section_path: Early life and education/Birth and early life
section_name: Birth and early life
paragraph_text: Birth and early life
  
  Martin Luther was born on 10 November 1483 to Hans Luder (or Ludher, later Luther) and his wife Margarethe (née Lindemann) in Eisleben, County of Mansfeld, in the Holy Roman Empire. Luther was baptized the next morning on the feast day of Martin of Tours.
  
  In 1484, his family moved to Mansfeld, where his father was a leaseholder of copper mines and smelters and served as one of four citizen representatives on the local council; in 1492, he was elected as a town councilor. The religious scholar Martin Marty describes Luther's mother as a hard-working woman of "trading-class stock and middling means", contrary to Luther's enemies, who labeled her a whore and bath attendant.
  
  He had several brothers and sisters and is known to have been close to one of them, Jacob.