My Travel and History Blog, Focussing mostly on Roman and Mediaeval Times
31 Oct 2022
It is Nano Time Again – And some Personal Remarks
I know I’ve not been blogging for several months, partly due to private problems, partly because of the geopolitical situation that takes up some of my free time.
Tangermünde at the Elbe river
Another reason is the lack of feedback in the comments and visitor statistics – sometimes I wonder if all the work I’ve put into this blog still pays off, and I often think it no longer does after everyone wandered off to Facebook.
Tangermünde, the town hall
I did a bit of work in the background like updating some posts and tampering with the sidebar. But that is another problem with this blog; a considerable amount of older posts needs to be reworked – I tended to write shorter posts more frequently during the first years of blogging that are no longer up to the present standard – and that is work people won’t even see most of the time. Yet it is a hill of labour in front of me.
Tangermünde, the Neustadt Gate, closeup of some decorations
I have material for a lot of new posts (some of it dating back years), but I’m not sure where I’m going with this blog. I don’t want to waste 15 years of work, but right now the pleasure of blogging is gone; it feels more like a chore.
Havelberg, the Romanesque cathedral, interior
November is Nano Writing Month again. I’ve participated in that for years, so I’ll concentrate on writing fiction druing the coming five weeks, even though I’m not very motivated. Maybe the interest in writing at all, and thus writing for this blog will return.
Jerichow monastery, the Romanesque cloister
The photos in this post come from a little tour in the Altmark at the Elbe I did in September. Got to photograph some pretty Romanesque and Gothic brick architecture, and found a lovely little town, Tangermünde, which is still somewhat flowing beneath the tourist radar.
Tangermünde, half timbered houses
I’ll post again once I have decided where to go with this blog in the long run.
Read more! ¶ October 31, 2022 8 comments
I know I’ve not been blogging for several months, partly due to private problems, partly because of the geopolitical situation that takes up some of my free time.
Another reason is the lack of feedback in the comments and visitor statistics – sometimes I wonder if all the work I’ve put into this blog still pays off, and I often think it no longer does after everyone wandered off to Facebook.
I did a bit of work in the background like updating some posts and tampering with the sidebar. But that is another problem with this blog; a considerable amount of older posts needs to be reworked – I tended to write shorter posts more frequently during the first years of blogging that are no longer up to the present standard – and that is work people won’t even see most of the time. Yet it is a hill of labour in front of me.
I have material for a lot of new posts (some of it dating back years), but I’m not sure where I’m going with this blog. I don’t want to waste 15 years of work, but right now the pleasure of blogging is gone; it feels more like a chore.
November is Nano Writing Month again. I’ve participated in that for years, so I’ll concentrate on writing fiction druing the coming five weeks, even though I’m not very motivated. Maybe the interest in writing at all, and thus writing for this blog will return.
The photos in this post come from a little tour in the Altmark at the Elbe I did in September. Got to photograph some pretty Romanesque and Gothic brick architecture, and found a lovely little town, Tangermünde, which is still somewhat flowing beneath the tourist radar.
I’ll post again once I have decided where to go with this blog in the long run.
Read more! ¶ October 31, 2022 8 comments
3 Jan 2022
Brick Architecture, Hall Houses, Monasteries and more – A Tour of Stralsund's Old Town
The town of Stralsund was one of the leading members of the Hanseatic League and thus one of the few German towns that still carry the denomination in official documents ‒ Hansestadt Stralsund. The historical buildings in the old town are so well preserved and/or have been painstaikingly restored that Stralsund, together with Wismar, became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002. There are lots of pretty Mediaeval and Renaissance brick buildings, so let's go for a little walk through the old town of Stralsund.
Stralsund seen from the harbour,
with the towers of St. Nikolai and the gable of the town hall (peeking up to the right of the church)
I've already posted about the harbour of Stralsund; we'll start our virtual tour the same way most merchants once did, coming in by ship.
Stralsund lies on the mainland opposite the island of Rugia (Rügen). Rugia was settled by the Slavic tribe of the Rani, still pagans at the time they were conquered by King Valdemar I of Denmark in 1168. Their princes became vassals to Valdemar and accepted the Christian faith. They extended their territory to the mainland. Fishing villages on the Dänholm Isle between the mainland and Rugia, and on the mainland itself, grew in imporance, becoming harbours for the Danish fleet and a trade hub. Settlers were invited; many of them came from Germany, bringing with them German technology and culture, soon dominating the burgeoning settlement of Stralov, later to be named Stral(e)sund.
