Jüterbog receives European Heritage Label as site of the Reformation

As a site of the Reformation, the city of Jüterbog in Brandenburg has received the European Heritage Label. The ministry announced that the label has been delivered by the Minister of Culture, Sabine Kunst (independent). Next to Mühlberg in the south of Brandenburg, Jüterbog belongs to the 19 official sites of the Reformation in Germany, which will receive the label. In preparation for the 500th Reformation anniversary in 2017, a "City Association for the Reformation Anniversary" has been founded in Jüterbog.

The impulse for Luther's theses came from Jüterbog

Luther's posting of his theses in Wittenberg on October 31st, 1517, although not totally historically verifiable, is considered to have been the decisive prelude to the Reformation. The impulse for Luther's theses against the selling of indulgences, with which believers were able to buy their freedom from sins, had come from Jüterbog, where the Dominican monk Johann Tetzel sold letters of indulgence on behalf of the Archbishop of Magdeburg, after having been denied free passage into Wittenberg.

When an increasing number of Christians travelled from Wittenberg to Jüterbog in order to buy letters of indulgence, Luther wrote his famous theses against making business with buying one's freedom from sins. In 1519, a treatise against Luther's new teachings was written in the Dominican monastery of Jüterbog, including for the first time the word "Lutherans" – as a curse word.