His father, Hans Luther (Lyder, Luder, Ludher), a peasant from the township of Mdhra in Thuringia, after his marriage with Margarethe Ziegler, had settled in Mansfeld, attracted by the prospects of work in the mines there.
Ziegler's hypsometric maps (1856) or so-called " relief maps," which attempt to delineate the ground so as to give the impression of a relief, are generally preferred.