Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-12-25
Parental

If you start from Halle by O'Clock In
the morning in an automobile you can
have all the time you want
Parental at Eisieben. the ancient
u. town where Luther was
born and where he died. and
will he able to visit several other inter-
esting places in the neighborhood. In
Guiding Mohra, the home OF his parents.
little village in the Thuringian forest.
The modest cottage in which Hans Luz
Their and his wife, Gretha, lived while he
worked In the copper mines is still point
ed out. and a monument has been erected
in the center Of the village in their honor.
Hans Luther moved from Mohra to
Mansfield in 1854. the year following
Martins birth, and was employed in the
copper mines there. The house he occu-
pied and the school which MARTIN at
tended still stand. The cottage is built
of stone. with matched roof. and Is OF
the common type of. dwellings of work.
insmen in that neighborhood. Over the
door is an inscription: u. L.. 1890. The
schoolhouse also bears an inscription.
Luther's recollection of his experience in
that school was painful. The master WAS
brutal and beat his pupils OH the slightest
provocation. Luther says that he was
whipped sixteen times in one day.
-.
Mansfield is a mining town of about
5000 inhabitants. and the slate quarries
in the neighborhood have
Mining furnished shingles for nearly
all Of the roofs in this part
AV"A. of Germany. The silver and
copper mines of the Hartz mountains.
which were very valuable 100 years ago,
are now practically abandoned because
the 10y, grade Of the ore cannot compete
with the products of North American and
South American mines. In Luthers child
hood, however, the town boasted Of sew
eral furnaces in which the ores were
smelted with charcoal made, as II is to-
day, from the timber of the surround
ing forests "nen tree is ripe 1t is cut
down, the trunk - sawed up for lumber,
the larger branches, the stump and the
roots are made into charcoal and the
smaller branches and twigs are used for
fuel by the cottagers. Gretha Luther
used to bring in OH her back loads OF
these fagots for cooking their food ana
heating their cabin when Martin was a
the neighborhood doing today. We met
dozens of them on the road-plain. sturdy
creatures, with honest, cheerful faces.
>.cai.ng coarse garments and heavy
shoes.
Their skirts reach half way down from
their knees and their ankles are protected
by coarse wooden stockings, which they
knit in the long winter nights. Over their
heads they wear little shawls folded into
triangular shape, with the ends tied under
their chins. On their backs were huge
bundles of fagots such as woodsmen IN
the United States throw away or burn
I'm piles because they cucumber the
ground In Germany and other European
countries these slashings constitute al
most exclusively the fuel of the peas
antry, who are obliged to pay for them
as we'll as carry them home. and that
comes within the sphere of woman's use
fulness today. as it did in the latter part
of the fifteenth century, when Martin
Luther's mother went to the forest when
a tree was being cut down and carried
her bundle Of fagots home.
The particular mine In which Hans Lu-
thor in, a three