Luther House and Bach House in Eisenach, 1937
Painted lettering marks the Luther House and Lutherkeller with a wrought-iron lantern, and cyclists pause on the square before the Bach House.
On the front of an old house, Gothic letters read Luther-Haus above leaded windows with geraniums and Lutherkeller below, and a wrought-iron bracket against the sky holds a lantern bearing the name. On a square across the town, two women with bicycles stand talking, and behind a garden rises the long, plain house with its steep roof and dormer windows that was shown to visitors as the birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Eisenach lived by its great names. Martin Luther went to school here around 1500 and lodged, by tradition, with the Cotta family; in 1521 he translated the New Testament in the Wartburg above the town. Bach was born in Eisenach in 1685. The Bach House became a museum in 1907, though his real birthplace later proved to be another house nearby.
