Ulm, straddling the Danube, is a middle-sized city in southern Germany, on the northern end of Bavaria. The city center, or Munster, is dominated by two large buildings. The first is the impressive city hall. In Germany a city hall is called a Rat Haus, a name that never caught on in the U.S. The second structure is the Ulm Minster, which when finally completed in 1890 held the record for being one of the tallest buildings on earth, behind the Eiffel Tower and the Washington Monument. It remains the tallest church in the world (per Wikipedia) and local tour guides call it the “Protestant St. Peter’s” although it has never been more than a municipal parish to the Lutherans of Ulm.
In 1377 the mayor of the city crawled down into a large foundation hole and balanced on top of a cornerstone deep in the ground. According to a contemporary account he stacked 100 pieces of gold on the block. Citizens both rich and poor followed suit, thus providing the initial capital for the gothic church. No bishops crawled down after him because the Catholic church had no interest in the project. This has always been a church for the Stadt and its citizens.
Ulm was a rich trading port on the Danube and wanted to celebrate the fact by building the biggest church around. In a story known to project managers everywhere, plans kept changing until ultimately, in a burst of enthusiasm, the city council told the architect the church to make room for 20,000 worshipers, about twice the city population at the time. This meant that a foundation built for a more modest church would be holding up a much larger edifice. To make matters worse, soon after that order the city went broke; after 100 years the giant church had a nave, an apse and a roof, barely, but no monumental steeple and spire. The north wall bulged out dangerously and in 1492 blocks of loose stone started raining down on the heads of worshipers, which no doubt dampened both attendance and enthusiasm. Trade over the next century petered out, reducing the importance of Ulm as a port. Consequently, just about everything stopped for the next 300 years.
But not quite everything. In 1530, in what might be the most bizarre citizen referendum ever, Ulmers voted that one and all in the city should embrace the Reformation and everybody should turn Protestant. Enter the Iconoclasts: mobs of poorly-organized Protestants who attacked Catholic churches throughout Reformation Europe breaking up hand-carved altars for firewood or tearing down and ripping up priceless icons in an effort to impose a Puritan-like asceticism on everybody else. According to a chronicle at the time the minster’s precious objects were saved and hidden just before the zealots could get their paws on them.
Here’s how I taught my kids about medieval church architecture: Lie on the floor with your arms outstretched to either side. Your feet sticking up are the front towers and your ankles are the narthex, the front entryway. Your legs and torso are the nave, the main part of the church where the people sit. Your head is the chancel where only the priest and choir can go, your nose is the altar and the round top of your head is the apse. On either side of your torso are the aisles; your outstretched right arm is the North transept, your left is the South transept. Your sternum is the crossing. You are in the shape of a crucifix so you are a Latin cross church.
Put your outstretched arms by your sides and your church looks rectangular when viewed from above. Ulm Minster has this rectangular footprint (no transepts, probably to save money) so it is called a basilica shape. Basilicas are also a special kind of church in Catholicism, but that’s another story. Vertically, Ulm minster is gothic, with pointed arches everywhere you look. To keep the high walls from shedding stone, subsequent architect/engineers over the centuries placed heavy inelegant buttresses around the outside. These were refashioned throughout the nineteenth century when flying buttresses and gargoyles along with a baroque steeple and spire added more delicate elements to an otherwise dour church exterior. Finally in 1890, about 500 years after the foundation was dug, the church was considered completed.
Ulm was of strategic importance for the National Socialists and so came under the crosshairs of the Allies. The train hub and most of the city were bombed to rubble; for example, during one raid on December 17, 1944, 1500 tons of bombs were dropped on the city in less than half an hour. The guidebooks call it miraculous, and I have to agree: Ulm’s Minster somehow escaped with only minor damage. Damage is mainly evident today in the stained glass; many of the windows are modern works of art, and some few are drab and waiting for the funds to replace them.
In summary, Ulm Minster is a beautiful, soaring work of gothic magnificence. In Medieval times both the rich and the poor lived in pretty awful houses or dark huts and coming into the church with all its light and glory must have been a transcendent experience. It certainly was for us walking through it today.
As with gothic cathedrals everywhere the level of detail in the building is overwhelming: stain glass windows, wall art, organ, in-floor grave markers, pulpits, Rood screen, side chapels, on and on. You can get a headache if you try to take in everything. For that reason I’d like to tell you about only one work of art: the two sets of carved wooden choir stalls facing one another in the chancel, and created over a period of five years during the early 1400s by Jörg Syrlin the Elder.
As you can tell from the photo below, the artist created niches on the wall above the rear stalls where characters from the Bible, in relief, peek out while clutching ribbons that identify who they are. In the same photo you can see the aisles leading to the rear seats are decorated with busts of characters from Biblical, Greek and Roman antiquity, in all about 16 remarkable figures, facing each other, guarding the aisle, on the left and right sides.
Finally, there are perhaps 60 misericords, or small carved figures on the underside of each seat, revealed when the seat is turned up during the service. My impression was that these were the fun part of the job, maybe done in the early morning or late afternoon, or by students in the workshop. There are carvings of everyday sights such as a squirrel or weasel, and then grotesque and fantastic people and creatures that come from the artist’s creative mind. Altogether, the work constitutes an object of enormous beauty. I’m so thankful the Iconoclasts never got their hands on it.
The unknown guy with the hat kinda’ looks like the Mad Hatter!
Marvelous description! Who knew you were such a scholar of church architecture?!