Reformation in

context today:
a historiography
of Reformation
sites in 2010
Arthur Davis

The missing of children and spouses,

The Luther commemorative houses,
The breakfast time bloats,
The rabbits and goats,
The Luther commemorative houses!

Wi! Mackerras

Reformation historiography is fraught. The historiographical

narratives of European Reformation sites—their tellings of
history—reveal the ways in which European reformations
have been co-opted for a whole range of purposes, from the
religious to the political. The most telling thing about a
museum display is not which objects have been included but
the nature of the overarching narrative that links the objects.
These museum narratives, mainly in written form, will be our
focus, although we will also consider the narratives of
artworks and monuments throughout. Will Mackerras’s tour
poetry reflects on the interminable ‘Luther commemorative
houses’, Luther sites with a seemingly unremitting emphasis
on Luther. In Geneva and elsewhere, however, Reformation
sites understand the European reformations quite differently.
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‘Fraughtness’ and Luther

The depictions of Reformation figureheads in art and
museums, especially of Martin Luther, veer between the man
as event and the man as person. The earliest artistic
presentations of Luther depict him as one of a body of
reformers. The works of Lucas Cranach the Elder in the
Wittenberg Stadtkirche, for example, are highly localised,
featuring townspeople and landmarks rather than an
abstracted Luther. The Luther of these paintings is not
Luther alone but one among a number of characters. Even
when Luther is singled out (Image 1, in which Jesus Christ is
present amongst the congregation as Luther preaches, an
expression of the priesthood of all believers), this panel is
part of a tetraptych in which many others, like Melanchthon
Image 1
and Cranach’s wife, appear. In a later piece, Jan Houwens’
Das Licht ist auf den Kandelaber geste!t (1620-1656, Image 2,
from the Wittenberg Lutherhaus), Luther is one of many
reformers, near the centre although clearly inseparable from
the rest of the cohort. This presentation of Luther as one
among many has continued in various forms; the Wittenberg
Schlosskirche appears emphatic on this point even though
Image 2
many of its interior features, such as its nine freestanding
statues, date from its Wilhelmine restorations in the
nineteenth century (Image 3). These monuments set Luther
in a wider political and academic context, alongside his
benefactor Friedrich the Wise, for example. Even when the
focus zooms in on Luther, it is as Luther the duo, inseparable
Image 3 from his companion Melanchthon, as in the painting above
the bronze memorial door. It was Melanchthon, a premier
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biblical languages scholar, on whom Luther largely depended

for his translations.

At what points, then, have these Reformation circles been

dissected? The narrative of the upper-storey exhibit in the
Wittenberg Lutherhaus attempts to answer this, tracking the
presentation of Luther down through the ages and noting the
diverging ways in which Luther has been presented. Luther
has been abstracted and re-appropriated in line with a
menagerie of socio-political currents:
• ‘Enlightenment Luther’ is a liberator, advocating
freedom of individual conscience and reason against
medieval superstition, his theology ignored;
• ‘Pietist Luther’, in reaction to the Enlightenment, is a
young man with mystical inclinations;
• ‘Nineteenth-centur y Luther ’ is a national(ist)
figurehead. Hermann Freihold Plüddemann’s Luther vor
dem Reichstag zu Worms (1864, Image 4) depicts Luther
bathed in clarity and conviction;
• ‘ Po s t m o d e r n L u t h e r ’ i s a f o i l f o r i d e o l o g i c a l
ambivalence.
This Lutherhaus exhibit focuses on artworks and the history
of Luther celebrations. For example, the three major
anniversaries of the Peace of Augsburg during the eighteenth
century saw Luther celebrations in Germany becoming more
jolly, with decorations becoming more ostentatious,
Image 4 influenced by Baroque culture and the increasing security of
Protestant society. Meanwhile, in the lead up to the Second
Wo r l d Wa r, L u t h e r a n n i v e r s a r i e s w e r e o f f i c i a l l y
overshadowed by Nazi commemorations, although the
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regional festivals continued, including those at Wittenberg.

This exhibit thus provides a lens into some of the
‘fraughtness’ of Reformation historiography. We will
continue to explore this fraughtness through a series of
Reformation sites.

