500 years after Luther's translation of the Bible at the Wartburg near Eisenach, more than 140,000 people viewed the special exhibition shown at the authentic location. The interest continues, said Franziska Nentwig, Burghauptmann of the Wartburg, on request. "So we're going to let it continue until the beginning of January."
The exhibition "Luther translated. Of the power of words", which pays tribute to the linguistic achievements of the church reformer Martin Luther (1483-1546) and draws parallels to the present, was originally scheduled to end on November 6th. The show is one of the highlights of the Thuringian theme year "Translating the World", which opened a year ago, in memory of the world-historical event. It's going to the final in Eisenach at the weekend.
In 1521/22, Luther translated the New Testament from Greek into German in just eleven weeks, thereby laying the foundation for a uniform written German language. Nentwig was satisfied with the response to the theme year. The events had managed to stimulate thinking about language. "That was very exciting." At the same time, the number of visitors to the Wartburg also showed that tourism in Thuringia had not yet recovered from the Corona crisis. The Luther House in Eisenach, next to the Wartburg the most important museum on the work of Luther in Thuringia, continues to feel this according to the assessment of its director Jochen Birkenmeier.
“Group bus trips are still lagging behind the pre-Corona level, and foreign guests are not coming back to the same extent as before Corona,” said Birkenmeier. As can also be observed at the Wartburg, it was primarily individual tourists, families and school groups from the region who came to the museum, whose updated permanent exhibition "Luther and the Bible" was seen by a good 10,000 guests from May to September.
This number does not include visitors to the special exhibition on the anti-Semitic "Dejudaization Institute", with which the Protestant Church wanted to eradicate any Jewish influence on Christianity and the Bible. It was originally supposed to run until the end of the year, but is now being extended to the end of 2023 due to strong visitor interest.
Theme Year "Translating the World"
