Master Gerhard

Master Gerhard: The stone head above the axial chapel is considered to be the master builder

Master Gerhard (* around 1210/1215; † April 24, before 1271 in Cologne , latinized as Magister Gerardus ) was the first master builder of Cologne Cathedral . The floor plan of the Gothic Cologne Cathedral Choir comes from Gerhard .

Life

Gerhard's life can almost exclusively be reconstructed through his work. It is possible that Gerhard visited the construction sites of the cathedrals of Troyes and the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris during his apprenticeship and traveling years . It has been speculated whether the builder of the abbey church of Saint-Denis , Pierre de Montereau , Doctor Lathomodorum, was Gerhard's teacher. Gerhard is also said to have been in close contact with Jean de Chelles , the manager of the Notre Dame construction site in Paris. As a parlier or master he must have probably worked on a Rhenish construction works before the Cologne cathedral chapter appointed him as a foreman (rector fabricae or opifex).

On March 25, 1247, the decision to build the new Cologne Cathedral was made, the foundation stone was laid on August 15, 1248. Gerhard is mentioned for the first time in 1257 when the cathedral chapter to him, the magistro gerardo lapicide rectori fabrice ipsius ecclesie , "because of his services to this church" Land at his house in Marzellenstrasse left on a long lease in order to build a large stone house on it.

Shortly after 1248 he married Gude, the sister of the cellar master of the cathedral dean . During an inspection tour on April 24th before 1271, under mysterious circumstances, Gerhard fell from the scaffolding of the unfinished cathedral and was fatally injured. Master Gerhard left three sons: Wilhelm, Peter and Johann as well as a daughter Elisabeth, all of whom accepted the spiritual status.

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Planning Cologne Cathedral

Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden: sponsor of a new Gothic building

Since the time of Prince-Bishop Engelbert I of Cologne (1216 to 1225), the responsible cathedral chapter had been discussing whether to replace the Hildebold Cathedral , which was originally Carolingian, with a new building. Due to the difficult political phase of Kurköln after Engelbert's violent death in 1225, the start of the project was delayed until the 1240s. The decision to build a new building had already been made when the cathedral chapter also agreed on the financing in 1247. Master Gerhard was appointed master builder in the mid-1240s, as the preparation of a large building project took more than three years. Today it is assumed that Gerhard was appointed from a local building works in Cologne because, contrary to French building practice, he worked according to late Romanesque methods. The members of the cathedral chapter had become aware of the Gothic cathedral building in northern France, presumably because Paris was personally known as the most popular study location for Cologne's numerous Cologne theologians and city nobility. Thanks to the personal ambition of Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden , who has been in office since 1238, the idea prevailed in the cathedral chapter of building the cathedral in the then most modern architectural style of the Gothic based on the northern French model and thereby fundamentally breaking with the late Romanesque building tradition of Cologne.

The cathedral chapter set up its own administration to oversee the building project. It was initially called fabrica nova because it was solely responsible for the new construction and not for the maintenance of the old cathedral. The medieval cathedral building administration was headed by two canons, for whom the term procurator or provisor fabricae prevailed. Her most important job was to raise and manage the funds for the construction project. Around 1260 one of these canons was called Gerhard von Rile, whose first name was the same as that of the cathedral builder. In fact, however, it was the foremost task of the provisional to select a foreman and to appoint him as master builder. After master Gerhard was chosen, it was up to him to organize and monitor the work on the construction site. This also included recruiting more than a hundred workers, selecting the quarries from which the stone was obtained and planning the logistics of the ship transport. The negotiations on the conditions under which the selected quarries on the Drachenfels could be used will have been conducted by the provisional for the cathedral chapter.

In the course of his building preparations, Master Gerhard will have visited the construction sites of the French cathedrals. He clearly used the overall arrangement of Notre-Dame in Paris, the choir building of the Cathedral of Amiens , the wall structure of the Cathedral of Saint-Denis and the architectural ornamentation of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris as inspiration. He combined these into a uniform overall plan and tried to create a synthesis of the latest French building ideas. The analytical talent to plan a chapel wreath for the first time in a strictly geometric outline, in which the 7 radial chapels are parts of a regular dodecagon, was his decisive achievement. At the same time he gave the high choir a parabolic floor plan in order to achieve a gentle choir closure. We can assume that the master presented his uniform overall design to the cathedral chapter himself and with personal enthusiasm. He turned out to be "an enthusiastic supporter of the High Gothic, [who] showed possibilities to surpass the previously built cathedrals through consistent application of the principles of the new architectural style, to complete their idea." We can assume that both the Archbishop and Representatives of the cathedral chapter have followed the further construction progress and have especially influenced the building design when they touched on questions of the representative effect and the theological-artistic iconography.

