How free is man, what does his freedom consist in and what are its limits? And what role do religions have in promoting freedom?

These age-old and yet still highly relevant questions will be discussed on 4 March 2011 by renowned academics to mark 2011 as the “Reformation and freedom” year of the Luther Decade.

The Federal Foreign Office, the “Luther 2017 – 500 Years Reformation” office in Wittenberg of the Evangelical Church in Germany and the “Luther 2017” office invite you to attend a fascinating debate in the town from which the Reformation spread and changed the world: Lutherstadt Wittenberg.

Minister of State Cornelia Pieper, who has been the Federal Foreign Office representative on the Luther Decade Board of Trustees since September 2011, has invited three specialists to conduct the debate: Protestant theologian Professor Friedrich Wilhelm Graf (LMU Munich), Professor Hans-Joachim Meyer, former Minister of State and former President of the Central Committee of German Catholics, and Professor Rauf Ceylan, expert in Islamic religious education at the University of Osnabrück. Stefan Rhein, Director of the Luther Memorials Foundation of Saxony-Anhalt, will speak on the significance of the Reformation idea of freedom for the modern world and call to mind what Martin Luther himself said on the subject of freedom.

The evening will see a performance from singer-songwriter and former GDR activist for civil liberties Stephan Krawczyk, who will stage a “Dream of Freedom” with school pupils from the Islamic world. These young people, who will spend several days in Wittenberg, exemplify a global longing for freedom which transcends national, cultural and religious boundaries.

The debate is the first in a series of discussions entitled “Reformation and freedom – a call to argument”.