Born: Eisleben, Thuringia, 10 November 1483. Education: Educated at the University of Erfurt, B.A. 1502, M.A. 1505. Family: Married Katherine von Bora in 1525; three sons and three daughters. Career: Entered Augustinian monastery, Erfurt, 1505; installed as professor of moral philosophy, University of Wittenberg, 1508: doctor of theology 1512; visited Rome, 1511; published 95 Theses against the sale of indulgences, 1517, and thereafter drawn into Reformation controversies: excommunicated, 1520, tried at Imperial Diet of Worms in 1521 and outlawed; kept in hiding at the Wartburg, 1521-22; spent most of the remainder of his life in Wittenberg, teaching, preaching, writing, and overseeing the emergence of reformed, Lutheran institutions. Died: 18 February 1546.
Publications
Werke [Weimar Edition], edited by J.C.F. Knaake and others, 110 vols., 1883-.
Works [American Edition], edited by Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann. 55 vols., 1955-.
Selections, edited by J. Dillenberger. 1961.
Selected Political Writings, edited by J.M. Porter. 1974.
Luther’s Theological Testament: The Schmalkald Articles, translated by William R. Russell. 1995.
Sermons of Martin Luther: The House Postils, edited and translated by Eugene F.A. Klug. 1996.
The 1529 Holy Week and Easter Sermons of Dr. Martin Luther, translated by Irving L. Sandberg. 1999.
Critical Studies:
Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther by Roland Bainton, 1950; Luther and His Times by E.C. Schwiebert, 1950; Martin Luther: Road to Reformation by Heinrich Boehmer, translated by W. Doberstein and Theodore G. Tappert, 1957; Martin Luther: A Biographical Study by John M. Todd, 1964; Martin Luther and the Reformation by A.G. Dickens, 1967; Luther: An Introduction to His Thought by Gerhard Ebeling, 1970; The German Nation and Martin Luther by A.G. Dickens, 1974; Martin Luther and the Drama by Thomas I. Bacon, 1976; ”Luther and Literacy,” in Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 91, 1976, and Luther: An Experiment in Biography, 1980, both by H.G. Haile; Martin Luther: An Illustrated Biography by Peter Manns, translated by Michael Shaw, 1982; Luther in Mid-Career 1521-30 by Heinrich Bornkamm, translated by Theodore Bachmann, 1983; Martin— God’s Court Jester: Luther in Retrospect by Eric Walter Grilsch, 1983; Martin Luther: The Man and the Image by Herbert David Rix, 1983; The Political Thought of Martin Luther by W.O.J. Cargil Thompson, 1984; Luther and Learning edited by Marilyn J. Harran, 1985; Martin Luther and the Modern Mind: Freedom, Conscience, Toleration, Rights edited by Manfred Hoffmann, 1985; Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation 1483-1521 by Martin Brecht, translated by James L. Schaaf, 1985; Luther the Reformer: A Story of the Man and His Career by James M. Kitelson, 1986; Luther in Context by David C. Steinmetz, 1986; Martin Luther: An Introduction to His Life and Works by Bernhard Lohse, translated by Robert C. Schultz, 1987; Martin Luther in the American Imagination by Hartmut Lehmann, 1988; Luther: Man between God and the Devil by Heiko A. Oberman, translated by Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart, 1989; Martin Luther by Gerhard Brendler, 1992; The Assurance of Faith: Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin by Randall C. Zachman, 1993; Martinus Noster: Luther in the German Reform Movement, 1518-1521 by Leif Grane, 1994; Luther’s Legacy: Salvation and English Reformers, 1525-1556 by Carl R. Trueman, 1994; Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther by Mark U. Edwards, Jr., 1994; Baptism in the Theology of Martin Luther by Jonathan D. Trigg, 1994; In Martin’s Footsteps by Matthias Gretzschel and Toma Babovic, 1996; Luther and German Humanism by Lewis W. Spitz, 1996; True Faith in the True God: An Introduction to Luther’s Life and Thought by Hans Schwarz, translated by Mark William Worthing, 1996; Luther by Hans-Peter Grosshans, 1997; Proverbs and Proverbial Expressions in the German Works of Martin Luther by James C. Cornette, Jr., 1997; Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther, edited by Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, 1998; The Trinity and Martin Luther: A Study on the Relationship between Genre, Language and the Trinity in Luther’s Work (1523-1546) by Christine Helmer, 1999; Martin Luther’s Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development by Bernhard Lohse, translated and edited by Roy A. Harrisville, 1999; Martin Luther and John Wesley on the Sermon on the Mount by Tore Meistad, 1999; Martin Luther: The Christian between God and Death by Richard Marius, 1999; Martin Luther, German Saviour: German Evangelical Theological Factions and the Interpretation of Luther, 1917-1933 by James M. Stayer, 2000; Renaissance Humanism in Support of the Gospel in Luther’s Early Correspondence: Taking All Things Captive by Timothy P. Dost, 2001; Luther’s Lives: Two Contemporary Accounts of Martin Luther, translated and annotated by Elizabeth Vandiver, Ralph Keen, and Thomas D. Frazel, 2002.
