Wittenberg

Almost halfway from Leipzig to Berlin lies Wittenberg, the home of Martin Luther. We took an early train from Leipzig so that we could spend the day in Wittenberg. It was a very cold morning and we had to walk quite a distance from the railway station in freezing temperature. (2.5 km to the Castle church). Indicators at the main station It was here in Wittenberg, Germany, that Martin Luther lived and preached, and legend will have it that on October 31, 1517, he nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church. The Protestant Reformation had begun. In response to Luther's theses, Pope Leo X promulgated a papal bull on the 15 June 1520. Luther was threatened with excommunication unless he recanted within a sixty day period. Luther refused to recant and responded publicly by burning a copy of the bull on 10 December 1520. As a result, Luther was excommunicated in 1521. The burning took place under an oak tree which is now known as Luther's Oak. (This might n

During a six weeks stay in Berlin (December 2013 - Jan 2014) we often made use of the weekends to go somewhere interesting. So on the 10th of January it was to Leipzig where we visited the Monument to the Battle of the Nations   ( German :   Völkerschlachtdenkmal ) which is a monument to the 1813   Battle of Leipzig , also known as the Battle of the Nations. Paid for mostly by donations and by the city of Leipzig, it was completed in 1913 for the 100th anniversary of the battle, at a cost of 6 million   Goldmark . (In 1914 approx. 1.5 mil. US dollars). The monument commemorates Napoleon's defeat at Leipzig, a crucial step towards the end of hostilities in the   War of the Sixth Coalition . The monument later years, supposedly, was the inspiration for our own Voortrekker monument in Pretoria. (?) Beautiful views from the top. . . . A further most enjoyable event we attended was the staging of Bach's cantate, "Meine kleine Jesus ist verloren" in the St. Tho