“Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.”
Martin Luther’s defiant declaration to Catholic Church leaders in 1521, as he set off the Protestant Reformation, is treasured in Germany as a motto of virtuous subversion. Now church officials and other political groups are taking a stand against attempts by the far right National Democratic Party, or NPD, to co-opt Luther’s words as a campaign slogan.
For the second straight election in the central German state of Thuringia, the NPD has put up posters incorporating the famous portrait of Luther by Lucas Cranach; instead of “Here I stand,” the rebel monk is depicted saying, “I would vote NPD, I cannot do otherwise,” alongside the party’s slogan “defend the homeland.”
The NPD, classified as a neo-Nazi party by the Counter Extremism Project, has used Luther’s image in previous German state and national elections. In 2017, Christoph Meyns, the Lutheran bishop in Braunschweig, to the north of Thuringia, told the German news agency DPA that the posters were “intolerable” political distortions of Luther and his message.
The posters’ appearance before the 27th October vote in Thuringia have renewed the controversy in a place where Luther was ordained and lived as a monk. The dust-up has also exposed the region as a home to nationalist sentiments, dredging up Luther’s own muddied legacy in regard to xenophobia and anti-Semitism.
Read the article by Ken Chitwood in Sight Magazine.