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You can hardly turn on the radio these days without being bombarded by yet another anniversary.

A hundred years since this, two hundred years since that.

Our popular history seems to be written increasingly in centenaries,

all generating books and exhibitions, t-shirts and special souvenir issues in a huge and happy frenzy of commemoration. Where did this

habit of anniversary festivities begin? The answer to that question takes us to

the great struggle for religious freedoms played out

across northern Europe in the 17th century because the first of all these modern

centenary celebrations seems to have been organized in Germany, in Saxony in 1617, and the object for this

program is a souvenir poster made at the time. The event it's commemorating had taken place a hundred years earlier.

In 1517 the story goes, Martin Luther picked up a hammer and nailed what was effectively

his religious manifesto, his 95 theses, to the church door in Vittenberg and in doing so he triggered the religious turmoil

that would become the Protestant reformation. The object for this program is a print

showing Luther's famous act. It's on a large single sheet of paper called a

broad sheet and it's not just a celebration, it's about getting ready for war.

Well this broad sheet is clearly designed to be looked at again and again so it's not a one

hit it's very crowded this was meant to be passed around hung up distributed and talked

to him. The broad sheet is depicting Luther as the instigator

of momentous change, as a liberator, one of the crafters of the modern period, of a reformed more vibrant religiosity.

A history of the world in a hundred objects. Broadsheet, celebrating the centenary of the Reformation.

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