Martin Luther
Martin Luther was a former Augustan monk who started a religious revolution. Luther was born in Eisleben, Germany in 1483. His father had grand ambitions for him, and so Luther studied law. However, he did not enjoy the dissolute university lifestyle and quickly became disillusioned. Instead, Luther became an Augustan friar and eminent teacher- until his theories became a little too outlandish for the Catholic Church. Luther began by speaking out against the sale of Indulgences by the church- a practice whereby people paid the church for their salvation. Luther believed that salvation could be earned by faith alone and so in 1520, he found himself excommunicated.
Luther, however, unlike many other Protestant reformers, did not find himself meeting an untimely and painful death. Instead, he lived a long life, marrying, starting a family and continuing with his calling until on February 19, 1546, he passed away. Martin Luther died of old age, peacefully, surrounded by his family and friends in his bed in a house in his hometown of Eisleben. After his death, the old reformer was laid out in a white smock. A pewter coffin was commissioned and Lukas Furtengel, an artist from the nearby town of Halle, was summoned to make his death mask.
After lying in state in Eisleben church, on February 20, Luther’s body left for his final resting place at Wittenberg. During the journey of two days, the funeral procession passed through and rested at various towns. One of those towns was Halle, in whose church Luther had preached three times. After two days, the funeral processions set out for one last time. On February 22, Martin Luther was finally laid to rest in Wittenberg church. His death mask, however, did not remain with his body.
Justus Jonas, the preacher at Halle, was a close friend of Luther. After the funeral, he somehow acquired the death mask. Naturally, due to the popularity of Luther’s teachings, the mask was replicated several times but the original never left Halle and remains there to its day. However, it is somewhat altered. Sometime between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, the original mask was used as part of a life-sized figure of Luther. Unfortunately, that involved making a crucial modification: the opening of the mask’s eyelids. However, in 1926, Halle’s regional director Hans Hahne reconstructed the original mask, creating a plastic copy that recaptures how Luther orally looked after death.
The original copy of our final death mask, however, is not so easy to locate.