Germany Guide
Schleswig-Holstein
Katharinenkirche
Address: Glockengiesserstrasse
Opening time: April– Sept Tues– Sun 11am–1pm & 1.30–5pm
Price: Free
The museum-church Katharinenkirche is a thirteenth-century Franciscan monastery whose renown is for its trio of chunky sculptures by Ernst Barlach on the facade. On the left, titled Woman in the Wind, The Beggar and The Singer, their vivacious style reveals the influences of medieval carving and social empathy that shaped the Expressionist's works. Barlach would have cast all nine in a "Community of Saints" cycle had he not been condemned as "degenerate" by the Nazi regime in 1932, leaving Bauhaus sculptor Gerhard Marcks to finish the job after the war. Inside, Tintoretto's monumental The Resurrection of Lazarus is half-hidden in the gloom on the west wall, a souvenir picked up by a Lübeck merchant from Venice.