Aachen cathedral building

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The Palatine Chapel, the central building of the Aachen Cathedral built by Charlemagne

The Aachen cathedral building is one of the Aachen sagas and legends . The legend is about the building of Aachen Cathedral by Charlemagne . In a first part, the financing of the cathedral building in Aachen is described through a devil's pact and in a second part a ruse with which the devil is deprived of the agreed consideration.

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The Wolfstür, main portal of Aachen Cathedral

The cathedral story tells of the construction of the Palatine Chapel in Aachen , the oldest part of today's Aachen Cathedral , by Charlemagne . Karl wanted only the best materials to be used for the cathedral. When he was going into a long war, he asked the city council to finish the building by his return. The city council soon ran out of money due to the cost of the war, construction stalled and the craftsmen withdrew. In their plight, the councilors made a pact with the devil and promised him the first soul who would enter the church after the building was completed in order to finance the building of the cathedral.

The devil's pact was supposed to be kept a secret, but word got around anyway and nobody wanted to be the first to enter the finished church. A monk asked for advice explained to the councilors that they had promised the devil a soul, but not a human soul, so it could also be an animal soul. The councilors then had a wolf caught and driven into the church. The devil tore the wolf's soul out and only then realized that he had been betrayed. When he left the church, angrily, he slammed the door so hard that it cracked. He also pinched his thumb on one of the door pullers when the door slammed.

Wolf door

Right lion head door puller with the "thumb of the devil" (behind the left lion head)

The legend explains in an aetiological way the name and some peculiarities of the wolf door, a two-winged bronze door at the main portal of the Aachen Cathedral , as well as the meaning of the two bronze sculptures in the entrance hall of the cathedral .

During guided tours, the devil's thumb is still shown to be felt in one of the two lion's head pullers of the wolf 's door . According to tradition, those who manage to pull the devil's thumb out of the door puller should receive a golden robe as a reward. The crack in the lower right corner of the right door leaf can also be clearly seen.

The devil's thumb is a bronze pin that goes straight through from the door panel to the inside of the lion's nose. Only the right door puller contains the bronze pin, otherwise the two door pullers are identical. During the restoration of the Wolf's door in 1924, it was found that the pin is hollow on the inside and apparently originally served as a support for a door ring that was no longer in existence at that time.

A late antique bronze sculpture of a she-wolf (or she-bear) in the entrance hall has a hole at the point where the devil is said to have torn her soul out of her body. A bronze pine cone placed opposite the she-wolf, also referred to in some traditions as a pine cone or artichoke, is interpreted as the soul captured by the devil.

  • Lion head door puller

  • She-wolf / she-wolf

  • Pine cones

Lore

Beginning of the legend in Schiller's Almanac of the Muses

The cathedral statement was first handed down orally, with different variants of each other.

Georg Forster got to know the legend on a trip to the Rhineland , which he undertook together with the young Alexander von Humboldt in 1790 . He describes a short version of the legend of 1791 in his book Views of the Lower Rhine as part of a report on a visit to the Aachen Cathedral , which was then still baroque . He also mentions the two bronze sculptures and their interpretation.

Another early written fixation of the legend can be found in verse form in August Friedrich Ernst Langbein's poem Der Kirchenbau in Aachen. A legend in Friedrich Schiller's Muses Almanac for 1796.

Among other things, the Dombausage can be found in the following collections:

variants

In the older written traditions of the saga, for example in the German sagas of the Brothers Grimm , the crack in the door is reported, but the reference to the stuck thumb is missing. It only appears around the middle of the 19th century.

Instead of slamming the door, the crack is also indicated by the fact that the devil kicked the door.

According to a variant of the legend, a sinful woman who had been sentenced to death was sacrificed to the devil . In this variant, too, the devil slammed the door angrily because he would have gotten the soul anyway.

Related sagas

Bronze statues of the devil and the woman on the Lousberg

Other of the Aachen sagas and legends are also related to the construction of the cathedral.

The cathedral story is continued in the Lousberg saga , which tells how the devil wanted to take revenge for the deception by trying to bury the city with a huge pile of sand. But he was outwitted by a poor woman and dropped the pile of sand north of the city, creating the Lousberg .

Another legend in connection with the construction of the cathedral deals with the casting of the first bell for the cathedral. A fraudulent bell caster removed the silver that had been provided for it and replaced it with tin. The finished bell made only a muffled sound, and the bell-caster was struck by the falling clapper.

The Klappergasse legend is about the inauguration of the cathedral. To complete the circle of bishops at the cathedral consecration, two deceased bishops came as skeletons from Maastricht. The clatter of their bones gave the rattling alley its name.

Literary processing

In his third letter from Paris in 1842, Karl Gutzkow tells of his visit to Aachen Cathedral and also mentions the cathedral story. He puts them in connection with other cathedral statements and expresses sympathy for the poor devil, who was betrayed every time, and understanding for his attempts at revenge.

