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Minister of State Cornelia Pieper with diplomats on a Luther tour of Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt
Minister of State Cornelia Pieper has invited ambassadors accredited to Germany to accompany her on a tour of Luther memorials in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt on 4 and 5 October. The aim of the tour is to publicize Germany’s activities at home and abroad within the framework of the anniversary of the Reformation in 2017 and to provide impetus for cooperation.
Together with members of the clergy from the Protestant Church in Germany and the Protestant Lutheran Church of Saxony, embassy representatives from predominantly Protestant countries (including Australia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the US) will follow in the great reformer’s steps and visit sections of the 300 km long Saxon Luther Path from Zwickau to Torgau via Leipzig.
“The publication of Luther’s 95 Theses marked the start of the Reformation – an event which had a profound impact on German history. Their religious, social, political and cultural repercussions were of crucial importance to world history,”
Minister of State Pieper stressed at an information event in Leipzig Town Hall. The Minister of State went on to say that the Federal Foreign Office was considering organizing a major art exhibition in the US in 2016 to showcase Protestantism’s formative influence on the world.
The ambassadors’ trip will end at the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle. There the guests will be shown, among other things, Luther’s toys as well as the mass grave of Lützen, currently under reconstruction, which harks back to one of the main battles of the Thirty Years War between Protestant and Catholic troops in 1632.