War Correspondent Richard Engel

DATE February 24, 2004 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Richard Engel discusses his time in Baghdad before,
during and after the war in Iraq
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

When American TV networks pulled their reporters out of Baghdad one year ago
before the bombing began, freelance journalist Richard Engel stayed. He was
the only American TV correspondent to remain in Baghdad through the shock and
awe campaign. He often reported live while the bombs were falling. There
were times he reported through the day and the night, living on what he
describes as `adrenaline and buzz.' Engel is still reporting in Iraq, now as
a correspondent for NBC News. He's briefly in the US for the publication of
his new memoir, "A Fist in the Hornet's Nest: On the Ground in Baghdad
Before, During and After the War."

Engel has been covering the Middle East since 1996 and taught himself to speak
Arabic. He's reported for the BBC, Voice of America and the public radio
program "The World." He's also edited English-language publications in Cairo
and Jerusalem. But when he went to Iraq before the war, he wasn't able to use
his credentials as a journalist to enter the country.

Mr. RICHARD ENGEL (Author, "A Fist in the Hornet's Nest: On the Ground in
Baghdad Before, During and After the War"): During the buildup to the war,
the Iraqi regime became very strict about the number of visas that it was
issuing for journalists, and I was a journalist at the time but I couldn't
obtain a reporting visa. The major networks were only given one or sometimes
two visas each, and so agencies like CNN or BBC were saving those prived(ph)
visas for their star correspondents, and I was a freelance journalist at the
time, working for public radio and working for ABC, so I wasn't on the top of
the list, or anywhere near the list, to receive one of those coveted visas.

But I was determined to get into Iraq and cover this conflict, so I actually
got a human shield visa. These were issued by the Iraqi government for people
who wanted to go to Iraq and express solidarity with the government and tie
themselves to oil refineries and things like that, and so I was able to get in
using this guise, and then I was hoping once I got there to try and convert it
into a reporting visa, and it was after a long time and having to leave the
country and going from one place to another and then eventually come back, I
did, in the end, manage to secure the proper credentials.

GROSS: Was there ever a point where you expected to play the part of the
human shield?

Mr. ENGEL: No, I had no intention of being a human shield. I hoped that
that would just get me in the door, and then once I was on the inside, I would
be able to secure a reporting visa. I did--never want to be a human shield.
I didn't want to make a documentary or any kind of--I wanted to do normal news
coverage, and I knew that I wouldn't be able to do that unless I had the
proper credentials, because the way the system was set up at the time, every
time you left the hotel where you were staying, which you had to register with
local authorities, you were required to go with a minder, so as a foreigner I
wouldn't have been able to walk around very easily and have done reporting
without--I did some of that, but it was very difficult under the old system to
have done any kind of reporting without proper credentials, and then I
certainly would have looked like a spy, and then I would have been arrested or
killed, and it was a road I didn't want to go down.

GROSS: What was it like for you when all the--well, when most of the American
journalists were leaving Iraq and you were staying?

Mr. ENGEL: I was very worried. I thought, do they know something that I
don't know? Am I making the right decision? Am I being a cowboy, as it's
sometimes referred to? Not everyone did leave, but most--there was a mass
exodus. I think there were about 600 journalists who were there in Baghdad in
the immediate buildup to the war. A lot of them were from radio and print,
and the whole television crews and producers and correspondents and things
like that. And then in the very end, I think there was only about maybe less
than a hundred, and the biggest exodus was from the major networks,
television, the people who made the decision that it just wasn't worth the
risk. And there was significant danger.

So when I was there watching people leave, I was wondering if they were making
the right decision. But I felt somewhat more comfortable than some of the
other people that were there at the time. I'd spent a lot of time in the
Middle East. It's now about eight years that I've been in the region. And I
speak Arabic and I knew Iraq; I'd been there on previous visits. I was a
one-man band, so I felt that I could--if the situation got very much out of
hand, I could go underground and there were many people, I found, who
exhibited really exceptional, many Iraqis, who exhibited exceptional bravery
and would have, I think, sheltered me and helped me out if the situation--if
the authorities decided to round up all of the Westerners in the country or if
there were riots that broke out or if the bombing became so intense that there
was no safe place to be. So I felt somewhat comfortable and didn't think I
was really risking my life too much.

GROSS: How did it make you feel knowing that, you know, ABC and the other TV
networks had sent their reporters home, but, you know, they were happy to use
you if you were willing to risk your life after they sent their reporters
home?