Victor Hugo also used the legend in 1842 as the basis for a story in the ninth letter of his travelogue Le Rhin . In it, Mr. Urian appears as a traveler from the Black Forest who pretends to own gold and silver mines there.

The saga also served as a template for poems, etc. a. The Düvel sing Dumm (The Devil's Thumb) on Oecher Platt by Joseph Müller (1853) or The Devil 's Thumb on the Aachen Cathedral Portal by Joseph Minetti (1857). A poem by Heinrich Janssen referring to the devil's thumb was placed in the bronze tube when the restoration work on the wolf door was completed.

In his book Der Sagenkreis vom gebrelte Teufel (1905) , August Wünsche gives an overview of sagas and legends in which the devil is cheated out of his wages, and also takes into account the Aachen cathedral statement.

literature

  • Patricia Arin: The Dombausage . In: Herbert Bremm (Ed.): The Aachen Cathedral and its surroundings . 2nd revised and expanded edition. Meyer & Meyer Verlag, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89899-872-7 , pp. 8th f .
  • Jürgen Linden : The cathedral statement . In: Verein Oecher Platt (ed.): Aachener Sagen und Märchen . Aachen (book and CD).
  • Franziska Allgaier: The devil's thumb . In: Verein Oecher Platt (ed.): Aachener Sagen und Märchen . Aachen (book and CD).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Joseph Müller: The cathedral building . In: Aachen's sagas and legends . Verlag JA Mayer, Aachen 1858, p. 6–12 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  2. ↑ a b Joseph Müller: The wolf door and the devil's thumb . In: Aachen's sagas and legends . Verlag JA Mayer, Aachen 1858, p. 13-17 ( digitized in Google book search).
  3. ↑ a b Joseph Buchkremer : 100 Years of Monument Preservation at Aachen Cathedral (=  Aachen Cathedral . Contributions to Building History . Volume III ). Aachen 1955, p. 71-72 .
  4. ↑ Georg Forster: Views of the Lower Rhine . First part. Vossische Buchhandlung, Berlin 1791, p. 323–325 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  5. ^ August Friedrich Ernst Langbein: The church building in Aachen . In: Friedrich Schiller (Ed.): Muses-Almanach for the year 1796 . Michaelis, Neustrelitz 1796, p. 193-203 ( Wikisource ).
  6. ↑ a b The wolf and the pine cone . In: Brothers Grimm (ed.): German legends . tape 1 . Nicolai, Berlin 1816, p. 269 f . ( Wikisource ).
  7. ^ Alfred von Reumont: The cathedral building to Aachen and the Loosberg . In: Rhineland's sagas, stories and legends . Verlag Ludwig Kohnen, Cologne and Aachen 1837, p. 86–92 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  8. ↑ a b Ludwig Bechstein: Aachen Cathedral . In: Deutsches Sagenbuch . Meersburg and Leipzig 1930, p. 99-100 ( online at Zeno.org .).
  9. ^ Johann Georg Theodor Grasse: The cathedral building, the wolf door and the thumb of the devil in Aachen . In: Book of legends of the Prussian state . tape 2 . Verlag Carl Flemming, Glogau 1871, p. 87-89 ( online at Zeno.org .).
  10. ↑ Joseph Müller: The Lousberg . In: Aachen's sagas and legends . Verlag JA Mayer, Aachen 1858, p. 27–30 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  11. ^ Johann Georg Theodor Grasse: The bell in the dome of Aachen . In: Book of legends of the Prussian state . tape 2 . Verlag Carl Flemming, Glogau 1871, p. 91 ( online at Zeno.org .).
  12. ↑ Joseph Müller: The Klappergasse . In: Aachen's sagas and legends . Verlag JA Mayer, Aachen 1858, p. 18–26 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  13. ^ Karl Gutzkow: Letters from Paris . tape 1 . FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1842, p. 30th ff . ( Digitized in the Google book search).
  14. ↑ Victor Hugo: Ninth letter. Aachen - The grave of Charlemagne . In: The Rhine. Letters to a friend (=  Victor Hugo's entire works . Volume 21 ). Verlag LF Rieger & Comp., Stuttgart 1842, p. 104–109 ( digitized in the Google book search - French: Le Rhin, Lettres à un ami . Paris 1842. Translated by FW Dralle).
  15. ↑ Joseph Müller: The Düvel sing stupid . In: Poems and prose in Aachen dialect . P. Kaatzer's Verlag, Aachen 1853, p. 18th f . ( Digitized in the Google book search).
  16. ↑ Joseph Minetti: The devil's thumb on the Aachen cathedral portal . In: Echo of the Present . September 23, 1857 ( zeitpunkt.nrw [PDF; 2.8 MB ]).
  17. ↑ August Wünsche: The saga of the cheated devil . Academic publishing house, Leipzig and Vienna 1905, p. 45 f . ( archive.org ).