“Our Daily Bread: Martin Luther & a Mansfeld Boyhood Home,” February 20

Sunday, February 20, 2 p.m.

Presented by the German American Heritage Center

A fascinating virtual presentation by historian Russell Baldner, the German American Heritage Center's Our Daily Bread: Martin Luther & a Mansfeld Boyhood Home will, on February 20, deliver insight into one of the most noted figures of the 20th century, its focus on events surrounding the town that currently houses about 9,000 people in a southwest corner of the German federal state of Saxony-Anhalt.

Our Daily Bread: Martin Luther & a Mansfeld Boyhood Home is based on the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer and the manifold blessings of “daily bread” as generously interpreted by Luther. The presentation features the Luther Elternhaus, Martin Luther’s parental home in Mansfeld, the new museum across the street from the home, and the display and interpretation of archaeological evidence recovered from the home site. Also featured are St. George’s Church, the adjacent school that Luther attended as a boy, and the three-phases-of-his-life Luther memorial in Mansfeld. On a hilltop immediately above the city stands the castle of the counts of Mansfeld, and the program concludes with Luther’s last days in nearby Eisleben, his birthplace, mediating a dispute between the counts of Mansfeld, and his death. But his final resting place was to be in the historic “95 Theses” Schlosskirche (Castle Church) at Wittenberg, where Luther worked and spent most of his adult life. Boldly displayed across the top of the adjoining belltower are the opening words of Luther’s most well-know and beloved hymn and proclamation of faith, “Ein’ Feste Burg ist Unser Gott (A Mighty Fortress Is Our God)."

First presented in 2020, Our Daily Bread: Martin Luther and a Mansfeld Boyhood Home is one of numerous historical works, public presentations, and scholarly publications in Lutheran, Reformation, German and ethnic German history, and Late Prehistoric Native American archaeology by Russell Baldner. Among the presenter’s earliest forays in primary source historical research were German family documents and the original German manuscripts of his family’s longtime Lutheran congregation, of which his immigrant great-great-grandfather was one of four founding members. Baldner’s early affection for the German language and history led to BA and MA degrees in history, undergraduate and graduate study in German, a teaching career in German, history, and anthropology/sociology, a lifetime of academic research in those and related fields, and repeated sojourns in ancestral Germany. On his first visit, Russell lived in his great-great-grandfather’s birthplace of wo der gute Wein wächst, and Baldner has presented for the German American Heritage Center on three previous occasions: in 2019's Berlin: Before and After the Wall Fell and 2021's Witches, Kings, & Architectural Charm: Exploring Folklore, Royal Might, & Half-timbered Splendor in Historic Saxon Germany and I Am Baptized: Martin Luther & Birthplace Eisleben.

The German American Heritage Center's Our Daily Bread: Martin Luther & a Mansfeld Boyhood Home will be presented on February 20 at 2 p.m., participation in the virtual event is free for members and $5 for non-members, and more information and registration is available by calling (563)322-8844 and visiting GAHC.org.