Mr. ENGEL: Well, I didn't feel exploited in any way. This was something I
wanted to do, and they were actually very fair with me about that. They told
me clearly, `We are not telling you or requiring you to be there in any way.
And they said that they would have certainly helped me to leave at any stage.
And I was in contact with them throughout. And I felt comfortable. It was my
decision, and I never was pressured in any way to make it one way or another.
But I did feel more comfortable by having more knowledge of the area and being
able to move around more or less discreetly.

I only had my own little DV, that's a digital video camera, and local people
who were helping me to get around, local drivers and fixers. And I built up
my own network of people, and this is another thing that I spent a lot of time
doing, was working on establishing the right safe houses, the right drivers.
At one stage I had cars parked all over the city, and I told some of them just
keep them running because I never know where I might end up. And I spent a
lot of time trying to get people to fix up their own cars so that if I needed
to make a getaway that I would make sure they had gas in it, that they had
extra tires; that I had hotel rooms all across the city that had generators
and food and crowbars in them. So I really established myself a little safety
net, so I felt that I was relying on myself more than anyone else. So I felt
somewhat comfortable about it.

GROSS: Can I point out that this kind of safety net is kind of like a cottage
industry because you basically have to pay everybody as part of this safety
net, you know, pay them for their services. In some cases, it's more of a
bribe. You had--What?--$20,000 taped to your ankle?

Mr. ENGEL: I had $20,000 with me at almost all times. I spent a lot of it.
I think I spent about $10,000 just keeping this system going, you know. I
didn't think this was the right time to be a cheapskate, so I was
spending--you know, if car repairs for one of these guys would end up costing
$75 and he was charging me $125, I wasn't going to really negotiate too much
because these were people who I was putting my life in their hands. So, yes,
I was paying people for their services, to help me out, to drive me to places,
to hire people, to be there if I needed them. So I had a lot of redundancy.

For example, I was staying in the Palestine. Every day there was a guy who
came and cleaned the room--all of the rooms on the floor where I was staying,
I should say. Every day I saw him, I gave him $20. He didn't do anything.
He didn't come; he didn't clean the room. I gave him $20 just because if
something was going on in the hotel, the authorities were coming, he would--I
assumed he would be the first to know and I wanted my room to be the first one
he knocked on. So it does cost a little bit of money.

GROSS: Well, two questions for you: Where did the $20,000 come from? Was it
an advance from a network or is it just like your savings that you brought
with you? And the second part of that question is: How do you wrap that much
money around your ankle? That's a lot of money, and you can't exactly have
thousand-dollar bills with you.

Mr. ENGEL: No, no. But I had--some of it was an advance from the radio
station "The World," which is a public radio station that I was working for,
and some of it was my own money. And I kept it in hundred-dollar bills in one
of these travel sleeves that they sell. And it looks like an Ace bandage with
a pouch on each side of it. And it was pretty bulky, but at the bottom of
your pants--and I was usually wearing jeans or khaki pants--there's a little
bit of extra room and you don't notice it so much.

GROSS: When word gets around that you have that much money, aren't you
targeted by people who would be happy to steal it from you?

Mr. ENGEL: Well, I made sure that word never got around. I kept most of it
in there, but I never told anyone, not even the people who were around me,
that I had this money. I would keep an extra grand or I would keep at least
$500 in my wallet, so if I ever needed to pay somebody, I would just pay it
out of my wallet, and then if I ever needed to dip into my safety net, I would
keep that around my--I would do that in private. And I also had a money belt,
you know, with a zipper in the back. And I had money stashed away in some of
the safe houses as well, hidden in places. Because I thought, anyway, if I
was ever in a bind, the easiest way to get out of it quickly was to have a
couple hundred dollars to give myself an extra five minutes or to get those
extra three feet to the door.

GROSS: You mentioned you had a crowbar in your hotel room? What for?

Mr. ENGEL: Well, I had crowbars in hotel rooms all across Baghdad, just in
case you needed--I thought if the door is locked on me from the outside, I
could break a lock, or if the room is damaged in such a way and the doorjamb
shifts and the door becomes stuck, if I'm trapped under something--it's just a
useful thing to have a big sturdy piece of metal when you don't know what the
situation is going to--what kind of situation you're going to be in.

GROSS: My guest is Richard Engel. His new memoir is called "A Fist in the
Hornet's Nest: On the Ground in Baghdad Before, During and After the War."