Cathedral foundation

Pope Innocent IV: First indulgence to finance cathedral

Construction work began long before the foundation stone was laid in August 1248. In the Middle Ages it was customary to dig a deep trench for the foundation, which was not much wider than the foundation walls to be built. In many cases, this ditch was laid around the choir of the existing, older church so that it could continue to be used in full. In April 1248, the preparatory work had progressed so far that Gerhard had the eastern part of the Hildebold Cathedral demolished. For this purpose, the wooden beams that supported the old walls in the excavation were set on fire. The fire then spread to the entire Hildebold Cathedral, which burned out almost completely. Only the Epiphany Shrine , which had already been moved near the door to protect it from the intended collapse, could be saved from the smoke; the rest of the furnishings, including two gold chandeliers and probably the original Milanese Madonna from Milan , burned. Just four weeks later, on May 21, Pope Innocent IV granted all believers an indulgence of one year and 40 days who supported the construction of the new cathedral.

The mishap forced the builder to clear away the eastern part of the old cathedral immediately, to close the western part with a temporary closing wall and to prepare the Hildebold Cathedral for use again. However, this gave Gerhard a free construction site to quickly lay the foundations of the Gothic cathedral. He had the construction pit excavated about 9 meters deep so that the foundation could be built on the statically stable layer of gravel. By August, the construction pit for the future axial chapel had been dug so far that a first section of the foundation could be carefully bricked up. At this point Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden laid the foundation stone for the new building on the Assumption Day in 1248 .

The construction work progressed rapidly under the energetic construction management of master Gerhard. In order to build the foundations, Gerhard had basalt blocks from the quarry near Unkel brought across the Rhine in barges; Around 9 barges a week delivered up to 450 stones, which were transported to the construction site via the Trankgasse and a ramp at the height of today's sacristy, where they were mainly layered in the construction pits by unskilled workers. When the first section of the foundation under the chapel wreath was completed around 1250, Gerhard immediately had the rising masonry begin. The work on the foundations for the other construction sections of the choir continued for years. It was not until 1257 that the foundations for the eastern pillars of the transept were laid as the last. Gerhard had the spaces between the foundations filled and created a floor level that was about two meters above that of the old cathedral.

Chapel wreath

Konrad von Hochstaden: Last rest in the Achskapelle

Around 1250 the master builder began to erect the rising masonry of the chapel crown. For this purpose, he had trachyte brought from the Drachenfels , which was used particularly sparingly on the construction site. Gerhard had narrow outer shells - some only 15 centimeters thick - made of trachyte and placed a core made of tuff and limestone between them . This offset technique is considered to be late Romanesque and at the time the cathedral was built on the most modern French building sites (such as the Amiens cathedral) it had already been replaced by a more rational working method. While the Cologne stonemasons were still building up relatively irregular stone blocks, in northern France stone blocks of standardized size were already stacked almost in series. This invention of a more effective construction method was obviously not familiar to Master Gerhard.

Gerhard had organized the work in such a way that two transfer columns with 3 to 4 masons could work at the same time. In the quarry, 3 to 4 stone crushers and 3 raw bossers were working, who already brought the stone into the most suitable shape in order to save transport weight. Three to four ships transport the trachyte from Drachenfels to Cologne to the construction site. 9 to 12 stonemasons worked there to prepare the stone blocks for moving. Overall, Gerhard and his two foremen supervised a construction site where around 80 qualified craftsmen and a large number of unskilled workers were working.

In terms of architectural style, the builder kept pace with the times. The exterior design of the Cologne chapel wreath is clearly influenced by the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris; the window tracery clearly shaped by her. When designing the interior, Gerhard merged the most successful examples of Ile-de-France architecture into a synthesis that is now considered the “perfect cathedral”. The proportions of the chapel wreath from Amiens are drawn into the perfect geometric shape of a regular dodecagon, the pillars are standardized and the capitals are harmonized in their heights. Gerhard has also planned the figures of the apostles on the pillars of the choir and integrated appropriate platforms and canopies into the pillars for them. Overall, he created the prerequisite for his successor to be able to design walls in the high choir that surpassed the glass house from St. Denis , which was considered a model .

