Page:Thirty-five years of Luther research.djvu/66



In as much as we are about to make mention of those valuable individual investigations which have been made during the last thirty-five years in the life and theology of Luther, we shall name them in their chronological sequence, and the career of the Reformer will furnish us with the links that will connect the one with the other,

Luther at all times held his father in high regard. The life of Luther's father, in spite of many investigations, has always been unclear in many respects. Catholic writers sometimes even portrayed it as possessing flagrantly immoral propensities. W. Moellenberg29 therefore in 1906, after carefully examining the papers of the Mansfeld mine at Eisleben and the council minutes of the city of Mansfeld, which are now in Magdeburg, shed new light on the life and doings of Hans Luther, especially on his possessions and his trade, so that we now are much better acquainted with his gradually increasing wealth and prominence. That the maiden name of Luther's Mother was not Lindemann as we still sometimes read owing to a statement of Rector Schneidewin of Wittenberg to that effect, but rather Ziegler, Knaake proved in a lengthy article in "Theologische Studien und Kritiken" (1881). When Hans Luther's son Martin was born, whether in 1482 (according to a