Wittenberg had two giants, and Philipp Melanchthon was the quieter one. Born in 1497 in Bretten, in southwest Germany, he came to Wittenberg at twenty-one to teach Greek at the university, and he stayed for forty-two years. He was a brilliant scholar, a shy man with a gentle manner, and he became Luther's closest collaborator. Luther was the preacher and fighter, and Melanchthon was the thinker and writer. He drafted the Augsburg Confession of 1530, the founding statement of the Lutheran church, and he reformed the German school system so thoroughly that he was called the Teacher of Germany.
His house stands in the old town, a short walk from the Lutherhaus. It was built in the 1530s, a fine renaissance building with a stepped gable, and Melanchthon lived here with his family until his death in 1560. The house is now a museum, and visitors can see his study, his library and the rooms where students and visitors sat around his table. It was listed with the other Reformation sites by UNESCO in 1996.
The setting is a calm one. The town lies on the Elbe, with meadows and woods beside the river, and the riding around it is relaxed, along flat, straight roads through farmland and pine forest. Pratau, a small village a few kilometres away, is on the river road. Rides from here go to the Bauhaus trade union school at Bernau, a masterpiece of modernist architecture, and to the great collegiate church, where Melanchthon is buried next to Luther.
Wittenberg has about thirty thousand people, so fuel and food are not difficult. Cafes line the main street, and the beer gardens under the trees are pleasant on a summer evening. The university where he taught still exists, as part of the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, and its old buildings are a quiet place to stroll. Autumn is lovely, with soft light and mist on the river. Slow down, and read the inscriptions on the houses.