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It was 475 years ago that German theological reformer Martin Luther toiled in a sparsely furnished room at the Wartburg Castle near Eisenach in Thuringia to translate the New Testament from Hebrew and Greek into the German vernacular in just 10 weeks. In doing so he paved the way for the emergence of the modern German language.

This tremendous achievement is currently being honored by the Wartburg Foundation with a special exhibition entitled "A book for all tongues, hands and hearts".

Open to the public until Reformation Day on October 31, 2009, it tells the story of the Luther Bible, which was first printed with both testaments 475 years ago. The complete translations of the Holy Script published in 1534 form the centerpieces of the exhibition at Wartburg Castle which has been on the UNESCO world cultural heritage list since 1999.

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Although the Luther Bible is widely assumed to be the first translation of the bible into German this is not the case. Following the invention of book printing in the middle of the 15th Century and up until Luther's translation around 18 versions of the Holy Script had appeared in German.

"It is a widely held misnomer that the first German bible on the market was the one by Luther," said Jutta Krauss, who is in charge of the academic department at the Wartburg Foundation.

Luther's aim however was to produce a bible which could be read all over Germany, a book which would be as easily understood on the North Sea coast as it would in Bavaria, along the Rhine or in Saxony.

Owing to the convoluted language used, earlier translations were often difficult for ordinary people to understand; moreover most of these works had been carried over from at least two other languages.

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Luther sought instead to capture the meaning of the Hebrew and Greek originals by using simple, direct language. He did not translate literally but sought to convey the meaning of the biblical testimony and formulate it in German. He wanted to literally "look at the mouths of the people", in other words pay attention to the way ordinary people spoke in the street and at home, and he therefore used a common, down-to-earth means of expression, rich in imagery and easy to understand.

Luther seemed to have struggled at first since as early as 1523 he lamented the lack of hard and fast rules as to just how the German language should be written down.

This only goes to emphasize the significance of his achievement which the great German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once summed up many years later by saying: "It was first through Luther than the Germans became a nation."

Along with paintings and woodcuttings by Lucas Cranach the Elder the exhibition also shows Luther's translation manuscripts of the Old Testament together with a working example of the bible from 1541 complete with handwritten annotations by Luther and his friend and associate Melanchthon.

The exhibition ends in the Luther room where the reformer wrestled with himself and the German language in order to translate the New Testament into German in record time.