George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers

by George Edmund Street

S. James has a very plain brick tower, and a good triapsidal east end, very much like that of S. Katharine. The steeple is crowned with a modern spire: inside there is a late metal font, of the kind popular in Lübeck—a large vat-like vessel standing on the backs of four kneeling angels, and covered with small and ineffective arcading with figures and subjects. There is a large organ of rather early date, and two curious standard lanterns for carrying lights in procession: they are of very late date, but still so rare as to be worth notice.

S. Giles has no one feature of interest, save its very fine tower and spire.

Of the hospitals the most curious is the Heiligen-Geist-Spital: the ground-plan and general arrangement of which are most remarkable. The chapel is the oblong building at the west end, only two bays in length, but of great width: against its east wall is a rood-screen and loft, under which is the altar, and, on either side of the altar, doors which admit every one under the loft into the hospital. This, like many of our old hospitals (S. Mary’s, Chichester, and Higham Ferrers, are cases in point) is one immense hall, 250 ft. long by 40 ft. wide, and has down its length two passages, and four rows of cubicles for the inmates, and accommodates no less than 150 poor people: truly a most royal provision for the poor. There is an entrance at the sides, but the main entrance is through the chapel, through which there is a constant passing, and it is therefore more like a great hall than a chapel. How much better is the ordinary English arrangement (of which I saw a grand example at Lüneburg), in which the chapel is at the east end of the hall. There the chapel sanctifies the whole, instead of being itself profaned, as is the case at Lübeck.

The hospital was founded by one Bertram Mornewech, in A.D. 1286, and is similar in plan, I believe, to the great Gothic Hospital della Scala at Siena.

In the chapel are some brass screens like those in the Marien-Kirche, but inferior to them. The west front is remarkable and certainly very picturesque, with its three gables and its multitude of turrets.

The most interesting building left to be described is the ruin of the Burg-Kloster. This was a Dominican convent, and at the Reformation was converted into a hospital for the poor. In 1818, a portion of the vaulting of the church fell in, and then they pulled down the rest of the church, sending their stained glass and the organ to the Marien-Kirche, and their triptychs and altar furniture to the Katerinen-Kirche. The north wall only of the church now remains, but this shows traces of stone windows enclosed within brick arches, like those in the apse of S. Katharine, and its destruction is therefore specially to be deplored. The foundation dates from A.D. 1229. The rest of the conventual buildings still in great part remain, but so mixed up with other and modern erections, that it is rather difficult to understand them.

There is, however, a fair cloister on the north side of the church, groined throughout and tolerably perfect: out of this, on one side, is a kind of open groined stall, which looks something like the ambulatories which are so beautiful a feature of our own abbeys; and out of this ambulatory, one enters a large hall once apparently divided by a row of columns down the centre. North of these buildings is a room which seems to have been part of the refectory, remarkable for an exquisite pavement of small tiles—red, black, and white—arranged in an ingenious and intricate pattern, of which I made a careful drawing. My drawing shows the entire remaining portion of this pavement which, it will be seen, continued on beyond the present partition-wall. A central shaft is still left, with an old oak sideboard framed round its base in a most effective manner. In another part of the Burg-Kloster there is a small fragment of similar pavement, which looks as if it had been the hearth under a fire.

Near S. Giles’s church there is another ruined conventual building, S. Anne’s Kloster. This was originally a nunnery of “Clarissernonnen” (I suppose these were nuns of S. Clare, an order who had a few houses in England), but has been converted into a workhouse. Unfortunately a great fire in 1843 consumed the church, and left nothing but the outer walls standing, and when I was there it was used as a place for the workhouse men to break stones or the roads. The church is said to have been designed and built by one Synsingus Hesse of Brunswick, who came to Lübeck in 1502 with five assistants, and completed the work in 1510. With this date the work tallies very well, though I confess there is no mark of the peculiarities of a Brunswick architect, which, as must be known to any who have ever seen that very remarkable city, are decided enough. Part of the west front of the church of S. Anne was built with courses of stone and brick, a most unusual arrangement in Germany, though common enough in Italian pointed, and always very striking in its effect; the domestic buildings retain a good many groined rooms, and a simple cloister in very perfect condition.

We come now to the Rathhaus, whose long line of picturesque front is so great a feature in the principal street of the city. Its history is so confusing and its style so peculiar, that it is very difficult indeed to affix any certain date to its various portions. It was burnt down in A.D. 1276, and there was another fire in A.D. 1358. In A.D. 1389 there were considerable works executed, including the famous cellars, whose still more famous wine was all cleared out by the French, when they sacked the good city in A.D. 1806. The portion of the Rathhaus to the south of the market-place seems to have been built in 1442–44, and the alterations of the Börse towards the street in 1570 and 1673; so that we may well expect a confusing and picturesque mixture of works of various dates. The earliest external portion appears to me to be the screen on the north side in front of the two gabled roofs; and this and the other great screens or parapets towards the market-place and towards the street are the most picturesque portions of the building. They are entirely executed in red and black brick, the cusping being all done in moulded brick. As a rich piece of colour this work is very valuable, but architecturally its sole merit is a kind of picturesqueness, which it certainly has in great force.

The fact is that in northern Germany all the domestic architecture was very full of faults; the fronts of the buildings were very seldom at all ruled by the roof line, and their stepped gables, traceried, mullioned, and pinnacled, had no reference to anything save a desire to look well; and so here some of the most striking portions of the old Rathhaus are done without any regard to constructional wants, and simply as masks of the construction; the fronts are built up to conceal the roofs, arcaded and pinnacled without meaning, and in a style very elaborate as compared with the other brick work throughout the city.