Stralsund, market square with gabled houses
In 1234, Prince Witzlav I of Rugia granted Stralsund the rights of town under the Lübeck law. The increasing importance of Stralsund challenged the power of Lübeck which attacked the town in 1249, burning most of it. Stralsund was rebuilt and got a massive town wall with eleven gates and 30 towers. Few of those survive today.
Stralsund became a member of the Hanseatic League in 1293 and retained a good measure of independence even when the Principality of Rugia became the Duchy of Pomerania in 1325. In the following centuries, the town survived internal troubles between the council and the burghers as well as conflicts with Denmark without any long term decline in importance and riches.
St.Nikolai Church at the market square
Stralsund was a major target in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). The town was Protestant, besieged by the Catholic general Albrecht von Wallenstein and relieved by Swedish forces, which led to a Swedish garrison and Stralsund becoming one of the main Swedish forts in Pomerania and Germany. After the peace, the entire Duchy of Pomerania (covering roughly what is today the county of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Germany and Polish Pomerania), and with it Stralsund, became Swedish.
The town remained under Swedish control until 1807 when Napoleon conquered Stralsund. The town fell to Prussia after Napoleon's defeat and became part of the Province of Pomerania. The town suffered bomb attacks in WW2 and was occupied by a division of the Red Army at the end of the war. Half of its population had fled westwards at that point. Stralsund then was part of the GDR. The city's old town was restored following the German Reunification in 1990, a process that is still going on.
More information about the Mediaeval history of Stralsund and its role in the Hanseatic Laegue will follow in another post.
Stralsund, lane with pretty old houses
The centre of the town was the market square with the town hall and St.Nikolai Church. The area south-west of it belonged to the Princes of Rügen who founded a monastery of the Dominicans, today the monastery St.Catherine (Katharinenkloster). The first old town soon became too small for the increasing number of inhabitants, thus a 'new town' (Neustadt) developed south-east of the centre, around a second market square in the 1260ies. Its main church became St. Mary, first mentioned in 1298.
Today, the Old Town of Stralsund encompasses both the Mediaeval old town and new town as well as the area around St.Catherine – that is, the section within the town walls.
Stralsund, St.Mary's Church
The town at first was mostly built of timber, except for the churches. Many houses were destroyed in a great fire in 1271. Afterwards, the houses were rebuilt using bricks. The land around Stralsund is not rich in natural rocks, so bricks were the easiest method to get a material more durable than wood. In 1283, the town had tree brickworks.
Brick architecture can be found all along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea from Lübeck to Riga.
The Knieperteich (Knieper Pond), part of the town defenses
Already in 1261, both parts of the town (including the area belonging to the princes of Rügen-Pomerania) were protected by a single town wall, following the attack by the army of Lübeck. In addition to the walls, the town was surrounded by the sea (the Strela sound) and a number of ponds and canals.
The first town wall had been constructed as earthen wall with timber palisades, but that did not keep the enemy out. So it was reconstructed in brick and stone. The new walls were finished in 1320.
Remains of the town wall seen from the outside
The wall is 3,100 metres long, with towers and battlements. In some places, the walls of houses were integrated into the town walls; in that case those house walls had but small windows. Part of the town wall still exists and has been restored at the Knieperwall and Fährwall sections.
The walls once had ten double gates with outer and inner doors, six of them leading to the waterside, four to the landside – which demonstrates the importance of the water transport for the economy of the town. Today only two gates still exist.
Town wall from the town side
The town walls were well cared for until Napoléon conquered Stralsund in 1808 and ordered the walls to be razed, which never was done completely. After the war Stralsund, together with Pomerania, fell to Prussia, and the Prussian government ordered to expand the walls according to the needs of modern fortifications.
But over time, the walls got in the way of the expanding town and the increasing traffic which began to clog the gates, while at the same time the strategic role of Stralsund as fortress declined, therefore the walls were dismantled after 1873. The part that remains today has been restored by specialists in Mediaeval brick architecture from Poland in the 1990ies.
