Árdís - 01.01.1954, Síða 9

Ársrit Bandalags lúterskra kvenna
7
living. This display of devout character and musical ability proved
benefiicial as it gained for him a helpful friend. At the age og 18 he
entered the University of Erfurt. Here he decided to enter the
Augustinian Monastery. But let us go back and catch glimpses of
his childhood home life. His father, Hans Luther, was a copper
miner and when Martin was only six months old his parents moved
to the neighborhood town of Mansfield—so that it, and not his birth
place, was known as the home of his childhood. His father was
practical and respectable and struggled upwards through severe
hardships to an honorable position. His mother, Margretha, was an
earnest, devout, religious woman, who wore on her face the shadow
of the struggles with poverty experienced during her early married
life—when she carried upon her back from the forest the supply of
wood needed for the family fires. Luther’s childhood reminiscences
were not those of sunshine, joyful sports or playful pleasures—but
rather of harshness and severity, for his parents’ love for their
children was expressed in their idea of how God ruled them. The
fear of punishment and the hope of reward always being uppermost.
Friends report that Hans Luther was found bending over his child’s
cradle in fervent prayer and determined that his son should receive
the best that his limited means could aíford. He made many sacri-
fices and Martin bégan school at an early age. The teachers were
rough and cruel and the methods crude and mechanical. Of this he
spoke later when he said: “It is a miserable thing when on account
of severe punishment, children learn to dislike their parents, or
pupils their teachers. Many a clumsy schoolmaster, by blustering
and storming, and striking and beating, and by treating children
precisely as though he were a hangman, completely ruins children
of good disposition and excellent ability.”
At the age of 14 a better school was found for him at Magde-
burg—where he remained only one year. From there he went to
Eisenach, the home of his mother’s family.
Thrown upon his own resources for support he sang for alms,
at the windows of the wealthier citizens. The sweet voice of the boy,
as previously mentioned, attracted Madame Ursula Cotta, the wife
of a leading merchant and member of a prominent family of Italian
descent, who invited him to her house and finally gave him a home
while he remained in Eisenach. In her home young Martin was
introduced to an entirely new mode of life. Just at the age when