After Morning Prayer in the Castle Church I headed over to a session on rare reformation books and the process of restoring them. This took place in the Luther House which is pictured above. This house was a wedding gift to Luther and Katie from Fredrick the Wise. -Crock pots were not a wedding gift option yet.
One of the books they showed us was an early edition of Luther's Works. It was printed in 1570. They even encourages us to touch the pages, without gloves! It seemed very wrong, but I wasn't about to decline the offer. The archives here store about 30,000 books, many of them in rough shape, not so much from the effects of time, but from overuse. The pages are holding up considerably well, due to the high quality of paper, but the covers are very worn and damaged; "Kaputt," was the word of the day from the archivist.
Much of the Luther House displays artifacts from the reformation, but one of the most interesting rooms had almost nothing on display in it. This was the living room where Luther and his house guests would gather after a meal and discuss theology and other matters. Much of the "Table Talk" writings that we cherish (and chuckle at) came from this room.
A short walk from the Luther House is the place where Luther burned the Papal Bull announcing his excommunication. This is a peaceful garden now, but the action he took here was very controversial and viewed as attack against Rome.
In the evening we gathered at the convention centre, and were joined by German youth who will be with us now for the weekend. I'm not sure if we impressed or shocked them when we prayed the Lord's Prayer in German. Possibly it wasn't even recognizable the way we said it. The picture above is the view from the balcony.
Here's a picture of the guy hanging out in the balcony.
Tomorrow we spend more time in large group sessions, and then I plan to attend a session on Taize singing.
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