Wittenberg

Wittenberg stands on the Elbe along the north-south trade road of the Via Imperii, where the Ascanian dukes of Saxony made their residence in the thirteenth century. Duke Albert II granted it town rights in 1293. By 1337 the town had a Franciscan friary, walls built under its charter, and a ducal court that turned a modest market of bakers, butchers, shoemakers and clothmakers into the capital of Saxe-Wittenberg.

The Ascanians' rise came in 1356, when Rudolf I saw his duchy confirmed as an electorate of the Empire, giving Wittenberg the status of an electoral capital. The line died out in 1422, and the electoral title passed to the Wettin margraves of Meissen; the town lost its court but kept its privileges. Its walls held in 1429, when Hussite armies besieged the town but could not take it.

Wittenberg's greatest age came when Elector Frederick the Wise settled here from 1486. The Castle Church was raised between 1496 and 1506, and in 1502 the elector founded a university. Martin Luther taught theology there from 1508, and Philipp Melanchthon arrived as professor of Greek in 1518. On 31 October 1517 Luther is said to have posted his Ninety-five Theses on the door of the Castle Church, and the town became the cradle of the Reformation. After the Schmalkaldic War, the Capitulation of 1547 stripped John Frederick the Magnanimous of the electoral dignity and gave it to the Albertine Wettins.