We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Richard Engel. He reports from Iraq for NBC News. During
the bombing of Baghdad, he reported live for ABC. He was the only American TV
correspondent who remained in Baghdad through the bombing campaign.

Could you describe what the worst night of the bombing was like for you and
where you were while it was happening?

Mr. ENGEL: I was on the 14th floor of the Palestine Hotel. I was on my
balcony facing west, looking out over the Tigris River. And I was looking at
the grounds of the Republican Palace, which was Saddam Hussein's main
headquarters in Iraq--in Baghdad, anyway. And the bombs began. Most of the
time they were--for the first two nights, they had begun around 2 in the
morning. They also--or 3 in the morning.

They began at a similar time on that third night, but the intensity picked up
like it hadn't done previously. And then the sky was just yellow with all of
the fireballs that were exploding, mainly clustered around this palace
compound, which was right across the river from me. And it was like thunder,
you know, claps of thunder, one after another. And the windows were shaking
and the building was swaying. It was like an earthquake almost. And some of
the blasts were so close that they would push me back and send my hair blowing
backwards like I had my face in front of a hot hair dryer. So it was really a
terrifying night.

And then waking up in the morning and looking out over the balcony and seeing
the city still seemed intact, but I didn't know what to do. Do you go outside
and you don't know if the city's still even standing. We were very cut off
from information. So I didn't know if I was going to go outside and find that
Baghdad looked like the surface of the moon and that people were going to be,
you know, angry and rioting and--as an American wandering around the city,
what do I tell people when I see them on the street? So getting out and
wandering around very nervously or sheepishly the next morning was also a
unique experience.

GROSS: Were you conscious of trying to not look afraid?

Mr. ENGEL: No. I think--no, I didn't. I was--most of the time when I was on
air, I was just running on adrenaline, so I was just trying to get the words
out and try and be there on time. We were in continuous coverage, so it was
hard enough to just make sure you had all of the live shots. But then I also
had to do reporting. I was the only person. I didn't have a producer who
could go out and get elements for me or anybody like that. So I would finish
with one program, tear off the mike and jump in a car and then try and gather
elements. I was also filming things myself, so I had to gather elements,
gather video, try and feed it out in time and then run back to be for the next
broadcast. So I had to go out of the building, as well, so that I could have
something to talk about.

So most of the time I was so busy that I didn't really have time to think
about too much--OK, here I'm going to stand there, I'm going to look brave or
anything like that. By the time I got to the live position, it was usually
seconds before I was on air. So I was relieved, if anything, if I made it on
time.

GROSS: How did the eating problems, the sleeping problems, all the horrible
stuff from the fires and the bombing in the air, the stress--how did all of
that--your lack of sleep--how did all of that affect your overall health and
your ability to function, you know, well, enough to perform?

Mr. ENGEL: Well, I was actually quite sick for the middle 10 days of the war.
I was in an interview, for example, with Tariq Aziz and I had to call off the
interview in the middle, I was coughing so badly. I started sweating. He was
trying to give his answers, and I was just coughing and coughing. I couldn't
stop myself. So at one stage, he offered me a glass of water and I said,
`Thank you very much.' And then as he was leaving the room, I joked, I said,
`Listen, I'm sorry if I got you sick. I'm an American biological weapon
here.' So I got sick because of the lack of sleep and running around.

GROSS: And did you still report while you were that sick?

Mr. ENGEL: Yeah, of course. You know, the--adrenaline is an amazing
chemical. I think more research needs to be done. When you're totally
flooded with adrenaline, you're on national TV and war is going on, you can
handle a lot of virus.

GROSS: While you were in Baghdad--I think this was during the war. Maybe it
was right before the war--you came across DVDs that were being sold of
tortures and executions. Real ones, not staged ones. What was the source of
those DVDs?

Mr. ENGEL: Yeah, all of this material came out after the war. This is all
the stuff that had been taking place during the regime. And then suddenly,
when this lid was taken off this boiling pot, all of the evil that had been
going on behind closed doors came to the surface. So tapes started emerging
that had been taken by one of the many Iraqi security services. Some of them
showed executions, particularly of Shiite Muslims during the Iran-Iraq War.
There were other videos of amputations--so people who'd upset one of the more
senior officials like Uday or Qusay Hussein and Saddam Hussein, and they had
videotaped the amputation of the hand, for example. Other times--I saw a tape
of someone who had plastic explosive stuffed in his pocket and then was blown
to bits. So there was lots of this. This was a regime, although it was
disorganized on many levels, it as extremely keen on keeping files and keeping
records of things, particularly video records, so there was lots of
information that emerged after the regime.

