The Story of Nuremberg

by Cecil Headlam

Near this is a commemorative escutcheon of the Tucher family, by Holbein, and below it a small wood carving, said to be by Albert Durer.

The Adam and Eve in Paradise over the Schauthüre is by Joh. Creuzfelder (1603), and was placed there by members of the Behaim family.

One of the chief features of interest in the Sebalduskirche is the stained glass. The Tucher and Schürstab windows, according to Rettberg, contain some late fourteenth-century glass, but would seem to have been much restored. The Fürer window was first set up in 1325 (Christ before Pilate). In the Bishop of Bamberg window (Wolf Katzheimer, 1493?) are the portraits of Kaiser Heinrich, Kunigunde, Otto, Peter, Paul and Georg, and in the corners four Bishops, and over all four Gothic canopies.

The Maximilian window is by Veit Hirschvogel (1514). The Emperors Maximilian and Charles V. stand on a ground of white tracery, with their consorts, patron saints, and arms.

The Margrave’s Window is by the same artist, after the designs of Hans von Kulmbach. It was only completed after Hirschvogel’s death (1527), and has quite recently been restored. The single figures of the Margrave Friedrich von Ansbach and Baireuth, and of his wife and eight sons, are on a white ground. SS. Mary and John the Evangelist above, and the Margrave’s arms on the sides. In the foreground, an inscription and an architectural substructure in the shape of a temple, according to the fashion of stained glass at this period.

Finer, better designed and considerably larger than St. Sebald’s is the Church of St. Lawrence. It is one of the best examples of pure German Gothic. Outside and inside, in form and in detail, it exhibits both the beauties and the defects of the German style when pointed architecture was developed according to the taste and feelings of the Germans, uninfluenced by French inspiration.

With regard to detail, amid so much that is admirable, now and again the besetting sin of German art makes itself felt—that lack of self-restraint, that prodigality and extravagance, one may almost call it, of ornament, by which the effect of gorgeous richness is obtained indeed, but at the sacrifice of distinctness. Even in the beautiful windows this is the case. The multiplicity and intersection of the lines tend to blur the “dry light” of the dry beauty of a perfect design.

With regard to form, viewed from the exterior, two features strike the eye and remain in the memory. On the one hand, the enormously high and grossly ugly roof of the choir which overwhelms the building produces the ludicrous effect of a camel’s hump. It is unrelieved by pinnacles or even by the flying buttresses which seem to lift the soaring Gothic naves of France into a world beyond our ken. Once again, as in St. Sebald’s, the notes of symmetry and proportion are lacking. Some flying buttresses do indeed figure in the nave where the side-aisles are not, as in the choir, of the same height as the central nave. These buttresses, however, are decidedly clumsy. On the other hand, the richly decorated western front, with its towers, rose window, open parapet and light gallery connecting the towers, is a pure and pleasing specimen of German art.

According to tradition the St. Lorenzkirche stands on the site of an older, Romanesque chapel which bore the name of “zum heiligen Grab” (Holy Sepulchre) and was erected for the spiritual needs of the inhabitants when houses first began to be built on this side of the Pegnitz.