Wittenberg - White Mountain - A quaint little town in Germany

Oliver the tour guide snaked our group through the once Russian occupied, quiet little town of 46,000 people located 56 miles southwest of Germany's capital city last Saturday. The hidden gem town is named Wittenberg, and it is home to the reformation.

Nestled on the River Elbe, the old town has a historic drinking water canal running through the medieval streets. At one time, the residents would drink from the sewage infused H2O, that trickled from one end of Wittenberg to the other. Fascinating.

Like many towns, they were conquered. After 9 short years of the Kingdom of Saxont, the Prussians took Wittenberg and added what was essentially a tall middle finger on their main 'Castle Church's' dome. Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott is spelt out across the tower. The English translation is:

"A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" 🙏

I, for one, am interested in communication technology evolvement throughout time (This is Christian writing). Our class understands now that Gutenberg's printing press changed communication. Luther sprung it in a meaningful way.

Modern or recent example --> the Vietnam war and broadcast television. A communications medium was drastically growing more and more popular, and Walter Cronkite changed communications by broadcasting his famous war editorial the news.

What really stood out to me = books that were printed by Luther. I used to learn all about the Protestant reformation, Peace of Augsburg and the Edict of Worms. Now I am standing right in front of the original works, it was cool to see.

Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany

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Something that I (Josh) found very interesting was that inside Martin Luther’s house he had a very exquisite podium, which our tour guide told us wasn’t used by Martin Luther, but I thought it was odd that it was put in his house at all. It looked like either marble or ceramic that had been gilded very finely. Depicted on the podium were the disciplines that students at the University of Wittenberg could graduate with. These occupied the first two rows while right above where the speaker stood was a picture of Martin Luther followed by a picture of Jesus Christ on a cross.

However, what I found weird was that god was written at the very top of the podium in Hebrew. Martin Luther, a known Anti-Semite had in Hebrew the word god above the picture of Jesus in a lecture hall inside his house. While the Jewish and Christian gods are the same, it could have been written in many languages before Hebrew.

Even on the church where Martin Luther preached there was a Hebrew phrase that was spelled in Latin, which I took as a way to disrespect Jewish tradition even more. Even if this podium wasn’t there during Martin Luther’s lifetime, I keep trying to think of a reason why somebody would add that to a place where such a famous and outspoken Anti-Semite lived.

The only reason that I could think of, was that one of his successors, in order to honor someone who had such a profound impact on our society wanted to make him seem more humble.

In addition to the podium, the church where Martin Luther posted his 95 theses and is buried stood out to me. Particularly, the one tower that still stands. Our tour guide said that the dome on the top of the tower was in the shape of a Prussian war helmet.

This church also known as the castle church was burned down, which is why the original door where the 95 theses was posted is no longer there.

 It begs the question of why one tower was left standing, and we may not know what the other towers looked like, but if they were different, then why leave the one with cultural significance to the Prussians still standing? It was extremely noticeable and easily identifiable especially to those who knew the attire of Prussian soldiers. It is possible that since it served as a castle and a church that it was used as a fortress, however I thought that was unlikely considering it stood so close to a holy place for the town.

The architecture in general was beautiful and consistent throughout and seeing it with four towers instead of just the one may have made it stand out less.