Knieper Gate (Kniepertor), town side
The Knieper Gate is one of two surviving gates, a land gate situated to the north of the town. Since the gate is already mentioned in sources dating to the late 13th / early 14th century, it must have already existed in the old timber town wall, likely a timber construction itself at the time. The present building dates to the 14th century, with additional changes ‒ esp. concerning the exterior decorations ‒ in the 15th century.
The gate is 11.5 metres wide, 8.6 metres deep and 20.8 metres high, built entirely of bricks. The ground floor has no windows, the two upper storeys have high windows in the Gothic style. The doorway proper is a pointed arch of seven metres width.
The gate survived several sieges, most notably the one by Wallenstein during the Thirty Years' War. The brick architecture would withstand siege engines of that time.
The facade of the town hall
Now let's go the market square, the centre of the first foundation of Stralsund. The pretty Gothic facade of the town hall is one of the iconic features of the town. The town hall is one of the most important profane buildings in the lands around the Baltic Sea dating to the Middle Ages.
The oldest parts of the building date to the early 13th century; the first mention of the house is from 1271. The elegant cross ribbed vaults in the cellar and rooms were a new style of achitecture in the north, introduced by the Cistercians. Two long houses (with the smaller gabled sides facing the market square), were connected by a transept and enclosed a yard with pillared galleries. The vaulted cellar was 30x60 metres in size. After later additions (see below) the building encompassed an area of 30x70 metres.
Town hall, the gallery
At first, the cellar served as storage for expensice cloths from Flanders, and the building was some sort of department store before the name where merchants would display and sell various goods in stalls in the galleries (called kophus, modern German: Kaufhaus).
The building was also used as meeting place for the town council – after all, many of the rich and influential burghers were merchants. They needed a representative hall which was added in front of the building complex in 1320, together with another set of rooms on the back side. In 1444, the decorated gabled facade was added. The top of the facade is actually higher than the roofs behind it; a Mediaeval show off. The arms of other towns of the Hanseatic League like Lübeck, Hamburg, Greifswald, Rostock and Wismar were integrated into the decorative elements.
Town hall, the back side with portico
More features were added in the later 16th century when the Renaissance style became popular, like the staircase leading to the hall and the porticos. The decorative gabled wall was hidden beneath a layer of whitewash since 1750, until the original facade was brought out again in 1883. The town hall was renovated in 2001-2011.
The town administration, municipal authorities, civil registration office and others still reside in the town hall. I can imagine worse places to have a bureau. *grin*
St.Nikolai, interior
St.Nikolai, the church at the market square, is the oldest church in Stralsund, dating to the 1230ies. But that first church no longer exists, it was replaced by a 'modern' Gothic style three naved basilica with an ambulatory choir in the 1270ies, after the model of St.Mary in Lübeck.
St. Nikolai served as council church. It may seem strange, but the church was not only a place of worship, but also of council meetings. Ambassadors were received in the church and laws were announced, the bursprake, where the burghers and town inhabitants were informed about laws and regulations and the results of legal cases.
St.Nikolai, stalls of the Novgorod Travelers
The church once had 56 altars situated in the naves and between the buttresses of the aisles. Important families often had their own altar, as did the artisans' guilds and the groups of merchants dealing with specific other countries, so the Novgorod Travelers (Nowgordfahrer) which had this lovely carved stall and their own altar as well.
Many altars were removed during the Protestant Iconoclastic Fury in 1525, but overall St.Nikolai did not fare too badly; part of the interior remained intact. The chapels between the aisles were used as burial places for distinguished citizen afterwards.
The Gothic twin towers were destroyed by fire in 1662. The southern tower got a Baroque crest a few years later, but there was not enough money to fit the northern tower with one as well, so it has a flat roof until today. The church was damaged in WW2, but restored in bouts whenever there was some money from west Germany. Repairs are still going on – every time I've been there, there was a scaffold somewhere.
Hall house (Dielenhaus) with decorated gable in the Mühlenstrasse
Stralsund has a number of surviving Dielenhäuser (hall houses) which we will now visit. The house in the Mühlenstrasse number 3, near the market square, is even called 'The Dielenhaus' since it is such a fine surviving example of this sort of building, with the Gothic interior still intact. It dates to the 14th century and was renovated in the 1970ies.
