Description

In the run-up to 2017, Luther was front-page news. He made the cover of the Spiegel, he had a supplement in Die Zeit, and his picture looked out from newsstands all over Germany. Yet when the celebrations were finally over, they were generally held to have been a ‘failure’. Numbers visiting the many exhibitions were lower than expected, Luther had not established himself as the ‘first Goethe’, and the hoped-for renewal of the church, especially in the former East, had simply failed to happen.

Since its foundation in the sixteenth century, the Lutheran church has lamented the ignorance and indifference of its flock, so these complaints are nothing new. The phenomenal attention given to Luther suggests that something at least had happened—but it is true that Luther did not become a German hero. The nineteenth century celebrated the monumental Luther, and installed him in the Berlin cathedral,but in 2017, we had Luther kitsch. Playmobil Luther sold over a million tiny figures, while the Wittenberg Panorama, produced by the artist Yadegar Assisi, offered the 'Luther Experience' in light and sound. This lecture will explore why it was not possible to sell Luther as the ‘inventor of the German language’, and what this tells us about Germany today, the legacy of the DDR, and the Brexit moment.