As we enter the town from the railway station, we pass through the Luther-Platz (place or square), in the center of which stands the Luther Monument, which was erected in 1868 at a cost of $85,000. The monument is on this wise. There is a massive platform of granite, forty-eight feet square and nine and one-half feet high, bearing in its centre a large pedestal, also of granite. This pedestal is surmounted by another in bronze, adorned with reliefs representing four scenes in Luther’s life. In the first, we see him administering the communion as a Catholic priest; second, he is nailing his theses on the church door in Wittenberg; next, we see him defending himself at Worms; and, last, he is translating the Bible into his native language.
Now, upon this pedestal, whose sides are thus adorned, stands the bronze statue of Luther, eleven feet in height, a commanding figure. In his left hand he holds a Bible, on which his right hand is placed emphatically, while his face, on which faith is admirably portrayed, is turned upwards. John Huss, Savonarola, John Wycliffe, and Peter Waldus are sitting at the four corners of the large pedestal on which Luther stands.
From the four corners of the large platform, rise four granite pedestals, not so large as the central one. On these four pedestals stand bronze statues of Luther’s fellow champions, Malanchthon, Reuchlin, on one side, and Philip of Hesse and Frederick the Wise of Saxony, his princely protectors, on the other. The four last-named statues are each nine feet high. Taken all in all, this is one of the finest and most impressive monuments I have seen. And why should it not be so? These men have justly been called the thunderers, the cloud compellers, the world uplifters, the hammers of the Lord, the pioneers of progress, the liberators of mankind,
“Whose names are ever on the world’s broad tongue,
Like sound upon the falling of a force;
Who play upon our hearts as upon a harp,
And make our eyes bright as we speak of them.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
GERMAN BAPTISTS.