Dielenhaus, interior with the derrick
Hall Houses can be found in many northern German towns, but in most cases, the interior has been altered and only the gabled facades remain. The defining feature of that type of town house is the hall (Diele) occupying the entire length of the building and usually two storeys in heigth. It has large windows to the side of the yard and an ornate gate on the street side that was large enough to allow a waggon to drive it. (A variant of this type can be found in the countryside as well.)
Wares would be stored in the floors above the hall; they could be transported from the hall to the cellar and the storage rooms by a derrick. The derrick in the Dielenhaus in Stralsund is still intact.
The Kontor (office)
The hall (Diele) was a room where wares would be processed and repacked and then stored in the upper floors. Often the hall included a beer brewery for private use. The hall was also used to present wares to prospective buyers and do business transactions. For the latter, a separate room was closed off, the Kontor.
Not only merchants built hall houses; they were common for well situated craftsmen as well; they would use the hall als work space.
Linguistic fun fact: Kontor was also the word for the branch offices the Hanseatic towns had in other towns of the league.
Hall house in the Frankenstrasse
Another good example of a Medieaval hall house is the house in the Frankenstrasse number 28, also dating to the 14th century. It is privately owned but sometimes open for visitors. I was lucky to get a peek inside.
In 1687, a Baroque gallery, situated above the Kontor, had been added to the hall.
Interior of the house in the Frankenstrasse
The family did not live in the hall house itself, but in a house built at its backside, usually including a yard between the hall house and the family home., the Kemladen. A staircase leading to the cellar and a fireplace / chimney were usually situated at the wall between the hall and the Kemladen.
The cellar often had a well or a connection to the town's water supply (timber water pipes dating to the Middle Ages have been excavated in Stralsund, and there seems to have been a sewage system as well – no dirty 'dark ages' at all).
The backside with the small windows of the storage floors
The house in the Frankenstrasse also allows for a view of the backside of the hall house with the small windows of the storage floors. That side is more practical than the decorative side facing the street; just windows and no pillars and glazed bricks.
The decorations with multi coloured glazed bricks set in patterns, with pillars and point-arched windows of the street side facades served not only as demonstration of a wealth that could buy the best brick artisans and masons, but also served as a sort of house numbers, since the decorations included personal features. Not all hall houses of the time were decorated with glazed bricks and pillared gables, though, some were painted in bright colours instead; colours often being expensive as well.
The Wulflam House
Another pretty example of a hall house with decorated gables is the Wulflam House at the market square. It is another house dating to the 14th century, commissioned by the town major Bertram Wulflam in 1358, a member of one of the most influential families in Stralsund. The house is conveniently situated opposite the town hall and a smaller mirror of it. The pillared gables are higher than the roof, the same as in the town hall. In 1405, the storage floors above the Diele were converted into a second hall, with a fireplace and painted walls, again mirroring the town hall.
The house and the facade have been altered several times during history, mostly due to decay (the unsupported upper part of the steeped gable threatened to collapse and was broken down); the original facade was restored in 1988-1991, but the interior is no longer a typical hall house.
The Scheele House
The Scheele House in the Fährstrasse is an example of a painted house. The house started out as two hall houses which were connected in the 17th century and the facades adapted to the Baroque taste of that time (which was pretty low style in northern Germany, with less decorations that you may find in the south). The house had been in bad shape until its restoration 2010-12; today it is a hotel. The house is named for the chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele who was born there in 1742.
St.Catherine Monastery (Katharinenkloster), the western side seen from the town wall
St. Catherine is one of the oldest monasteries in the Baltic Sea area and one of the few whose Gothic substance remains pretty much intact. Prince Jaromar II of Rugia founded the monastery and invited Dominican monks to Stralsund. His successor Witzlav II gifted them the land at the town wall in 1261 The church – a three naved hall church of 70 metres length – was finished in 1317.
The monastery was expanded in the 14th and 15th century; the chapter room has some pretty fresco paintings dating to the 15th century. Due to its size and importance, the monastery was the site of several meetings of the Dominican Order from the 14th to the 16th century.
St.Catherine, the cloister yard
Most of the portable interior decorations were lost during the Reformation in 1525; the monastery was secularised, the buildings came into possession of the town. In the following centuries, the monastery provided rooms for a high school and an orphanage, later the church itself was confiscated and used as arsenal by the Swedish (1678) and Prussians (1815). During that time, additional floors were added in the church naves.
