George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted PapersStreet, George Edmund
History
George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers
Street, George Edmund
Architecture, Gothic; Church architecture -- Europe; Europe -- Description and travel; Street, George Edmund, 1824-1881
And now I must leave the cathedral, and getting over the difficulties
of the horrible pavement which distinguishes this end of the city as
well as may be, take you to the Marien-Kirche; the church which, in
one’s first view of Lübeck, one naturally takes for the cathedral, from
its central position and general grandeur. The whole church is built
of red brick, though unfortunately, internally, it has been daubed all
over with a succession of coats of whitewash. I was able to measure
the ground-plan, which may be taken as a type of the ground-plan most
in favour in Lübeck, and indeed generally in this part of Germany. All
the columns, arches, groining-ribs, and even the window tracery, are
built of moulded bricks; and, as will be seen from the detail, the
piers and arches are particularly well moulded and good. Not so the
window tracery, which is very plain, and like all brick window tracery,
most unsatisfactory, consisting as it does of three arched heads
within the window arch, without cusping or ornament of any kind to
relieve its baldness. The transepts hardly show on the ground-plan, and
externally they are finished with two gables instead of one, and are
so insignificant, consequently, as hardly to deserve notice. Between
the buttresses all round is a row of chapels, their external walls
being flush with the face of the buttresses. Among other good features
in this church are the Lady-chapel to the east of the main apse, and
the late turret over the intersection of nave and choir; and lastly,
the two grand steeples at the west end. This kind of steeple was not
an invention peculiar to Lübeck, but is a kind of which one finds many
examples throughout northern Germany. The earliest with which I am
acquainted are at Soest and Paderborn cathedrals, both of them very
fine, and much earlier in date than the Lübeck examples; and these
clearly have some affinity to the Lombard churches on the Rhine, save
that the continual repetition of stage above stage, exactly alike, is
a feature of their own, and one which the builders of the great brick
steeples in the fourteenth century always had before them. Certainly,
the two western steeples of the Marien-Kirche are very noble, and make
one admire immensely this kind of spire, which, as you will see, rises
from the angles of the tower and the points of the gables, which are
so great a feature as a finish to each face of the tower. These great
gables are generally filled in with tracery, without much regard to
uniformity or symmetry, but sometimes, as in the noble steeple of S.
John, Lüneburg, most effective: the spires in this case, and indeed
almost always, are of timber covered with copper.
It will be seen from the plan that the dimensions of this church are
very grand. The length is 280 English feet; height to vault, 108 ft.;
height of aisles, 59 ft.; the spires, 344 ft.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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