Lutherhaus, Wittenberg
It is ironic that this upper-storey Lutherhaus (Image 5)
exhibit appears in the very museum that is so preoccupied
with a Big Man history of Luther—the Reformation as
Luther-event. From the outset, the downstairs Lutherhaus
narrative takes what Bernd Moeller calls a powder-keg view:
the historical stage is set for an explosion and Luther is the
Image 5
spark. Firstly, Luther’s life and times, even his own person,
form contributions to his irresistible electrical charge. In the
first panel (Image 6), humanism is something that Luther
becomes ‘acquainted with’ and absorbs, rather than a
historical trend with its own particular contribution.
Secondly, the narrative begins to read everything prior to 1517
forward to that point, and everything subsequent in light of
that moment: ‘Here we can already see surface the question
that did bother Luther: How can I receive a gracious God?’
In the second panel, Wittenberg is established as the decisive
location for the lightning strike of reformation: its economy
is in boom, and a quotation panel heralds, ‘Come to
Wittenberg, whose citizens are well educated and men are
devoted to the sciences’. The fourth panel locates the
Image 6 beginning of the lightning strike in 1513-1518, during which
Luther lectures and develops his views, and the point of no
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return is noted as the summer of 1516, by which point

Luther’s views have hardened. As the narrative continues, it
implies that the impending lightning strike is apparent to
Luther himself: ‘Where Christ is, there he always goes
against the flow’. (The fifth panel betrays a chink in this
narrative; Luther’s initial concern with indulgences is that
people have stopped attending confession. Is this really the
view of a reformer?) The narrative continues to the explosive
moment, the Wittenberg Door (1517). There are perhaps
multiple epicentres; the seventh panel deals with the Diet of
Worms (1521), presenting every turn of events as inexorably
carrying Luther to his decisive stand. Intriguingly, at this
point the narrative refers to Luther’s prevarication, his thin
voice, and addition of ‘Hier stehe ich’ only after the event,
yet this somehow only heightens the momentousness of the
Diet. ‘The young emperor Charles V ... clearly recognizes
that through Luther’s action the schism of the Western
church is imminent’. A new world has been ushered in.
Giving shape to this new world, subsequent panels are
preoccupied with Luther’s innovations. His Wartburg Castle
confinement provides the occasion for the first aftershocks:
anti-Roman writings, sermons, and the new German
translation of the New Testament. So too Luther’s marriage
and family, which in an instant ‘overthrows a thousand-year
old Christian tradition that regarded celibacy and sexual
abstinence as holier than marriage’ (Image 7 shows the
accompanying quote panel). The concluding panel of the
narrative, on reaching Luther ’s death, notes, ‘His
contemporaries are acutely aware of the fact that an era has
Image 7
come to an end’. The discharge is complete; the world is
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irrevocably changed. The panel finally turns to another of

Luther ’s innovations: his single-handed creation of
Protestant songwriting. Luther is the one-man Reformation
band.

This narrative presents a single, uniform Reformation with

Luther at the centre. When the focus is singularly on Luther,
the Reformation has no precedent or precursor, nor even any
successor. Luther did not influence others but rather created
an entirely new world in which everything had changed and
in which it was no longer possible to continue as before.
There is thus little sense of either continuity or
discontinuity; the Reformation is a sheer historical
disjunction. This narrative sees no diversity of reforming
movements in Europe, with little real difference between
Anabaptists and the magisterial reformers; between the Swiss
reformers and German reformers; between the somewhat ad
hoc progression of Luther’s works and the more systematic
progression of Calvin’s. This is not Reformation so much as
Revolution; the protestatio at the second Diet of Speyer (1529)
becomes the final radical rejection.

