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Admire Luther’s wife’s original wedding ring in the Old City Hall

Martin Luther in Leipzig – a city tour

Map On the footsteps of Martin Luther | Celebrating 500 years of Reformation

Currently certified as accessible: St. Thomas Church, New City Hall, Auerbachs Keller, Old City Hall, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Nicholas Church
Detailed information available at: www.sachsen-barrierefrei.de

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1 St. Thomas Church

St. Thomas Church dates back to the 12th century. Its foundations have their origins around 1160 – the era when Margrave Otto the Rich of Meissen granted a town charter to the Castle of Libzi and the settlement around it. Between 1492 and 1496 the church was redesigned as a late Gothic hall church. The St. Thomas Boys Choir has been singing here for more than 800 years. Its choirboys sang here at the start of the Leipzig Disputation between Martin Luther and Johannes Eck in 1519. Twenty years later, it was the site of Luther’s sermon introducing the Reformation, an event commemorated by a memorial plaque inside the church.

Between 1723 and 1750, the position of cantor and choirmaster at St. Thomas Church was held by Johann Sebastian Bach. The great composer’s grave can be seen today in the choir of the church. When the church was renovated in 1884–89, all the Baroque architectural features from Bach’s term of office were removed. Since then, the interior of the church has been in the neo-Gothic style. The Sauer organ and the Mendelssohn portal at the western end also date from this period. The new Bach Organ was installed in 2000.

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2 Thüringer Hof

The history of the Thüringer Hof dates back to the middle of the 15th century. In 1466, shortly after the building was erected, it was designated as a “Burse”, or hostel for students – the town had had a university since 1409. It is claimed that Luther was a regular guest here. Until 1515, the tavern was run by Dr Heinrich Schmiedeberg, who also left Luther a bequest of 100 guilders, as Luther recorded in a letter to Spalatin in 1520. It acquired the name “Thüringer Hof” in 1838, when a landlord from Thuringia set up a large restaurant serving dishes from his native state. Wide-ranging renovations in the 1930s introduced a “Lutherhalle” on the ground floor depicting scenes from Luther’s life and work. After the complete destruction of the entire complex of buildings in the Second World War, this was rebuilt, and created afresh following complete demolition and redevelopment in the 1990s.

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3 Pleissenburg Castle (today the New City Hall)

Pleissenburg Castle was the scene of the famous Leipzig Disputation in the summer of 1519, where the differences between Luther and the Catholic Church emerged into the open. Luther preached in Pleissenburg Castle on that occasion, and again on 24 May 1539 to mark the introduction of the Reformation by the Saxon Duke Henry the Pious. The castle buildings were destroyed in 1547, and the imposing New City Hall was built on its foundations in 1905.

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4 Auerbachs Keller

Professor of medicine Heinrich Stromer von Auerbach, who set up a student pub in the basement of his house in 1525, was a renowned humanist and free-thinker. He got to know Martin Luther in 1519 on the occasion of the Leipzig Disputation and entertained him at his home – an acquaintanceship that required a certain amount of courage in those days. The Reformer also enjoyed Stromer’s hospitality disguised as Junker Jörg on his way from Wartburg to Wittenberg two years later. In the Luther Room these events are illustrated by precious and historic artefacts, which are explained to guests on guided tours. Over the centuries, Auerbachs Keller has become the city’s most popular wine bar and can be counted today among the best known restaurants in the world. The fact that Goethe found inspiration in Auerbachs Keller for a scene in his tragedy “Faust” has added in no small measure to its renown.

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5 The Old City Hall - Leipzig Museum of City History

The Old City Hall is one of Leipzig’s landmarks. Built in 1556 while Hieronymus Lotter, master builder to the Electors, was serving as mayor, this magnificent example of Renaissance architecture dominates the market square. The City Hall tower was remodelled in the Baroque style in 1744. Since the New City Hall was built in 1905, this building has housed the Leipzig Museum of City History. It was badly damaged in the Second World War. For a few years it has displayed a comprehensively redesigned permanent exhibition on the city’s history from its earliest days to the present. An entire section is dedicated to the Reformation and the history of printing. Amongst the many documents, paintings and historic treasures are some of the Reformer’s writings, Katharina von Bora’s wedding ring from 1525, the famous Luther Chalice, a present from Swedish King Gustav I Vasa, and the pulpit with Lutheran imagery from St. John’s Church, the first church built in Leipzig after the Reformation.

