Assignment #2

While reading Hagen Schulze’s book, Germany: A New History, I came across an event in Chapter 2 that caught my interest. The event was Martin Luther’s Reformation. This epoch making movement of Christianity helped shape the religions found in the modern world. I find this event to be interesting because I have grown up with a Lutheran background, and find it intriguing what Luther did in order to fight for his religious beliefs by changing the Catholic Church. He had no intentions of forming his own religion, but wanted to converge his ideas with Catholicism.   



This picture depicts Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses

 to the Wittenburg Church Door on October 31, 1517.



One part that intrigued me was that Martin Luther was not executed unlike other reformers, such as Jan Hus, that had attempted to break away from the Church in the past. The reason why Martin Luther was not sentenced to death was because many of Luther’s followers were people of high power in Germany, several of those followers being princes. With having the support of princes, Lutheranism began to spread more peacefully. Other supporters that helped spread the peace included city councils that adopted Luther’s ideas and decided to suppress the Catholic Church’s ideas on Christianity. However, switch from Catholicism to Lutheranism was a decision that was not an easy decision. Many Germans had to decide whether or not the wanted to remain in good graces with the Emperor and the Catholic Church, or take a part in the Reformation and take into consideration Luther’s ideas about how religion should be practiced.  The importance of this event is that Luther’s Reformation started the beginning of a new era in Germany in a religious aspect.



This building, The Lutherhaus,  is now a museum devoted to

Reformation history. It used to be an Augustinian Monsastary where 

Luther lived while teaching at Whittenberg University. After the Reformation,

the monastary closed, and the building became Luther's private home.

 It was here where Luther died.



A similar event was seen in the 1600s when English Dissenters separated from the Church of England for religious freedom.  Many of these people left England and traveled to the New World, which is present day United States.  Dissenters arrived at the New World in order to form their own religions and to have the freedom to teach Christianity their own personal way.