DETAILS. German window tracery was best where it most closely followed French patterns, but it tended always towards the faults of mechanical stiffness and of technical display in over-slenderness of shafts and mullions. The windows, especially in the “hall-churches,” were apt to be too narrow for their height. In the fifteenth century ingenuity of geometrical combinations took the place of grace of line, and later the tracery was often tortured into a stone caricature of rustic-work of interlaced and twisted boughs and twigs, represented with all their bark and knots (branch-tracery). The execution was far superior to the design. The carving of foliage in capitals, finials, etc., calls for no special mention for its originality or its departure from French types.
FIG. 141.—COLOGNE CATHEDRAL. PLAN.
PLANS. In these there was more variety than in any other part of Europe except Italy. Some churches, like Naumburg, retained the Romanesque system of a second western apse and short choir. The Cistercian churches generally had square east ends, while the polygonal eastern apse without ambulatory is seen in St. Elizabeth at Marburg, the cathedrals of Ratisbon, Ulm and Vienna, and many other churches. The introduction of French ideas in the thirteenth century led to the adoption in a number of cases of the chevet with a single ambulatory and a series of radiating apsidal chapels. Magdeburg cathedral (1208–11) was the first erected on this plan, which was later followed at Altenburg, Cologne, Freiburg, Lübeck, Prague and Zwettl, in St. Francis at Salzburg and some other churches. Side chapels to nave or choir appear in the cathedrals of Lübeck, Munich, Oppenheim, Prague and Zwettl. Cologne Cathedral, by far the largest and most magnificent of all, is completely French in plan, uniting in one design the leading characteristics of the most notable French churches (Fig. 141). It has complete double aisles in both nave and choir, three-aisled transepts, radial chevet-chapels and twin western towers. The ambulatory is, however, single, and there are no lateral chapels. A typical German treatment was the eastward termination of the church by polygonal chapels, one in the axis of each aisle, the central one projecting beyond its neighbors. Where there were five aisles, as at Xanten, the effect was particularly fine. The plan of the curious polygonal church of Our Lady (Liebfrauenkirche; 1227–43) built on the site of the ancient circular baptistery at Treves, would seem to have been produced by doubling such an arrangement on either side of the transverse axis (Fig. 142).
FIG. 142.—CHURCH OF OUR LADY, TREVES.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. The so-called Golden Portal of Freiburg in the Erzgebirge is perhaps the first distinctively Gothic work in Germany, dating from 1190. From that time on, Gothic details appeared with increasing frequency, especially in the Rhine provinces, as shown in many transitional structures. Gelnhausen and Aschaffenburg are early 13th-century examples; pointed arches and vaults appear in the Apostles’ and St. Martin’s churches at Cologne; and the great church of St. Peter and St. Paul at Neuweiler in Alsace has an almost purely Gothic nave of the same period. The churches of Bamberg, Fritzlar, and Naumburg, and in Westphalia those of Münster and Osnabrück, are important examples of the transition. The French influence, especially the Burgundian, appears as early as 1212 in the cathedral of Magdeburg, imitating the choir of Soissons, and in the structural design of the Liebfrauenkirche at Treves as already mentioned; it reached complete ascendancy in Alsace at Strasburg (nave 1240–75), in Baden at Freiburg (nave 1270) and in Prussia at Cologne (1248–1320). Strasburg Cathedral is especially remarkable for its façade, the work of Erwin von Steinbach and his sons (1277–1346), designed after French models, and its north spire, built in the fifteenth century. Cologne Cathedral, begun in 1248 by Gerhard of Riel in imitation of the newly completed choir of Amiens, was continued by Master Arnold and his son John, and the choir was consecrated in 1322. The nave and W. front were built during the first half of the 14th century, though the towers were not completed till 1883.