Around 1260, Gerhard began to vault the axial chapel and immediately afterwards he also had the older Bible window installed there , which with its jagged style is still attached to the late Romanesque aesthetic. In the years that followed, the other radial chapels were vaulted and the chapel wreath towards the high choir, which remained under construction for another 30 years, was closed with temporary partition walls so that the ambulatory could be used liturgically from around 1265. The cathedral chapter had him immediately as grave lay herrichten, as the most prominent grave was that of the late 1261 Konrad von Hochstaden that in a Tumba was buried in the axial chapel. The archbishop probably commissioned his tomb while he was still alive. So it was up to Gerhard to oversee the casting of the bronze reclining figure in the cathedral building . The tombstone shows the archbishop as a young man in full episcopal regalia. It is one of the finest bronze works of the 13th century and the oldest piece of furniture for the Gothic cathedral.

We don't know exactly how long the builder survived the archbishop for whom he had worked so long. On April 24th, Gerhard fell from scaffolding and was fatally injured. The accident was considered so mysterious that it gave rise to some cathedral sagas. In 1271 his successor, Master Arnold , was already in office. Presumably he had the little head attached to the top of the window in the axial chapel, which we now take to be a portrait of Gerhard.

Other structures

At the latest by working on the cathedral, Gerhard became a well-known foreman, so that he was also involved in other construction projects. Its influence can be demonstrated in the construction of the Altenberg Abbey Church , for which Count Adolf IV von Berg laid the foundation stone in 1255. In 1256, Master Gerhard also designed the Gothic choir of Mönchengladbach Minster , which was inaugurated by Albertus Magnus in 1275 .

Speculation about the origin

Fantasy representation: Master Gerhard in the imagination of the 19th century

Master Gerhard has long been confused with the cathedral canon Gerhard von Rile, who is named as provisional or building director (rector fabricae) in 1264. As a rule, the role of a commissioner in Cologne's medieval construction works was taken over by two clergymen who coordinated the building work for the church builder and were also responsible for the administration of the finances. It "is certainly incorrect" that Master Gerhard was identical with the canon Gerhard von Rile.

The incorrect identification of the builder with the cathedral canon has led to numerous investigations into the origin of Gerhard von Rile. Since there was a noble family "von Ryle" in today's Moselle town of Reil in the Middle Ages , there were suspicions that Gerhard could have come from this family. The Schillinge de Ryle (Rile), who were the Archbishop's ministerials , had lived outside Cologne since 1173 . These Schillinge de Ryle owned a town house with a farm on Marzellenstrasse, of which there is said to be an old drawing. Next door, Gerhard is said to have received a vineyard in the area for which the St. Kunibert collegiate church responsible for de Ryle was pastorally responsible. Finally, it was speculated that Gerhard was the son of the brewer Gottschalk from Riehl , a town north of medieval Cologne.

Aftermath

In the 19th century Gerhard was honored as the “great master”, “in whose head the plan for the miracle building” emerged. At the same time, an overall plan of the cathedral was assigned to him, which remained binding for all subsequent generations of builders. This made Gerhard one of the creators of Gothic German architecture, who consequently also received a plaque in the Walhalla in Donaustauf . This heroic image of Gerhard has changed significantly to this day, whereby he is still awarded the special achievement of having recombined the inspirations from the works of northern French Gothic in such a way that the "perfect cathedral" became visible in the Cologne Cathedral Choir.

Gerhard's talent for planning, his daring to start such a large building and his mysterious accidental death were devoured in an imaginative way in various cathedral sagas in the Middle Ages. In Ludwig Bechstein's version , the builder let the devil persuade him to bet that he could build a water pipe from Trier to Cologne before the cathedral was finished. When Gerhard discovered that he had lost the bet, he threw himself off the scaffolding; the blueprints were burned. Another legend reports that the builder was able to save himself from the devil's bet through a clever trick of his wife. After that, however, the building remained a torso. Stonemasons have designed a gargoyle on one of the pillars of the choir, which is interpreted as a representation of the legend.

Gerhard also served as a literary model in the 20th century. In his detective novel Death and the Devil , Frank Schätzing lets master Gerhard become the first victim of a historical plot by the Cologne patricians against the Cologne archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden.

