Lübeck Cathedral

Stand still for a moment and listen. Near the cathedral the city goes quiet. Water lies close by, and ducks call from the reeds at the edge of the pond. The air carries the cool, mineral smell of old brick after rain. Above you, two slender towers rise in dark red against the northern sky. You are at the southern tip of Lübeck's old town island, and this church has watched over this corner of the city for more than eight hundred years.

The story begins in the twelfth century with Henry the Lion, one of the most powerful princes in medieval Germany. He was Duke of Saxony and Bavaria. He refounded Lübeck as a trading town, and in 1173 he laid the foundation stone of this cathedral. It was meant to be a bishop's church, a statement of faith and power on the edge of the Baltic world. At that time, this coast was still a frontier.

Notice what the building is made of. There is almost no natural stone here. The plains of northern Germany had very little good building stone, so builders fired clay into bricks. This cathedral was among the earliest large brick churches in the Baltic region. It helped begin a style that later spread along the coast, through the trading towns of the Hanseatic League. That was a powerful network of merchant cities, and Lübeck was its leading member.

The first church followed the Romanesque style. Romanesque buildings have rounded arches, thick walls and a heavy, grounded feeling. Over the following centuries, tastes changed. Builders lengthened the church and raised its side aisles to the height of the nave. The result was a Gothic hall church, a tall and open space with pointed arches. Look carefully and you can still find both periods in one building, the older rounded forms beside the later pointed ones.

Here is something many visitors miss. Lübeck has two great medieval churches, and they stand almost at opposite ends of the old town. This cathedral belonged to the bishop. Saint Mary's Church, near the market square, belonged to the merchants and the city council. The merchants built their church taller and grander, partly as a message. In this city, wealth and trade could stand beside the authority of the Church, and sometimes above it.

Walk inside, and the light changes. The walls are washed in pale tones, and the brick piers rise in long, calm lines. The space feels long and slightly austere. Your footsteps carry far. Then your eye moves down the nave and stops at something extraordinary, high above the centre of the church. A huge carved crucifix hangs there, surrounded by figures. It is one of the most remarkable works of late medieval art in northern Europe.

This is the triumphal cross by Bernt Notke, a Lübeck sculptor and painter. He completed it in 1477. Christ hangs at the centre, with Mary, John and other figures gathered around him. Bishop Albert Krummedick paid for the work, and he appears among the figures, kneeling. Notke's carving is full of feeling. The faces show real grief, and the bodies have weight. Take a moment here. Five centuries have passed, and the emotion still reaches the floor where you stand.

Below the cross is a carved screen that divides the nave from the choir. In the Middle Ages, this choir was the domain of the clergy. Ordinary worshippers stayed in the nave and looked through toward the altar. The screen marks that old boundary between priests and people. Over time, the cathedral filled with chapels, tombs and memorial slabs. Wealthy families and church leaders paid for a place close to the sacred centre of the building.

The Reformation reached Lübeck in the sixteenth century, and the city became Lutheran. The cathedral became a Protestant church, as it is today. Many churches in this period lost their images. Here, a remarkable amount of medieval art survived. One famous treasure did leave the building, however. A painted altarpiece by Hans Memling, the great Flemish master, was made for this cathedral. Today you can see it in the Saint Anne's Museum, a short walk away.

Now comes the darkest chapter. In March 1942, during the Second World War, British bombers attacked Lübeck. It was one of the first heavy raids on a historic German city centre. Fire spread through the old town, and the cathedral was badly damaged. Parts of the roof and the towers burned. Later, part of the vaulting in the eastern end collapsed. Much of the building stood open to wind and rain for years.

The rebuilding took decades, and it continued long after the war. Restorers worked slowly, brick by brick and vault by vault. They recovered and repaired much of the art and the structure. When you look at the walls today, some bricks look sharper and newer than others. These differences are not mistakes. They are the record of the reconstruction, and they show how much was lost and how much was saved.

In 1987, the old town of Lübeck became a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the cathedral is part of that heritage. Yet it is not only a monument. It remains a working church, with services, concerts and the sound of the organ on many days. If you hear music while you are here, stay for a few minutes. Sound moves through this long brick space in a slow, warm way.

When you step back outside, walk a little toward the water. Turn around and look up at the two towers once more. Notice the colour of the brick in this light, red in some places and almost brown in others. Notice the quiet of the streets around you, the low houses and the trees. Eight centuries ago, a duke chose this spot for his bishop. Today, the cathedral still stands at the edge of the island, close to the water, as the city moves on around it.