East Germany to mark a Martin Luther jubilee
| East Berlin
East German Communist leader Erich Honecker will direct preparations for an elaborate jubilee in 1983 to mark the 500th anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation.
The East German authorities long have claimed Luther as part of the Communist state's cultural heritage, calling him a German revolutionary whose reformist ideas made him a forerunner of radical philosophers such as Marx.