Luther's town: Wittenberg, 1937

Before the tall Gothic windows of the Castle Church men dig a trench along the street, a young worker swings his pickaxe and looks up, a bus pulls in, a nun passes and two riders walk their horses by a long building with dormer windows. A column of girls in white blouses and dark neckerchiefs marches past the church behind the heaps of earth. On the market square, before the Renaissance town hall and the twin towers of the Stadtkirche, a man in party uniform with a swastika armband crosses among prams and cars.

Martin Luther is said to have posted his ninety-five theses on the door of the Castle Church on 31 October 1517. The German Christians, the pro-Nazi wing of the Protestant church, claimed him as the first great German nationalist.