See also

Portal: Cologne Cathedral  - What Wikipedia knows about the cathedral

literature

→ Main page: Bibliography on Cologne Cathedral (in the portal: Cologne Cathedral )

• Günther Binding: Who was Master Gerhard who planned and built Cologne Cathedral 750 years ago? In: Ulrich Krings, Wolfgang Schmitz, Hiltrud Westermann-Angerhausen (eds.): Thesaurus Coloniensis. Festschrift for Anton von Euw on his 65th birthday (= publications of the Cologne History Association. Volume 41) Cologne 1999, pp. 45–60.
• Manfred Huiskens: Die Dombaumeister, in: Joachim Deeters et al. (Ed.): Ad Summum 1248, The Gothic Cathedral in the Middle Ages, exhibition of the Historical Archives of the City of Cologne on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral 750 years ago, Cologne 1998, pp. 69–82
• Sulpiz Boisserée : Master Gerhard, presumed builder of the cathedral of Cologne. (History and description of the Cologne Cathedral). In: Kunstblatt No. 13 (1824).
• Herbert Rode:  Gerhard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 272 ​​( digitized version ).

Remarks

1. ^ Arnold Wolff: Chronology of the first construction period of the Cologne Cathedral 1248-1277, Diss. Cologne 1968, p. 228
2. ↑ Manfred Huiskens: Die Dombaumeister, in: Joachim Deeters et al. (Ed.): Ad Summum 1248, The Gothic Cathedral in the Middle Ages, exhibition of the Historical Archives of the City of Cologne on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral 750 years ago, Cologne 1998, p. 69
3. ↑ Land register entry in the shrine register of St. Lupus (Niederich). Merlo, Nachrichten, p. 133. Printed by Hasak, Dom, p. 58 ff.
4. ^ Georg Kaspar Nagler, New general artist lexicon: or, News of life and works ... , 1837, p. 110
5. ↑ Merlo, Nachrichten, p. 135; Hasak, Dom, p. 62 ff.
6. ↑ Joachim Deeters: Timing and plan of the new building, in: Joachim Deeters: Ad Summum 1248, The Gothic Cathedral in the Middle Ages, exhibition of the Historical Archive of the City of Cologne on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral 750 years ago, Cologne 1998, p. 9ff
7. ↑ Joachim Deeters: Time and plan of the new building, in: Joachim Deeters: Ad Summum 1248, The Gothic Cathedral in the Middle Ages, exhibition of the Historical Archives of the City of Cologne on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral 750 years ago, Cologne 1998, p. 11ff
8. ↑ Klaus Militzer: Der Dom und das Domkapitel , in: Joachim Deeters: Ad Summum 1248, The Gothic Cathedral in the Middle Ages, Exhibition of the Historical Archives of the City of Cologne on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral 750 years ago , Cologne 1998, p. 100f
9. ↑ Georg Schelbert: The choir ground plans of the cathedrals of Cologne and Amiens , in: Kölner Domblatt 62 (1997), p. 110.
10. ↑ Arnold Wolff: The Perfect Cathedral, The Cologne Cathedral and the Cathedrals of the Ile-de-France , in: Dombau und Theologie in Medieval Cologne, Festschrift for the 750th anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral and for the 65th birthday of Joachim Cardinal Meisner ( Studies on Cologne Cathedral Volume 6), Cologne 1998, p. 37f
11. ↑ Joachim Deeters: Timing and plan of the new building, in: Joachim Deeters: Ad Summum 1248, The Gothic Cathedral in the Middle Ages, exhibition of the Historical Archive of the City of Cologne on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral 750 years ago, Cologne 1998, p. 11
12. ↑ Klaus Militzer: Der Dom und das Domkapitel , in: Joachim Deeters: Ad Summum 1248, The Gothic Cathedral in the Middle Ages, Exhibition of the Historical Archives of the City of Cologne on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral 750 years ago , Cologne 1998, p. 101
13. ^ Lutz Jansen: The archaeological finds and findings from the "first construction period" of the Gothic cathedral in Cologne (1248–1322), Diss Bamberg 1999, p. 293
14. ↑ Joachim Deeters: Ad Summum 1248, The Gothic Cathedral in the Middle Ages, exhibition of the Historical Archives of the City of Cologne on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone of the Cologne Cathedral 750 years ago, Cologne 1998, p. 19f
