Germany - In the Steps of Martin Luther ...

I thought I'd share some musings on my recent trip to Germany.  Rather than a day by day, or blow by blow account, it's best I think to take you on a journey, place by place and, as we go, take some time to reflect on the impact that Martin Luther had, and continues to have, on our world, our continent and our church ....

Berlin - At the Heart of Things ...

Sitting on the steps of the river Spree, overlooking the shiny and modern new Government buildings, with the Reichstag illuminated at my back, clearly this is at the heart of things. I’m watching a multimedia presentation of the events of the last century, projected onto the landscape around me, the very arena that witnessed much of it. I’m sat in a large crowd watching, next to an elderly German couple, I’ve no idea what they’re saying to each other, but I wish I did. No country has had to face up to its past in quite the way that Germany has.

Berlin can’t be described as a pretty city like Florence or Venice, it’s not romantic in the vein of Paris or Rome, but it’s certainly historic, it feels like a place of significance, the canvas upon which great, powerful and poignant events have been played out. There was the eerie silence of the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, the lingering legacy of Jesse Owens 1936 triumphs at the Olympic stadium, the strange echoes of Nazi jack boots on the Maifield, the evocative ruins of the famous wall, together with the pertinent reminder of checkpoint Charlie, and, of course, the power architecture of the State, around the Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate.

On my recent trip there, resonances were everywhere, of how the past shapes our present, both in the cities we build and the circumstances in which we live but also, more importantly still, in how we think. In Berlin it was the 20th century that was most powerfully present. An era that, for me, especially the time of the cold war and reunification, seems very recent and real. I was in Germany though mostly to think about the 16th century, through the eyes of Martin Luther, much longer ago and more distant in all sorts of ways but, as I was to discover, still as powerful and pertinent.