Wartburg Castle - Eisenach, Germany

The Wartburg is a castle originally built in the Middle Ages, situated on a 410 metres (1,350 ft) precipice to the southwest of, and overlooking the town of Eisenach, in the state of Thuringia, Germany. In 1999, UNESCO added Wartburg Castle to the World Heritage List. It was the home of St. Elisabeth of Hungary, the place where Martin Luther translated the New Testament of the Bible into German, the site of the Wartburg festival of 1817 and the supposed setting for the legendary Sängerkrieg. It was an important inspiration for Ludwig II when he decided to build Neuschwanstein Castle. Wartburg is the most-visited tourist attraction in Thuringia after Weimar. Although the castle today still contains substantial original structures from the 12th through 15th centuries, much of the interior dates back only to the 19th-century period of Romanticism.

 

History of Wartburg Castle

Wartburg Castle was founded by Duke Ludwig of Thuringia in 1067 AD. It belonged to the landgraves of Thuringia and once hosted the medieval Minnesinger poets, immortalized by Wagner in Tannhäuser.
Most famously, the Wartburg is where Martin Luther hid out as "Knight George" upon his return from the Diet of Worms in 1521. Here he completed his translation of the Bible. During his stay here, he said he "fought the Devil with ink" and is said to have experienced dark periods of depression.
In 1777, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent five weeks in the Wartburg Castle translating the Bible into German. Goethe once said, "The Germans weren't a people until Luther."
In 1817, the Wartburg was the rallying site of the Burschenschaften, students who protested the continued division of Germany into a host of tinpot principalities. More recently, Adolf Hitler engaged in a battle with local authorities to take down Wartburg Castle's cross and replace it with a swastika. Hitler was a big fan of the Wartburg, declaring it "the most German of German castles."
Today, the castle is a regional museum. Wartburg Castle was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999 for its association with Luther and for its role as "a powerful symbol of German integration and unity."