15. ^ Lutz Jansen: The archaeological finds and findings from the "first construction period" of the Gothic cathedral in Cologne (1248–1322), Diss Bamberg 1999, p. 294f
16. ^ Lutz Jansen: The archaeological finds and findings from the "first construction period" of the Gothic cathedral in Cologne (1248–1322), Diss Bamberg 1999, p. 319
17. ^ Lutz Jansen: The archaeological finds and findings from the "first construction period" of the Gothic cathedral in Cologne (1248–1322), Diss Bamberg 1999, p. 297
18. ^ Lutz Jansen: The archaeological finds and findings from the "first construction period" of the Gothic cathedral in Cologne (1248–1322), Diss Bamberg 1999, p. 302ff
19. ^ Lutz Jansen: The archaeological finds and findings from the "first construction period" of the Gothic cathedral in Cologne (1248–1322), Diss Bamberg 1999, p. 347f
20. ^ Lutz Jansen: The archaeological finds and findings from the "first construction period" of the Gothic cathedral in Cologne (1248–1322), Diss Bamberg 1999, p. 300f
21. ↑ Dieter Kimpel: The offset techniques of the Cologne cathedral choir . In: Kölner Domblatt 44/45, 1979/80, pp. 277f
22. ↑ stadtgeschichten-stadtfuehrungen.koeln: Cologne Cathedral - giant made of stone The figures are not documented, but result from today's experience of the cathedral builders in Cologne, Strasbourg and Regensburg
23. ^ Lutz Jansen: The archaeological finds and findings from the "first construction period" of the Gothic cathedral in Cologne (1248–1322), Diss Bamberg 1999, p. 304f
24. ↑ Peter Kurmann: Perfection and Preciousness, The Choir Pillar Figures in the Architectural Context of the Cologne Cathedral, in: Klaus Hardering (ed.): The Choir Pillar Figures of the Cologne Cathedral, Kölner Domblatt 2012, p. 293ff
25. ^ Lutz Jansen: The archaeological finds and findings from the "first construction period" of the Gothic cathedral in Cologne (1248–1322), Diss Bamberg 1999, p. 350ff
26. ↑ Barbara Schock-Werner: Cathedral stories, with the master builder a. D. by the Cologne Cathedral, Cologne 2020, p. 139
27. ^ Arnold Wolff (ed.): The Gothic Cathedral in Cologne ; Vista Point Verlag, Cologne 2008, ISBN 3-88973-060-4 , p. 51
28. ↑ Arnold Woff: The Cathedral of Cologne, edited and supplemented by Barbara Schock-Werner, Cologne 2015, p 58
29. ^ Herbert Rode:  Gerhard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 272 ​​( digitized version ).
30. ^ Franz Theodor Helmken: The Coeln Cathedral, its history and construction, sculptures and art treasures. Cologne 1899.
31. ^ For example, Hans Jürgen Rieckenberg: The first Cologne cathedral master builder Gerhard. In: Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 44, 1962, pp. 335–349.
32. ↑ Manfred Huiskens: Die Dombaumeister, in: Joachim Deeters et al. (Ed.): Ad Summum 1248, The Gothic Cathedral in the Middle Ages, exhibition of the Historical Archives of the City of Cologne on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral 750 years ago, Cologne 1998, p. 69
33. ^ Robert Dohme : History of German architecture . Berlin 1887
34. ^ Leonard Ennen :  Gerhard von Rile . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 8, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1878, pp. 756-758.
35. ↑ Arnold Wolff : The perfect cathedral, The Cologne Cathedral and the cathedrals of the Ile-de-France , in: Dombau und Theologie in Medieval Cologne, Festschrift for the 750th anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral and for the 65th birthday of Joachim Cardinal Meisner ( Studies on Cologne Cathedral Volume 6), Cologne 1998, pp. 15–47
36. ^ Carl Dietmar: The medieval Cologne, Cologne 2006, p. 268f. See, for example, Heinrich Pröhle: Rhineland's most beautiful sagas and stories. Berlin 1886, pp. 213-216.
37. ↑ https://www.koeln-lese.de/index.php?article_id=166
38. ↑ https://www.koelner-dom.de/rundgang/bedeutendewerke/riss-f-ende-des-13-jahrhunderts/sagen-legende/
39. ^ Carl Dietmar: The medieval Cologne, Cologne 2006, p. 268
40. ^ Frank Schätzing: Tod und Teufel, Emons Cologne 1995.