Over the past few decades, heritage tourism, pilgrimage routes, and public festivity have emerged as important resources shaping identities and channeling cultural flows in our global world. This field-based study of contemporary Luther and Reformation festivals and Protestant pilgrimage in Wittenberg, Germany, places the reader on the ground in Wittenberg’s festival and tourism scene. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Wittenberg, city of Martin Luther, each year plays host to two large-scale, public Luther festivals and is also a destination of tourists and pilgrims in search of heritage, authent ... More

Over the past few decades, heritage tourism, pilgrimage routes, and public festivity have emerged as important resources shaping identities and channeling cultural flows in our global world. This field-based study of contemporary Luther and Reformation festivals and Protestant pilgrimage in Wittenberg, Germany, places the reader on the ground in Wittenberg’s festival and tourism scene. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Wittenberg, city of Martin Luther, each year plays host to two large-scale, public Luther festivals and is also a destination of tourists and pilgrims in search of heritage, authenticity, and origins. Integrating historical context, an ethnographic approach, and ideas drawn from ritual studies and performance theory, this book offers rich, descriptive accounts and critical interpretations of the contemporary public performance of the Reformation. The book examines the multidimensionality of Wittenberg’s festivals, exploring the dynamics of diverse ritual and performative genres, including liturgy, processions, parades, street performance, civil religion, and carnival. The book also takes up the themes of Protestant pilgrimage and the sacralizing of space through architectural, visual, and performative means.