And then it was being sold openly on the streets, 'cause Iraqis, themselves,
had heard about all these atrocities that were going on, and some Iraqis had
experienced them themselves, and they wanted to--I think it was somewhat of a
cathartic process for them to view these tapes and to buy these tapes and to
sit around collectively and watch them and shake their heads in disgust at
what had happened. So there's quite a bit of this material that has now
emerged since the collapse.

GROSS: And you got to see them?

Mr. ENGEL: Yeah, I saw them. I have a little bit of a sort of morbid
collection of all of these things that I--'cause you accumulate lots of stuff,
and I think it's a good window into what the regime was like. And you can
understand why these people, why the Iraqis are having such a tough time
coming to terms with their past and with their future. There's a lot of
healing that still needs to take place, and it's difficult to do that healing
when they feel that they're still in this chaotic environment that they're in
right now.

GROSS: From what you've seen in Iraq, do you think that the end of the Saddam
Hussein regime is decreasing the power of terrorist networks, or do you think
it's attracting more terrorists and inspiring more would-be terrorists to
become terrorists? Like...

Mr. ENGEL: I think it's attracting. It's become a magnet for terrorists
around the world, and has become a training ground, a proving ground for local
terrorists to rise up. There has been some arguments that it's better to
fight them in Iraq, because, you know, you'll draw in all of these terrorists
to Iraq, and you can kill them there, so you don't have to fight them in New
York or New Jersey or wherever. And that's what some of the local US
commanders are telling the troops in Iraq.

It is one theory, and maybe it will prove to be correct, but that assumes that
there are a definable number of terrorists, that there's that finite number of
people who want to fight against Americans or American interests. And one
could just as easily argue that this situation in there and the chaos that's
on the ground is attracting more and recruiting people who were never even
considering this kind of behavior. So I think, you know, there are certainly
more people from al-Qaeda and that kind of network in Iraq now than there ever
were.

GROSS: Why have you stayed in Iraq?

Mr. ENGEL: Well, I got a job that wants me to be there, for one. And I
think it's fascinating. I wouldn't feel satisfied at all if I had seen the
old system as before and then watch it get pulled down and then to leave it,
you know, midstory, as it were. The story is not over yet, and there would be
no satisfaction for me to leave. It would be like getting up in the middle of
the movie, and it's a great movie.

GROSS: Well, Richard Engel, thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. ENGEL: Well, it's been my pleasure. Thank you.

GROSS: Richard Engel's new memoir is called "A Fist in the Hornet's Nest: On
the Ground in Baghdad Before, During and After the War." He now reports for
NBC News.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Announcements)

GROSS: Martin Luther wanted to reform the Catholic Church, but his
excommunication led to the development of the Lutheran Church. Coming up, we
talk with religion historian Martin Marty about his new biography of Luther.
Also, Lloyd Schwartz reviews a new DVD of the movie "My Fair Lady."

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Martin Marty discusses his new biography on Martin
Luther
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Martin Luther was one of the leaders of the Protestant reformation in Germany.
After speaking out against corruption in the church and challenging the
infallibility of the pope, he was excommunicated in 1521. The Lutheran Church
was developed around the principles he advocated.

My guest, Martin Marty, has written a new biography of Martin Luther. Marty
is a professor emeritus of religion at the University of Chicago. His honors
include a National Book Award and the National Humanities Medal. Marty
described Luther as a man of contradictions. Marty says that as much as any
individual, Luther broke the hold of a single-religion system and broke the
boundaries set by religious elites. Yet he also stressed obedience to
authority. I asked Martin Marty to describe how Martin Luther changed
Christianity.

Professor MARTIN MARTY (University of Chicago): When Martin Luther came on
the scene, there were people all over Europe who found abuses in the practices
of the church headed at Rome by the pope and sometimes in the teachings. And
they started trying to purify, to simplify, to reform so that what's called
the channel of grace by which people are made right with God would be purer
and clearer. And in the midst of all that, Martin Luther came along, a young
monk wrestling with his own demons, you might say, sure that he was offending
God, unsure of whether he was going to be saved. And then reading the Bible
in a certain way, he had it dawn on him that it's all free, it's all grace,
and all these efforts to make you earn your way or buy your way were not only
futile but bad.

