroundings and is in many ways "the ideal castle." Although it contains some original sections from the feudal period, the outline it acquired in the course of a 19th-century reconstitution is a splendid evocation of what this fortress might have been at the peak of its military and seigneurial power.
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