Luther Translates the New Testament at the Wartburg
In hiding under a false name, Luther puts the Bible into everyday German
Quick facts
- Location
- Wartburg Castle, near Eisenach
- Source text
- Erasmus's Greek New Testament, second edition
- First print run
- September Bible, September 1522
What happened
Hidden at Wartburg Castle under the alias Junker Jorg after his staged disappearance from the road home from Worms, Luther spent ten months, from May 1521 to March 1522, in seclusion. Working from the second edition of Erasmus's Greek New Testament, he translated the entire New Testament into German in about eleven weeks, aiming for the spoken German of ordinary market and household life rather than formal or academic vocabulary. The finished work, Das Newe Testament Deutzsch, was printed in September 1522 and became known as the September Bible; it sold an estimated 5,000 copies within its first two months, a striking figure for the era, and a second edition followed by December.
Why it matters
Because Luther deliberately drew on the everyday German spoken across Saxony rather than any single regional dialect, his translation helped standardize written German across politically fragmented territory, becoming a model other translators followed for vernacular Bibles elsewhere in Europe, including later English translations. It also embodied Luther's core claim that scripture belonged to ordinary readers, not only to Latin-trained clergy.
How we know
Multiple surviving copies of the 1522 September Bible and December Testament, along with Luther's own letters describing the eleven-week translation sprint, document the process; the Christian History Institute's account of the translation's impact draws on this record.
Sources
- Christian History Institute. The Bible Translation That Rocked the World · Reputable sourcechristianhistoryinstitute.org · The domain "christianhistoryinstitute.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Luther's Speech at the Diet of Worms · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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