GROSS: One of the things Martin Luther is best known for is nailing his 95
theses to a church door in 1517. And this was a kind of common thing in
college--and he was in college then--yes, that you would nail an argument to
the door, and then people would come and debate with you. So what he was
doing was part of a standard practice, but the things he was saying were very
atypical. He was opposing the selling of indulgences. What was the selling
of indulgences?

Prof. MARTY: The selling of indulgences was an invention--frankly, a
money-making invention- in which the individual who had felt guilty before
God, who was sinful, who was sure that she had enraged a just God and feared
spending years in purgatory, at an immediate place of punishment or eternity
in hell would be able to buy a way out of purgatory, lessen the threat and so
on. And so you simply had them printing out these little indulgence scripts.
And depending on how much money you had and how anxious you were to invest,
you got more and more years off that post-life punishment.

And this, to Luther, violated the entire idea that God is a gracious God and
that what God wants is not your pocketbook but your heart. So that's why he
wrote that instead of buying indulgences, you should listen to the Word of
Jesus, who wanted the whole life to be one of repenting. I should say
repenting didn't mean grimness. In his New Testament, repenting was also a
joyful act. And everything about the indulgence system ran against that
notion.

GROSS: Luther wanted people, wanted individuals to have a more direct and
personal relationship to God. What made him think that people shouldn't need
an intermediary of a priest in order to communicate with God?

Prof. MARTY: For one thing, because he was so devoted to the Bible and so
sure that it would make its point, he went back to Jesus, and he found there
that Jesus was constantly opposed to the formal religious system. He was
critical of the priests, the elders, the scribes, the rulers. And his reform
was entirely to help people have a direct relation to God. He teaches them in
the Gospels, the prayer that we call the Our Father. He didn't like it that
you had to bring a lamb for a sacrifice or even two turtledoves, as Mary and
Joseph did when they brought him. That had to be removed; that there be no
interruption in the transaction.

Now he was not, as he's often portrayed, a lonely, kind of Robinson Crusoe of
the faith. He wasn't an individualist who said you didn't have or need
company. He was very churchly. And, in my own interpretation, he kept
wanting to be Catholic of a sort. In fact, he once said, `The more you can
celebrate Communion as if it's in the upper room, where Jesus and the
disciples had the first one such meal, according to the Gospels, the better it
will be.'

GROSS: In Luther's time, many priests and nuns were priests and nuns against
their will. They took their vows, and they couldn't leave, and, you know,
they were forced to stay in that position. Were many men and women almost
forced to be priests and nuns against their will?

Prof. MARTY: I think more people were forced to be monks, friars and nuns
than priests. Priest was in public life, and you could get away if you wanted
to. You were secular, they say, meaning out in the streets, out in the public
realm, whereas the monks and the nuns were cloistered; they were set apart.
Sometimes a girl age 14 would be sent to a religious order in which she says
goodbye to her parents, never leaves all her life and they never see her
again. On the annual visit they might see her through a screen and so on.
But if you're a 14-year-old girl and you're forced into that as opposed to
choosing it, as some do even today, a joyful choice--but if you're forced into
it, then everything happens: restlessness; your sexual juices are flowing;
your dreams of an outer world are there and you're all ready to go.

So when someone comes along who, in Luther's case, a man with a deliverer of
herring, of fish, goes to the Nimbschen monastary convent and puts nuns in the
stinking fish barrels and runs them out at night--these are the set of people
that Luther then had to find husbands for because they were abjectly poor.

GROSS: So you're saying that Luther helped to free nuns in convents...

Prof. MARTY: Yeah.

GROSS: ...with the help of this fish seller, who would hide the nuns in his
barrels?

Prof. MARTY: At least in this one case. Others helped others escape. But
the one that is important for him is that he finally ended up marrying one of
those people who escaped in the fish barrels, Katherine von Bora. But
that's typical. It was very hard. You were almost penalized for life by
being in there. And many people took to it and liked it. Many people stayed
because there was no choice: You didn't have any money; your family had moved
on and abandoned. And so you stayed there, and there was a certain comfort to
that.

