Qualla: St. Augustine's Monastery (Erfurt)

St. Augustine's Monastery (Erfurt): Introduction

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, Public domain. The friary that housed Martin Luther was paid for, in part, by indulgences. Building began in 1277 on donations and on the sale of remissions for sin - precisely the trade that, two and a half centuries later, the house's most famous resident would attack in a way that split the Western church. Luther arrived in July 1505 as a twenty-one-year-old law student who had abandoned his career, and left for good in September 1511. The complex covers almost a hectare in the middle of Erfurt, and the rooms he knew are still there, along with a hole where the library used to be.

Image: Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop | Public domain

St. Augustine's Monastery (Erfurt): Blue Money and a School

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dr. Bernd Gross, CC BY-SA 3.0. Augustinian friars had been in Erfurt since 1266. A quarrel with the city got them expelled in 1273; three years later they were allowed back for good, and construction of the church and friary started in 1277. It went on for generations - St Katherine's chapel, the chapter house...

Image: Dr. Bernd Gross | CC BY-SA 3.0

St. Augustine's Monastery (Erfurt): Six Years and One Storm

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:MatthiasKabel, CC BY-SA 3.0. Luther's decision was made outdoors, on 2 July 1505, when a violent thunderstorm caught him near Stotternheim as he walked back to Erfurt from visiting his parents. He entered the friary within weeks. The dates of what followed are unusually well recorded: ordained priest in Erfu...

Image: User:MatthiasKabel | CC BY-SA 3.0

St. Augustine's Monastery (Erfurt): The Friars Ran Out

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vitold Muratov, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Reformation dismantled the house from the inside. In 1525 the church was taken away from the friary and handed to the congregation of the new Lutheran church, so that the building where Luther had said his first mass as a Catholic priest became a Protestant parish while some ...

Image: Vitold Muratov | CC BY-SA 3.0

St. Augustine's Monastery (Erfurt): 25 February 1945

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alupus, CC BY-SA 3.0 de. The cellar beneath the friary library was a public air raid shelter, thick-walled and old, the kind of place a neighbourhood trusts. On the night of 25 February 1945 a British raid hit the monastery. The library above was destroyed, and 267 people died in the cellar underneath it...

Image: Alupus | CC BY-SA 3.0 de

St. Augustine's Monastery (Erfurt): Rebuilding Around an Absence

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wikswat, CC BY-SA 3.0. Restoration began almost immediately and ran from 1946 to 1957, covering the church, the cloister, the east wing and the old dormitory. Four medieval windows went back into the church in 1947, and the organ was pieced together with parts sent from West Germany. Serious reconstruc...

Image: Wikswat | CC BY-SA 3.0