{"id":240,"date":"2017-04-18T14:15:03","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T14:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/?p=240"},"modified":"2017-04-18T14:15:22","modified_gmt":"2017-04-18T14:15:22","slug":"weeks-9-11-eisenach-leipzig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/2017\/04\/18\/weeks-9-11-eisenach-leipzig\/","title":{"rendered":"Weeks 9-11: Eisenach, Leipzig"},"content":{"rendered":"

The days are continuing to fly by in Berlin, with so much to do in the last few weeks here. On the first weekend after Spring Break, I went to Eisenach, which is about a five and a half hour bus ride from Berlin. Eisenach is a very small town in Thuringia, a state in the middle of Germany. J.S. Bach was born in Eisenach in 1685, but I was primarily there to see the Wartburg Castle, which sits on a hill in the Thuringian Forest. After I arrived on Saturday afternoon and checked into my hostel, I walked down to the Lutherhaus at Lutherplatz, in the main part of the city.<\/p>\n

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\nThis was the house of the Cotta family, with whom Luther stayed during his pre-University schooling in Eisenach from 1498 to 1501. This was about 20 years before he was brought to stay at the Wartburg. I got to go inside the house and see the room where Luther lived.
\nAfter this I walked to the Bachhaus. Here there is a museum set up for the history of Bach, and Baroque music performances occur there every hour. Unfortunately, I got there too late to hear the last one, but I learned a lot about perhaps the greatest composer ever to live. I walked around Eisenach for most of the rest of the evening. The town is so distinctly German-looking compared to any of the other German cities I\u2019ve been in. If I didn\u2019t feel like I was in Germany before this, Eisenach dispelled all doubts.<\/p>\n

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\nThe next morning after checking out of the hostel I took a 10 minute bus ride to the foot of the Thuringian Forest beneath the Wartburg. From there it was a lot of steps and ramps uphill to the castle. It was so cool to actually be there. I learned that so much history has unfolded at the castle throughout the centuries, with Luther being one of the most famous. I asked a kind-enough-looking German stranger to take my picture from the observation point before going on to the castle grounds.<\/p>\n

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\nOnce through the arched gate, I found where Martin Luther\u2019s study was, in the second story of one of the castle buildings. This is the place where he translated the New Testament from Greek into German. It was pretty incredible to be able to go inside and stand in that room.<\/p>\n

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\nAfter Luther\u2019s room, I saw a tour group from England and tagged along behind them as they toured the castle building which holds the grand hall and a chapel. After leaving the Wartburg, I had enough time before my bus left for Berlin to briefly visit Georgenkirche, where Bach often played organ, and where Luther preached on a Sunday in May 1521 before he stayed at the Wartburg.
\nI spent last Sunday (the 9th) in Leipzig, a two hour bus ride from Berlin. Leipzig is a larger city than Eisenach, and is where J.S. Bach spent a lot of his career. When I arrived I headed towards the Nikolaikirche, which was the principal church in Leipzig in Bach\u2019s day. One of Bach\u2019s two surviving passions \u2013 St. John Passion \u2013 was first performed here. (Side note \u2013 last Friday I had the opportunity to attend a performance of Bach\u2019s other passion \u2013 St. Matthew Passion \u2013 at the Berlin Dome. It was one of the coolest things I\u2019ve ever experienced.) Unfortunately Nikolaikirche was temporarily closed to visitors. Next\u00a0I went to Thomaskirche, the most famous of Leipzig\u2019s churches and the reason I wanted to visit Leipzig. Bach also worked at this church, where he wrote music for worship and directed the choir.<\/p>\n

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His remains were moved to the church after the church of his original grave was bombed in World War II. Martin Luther was also at Thomaskirche, where he preached from this pulpit on Pentecost Sunday in 1539.<\/p>\n

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\nOther things I did in Leipzig included visiting the Mendelssohn Haus, seeing a monument to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and going to the top of the\u00a0Panorama tower for a view of Leipzig.<\/p>\n

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\nMy bus left back for Berlin in the late afternoon. In between weekends I spend a lot of required time on my term papers for my music and history classes. For music, I am writing about\u00a0how Martin Luther\u2019s theology and music influenced the theological content of Bach\u2019s works. For history, I am writing on the composition of Ronald Reagan\u2019s speech in Berlin in front of the Berlin Wall and Brandenburg Gate. There are plenty of resources for both of these topics, but getting hold of them has been difficult \u2013 Freie Universit\u00e4t has fifteen different libraries spread throughout its huge campus. FIFTEEN. It makes tracking down what I need a headache. Suffice to say I\u2019m using a lot of online resources.
\nI had the opportunity to attend Easter worship at the congregation of the WELS\u2019 sister synod \u2013 the ELFK \u2013 in Berlin. On Easter afternoon I flew to Salzburg for a 3-day\u00a0trip. At the end of this week, the international program\u2019s nine-day tour of Frankfurt, Heidelberg, and Prague starts. By the time we get back to Berlin, I\u2019ll only have one more week of classes, a trip to Wittenberg, and exam week before my semester here is over. That\u2019s all for now \u2013 watch for the next blog about the tour!<\/p>\n

Tsch\u00fcss,
\nCollin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The days are continuing to fly by in Berlin, with so much to do in the last few weeks here. On the first weekend after Spring Break, I went to Eisenach, which is about a five and a half hour bus ride from Berlin. Eisenach is a very small town in Thuringia, a state in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7Lhdr-3S","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions\/253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}