So I wouldn't want to portray it that everybody wanted to get out of it.
There are things in the monastic life that Luther admired. He liked the
scholarship of some of the monks. He liked the works of charity. He only
thought they shouldn't have to make a lifelong vow. If they did it
voluntarily, that would not have bothered him. But if they went in with that
vow and the notion that by becoming a nun or a monk, you helped earn your way
into God's grace, that's where he did his attack.

GROSS: My guest is Martin Marty, a professor emeritus of religion at the
University of Chicago. He's written a new biography of Martin Luther. We'll
talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Martin Marty, and his new book
is a biography of Martin Luther. It's part of the Penguin Lives series.

So here's Martin Luther challenging the selling of indulgences, challenging
some of the roles of priests and nuns. He even went so far as to challenge
the pope himself. What did Luther object to about papal power?

Prof. MARTY: He objected, first of all, that what should be spiritual power
was worldly. He didn't think that somebody who was called a vicar of Christ,
a deputy for Christ, should be carrying the sword. Jesus was against that,
and the pope had armies. He was against the notion that the pope could open
the door of heaven and close the door of heaven, open the gates of hell and
push you into it. No human being should do that.

He was opposed to the corruption of contemporary popes, but that wasn't the
biggest thing. Sometimes you'll see Luther portrayed as if he's so offended
by corrupt popes. He knew a lot about human nature, and he knew there was
corruption all over the place. It was the corruption of their teaching and
their religious practice that bothered him. And when he saw the pope making
various alliances, one day with the king of France, one day with the Holy
Roman emperor in Germany and Spain, these alliances were all to gain worldly
power. And he thought it should be a spiritual power and a depth that would
reach the heart as opposed to force one into prisons and into subjection.

GROSS: What did the pope want to do to punish Martin Luther for taking a
stand against the selling of indulgences, for wanting to allow monks and nuns
to leave the monastary and for wanting to diminish the powers of the pope?

Prof. MARTY: The pope first threatened and then excommunicated Luther, which
meant put him outside the church. And that didn't mean a death sentence.
That meant you lost all kinds of legal privileges and so on. It was very low
status. But then at numbers of imperial gatherings, it came to the point
finally where Luther was--well, it would be the equivalent of a subversive
traitor and that he did, in effect, have a death sentence for most of his
adults years. There were times when he had to be hidden. He was hidden in a
castle called the Wartburg, hidden by his friends for a period of time. He
didn't go to the most important meeting of the new, young Lutheran movement at
Augsburg because that would have been dangerous. That's where it's in front
of the emperor.

But the key point--earlier on you mentioned the thing everyone know about
Luther, the 95 theses. The other thing that everybody knows is when church
and state, as we call it today, when religion and regime, when pope and
emperor are in combination, Luther's trapped there. And at Worms cathedral
city, they piled up all of his writings, and the papal delegates asked him,
`Are these yours?' And Luther looked at the monstrous pile. Yeah, they were
his. `Well, will you recant? Will you reject them?' And Luther said, `Well,
I can't. For one thing a lot of them are irrelevant. They're not about the
topics we're debating. Others are just repeating what's in the Bible, and I
can't recant the Bible. Give me overnight to think.' And the next day he
stands in front of the emperor and says, `I can't take these back. Unless I'm
convinced by scripture and sound reason, I can't take them back.' And then
some people hear him say his most famous line, `Here I stand. I can do no
other. God help me.' Lutherans like to do kitsch objects. You know, they
have Lutheran beer mugs and they have Lutheran bobbleheads, and somebody sent
me some socks that say, `Here I stand. I can do no other.'

(Soundbite of laughter)

Prof. MARTY: But that was really defiance. That's as if you're taking on the
highest civil authority in Europe, namely the emperor, who has all kinds of
backing. And it took great courage. It's right after that that his friends
spirited him away. He had been given safe conduct to that event. But when
that ran out, he certainly would have been killed had he not been protected by
Prince Frederick the Wise.

GROSS: Martin Luther had so many differences with the church. Why did he
want to become a priest in the first place?

Prof. MARTY: When he wanted to become a priest, it came out of a deep
conviction. Very first thing, he was a monk before he was a priest, and he
was a very troubled soul. He once said that the trembling of a leaf, a
crackling of a twig would throw his heart into his mouth. He really feared he
was guilty. We have pictures of...

GROSS: Guilty?