Geburtshaus, Eisleben
The narrative of the Eisleben Geburtshaus (the oldest Luther
museum, 1693), focuses initially on Luther’s social context,
such as the history of the town’s mining industry and his
family background, including the role of his father, Hans
Luder. This focus on the town of Eisleben is less about
Luther’s person than it is about his world and time. There is
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nothing to be found in the Eisleben mines or the tussles

between nobles and leaseholders that made Reformation
inevitable. Nonetheless, the overarching impression of the
Geburtshaus narrative is that Eisleben was a place preparing
for Luther. The Eisleben setting created Luther the man.
Thus the narrative moves on to the development of Luther’s
thought-world, such as his theology of music as a tool against
Satan. It is therefore Luther who grants significance to the
Geburtshaus and to Eisleben—especially given that his
family moved to nearby Mansfeld only a year after Luther’s
birth, in 1484. We have returned to the Luther-event. It is
perhaps unsurprising, then, to find the Lutherdenkmal in the
Eisleben square doing the same (Rudolf Siemerig, 1883, Image
Image 10
10). Luther, foot planted forward, protectively holds a Bible
against his chest and in his right hand scrunches Leo X’s
papal bull (Exsurge Domine). This provides an interesting
historiographical contrast to Wittenberg. If there was a
Reformation lightning strike, what was it? The Lutherhaus
emphasises the Wittenberg Door; the Diet of Worms is
emphasised elsewhere; here it is Luther’s withstanding the
Pope. Even when Luther himself is seen as the Reformation
event, there remain attempts to reduce the Luther-event to a
single decisive flashpoint.

Erfurt monastery
The Erfurt monastery museum provides a distinct contrast
to the Lutherhaus and Geburtshaus. It features a Luther
narrative focusing broadly on Luther’s life and times,
painting his world as a complex series of interactions. The
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first panel, ‘Student of the seven free arts (1501-1505)’ (Image

11), establishes the tone: the Reformation was an organic,
multifaceted development. If there was a Reformation spark,
it was found in neither Luther alone nor humanism alone but
the interactions between them. Notably, by beginning with
Luther’s mundane birth and childhood, this narrative does
not reduce Luther to a set of innate existential concerns as
the Lutherhaus narrative appears to. The Erfurt monastery
narrative continues to introduce further complexities. The
third panel, ‘Studying the Bible and lecturing (1508-1511)’,
portrays Luther, beginning to question the church’s
teachings, not as a juggernaut but as a lecturer embroiled in
Image 11 monastery politics. The vicar general, Johannes von Staupitz,
seeks to encourage Luther’s preoccupation with the Bible,
while Luther’s mentor, Bartholomaeus Arnoldi von Usingen,
is against it. It is Staupitz who has Luther transferred to
Wittenberg for lecturing and further study. Luther continues
his work, developing his focus on interacting with the Bible
and early church fathers rather than the scholastic tradition,
yet Luther is not simply proceeding at his own say-so. This
Luther is not a free agent on a personal path to discovery but
a man set in a world teeming with other human intentions.
The fourth panel, ‘The journey to Rome (1510-1511)’, recounts
Luther’s journey to Rome to protest the union of their
monastic order. Again, this is not a Luther fated to be a
reformer but a deeply pious Roman Catholic intent on
making a general confession and visiting cathedrals. At this
point particularly, the narrative constructs its own explicit
meta-account of Luther’s life instead of viewing his life
through the lens of his own later self-commentary, which the
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Lutherhaus makes much of; the fourth panel states that ‘only
later his judgement about the papal church is … hard and
negative’. The final panel of the narrative, ‘Reformer for
Erfurt (1517-1546)’, presents not an irreversibly changed world
but a melting pot of ongoing interactions and conflicts.
Luther’s own monastery continues to refuse his ideas, yet the
humanists swiftly reform the University of Erfurt, but when
Luther passes through Erfurt on his way to Worms in 1521,
the town remains divided. The narrative of the Erfurt
mona ster y a voids the f raughtness of Reformation
historiography by presenting a history of loose ends—the
fraughtness of history itself.

Hus Museum, Constance

The Hus Museum in Constance (Hus-Museum Konstanz) takes
up a different approach to its narrative, with its rooms
designed as an intricate series of motifs comprised of stylised
reproductions, symbolic objects, and tactile elements. Jan
Hus’s declarations at the Council of Constance (held
1414-1418) are engraved in stone panels to represent the
firmness of his conviction. A display from the second room
(Image 12) depicts the emergence of criticism amongst Hus
and his university colleagues in Prague, featuring illustrations
from the Jena Codex, a Hussite satire against the papal court.
This narrative is, as the accompanying brochure points out,
about ‘evoking atmospheres’. The overall impression of this
symbolic approach is one of Reformation as another world—
Image 12
a world of real people, real discovery and real sadness, but a
world that is not our own, a world that belongs to another
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realm. The Hus Museum narrative thus takes seriously

Bernd Moeller’s comment that the subject matter of the
Reformation ‘connects past and future under absolutely
specific, unique, and irretrievable circumstances’.