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6 Barthels Hof/Market square, corner of Hainstrasse

Luther is believed to have preached to the people from the bay window here in 1539. However, this is not attested. It is probably an embellishment added by the chronicler Otto Moser at the end of the 19th century.

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7 Katharinenstrasse 11 / Fregehaus

The Gothic entryway leads to a small inner courtyard with a sandstone portrait depicting the Emperor, the Pope and a monk, and the year 1535. The meaning is somewhat ambiguous, and the title, “The Mocking of Luther”, is contested.

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8 Hainstrasse 16–18 (today the Hôtel de Pologne)

The house that used to stand here was the home of Melchior Lotter. He was a key figure in the dissemination of Luther’s ideas. Between 1518 and 1520 alone, more than 40 of Luther’s writings, and the first posters of the 95 theses, were printed in his workshop. During the Leipzig Disputation, Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon and Andreas Bodenstein (known as Karlstadt) stayed in Lotter’s house.

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9 The Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts

The museum has a large collection of graphic works and 18 paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder and Lucas Cranach the Younger, of which eleven are on display. The most famous is the “Portrait of Luther as Junker Jörg” (1521) by Luther’s friend Cranach the Elder.

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10 St. Nicholas Church

This church has witnessed the most important dates in Leipzig’s history. It was built in 1165 at the junction of the two trading routes to which the city owed its rise. This was the year when the town charter was granted, including the trading privileges on which the Leipzig trade fair tradition was based. Today, St. Nicholas Church is the city’s biggest church and is dedicated to the patron saint of business people. Its current form stems from Late Gothic remodelling in the 16th century. In 1539 the city’s first Lutheran service took place here, and the church became the seat of the first Superintendent and therefore Leipzig’s principal church. This is where Johann Sebastian Bach took up his post as Director musices (musical director) for the city in 1723. The interior was remodelled in the classical style at the end of the 18th century.

1982 saw the start of regular peace prayers in St. Nicholas Church. These led to the Leipzig Monday Demonstrations, which eventually sparked off Germany’s Peaceful Revolution of 1989.

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11 University Church of St. Paul

In 1519 Johann Tetzel, preacher of indulgences, was buried in the choir of this monastery church of the Dominican Order, which had been consecrated in 1240. With the service and final sermon given by Luther in Leipzig on 12 August 1545 the monastery church became the Protestant University Church of St. Paul. Although it was only slightly damaged during the Second World War, the GDR authorities had the church demolished in 1968. Today, the Paulinum on the new university campus traces the outlines of the original Church of St. Paul.

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12 St. John’s Cemetery (today Johannisplatz)

Sebastian Fröschel gave the first Protestant sermons in St. John’s Church in 1523, in response to which the citizens of Leipzig rushed to the gates of the city. At the urging of the Bishop of Merseburg, Duke George came to Leipzig to prevent the whole town being led astray by Luther. He banned Fröschel from the state – just as he ordered the expulsion of more than 70 Leipzig citizens and their families in 1533 for attending Protestant services in the neighbouring Electorate.

After St. John’s Church sustained heavy damage in the Second World War, its ruins were demolished in 1949. Before this was done, Johann Sebastian Bach’s remains were transferred to St. Thomas Church. Today, the pulpit from St. John’s Church can be seen in the Leipzig Museum of City History.

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Contact

City of Leipzig
Department for Culture, New City Hall
D-04092 Leipzig

Phone +49 (0)341 123-4200
Email: peter.matzke@leipzig.de, karin.rolle@leipzig.de
www.leipzig.de

Leipzig Tourismus und Marketing GmbH
Tourist Information
Katharinenstraße 8
D-04109 Leipzig

Phone +49 (0)341 7104-260
Fax +49 (0)341 7104-271
Email: info@ltm-leipzig.de
www.leipzig.travel

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Martin Luther in Leipzig – a city tour

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