The city of Wittenberg and its inhabitants are used to visitors, but I guess the visit of 82 Lutheran women and men on a Bold Women of the Reformation tour is news. A reporter from the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung spent Thursday evening of last week at our dinner, interviewing participants and taking in the magnitude of our visit. The reporter had already spent time on the Women of the ELCA web site and the trip blog as well. The resulting article does a great job of portraying our visit and the purpose of our visit. We'll post a translation of the article soon (our friends at the ELCA Wittenberg Center have offered to accomplish that). For now, a translation of the title will have to do: "It's as if we have come home."
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Here's the translation:
Article from the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung (Middle German Newspaper)
Wittenberg edition, p. 16 (with photo of the travelers at the Luther House)
Saturday, April 21, 2007
As if one were coming home
US-American Lutheran Women from 26 States on a Learning Tour in Wittenberg
By Stefanie Hommers
Wittenberg/MZ. When 80 women undertake a trip together, it must be well organized. When the group of “Women of the ELCA” meet for dinner on Thursday at the Best Western Hotel, everything is set to go. Women, whose names derive from Katharina or Barbara, may storm the buffet table first. The intent, to remember the wives of Martin Luther and Lucas Cranach, isn’t to be taken only seriously. “If you are very hungry, simply ignore what I have just said,” quips Jean Godsall-Myers from the Wittenberg ELCA Center, as the guests laugh and head for the buffet.
The American women from 26 states have come to Wittenberg to trace the roots of the Reformation. “Coming to Wittenberg is like coming home,” is the way Linda Post Bushkovsky describes her first impressions of the three-day visit. The director of the “Women of the ELCA”, a women’s group of the Lutheran Church in the US with around 500,000 members, initiated the trip as part of the 20th anniversary of the founding of the organization. Her particular vision focused on the wife of the Reformer. Katharina von Bora was in her time an exceptional woman with diverse competencies and can still be considered a role model today, she finds.
The interest of the Christian tour group is not just of a historic nature. The women are eager to find out how women today in the Luther City live out their faith. For that reason, the agenda of visits includes, next to the classic sites of the Reformation history, such as the Luther House, the City Church, and the Castle Church, encounters with Christians who live and work here. The Evangelical Elementary School and Kindergarten are viewed with as much interest as the Soup Kitchen of the Diaconal Social Services Agency. Barbara Qadduri is pleased about the lively interest and the many questions during the tour. For translating, Isolde Smirnow helps. The trained nurse, born in Odessa and raised during the war near Berlin, immigrated to the States in the fifties and has not lost any of her German. “She gave me a run for my money with translation,” chimes in (Pastor) Anika Scheinemann. The theologian is asked during the evening gathering by Judy Springer about working conditions and professional chances for women as pastors in the Protestant church in Germany.
Even Pastor Volkmann and the principal of the elementary school Grit Förster need to speak and answer questions. It is clear that the guests are enjoying the trip, which is offering them the opportunity to absorb so much about the daily life in the heart of the Reformation, to vacillate between history and the present, spiritual and secular experiences. Patrice Nordstrand enjoys the museum visits as much as the discussions. On trips, she claims, there is the need beyond entertainment and amusement, which can be met in Wittenberg in a pleasant and informative way.
For the women, the visit in this jubilee year is a great success, from which by the way, those who are visited also have something to gain. In response to the question, “Who knows someone, who could be brought along on a return trip?”, many hands are raised.
This text was translated by staff of the ELCA Wittenberg Center, 2007.
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