St. Gertrud Chapel (Lübeck)
The St. Gertrud Chapel was a church in Lübeck.
Location
The St. Gertrud Chapel was located north of Lübeck's old town , directly in front of the castle gate in the vicinity of the Burgfeld . For a viewer leaving the city, your location was to the left of the road leading to Travemünde .
history
For the burial of the numerous victims of the Black Death , a cemetery was laid out in front of the castle gate in the summer of 1350 - documented as cymiterium pauperum , i.e. poor cemetery. It was consecrated to the patron saint of travelers St. Gertrud . The building of an associated chapel was planned from the beginning, as documents show. The construction of this church was implemented at a time that can no longer be determined between 1350 and 1370.
On May 21, 1373, Bishop Bertram confirmed a vicarie in honor of Saints Gertrud and Saint Thomas of Canterbury for the St. Gertrud Chapel, which had been donated by the Lübeck Council and whose award was also his sole prerogative. This remained the only ecclesiastical fiefdom assigned to the chapel.
At the instigation of the Mayor Simon Swerting , who was on a diplomatic mission in London at the time , the English King Edward III gave a gift. the chapel in 1375 a relic of their patron saint Thomas of Canterbury, which was worshiped there. From 1394, the alleged half of one of the innocent children of Bethlehem , which had been bought in Venice , was also venerated in the St. Gertrud Chapel .
When Emperor Charles IV visited Lübeck in October 1375 , he and Empress Elisabeth put on the robes for the ceremonial entry into the city in the St. Gertrud Chapel.
During the feud of the counts in September 1534, the siege of Lübeck threatened by the army of Duke Christian von Holstein that had drawn up near Krempelsdorf . As a precaution, at the instruction of Jürgen Wullenwever, the St. Gertrud Chapel was partly demolished in order not to provide cover for the enemy. After the crisis was resolved, the Church was restored.
In 1622, the complete and definitive demolition of the St. Gertrud Chapel took place. Despite the objections of the Lübeck clergy, the building had to give way to the re-fortification of the castle gate with contemporary, space-consuming fortress walls based on the bastionary system . The associated cemetery was moved to the northwestern edge of the castle field and is still there today. The name of the church and cemetery has been retained in the naming of the St. Gertrud district .
architecture
Only one written source refers to the architectural history: in 1451 the merchant Everd Witte gave the chapel in his will with 10 marks for upcoming construction work. There is no documentary information about the architectural form of the church; however, there is a representation on a city view made by the painter Johannes Willinges in 1597 . It shows a presumably polygonal building, surrounded by buttresses or columns that support a domed roof crowned by a turret .
literature
- Monument Council of the Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck (ed.): The architectural and art monuments of the Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck, Volume IV . Publishing house by Bernhard Nöhring, Lübeck 1928