George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers

by George Edmund Street

The only old apartment in this building, so far as I could discover, is a room called the Frieden-Saal. It is a low council-chamber, of late date, which has been most elaborately restored, and renovated with much rich colour. There are some very good hinges and locks on a series of closets here.

Of the churches, there are some five or six old, besides some modern. The cathedral is very curious. Its plan shows two western towers, then a transept; a nave of two (!) very wide bays; transept again; and an apsidal choir, with several apsidal chapels round its aisle. The internal effect of the nave is singular. It is very simple, but from the great width of the bays rather bold-looking. The most notable things here are,—a very noble brass font; a brass corona in the choir; a stand for eleven candles, also in the choir; a magnificent stone rood-screen of late date; a very good Sakraments-Häuslein, and some niches for relics, etc., with their old doors; another stand for lights, something like that at S. Cunibert, Cologne; and some stalls of the seventeenth century, founded very closely upon mediaeval examples. The brass font is circular, supported upon five lions, the two eastern of which are standing, the others recumbent. The stem is covered with tracery and moulding, and the bowl has five large quatrefoiled circles, the eastern containing the Baptism of our Lord, and the other four the emblems of the four Evangelists, with scrolls and inscriptions in red letters; above them, a trefoiled arcade contains half-figures of the twelve Apostles. The corona is large, containing fifty candles in one row; but it is of late date, and frittered away in elaborate tracery and crocketing. The rood-screen has two doorways—one on each side of an altar in the centre of its west front. This altar still remains, with a sculpture of the Crucifixion at its back, but is not used now, a modern altar having been put up in front of it. Two very light open staircases on the eastern side of the screen lead to the Gospel and Epistle sides of the loft. There is also a very fine and large crucifix against one of the nave piers.

The main entrance to the cathedral is through a sort of Galilee of Romanesque date adorned with a number of fine statues; this is at the south-west of the church, whilst on its north side are some fair middle-pointed cloisters.

Next to the cathedral in importance is the Oberwasser-Kirche, a late middle-pointed building; it has a large south-west tower very much of the same type as the great tower at Ypres, having four windows of two lights in each stage, and four stages all exactly alike, and above them an octagonal belfry stage of later date. The first example of this kind of design is seen in the four belfry windows of the cathedral at Soest, and still more remarkably in the steeple of Paderborn cathedral, but here it is developed into even greater regularity. This design, however, is poor in kind, and only respectable when characterized as at Soest and Paderborn by massive simplicity. The south door of the Oberwasser-Kirche is good, being double with square openings within an arched head. Internally the church is very lofty and light, but of no great length, and has an eastern apse, and some traces of old wall painting. A very good brass water vat hung from a small crane by the north door and served as a stoup for holy water; this is a common plan in the Münster churches.[80]

This church was being scraped of paint and whitewash; so also in the cathedral they were removing some trumpery work of the last century, and indeed generally in this district a good deal is being done to the finer churches, and in most of them a box is provided for offerings for the restoration of the fabric: in most, I should say, which are not “evangelical”:—for in these, save where the government is repairing the stone work, they seem to be satisfied to put up pews and galleries, to keep the doors well locked, and to make their interiors look as cold, miserable, and repulsive as possible. Happily, however, the “evangelical” church is not very actively mischievous in architectural matters, and so one sees altars and reredoses still standing with candles and crucifixes, and curtains of white muslin or silk on each side, sometimes, as in the Petri-Kirche at Soest, double, first, on each side of the altar, and then the same height as the altar, and coming forward the full width of the footpace![81] In the old altars, there are always arrangements for closets—generally at one end—whilst in the middle of the back of the altar is often an opening, which I fancied might have been made for the reception of relics, but which seldom seems carefully enough fastened; the ends of the super-altars have also, very frequently, closets; generally speaking, the altars in this district are solid masses of masonry with a projecting and moulded mensa. This, however, is a digression, and I must now say somewhat of the Lamberti-Kirche, which is next to the cathedral the best church in Münster. Externally it has a western tower[82] of considerable dimensions dwarfed in appearance by the immense size of the roof which covers both nave and aisles; this is a not uncommon arrangement in this district, and has a parallel, as will be remembered, in the noble choir of S. Laurence at Nuremberg. Its main result is the great internal effect of height in the aisles and the opportunity it affords of obtaining what Germans were so fond of—an immense length of window opening. The entrance to S. Lambert on the south side is by a very beautiful doorway; the doorway itself is not very large but its jamb mould runs up to a great height and encloses a fine sculptured tree of Jesse; the branches of the tree form a series of medallions, in each of which is a half figure; the whole is very rich in its effect, and the sculpture quite exquisite. Internally the only remarkable piece of furniture I noted was a very fine rood. The proportions and arrangements of the church are very similar to those of the famous Wiesen-Kirche, at Soest, which I shall have presently to describe, and mainly noticeable for the great effect of unbroken space, owing to the large span and great height of the arches, and the small number of piers supporting the roof.

Two other churches near this afforded little worth notice. One of them was Protestant, and as a consequence, was elaborately pewed and galleried; it was seven or eight bays in length, and groined throughout, and entered by a good double door. The other was very similar, and had a curious kind of narthex under the western tower.

The Ludgeri-Kirche is of more interest, having a fine octagonal belfry of late date; this was undergoing repair, as was also the church, whose nave is of simple Romanesque with a good middle-pointed apse. There is another church of small size with an eastern apse, and a very low gabled tower at the north-west angle. This is near the railway station.

For two things besides her domestic buildings Münster is certainly to be remembered: these are the brass work and the sculpture; the latter is generally remarkably good, and I think I have seldom seen more spirited figures than I saw there.

In a silversmith’s shop, opposite the Lamberti-Kirche, I found a magnificent old monstrance, of the fourteenth century, and of very elaborate detail; it belonged to a church some miles distant, the name of which I have forgotten; this man was making church plate in very fair fashion, copying old examples with some care and with a good deal of feeling and enthusiasm; I need hardly say that such men are as rare on the Continent as they are here.

From Münster I returned to Hamm, and thence by another branch railway to Soest, travelling through a country without any feature by which to remember it save its interminable rows of poplars.