Martin Luther has become an almost mythical figure in history over five centuries. Volker Leppin approaches the Wittenberg reformer from a new, unfamiliar perspective: Luther is described less as an impulsive innovator and more as a monk and theologian who slowly detaches himself from his medieval heritage. There is no sudden conversion at the beginning, no forceful posting of theses, but rather a gradual transformation of religious thought. Rarely does Luther appear here as a shaper of his environment. Most often, he is portrayed as the driven one, provoked to radicalism by his opponents, placed in difficult situations by his supporters, and time and again, he is the lonely figure who observes and comments on events from the Wartburg in 1521/22, stuck in Coburg while his companions fight for the fate of the Reformation at the Imperial Diet in Augsburg in 1530.