Germany Guide
Schleswig-Holstein
The Marienkirche
Address: Markt
The Marienkirche behind the Rathaus is not only Lübeck's most impressive church, it's also the finest brick church in northern Germany. The merchant elite, their independence from the Church guaranteed by Saxon overlord and town founder Henry the Lion, had a point to prove when they built it during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries – it's no coincidence the church melds into the heart of civic power, nor that its two spires dwarf those of the bishop's Dom south. A minor collapse mid-build provided an excuse to modify the original Romanesque plans and switch instead to fashionable French Gothic; flying buttresses explode like ribs from the side aisles to the nave.
If its scale impresses from the outside the interior inspires awe. Gothic frescoes of Christ and saints add colour to otherwise plain walls; the pastel images only resurfaced when a fire caused by the 1942 air raid licked away the coat of whitewash. Two bells that fell from the south tower during the raid remain shattered on the floor as a poignant memorial to war dead. Also lost in the fire was the instrument of Lübeck's favourite organist, Dietrich Buxtehude, whose improvisatory, fugal concerts were a sensation during a forty-year tenure from 1667. The new Buxtehudeorgan, the world's largest mechanical organ, stars in concerts.
There's superb visual art too. Behind the chancel in the Marientiden-Kapelle, beneath the final words of a Buxtehude cantata in stained glass, a double-winged triptych altar from Antwerp depicts the life of St Mary in cobweb-fine carving. In the ambulatory nearby, a pair of sandstone Passion reliefs by Münster's Hinrik Brabender draws visitors mostly for a tiny mouse in the Last Supper scene. Apparently, like the ravens of London's Tower, Lübeck was secure so long as a rose bush bloomed beside the Marientiden-Kapelle. A mouse gnawed at its roots to create a nest, the plant wilted, and soon afterwards, in 1201, Danish king Waldemar II conquered the city for a quarter of a century. Smooth from wear, the tiny mouse is said to bring wealth to whoever touches it with their left hand.