Prof. MARTY: Guilty before God, a bad sin. And one time he'd been visiting
his parents. And on the way back to the university there is a terrible
lightning bolt near him, and he's thrown to the ground. And he prays to St.
Anne, who is the patron saint of miners, M-I-N-E-R-S. His father was a miner.
`Blessed St. Anne, if you spare me, I will become a monk.' This enraged his
father who wanted Luther to be an attorney. A lawyer was a good life
insurance for father and mother when they got old. He was just infuriated.
But Luther said, `I made that vow,' and he went.

He became a very serious monk. He was picked out by a good talent scout, my
favorite Catholic of the era, Johan Van Schtalpitz(ph), who sensed that Luther
had scholarship in him. He thought Luther was way too scrupulous in finding
faults. If I'm allowed to say it here, he said, `Luther, you keep me with six
hours of confession as if calling every fart a sin.' That's the language that
was very common in confessional language, if you look it up, at the time. And
Schtalpitz said, `That's not what it's about. This is about God's good grace
to you.' So Luther is torn in all that but, along the way, wants to be
ordained because then he gets to hold the very body of Jesus and the very
blood of Jesus, the bread and the wine, and give it to people and help impart
eternal life. When he finally got to do it, he almost fainted, went into
shock to think that he was holding the body of Christ. It was that vivid to
people in that day. And so he enjoyed that, once he got used to it, very
much. He liked being a preacher, a pastor, a priest.

GROSS: But he also had grave doubts.

Prof. MARTY: It's impossible to separate Luther from his faith and impossible
to separate him from his doubts. He really acted as if the two always
belonged together. He had a concept, the only word I don't translate in the
whole book 'cause you can't. It's called unfactonini(ph), which meant an
agony of doubt which didn't come from your brain, your reason, your
experience. It didn't come from what he usually said were your enemies, the
attractive world, the devil, your own person. He thought that somehow God was
abandoning himself and every believer somewhere along the way. And he would
rise in the night at first, until he finally came to that point that God's
grace reaches you precisely at such moments and lifts you up.

But that didn't mean he was cured of it. And one of the tutors of his
children, George Weller(ph), had what today we would call manifest clinical
depression. What should he do? Well, Luther says, `You've got unfactonin,
and you have to fight it off.' `What are the weaponry?' `The Word of God.
God's grace. But also, in the world, go dancing. Gamble a little bit. Drink
some beer. Do anything except overt sin.' And Luther himself said, `When I
had unfactonin, sometimes I'd reach over and hold my wife in the middle of the
night.'

GROSS: Martin Luther's life is filled with contradictions, many of which you
point out through your book. And one of those contradictions is that although
he wanted Christians to have a more direct relationship with God, he wanted to
eliminate a lot of the hierarchy and special privileges of the clergy, you
couldn't exactly call him the most open-minded egalitarian either. He
condemned the Jews toward the end of his life. What was his problem with the
Jews?

Prof. MARTY: His problem with the Jews, which is, I think, the saddest
chapter of his life and there's no way you can defend one line of it, was
that--as a young person, he was close to them. Translating the Bible, he
would go to Jews to learn what this part of the animal being sacrificed was in
Hebrew and in German. He grew up with them, and he was really convinced that
once the Gospel got out, they would all be converted. This would be a real
sign; they'd all turn Christian. And, of course, almost none of them did.

And then as life went on for him, they almost became the test. He was not
anti-Semitic in the sense of racial anti-Semitism of the kind that ruins the
modern world. He was a religious anti-Semite, which might have been worse in
the language of that day. His attacks were always on the rabbis. They were
the ones who could have taught the Jews the Gospel, and they didn't. So when
he says, `Yeah, you have to burn the synagogues and burn the rabbis' houses,'
he's not out for the massacre of all the Jews, but he does want to cut off the
teaching.

GROSS: Do you think Martin Luther would be shocked if he could come back
today to see how many denominations there are within Christianity?

Prof. MARTY: He probably would be shocked because anybody who knows there
are 25,000 of them would be shocked themselves. I think he had to know that
he was letting something loose that would mean a good deal more diversity.
And if you have freedom, you're going to have choice, and you'll have a lot
more. But I don't think he could have envisioned or could welcome the great
diversity. He believed he would be, in the end, an agent of Christian unity.
And I think he would have smiled in 1999 when the Lutherans of the Lutheran
World Federation and the Vatican signed a joint document saying most of the
things they fought over about grace five centuries ago they now agree on.

GROSS: Well, Martin Marty, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

Prof. MARTY: Thank you for the opportunity.