At the centre of all Martin Luther’s activities lay a profound faith in the redemptive personal experience of Christ, the Word of God to mankind, and he always regarded his writing and teaching as forms of preaching, in continuation of the saving work of God, the supreme poet. Trained in scholastic and humanistic studies alike, he used them merely as skills which aided his ”preaching.” While not subscribing to the humanists’ literary aestheticization of spiritual matters, Luther none the less aspired to the fitting and effective use of language to give expression to truth as he saw it revealed. This is one reason why he embarked upon the composition of a liturgy and hymns in German, for the initial efforts of his arch rival, the radical Thomas Muntzer, seemed wooden and unsatisfactory. Equally fluent in Latin and German, he employed the vernacular increasingly after 1515 to impart his Reformation precepts to the people, setting clarity and simplicity as goals. He was no systematic theologian: his writings have the character of dialogue or polemic (often virulent) about them; most of his main ideas were formulated in response to an adversary. His thinking is strongly antithetical, he worked in terms of polar opposites: Letter and Spirit, Faith and Works, Freedom and Bondage, God and Man. His output was prolific: for 30 years after 1516 he published almost one title per fortnight. In numerous works on controversial matters of theology, church polity, and social order, he gave articulated theoretical foundation to traditional national grievances: his tract An den Christlichen Adel deutscher Nation [To the Christian Rulers of Germany] of 1520 ran to 13 editions within five months and quickened the pace of political debate and literary agitation in Germany.
Luther began his translation of the Bible in 1521 in order to promote his theological principle of the priesthood of all believers by making the Scriptures accessible in the vernacular to all estates of men, and revised the work constantly up to his death. Of this translation over half a million whole or part-bibles were sold (for a population of some 15 million). Luther’s oeuvre includes devotional works, prayers, and ars moriendi (books of comfort for the dying), tracts on catechism and sacraments, about 2,000 sermons, programmatic tracts on matters of ecclesiastical and social controversy, and exegesis; he also wrote fables, hymns, and hundreds of letters; moreover, his table talk was transcribed and recorded for posterity. The outer forms of his writings are usually simple, the language clear, occasionally crude. Frequently, however, as in Von der Freyheyt eyniss Christen menschen [The Freeedom of a Christian], plain and direct language couches a profoundly logical dialectic argument in which the precepts of classical rhetoric are deployed. Literature, in the sense of the written word being read or listened to and taken seriously by a significant proportion of the population, was virtually brought into existence for Germany by Luther. Almost single-handed during the Reformation (and especially in the period 1520-25) he created public opinion as an effective power in the land, and the leaders of both movements which rose in rebellion and failed in these years— the Imperial Knights and the Peasants—adduced Luther’s writings in their cause.
Luther used to be solely credited with creating a national unified German language; it is acknowledged currently that he made few innovations of syntax or phonology, but did, however, succeed decisively in reinforcing existing trends in the language. His home territory—Saxony and Thuringia—was the dialect area of East Central German, which embraced features of diverse dialects from the old German ”heartlands” in north, west, and south-west; moreover it straddled the linguistic boundary between Lower and Upper (north and south) German dialects. Luther employed the synthetic scribal language of the Saxon chancellory, an official language which was by assimilation comprehensible in most of the German lands. In his German Bible he imbued the stilted official language with the colour, idiom, flexibility—in short, life—of spoken German. His aim was to translate the matter of Scripture faithfully, but to do so in keeping with the inherent principles of the German language: in the Sendbrieff von Dolmetzschenn [Open Letter on Translation] he states his aim to write what he ”heard,” from ”the mother in the house, the child in the street, the man in the market place.” In particular, his striking innovations of vocabulary gave his German Bible a unifying cultural significance for the nation comparable to that of the King James Bible in England, and he was sometimes aware of his command of the German language claiming that even his adversaries had to learn from him.
Luther’s hymns are possibly the most powerful manifestation of his theology, and it is a major achievement of his Reformation that the vernacular hymn has so central a role in Church worship; Luther’s love of music—he composed several tunes himself—contrasts with the stance of other reformers (Zwingli, Calvin). He wrote hymns as part of his vernacular liturgy, in a 12-month creative outpouring in 1523-24 he completed 23, and out of his total of 36 some 30 survive in current hymnals. For Luther ”the notes give life to the text,” and hymns lent unity, and—memorable for being set to music—implanted theological principles in the minds of the congregation. Luther drew heavily on traditions; most hymns are adaptations, of Biblical or sacramental material: ”Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam” [Christ Our Lord to Jordan Came], ”Aus tieffer Not. De Profundis” [Out of the Depths, O Lord]. Others derive from Latin hymns: ”Mitten wyr ym leben sind” [In the Midst of Life We Are in Death] from the antiphonal ”Media vita in morte sumus,” while a few spring from German folksongs: ”Vom himel hoch da kom ich her” [From Heaven Above] adapts an old traveller’s song as children’s Nativity story. The most famous, ”Ein feste Burg” [A Mighty Fortress], portrays in pugnacious monosyllables and stark antitheses the cosmic battle between God and the devil in which impotent man is saved by alliance with Christ alone in faith and trust: truths central to Luther’s Reformation.
