The Castle Church in Wittenberg has undergone an extensive restoration and will be reopened with a celebratory church service on Sunday, 2 October 2016, when The Queen’s antependium for the Castle Church will be unveiled.

At the request of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, The Queen has crafted an antependium in connection with the jubilee of The Reformation in 2017. An antependium is a piece of cloth which is hung up on the front of the Communion table and which marks the different periods of the ecclesiastical year. The Queen’s antependium was created in the red colour which is used on Boxing Day as well as on Whitsunday and Whit Monday. The antependium was embroidered by The Queen using the embroidery technique petit point, which involves very small cross-stitching. The central motif is the “Luther rose”, which was created by the reformer Martin Luther in his time.

After the church service celebration, The Queen will visit the Luther Garden and plant a tree there. The Queen concludes the day with a visit to the town hall, where the town’s golden book will be signed.

On 31 October 2017, it will be 500 years since the reformer Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses up on the Castle Church’s door in the German town Wittenberg. That was the beginning of The Reformation, which reshaped large parts of Northern Europe, both religiously and politically. Denmark officially affiliated itself with The Reformation in October 1536. With this, the Danish church became Lutheran.