| History of the Luther death house |
Luther died in Eisleben on February 18, 1546, during his final voyage to the County of Mansfeld. Recent research has confirmed that the Protestant reformer died in the ‘house, which belonged to a certain Dr. Drachstett, opposite the market’. Today, the hotel ‘Graf von Mansfeld’ is located here. Cyriakus Spangenberg’s chronicle of Mansfeld was the source of the confusion and the mistaken identification of Luther's place of death. He described the death house as a house, ‘which was thereafter long known as the House of Doctor Drachstett, in which Doctor Luther passed away in 1546'. It was still a well-known fact among Spangenberg's contemporaries that the house where Luther had died, which was opposite the market, had once belonged to Philipp Drachstedt. This fact later faded from memory. The passage in Spangenberg’s chronicle was associated with another property, which had long been in the possession of the Drachstedt family. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the house at Andreaskirchplatz 7 was thus identified as the house where Luther died. This building had been in the possession of Philipp Drachstedt’s son Bartholomäus.
The core structure of the house on Andreaskirchplatz was created during Luther’s lifetime. Recent research has shown that the still-extant timbering of the roof was constructed in 1514. Over the years, however, the facade has been altered and the layout of the rooms has been changed. 
The Prussian state purchased the building in 1863. The future Emperor William I donated 6,000 marks from his private funds for the transaction. The house where Luther had supposedly died was to be converted into a memorial. It took on its current appearance in the 30 years that followed. In 1863-65, Friedrich August Ritter first carried out neo-Gothic alterations to the house’s Biedermeier facade and altered the layout of the rooms to conform to the reports on Luther's last stay in Eisleben. In a second phase during the years 1893-94, the Nuremberg art professor Friedrich Wilhelm Wanderer designed the interiors of the rooms named in the reports on Luther’s death.
In honour of this tradition, the Luther Memorials Foundation will preserve this house as a site for the commemoration of Luther's death. |