Everybody Loves...Martin...

It is true - just about every town here has a claim to Martin Luther.

After the classes this morning (today: The Rhetoric of Bach!) a group of us decided to make a side trip to the city of Erfurt. Erfurt is an ancient town - founded about AD 729, and is about 45 minutes from Eisenach by train. It is also the capital of Thuringia, this area of Germany. It is the home of Erfurt University, where Luther attended, and was for a long time a very progressive center in Germany. Most communities in East Germany suffered greatly during the communist rule, but Erfurt survived better than others because is had long been a great center of commercial activity, and because it had the good fortune to have survived WWII without too much bombing. Much of it's Medieval through Baroque character has survived very well.

As I said, Martin Luther was a student here, so of course we immediately ran into him:

 Luther went to Erfurt after he left Eisenach, so he was young - early 20's. I do hope he didn't look like this statue at that time, or perhaps that what you will look like if you don't eat enough roughage...

Bach never lived in Erfurt, but he did have many relationships with the city, and visited it on many occasions. His older brother, who became his guardian, studied with Johannes Pachebel (of the Canon in D infamy...) who eventually composed in Erfurt, and may be decomposing there today for all I know. I believe one of his sons went on to work here too.

 Here I am on the Merchant's bridge. We actually spend quite a bit of time finding the bridge, only to discover that we were already on it. It was the habit to line the sides of a bridge with shops and houses, so we thought we were just in a nice shopping district for a while.

 Many of the buildings are highly decorated. I am not sure if this is a restoration since the communist era, or if they maintained these buildings during that time.

Finally, what is a trip to Europe without visiting a big rock-pile of a church? Erfurt has a beautiful one - the Dom St. Marien. It was built in the 13th or 14th century.

We also visited the Alte Synogogue, which is the oldest Synagogue in Europe, established in the 10th century. Not much is left of it. Over the course of a thousand years the Jews were appreciated and needed, accepted, tolerated, shunned, oppressed, persecuted and exterminated. It was a rather moving place to visit. 

Thursday is my last day in Eisenach. Next we move on to the weekend in Prague, which is in the Czech Republik.