Coat of arms of Wittenberg, Germany

Wittenberg, officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg, is the fourth-largest town in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, in the Federal Republic of Germany. It is situated on the River Elbe, 60 kilometres (37 mi) north of Leipzig and 90 kilometres (56 mi) south-west of the reunified German federal capital city of Berlin, and has a population of 46,008 (2018). Wittenberg has close connections with Martin Luther (1483–1546) and the 16th century religious / theological movement of Protestantism begun here in the Reformation, and the large branch of Western Christianity started here of Evangelical Lutheranism, for which it received the honorific title Lutherstadt and has been called the "cradle of the Reformation" and "cradle of Protestantism". Several of Wittenberg's buildings are associated with the historical / religious events, including a preserved part of the Augustinian monastery of the local community of the world-wide Roman Catholic Order of St. Augustine in which Luther lived, first as a celibate monk and later as property owner with his later wife Katharina von Bora (c. 1499 – 1552), and family. Wittenberg was also the seat of the prince Elector of Saxony, a dignity held by the dukes of the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg, making it one of the most powerful cities in the thousand-years-old Holy Roman Empire (A.D. c.800 / 962–1806) in Central Europe. Today Wittenberg is an industrial centre and tourist destination, with an intact historic centre and various additional memorial sites dedicated to Martin Luther and his friend and fellow theologian / reformer Melanchthon, author of the Evangelical Lutheran seminal theological document of the Augsburg Confession of 1530. The buildings associated with those two figures were added to the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) designated World Heritage list in 1996, along with other sites in nearby Eisleben, because of their religious significance and testimony to one of the most influential religious, political and social movements of world history from the Medieval / Middle Ages era in the History of Europe.