GROSS: Martin Marty's new book, "Martin Luther," is part of the Penguin Lives
series.

Coming up, Lloyd Schwartz reviews a new DVD of the movie "My Fair Lady." This
is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: New DVD release of "My Fair Lady"
TERRY GROSS, host:

It's Oscar time, and in honor of the Academy Awards, Warner Bros. has released
on DVD a number of classic Oscar-winning movies. One of them, "My Fair Lady,"
has an intriguing back story, as music critic Lloyd Schwartz tells us.

(Soundbite of music from "My Fair Lady")

LLOYD SCHWARTZ reporting:

"My Fair Lady," one of Broadway's most successful musicals, went on to become
one of Hollywood's most successful movies. In 1964, it won eight Oscars,
including the awards for best actor, best director and best picture. Warner
Bros. has just put out a new two-disc, special-edition DVD in a gorgeous, new
high-definition transfer to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the film's
original release. The most interesting added material on this set is an
unusually honest, hour-long documentary about the making of the movie narrated
by Jeremy Brett, the actor who played the role of Freddie.

It's hard to imagine a less-controversial film than "My Fair Lady," and yet
there's a continuing controversy about the casting of the title role. On
Broadway, Eliza Doolittle, the cockney flower-seller whom linguistics
Professor Henry Higgins transforms into an elegant lady, was played by a young
English woman who had only one previous Broadway credit. I'm referring, of
course, to Julie Andrews. She not only had a lovely silvery voice, but she
also brought a certain wistful poignance to the role that no one else has ever
quite matched.

On a DVD of musical comedy clips from "The Ed Sullivan Show" called "Best of
Broadway Musicals," you can see how magical she was singing and dancing
"Wouldn't It Be Loverly" with members of the Broadway cast.

(Soundbite of "Would It Be Loverly")

Ms. JULIE ANDREWS: (As Eliza Doolittle) (Singing) All I want is a room
somewhere far away from the cold night air with one enormous chair. Oh,
wouldn't it be loverly? Lots of chocolates for me to eat, lots of coal making
lots of heat. Warm face, warm hands, warm feet, oh, wouldn't it be loverly?

SCHWARTZ: Two of the show's leading players, Rex Harrison and Stanley
Holloway, repeated their roles in the film. But, typically, Hollywood wanted
a more established star for the title role, Audrey Hepburn, who was also
wonderful, especially in the later scenes of her transformation. But she
wasn't considered a singer. So the Hollywood pros did what they usually did
with movie stars who couldn't sing; they brought in someone else to dub her
singing voice. That uncredited singer was soprano Marni Nixon, who also
dubbed the singing voices of Deborah Kerr in "The King and I" and Natalie Wood
in "West Side Story." According to Jeremy Brett in the documentary, Hepburn
was desperate to do her own singing, as was Brett himself, whose singing voice
was dubbed for "On The Street Where You Live."

Two songs, "Wouldn't It Be Loverly" and "Show Me," were actually filmed with
Hepburn lip-syncing to her own recorded voice. Later, her vocal tracks were
replaced by Marni Nixon's. These outtakes with Audrey Hepburn's own singing
have been located and are included on the DVD. You can see on her face the
expressions you hear in her voice, a voice that gave these songs a dimension
of character missing from the final version of the film.

(Soundbite of "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?")

Ms. AUDREY HEPBURN: (As Eliza Doolittle) (Singing) Lots of chocolate for me
to eat. Lots of coal making lots of heat. Warm face, warm hands, warm feet,
oh, wouldn't it be loverly? Oh, so loverly sitting abso-blooming-lutely
still. I would never budge till spring crept out on the windowsill.

SCHWARTZ: Marni Nixon's pleasant but generic singing erases Hepburn's
inimitable and irresistible vocal personality.

(Soundbite of "Wouldn't It Be Loverly")

Ms. MARNI NIXON: (Singing) Lots of chocolate for me to eat, lots of coal
making lots of heat. Warm face, warm hands, warm feet, oh, wouldn't it be
loverly?

SCHWARTZ: Audrey Hepburn was one of the few people connected with "My Fair
Lady" who wasn't even nominated for an Academy Award, maybe because she didn't
do her own singing. And that year the best actress Oscar went to the star of
"Mary Poppins," Julie Andrews.

GROSS: Lloyd Schwartz is classical music editor of the Boston Phoenix. He
reviewed the new DVD edition of "My Fair Lady."

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.