More peculiarly German are the brick churches of North Germany, where stone was almost wholly lacking. In these, flat walls, square towers, and decoration by colored tiles and bricks are characteristic, as at Brandenburg (St. Godehard and +St. Catherine+, 1346-1400), at +Prentzlau+, Tängermünde, Königsberg, &c. Lübeck possesses notable monuments of brick architecture in the churches of +St. Mary+ and St. Catherine, both much alike in plan and in the flat and barren simplicity of their exteriors. +St. Martin’s+ at +Landshut+ in the South is also a notable brick church. +LATE GOTHIC.+ As in France and England, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were mainly occupied with the completion of existing churches, many of which, up to that time, were still without naves. The works of this period show the exaggerated attenuation of detail already alluded to, though their richness and elegance sometimes atone for their mechanical character. The complicated ribbed vaults of this period are among its most striking features (see p. 239). Spire-building was as general as was the erection of central square towers in England, during the same period. To this time also belong the overloaded traceries and minute detail of the +St. Sebald+ and St. Lorenz churches and of several secular buildings at Nuremberg, the façade of Chemnitz Cathedral, and similar works. The nave and tower of St. Stephen at Vienna (1359-1433), the church of Sta. Maria in Gestade in the same city, and the cathedral of Kaschau in Hungary, are Austrian masterpieces of late Gothic design. +SECULAR BUILDINGS.+ Germany possesses a number of important examples of secular Gothic work, chiefly municipal buildings (gates and town halls) and castles. The first completely Gothic castle or palace was not built until 1280, at +Marienburg+ (Prussia), and was completed a century later. It consists of two courts, the earlier of the two forming a closed square and containing the chapel and chapter-house of the Order of the German knights. The later and larger court is less regular, its chief feature being the +Great Hall+ of the Order, in two aisles. All the vaulting is of the richest multiple-ribbed type. Other castles are at Marienwerder, Heilsberg (1350) in E. Prussia, Karlstein in Bohemia (1347), and the +Albrechtsburg+ at Meissen in Saxony (1471-83).