Lutherbibliothek 2017: Dokumentation von literarischen Lutherbildern zwischen 1517 und 2017 in fünf Reihen. Dresden: Neisse, 2017–ongoing.

Summary

The goal of this series, published under the guidance of Hans-Gert Roloff, is to document the literary treatment—and transformation—of the historic figure Martin Luther. In total, the series plans facsimile publication of seventeen representative works from 1520 to the present containing new introductions and notes written by specialists in the field. The series is divided into five sections: sixteenth century (eds. Roloff and Anne Wagniart); seventeenth century (ed. Jörg Jungmayr); eighteenth century (eds. Sabine Gruber and Ralph Zade); nineteenth century (eds. Gerd-Hermann Susen and Edith Wack); twentieth–twenty-first centuries (ed. Andreas Keller).

The literary afterlife of Luther is unique: no other figure in German literature has experienced such a mass of literary documentation through the centuries. The purpose of the series (seventeen volumes are planned) is to document how widely different authors saw and interpreted the man and his ideology. It is important to note that the series does not attempt to differentiate works on the basis of their presumed literary value. Rather, it aims to publish works that are largely forgotten or neglected in order to provide disparate views of Luther over the centuries since his death.

It is noteworthy that the institution of the Lutheran Church has generally ignored this body of literature—all the more reason to provide it now. In fact, the Lutherhandbuch 2017 provides precious few references to “Lutherbilder und Memorialkultur.” Luther scholarship has hardly made note of the numerous literary works on Luther. One Luther specialist writes: “Von den Lutherdramen, den Lutherromanen und den Luthergedichten … ist kein Stück in den Kanon der deutschen Literatur eingegangen” (Hartmut Lehmann, Luthergedächtnis 1817 bis 2017, 2016). Indeed, recent Luther scholarship in general has neglected the literary treatment of Luther. Yet, in the nineteenth century alone almost fifty Luther dramas appeared; in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries a like number of literary texts in all genres were published.