Erfurt and the World



Used as we are to the mod­ern mega­lopo­lis, we might at first think that Luther’s Erfurt, home to some 20,000 peo­ple at the time, was a coun­try back­wa­ter. This was not the case.

Pre­cise pop­u­la­tion fig­ures about the era are hard to come by, but in 1500 even Europe’s most pop­u­lous cities paled in com­par­i­son to the great metropoli of the rest of the world. Before its encounter with Span­ish troops, for exam­ple, Tenochti­t­lan is con­ser­v­a­tively esti­mated to have housed half a mil­lion peo­ple, two to three times larger than Europe’s largest.

No, Europe was small pota­toes in 1510. Rome, the for­mer behe­moth boast­ing over a mil­lion res­i­dents in the late-classical era, had shrunk some 2000% to around 40,000; all of them and more could have fit into the Colos­seum. By the time Luther arrived in 1510-11, sheep had been graz­ing within the old walls for a mil­len­nium. Geneva, for all its later impor­tance, was less than 5,000. North­ern cities like Paris, Lon­don, and Rot­ter­dam were at the head of the pack with pop­u­la­tions between 100,000 and 200,000. Cologne and Nurem­berg, the largest cities of the Holy Roman Empire, topped out around 40,000 in 1500; Stras­bourg was a bit smaller at  25,000. So at 20,000 inhab­i­tants Erfurt could con­sider itself one of the more impor­tant cities in Germany.

Like other urban cen­ters, Erfurt’s life was based on being a cen­ter for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of agri­cul­tural sur­plus. Towns are in their ori­gins actu­ally mar­kets, and Erfurt uti­lized this bustling agri­cul­tural com­merce  to build sev­eral large churches and monas­ter­ies, a uni­ver­sity, and a nascent print­ing indus­try. It was also known for the qual­ity of its blue dye, derived from the roots of the woad plant. It was Luther’s next post, Wit­ten­berg, with its mere 400 houses, that was the backwater—not Erfurt.

Ben Foster says:
August 22, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Greetings.…I am a retired Sal­va­tion Army officer…am look­ing for­ward to tak­ing this walk with you. I want to again remind myself of the self sac­ri­fic­ing efforts made by such giants as Luther that have had such life chang­ing impact upon the world. Thanks for allow­ing us to join in.
Blessing…and ENJOY HIS PRESENCE ON YOUR TRAVELS
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Deanna Heuermann says:
August 22, 2010 at 10:50 pm
You are to be com­mended to under­take such a jour­ney. I have told many of my friends about you and your task and we will fol­low it with great inter­est. Many prayers go with you. God Bless,’
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