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 Katharina was born in poverty. At 10, she joined a convent in preparation for holy orders. As the Reformation progressed in Germany after 1517, she read the writings of Luther and became convinced of the doctrine he preached. She and eleven other nuns wrote to Luther asking for help to escape from the convent. This was a dangerous affair for leaving or assisting someone leaving religious life was a capital offense.
Luther conspired with a local city councilman and herring merchant to rescue the girls. The merchant delivered his fish at the appointed time and smuggled the girls out in his empty barrels.
The former nuns came to Wittenberg, and within two years, Luther had found husbands for them. He was, however, unable to find anyone for the feisty, redheaded Katharina. He suggested one man, but Katharina declined saying if Luther were willing she would marry him.
Luther wrote to a friend, “I am not now inclined to take a wife. Not that I lack the feelings of a man (for I am neither wood nor stone), but my mind is averse to marriage because I daily expect the death decreed to the heretic.” But after strong encouragement from his parents and his friend Philip Melanchthon (who said, “…we hope that this state of life may sober him up, so that he will discard the low buffoonery that we have often censured,”) he finally consented in the summer of 1525.
His opponents, including Henry VIII who called it “a crime,” ridiculed the marriage. Others called Katharina, “…a poor, fallen woman who had passed from the cloistered holy religion into a damnable, shameful life.” Katharina brought order to Luther’s life (he once said, “Before I was married, the bed was not made for a whole year and became foul with sweat.”), and joy, brewing her own beer for his continual maladies.
Katharina and Martin had six children together and four of them reached adulthood.
She died in 1552, six years after Luther’s death.
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