Reformation Wall, Geneva

There is a stark contrast between the Lutherhaus and the
Reformation Wall of Geneva (Mur de la Réformation or
Monument international de la Réformation, built 1909-1917,
Image 13), where Luther appears only in name. The wall
stands in the grounds of the University of Geneva, which
John Calvin founded, and was built for the 400-year
anniversary of Calvin’s birth and the 350-year anniversary of
the University’s foundation. Here, Luther and Zwingli
literally form bookends to the monument, thus being
Image 13 presented as pre-reformers, while William Farel, Calvin,
Theodore Beza, and John Knox take centre stage as the
launch pad for worldwide reformation, which is depicted in
the four panels and three statues to each side. The order of
the four reformers is deliberate (Image 14): Farel introduced
reformation idea s, Calvin established them, Beza
consolidated them as Calvin’s successor, and Knox carried
the reformation further afield on his return to Scotland. The
monument identifies Calvin as the figurehead, further
forward and taller than the others, although he was probably
Image 14 a full head shorter in person. An irony of the monument is in
the reformers’ own disavowal of memorialising human
achievements. Yet this is a political monument as much as a
religious one. The four men were magisterial reformers,
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seeking to align godly church with godly state. The

monument is set into a hundred-metre stretch of the old city
walls, presenting the Reformation as integral to the city’s
identity. The international scope of the monument, from
Knox to the eight panels, emphasises Geneva’s distinct
identity as the premier international city. The statues
include Oliver Cromwel l, who helped consolidate
Reformation in England, while the panels include the
Mayflower Compact, the bringing of Reformation to North
America. If not a Luther-event, the Reformation Wall
presents Reformation as a Geneva-event, an international
moment centred in one dynamic meeting place.

Geneva Cathedral
Other micro-narratives take up a ‘history of loose ends’ in a
similar manner to the narrative of the Erfurt monastery
museum. In a corner of the Geneva cathedral, a single poster
summarises the European reformations. It charts the
development of what would become touchstone issues in the
emergence of Protestantism:
• Purgatory (C2nd, esp. C13th onwards, following
Aquinas)
• The cults of martyrs and saints (late C2nd, esp. C6th
onwards, following the merging of the two)
• The cult of images (early C3rd, esp. 787 onwards,
following affirmation at the Second Council of Nicea),
• Monasticism (C3rd onwards),
• Celibacy (esp. following the Synod of Elvira, 295-314),
• The papacy (esp. following Leon I of Rome, 440-461),
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• Indulgences (1095 onwards, following the First

Crusade),
• Sacramentalism (esp. 1274 onwards, following the fixing
of seven sacraments by Pope Clement IV).
However, these ancient features are not snowballing towards
an inevitable Reformation flashpoint: the poster also traces
reformation trends back through no less than eight men
prior to Luther, including Hus, all the way to Bernard of
Clair vaux (1090-1153). Despite its highly distilled
presentation, this narrative does not reduce Reformation to
an event.

Calvin Auditorium, Geneva

The historiography of the Calvin Auditorium (Auditoire de
Calvin, Image 15) continues the theme of the Reformation
Wall: the Reformation as a uniquely international event
based in Geneva. Luther, the German ‘pre-reformer’, does
not even rate a mention, and the trail of Reformation sites
from Germany to Switzerland seems to have come full circle.
In the Auditorium’s collage displays, Geneva is depicted as a
Image 15
hive of reforming activity. One entry point of the narrative
highlights the use of the Auditorium to British and Italian
religious refugees (November 1555 onwards). Geneva’s
population of 12000 swelled by half as refugees flocked in.
The displays go into detail about the makeup of these
communities in Geneva. The English-speaking exiles
returned to Britain in the years following the death of Mary
(November 1558) but the relationship with Geneva remained
strong. The narrative communicates the breadth of
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reformation initiatives and the vitality of these first Genevan

