After his condemnation at the Diet of Worms in 1521, Martin Luther was secretly conveyed to the Wartburg Castle in Thuringia by agents of the Elector of Saxony, where he spent ten months in disguise as 'Junker Jörg'. During this enforced sojourn in the medieval fortress, Luther translated the New Testament into German — a task he completed in just eleven weeks — producing what became the foundational text of the modern German language and of the Protestant Reformation.

Luther's New Testament, produced within the walls of Wartburg Castle, was one of the most consequential acts of literary translation in world history, standardising a written German vernacular that would underpin all subsequent German poetry and prose. The castle as shelter for the persecuted translator became a potent image in Protestant tradition. The Wartburg also hosted the legendary Sängerkrieg — a medieval contest of poets — that Wagner later dramatised in Tannhäuser, further cementing the castle's literary significance.