After the Diet of Worms and Luther’s refusal to recant his views, he was a marked man. The emperor placed him under the ban, and he was declared an outlaw who could be arrested or killed by anyone at will and with impunity. Luther’s associates thought it best for his safety that he leave Wittenberg and go into exile. Duke Frederick told his solders to secure him in one of his castles but not to tell him which one it was so that if the emperor asked him where Luther was, he could honestly reply that he did not know. The place chosen was the Wartburg, a castle enough in isolation that the agents of the emperor would likely not be able to find him. There he disguised himself, grew a beard and lived under the name of “Knight George.”
The year was 1522 when Luther took up his residence-in-exile at the Wartburg. Not being a person content with idleness and always given to activity, Luther took advantage of this situation to translate the Bible into contemporary German so that the people of Germany would have access to the word of God in their own native tongue. He used Erasmus’ Greek text which had been produced only a few years earlier in 1516 and printed by Johann Froben in Basel. This Greek text, which Erasmus dedicated to Pope Leo X, the same pope who excommunicated Luther, was his chef d’oeuvre.
Luther also wrote his Shorter Catechism at the Wartburg and held catechism classes for young people. He found the children quite receptive to learning the Bible in their own language. It was also at the Wartburg that he had spells of what he called Anfectung, in which he imagined that the devil was attacking him, trying to hinder his work. Once he even threw an inkwell at the wall, at the spot where he thought the devil was standing.
It was a cold and rainy day in 1998 when our group visited the Wartburg, and there was a long queue of visitors, so the wait would be some time, and we were standing in the drizzle. Dr. Goree and I made the decision not to go in, but I can say that I stood at the Wartburg, albeit on the outside, and took the attached picture.
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