Reformed communities through events including the
production of the Geneva Bible and the beginnings of early
Protestant musical tradition. The groundbreaking Geneva
Bible was first published in 1560. Along with fresh English
translation work it featured extensive annotations—it has
been called the world’s first study Bible—and, for the first
time in English, verse numbers. Meanwhile, Petrus
Dathenus’ rhyming hymnbook of the Psalms (1572, Image 16)
Image 16
was based on the Hebrew text and Beza’s French translation,
with melodies by Marot. Although it was not easy to sing
from, it was the standard songbook for 200 years, only being
superseded in 1773. Although a version created by Marnix in
1617 was more musically fluent, it never gained popularity
because Dathenus’ version had the ‘stamp of sturdy
orthodoxy’—an intriguing hint at the calcification of
Protestant tradition. The narrative also describes Geneva’s
international forums including La Congrégation, a public
lecture in which townspeople, visitors, and refugees absorbed
reformation thought to take with them to other regions. The
international focus continues in the section on Knox. In a
collection of captions and snippets, the narrative emphasises
Knox’s contributions to Geneva and his carr ying of
reformation further afield, despite the brevity of his stay
(1556-1559). The narrative sketches out various dimensions of
Knox’s life, including his published writings, and describes
Knox the man, including his family life amidst his work on
the Geneva Bible, and Calvin’s condolences at the death of
Knox’s wife (1561).
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Reformation Museum, Geneva

The tenth room of the International Museum of the
Reformation (Musée international de la Réforme), ‘The
Reformation in the Nineteenth Century’, contains a final
fascinating artwork, a lithograph representing the modern
world in light of the Reformation (Image 17). In the
foreground are explorers (left) and literary figures (right;
Shakespeare is prominent with his arms folded), behind them
in the alcoves of the middle ground are scientists (left;
Copernicus points to the solar system) and artists (right).
Between the alcoves and the centre are political figures
(Elizabeth I stands before the left column). In the centre,
Image 17 Luther holds aloft the Bible. Beside and below him are other
Reformation figures; Zwingli, Calvin and Melanchthon are
easily recognisable. Although Luther holds the Bible, the
focus is on the illuminating presence of the open Bible. This
is an Enlightenment vision of divine revelation unleashing
human initiative; the creative activity appears to be animated
by the opening of the Bible. The Reformation is the hinge
point for modern thought. This the other side of the
Lutherhaus narrative: the Reformation is not only an epochal
lightning strike but the one in which our own world was
created. The Reformation has again been co-opted for
contemporary purposes.

Conclusions
A fitting motif for the Luther-event is found at the site of
Luther’s stand at the Diet of Worms (1521), where a bronze
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artwork presents the moment as a lightning bolt dividing

church and state (Image 18). ‘1521’ is etched in the lightning
bolt itself.

Big Man histories provide a means of escaping the

fraughtness of history. The Lutherhaus, in spite of its upper-
storey exhibit, is another ‘expropriation’ of Luther, excising
Image 18 him from his time and place. The Luther-event forms an
eminently simple approach to the Reformation because it
does not need to explain continuities and discontinuities, of
which the Worms artwork is so expressive. In the
Lutherhaus narrative, Luther himself is that lightning strike.
His life and times before and after ‘the Reformation
moment’—be it the Wittenberg Door or something else—are
merely accessory. If Reformation history is a matter of
‘irretrievable circumstances’, as Moeller warns, then the
Luther-event is a way of dodging the question by reducing
those circumstances to inevitability.

As we have seen, however, the Reformation sites of Europe

are a trail of competing narratives. Genevan Reformation
sites know nothing of the Luther-event, although they
construct their own Geneva-event. Other sites challenge this
very enterprise: the Hus Museum is a meditation on
Moeller’s warning, while the Erfurt monastery explicitly
exposes some of the complexities of German Reformation
history.

The final panel of the Lutherhaus’s upper-storey exhibit

concludes with Gerhard Ebeling’s reflection on Luther: our
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perspective on Luther is dominated by his ‘strangeness’,

which confounds our attempts to make sense of him. The
Lutherhaus narrative of the floors below seems to have a lust
to pin down, if not explain, Luther’s strangeness. In doing
so, this exhibit forms a kind of museum-within-a-museum,
another edifice of Luther reinterpretation, a fitting if
unwitting prelude to the upper storey.