Germany Guide
Saxony-Anhalt and the Harz
Luthers Geburtshaus
Address: Lutherstrasse 15
Opening time: April– Oct daily 10am–6pm; Nov– March Tues– Sun 10am–5pm
Price: €4
Telephone: 03475/714 78 14
Though easily the town's most worthwhile attraction, Luthers Geburtshaus is not what it claims. Yes, the reformer was born here, but the house in which he first came to light actually burned down in 1689. The current building stems from 1693 and has served as an almshouse and housed parts of the town administration. Nevertheless the museum has plenty of interesting content on the era and region into which Luther was born, and on the Reformation. This is done not only with displays of valuable old bibles and retables, but also by reconstructing a medieval kitchen thought to have been similar to the original. The museum also puts high-tech gadgets to good use, for example using Cranach the Elder's portraits of Luther's elderly parents to reconstruct how they might have looked at the time of his birth.
Modern audiovisual technology is also used well in an off-topic, but engrossing collection of epitaph paintings hauled from the Eisleben crypts of local worthies. At great expense they had themselves painted into biblical scenes, the significance and symbolism of which is expertly explained by touch-screen databases – in English as well as German. One area of the museum focuses on baptism, a topic of great importance to Luther. Luther himself was baptized at the fourteenth-century St Petri-Pauli Kirche (May– Oct Mon– Fri 1–3pm), practically next door.