Throwing Ink at the Devil
I've always been intrigued by the former East Germany. Not for its awful government (although they did women's rights well) but for its cities and lands, which were largely off limits to American tourists for so many years.
I have a long free weekend between places where I have to be in Germany, and decided to spend most of it in Berlin, where I am writing this now. But on the way, I stopped at Eisenach, a city in the state of Thuringia. The attraction of Eisenach was Wartburg Castle, where Martin Luther, founder of the Lutheran Church, found refuge with a local nobleman while he committed the revolutionary act of translating the New Testament from Latin into German. That made it accessible to average people, not just priests and nobility who could read Latin.
When I took the Lutheran confirmation classes as a child, I never forgot the image in the textbook of Luther throwing a bottle of ink at the Devil, who had supposedly appeared in his room one night. Whether or not it really happened, it's a great metaphor. And not just for Lutherans. It's really a perfect metaphor for what journalists do when they do their jobs well. All of us in the profession have thrown ink at the Devil, or wish we had.
Eisenach, like many cities in the former East Germany, looks tired and a bit down at the heels. My friends in Freiburg told how local authorities would spruce up houses along roads that former DDR leader Erich Honecker would travel when he came to visit, but only to the second floor. That's as far up as he could see from his moving automobile. Eisenach is full of history. In addition to the Luther connection, Johann Sebastian Bach was born here. He and Luther, a century or so apart, were choir boys in the same church.
Wartburg Castle sits atop a mountain. I took a city bus to the top, but after it lets you out, it was still 600 feet of steps to the front drawbridge. Having visited the castle, I put in the category of "European Monuments That Look Great from the Outside, But Not So Great Inside." Even Luther's room was a bit of a letdown, much more interesting for what happened there than how it looks. Only one thing is original in the room, a whalebone footrest. Tourists in the 19th century picked apart the desk he used, and tore away the alleged inkspot on the wall. That was gone after about 1901, a guide said.
Still, it was worth it. Acts of revolutionary writing need to be commemorated. And journalists need to throw more ink at more Devils.