Luther and the Germans

In 1521, while sit­ting in his small room at the cas­tle above Eise­nach for almost a year, Jörg wrote a will that rev­o­lu­tion­ized more than just the Ger­man lan­guage. The Augus­tin­ian monk’s writ­ing, Luther’s Line, becomes the leit­mo­tif of the scenog­ra­phy of this nation­al spe­cial exhi­bi­tion. It inter­venes in the rich archi­tec­tur­al struc­ture in a vari­ety of ways, pre­serv­ing and empha­siz­ing the Wart­burg as an authen­tic place. The scenog­ra­phy devel­oped by chezweitz guides vis­i­tors through a com­plex col­or dra­matur­gy and diverse move­ment pat­terns. This cre­ates an impres­sive inter­play with the his­tor­i­cal rooms, where the sil­hou­ettes of the Luther Line offer vis­i­tors new insights into the rich his­to­ry of the Wart­burg and the recep­tion of Luther. Span­ning a total area of​more than 1,200 square meters, around 300 impres­sive exhibits are pre­sent­ed as a unique Tes­ta­men­tum Lutherus. The com­bi­na­tion of sig­nage, sculp­ture, texts, show­cas­es, and media dis­plays allows for a sin­gle sceno­graph­ic lan­guage for all the nar­ra­tives in the exhi­bi­tion while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly bring­ing the most impor­tant exhib­it, the Wart­burg itself, to life. The his­toric spaces present a chal­lenge in terms of their geom­e­try, access, and con­ser­va­tion require­ments, but these chal­lenges were mas­tered with sen­si­tiv­i­ty and intel­li­gent archi­tec­tur­al solutions.

The stat­ed goal of the scenog­ra­phy is to facil­i­tate the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of the com­plex con­tent. It begins with the high­ly inter­ac­tive sit­u­a­tion in the wait­ing area. Using high­ly descrip­tive graph­ics, but also with ded­i­cat­ed ​“close read­ings” of images, the view­er’s gaze is repeat­ed­ly and mean­ing­ful­ly direct­ed and the key mes­sages of the exhi­bi­tion are brought to the fore. The var­i­ous chap­ters and mes­sages are vis­i­bly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed from one anoth­er in very dif­fer­ent­ly designed rooms. In this way, the design suc­ceeds in refo­cus­ing atten­tion in each room dur­ing the com­plex and lengthy tour. The exhi­bi­tion cul­mi­nates in a cheer­ful and infor­ma­tive con­clu­sion: Luther’s ink stain, ward­ing off the dev­il, appears as if by mag­ic on the wall, along with fur­ther com­men­taries and quo­ta­tions from the fol­low­ing cen­turies – an event par excellence.