In 1902, the Prussian government sold the buildings to the town. The arsenal was abandoned, the orphanage moved to another place and the monastery was restored in 1919-1924. The additional floors in the church were removed and the walled-in windows laid free again. The church was fitted with a steel construction for the Maritime Museum that yet left the original impression of the hall intact (1973).
Refectory with exhibition displays
Besides the Maritime Museum, the monastery also houses the Stralsund Museum of Cultural History. A 'Provincial Museum for New Pomerania and Rügen' existed since 1859, first housed in the town hall. Its foundation were the collections of the Swedish governor Axel Count of Löwen. The growing collection was moved into the convent building of the monastery in the 1920ies, now called 'Museum of Cultural History'. The museum had been further expanded in 1936, and was recently modernised. One of its most important displays is the gold treasure of Hiddensee.
St.John's Monastery, the ruined choir
Another monastery founded by Prince Jaromar is St.John's Monastery, a Franciscan house. Prince Jaromar and several other noble familes from Rugia, including Margarete von Putbus (an ancestress of Prince Wilhelm Malte of Putbus), donated money and land at the Strela sound in 1254. Together with St.Catherine, St.John is one of the oldest buildings in Stralsund, though it has not survived as unscathed as the former. The construction of the monastery and the Gothic hall church were finished in the early 14th century.
The mendicant order of the Franciscans with its ideal of poverty, the monks' care for the sick and poor and their easily understandable sermons made them popular not only with the Rugian nobility but even more so with the burghers of Stralsund. The monastery received a fair amount of donations.
St.John, remains of the church
It is only fitting then that the monastery was converted into an almshouse after the Reformation.
The church and the roof of the convent unfortunately burned down at Christmas Eve 1624. There was no money to rebuild the church at the time. A few years later, the choir – the walls of which were still mostly intact ‒ was repaired and a smaller church created, Little St.John. But it was destroyed again in WW2.
Houses on the monastery grounds
The convent buildings of the monastery have been repaired in the 1960ies, though the church itself remains a ruin. Today, the chapter hall with its cross rib vault and Gothic frescoes is used for concerts (it was closed when I visited, so no photos, alas) and some of the other rooms house the town archive, including the library of Count Löwen who collected not only ancient artefacts, but also 2,500 books.
The pretty little half-timbered houses on the monastery ground, once the quarters of lay brothers, craftsmen working for the monks, and visitors, are rented out as appartments.
St.Mary's Church, exterior (obs. the three naved transept)
St.Mary's Church is the main church of the 'new town' that developed to the south-east of the old town around the market square (see above). The church is the largest in Stralsund, 100 metres long and 33 metres high in the main nave. The building, representing the late Gothic style, is a three naved basilica with a transept – which has three naves as well, a rare architectural feature – a choir with ambulatory, and a single tower. The buttresses are hidden beneath the roofs of the side naves and the windows are unusually large.
The church is first mentioned in 1298, but the present building dates to the early 15th century. The first tower collapsed in 1382, destroying the main nave. It turned out that the ground had been too soft to carry its weight. The new westwork with its tower was based on a set of pillars and cross beams that were driven into the ground.
The new tower, finished later than the church (it took until 1475), was supposedly 151 metres high, with a soaring Gothic spire. It served as landmark for the ships, being visible at a far distance. If that is true – unfortunately it can't be proven – St.Mary would have been the highest building in the world at the time. The spire was destroyed by lightning in 1647: Today, the tower measures 104 metres.
St.Mary, westwork
Of the interior, not much is left due to the Iconoclastic Fury (1525) and the fire caused by the lightning that destroyed the tower. The church was used as parish church, but during the French occupation, it was misused as barracks and granary. St.Mary was also damaged during WW2. The church was renovated in 2000.
Hospital of the Holy Spirit, the gallery leading to the church
We return to the sites near the harbour with our last stop: The Hospital of the Holy Spirit (Heiliggeisthospital) was founded in 1256, then still situated within the town walls, but it was moved to the site outside the walls in 1320. A reason may have been the possible spread of infectious diseases like leprosy or dysentery, another the 'outsiders' of Medieaval society living there. The hospital grounds included an almshouse, a guest house, an infirmary, a hospital proper and a church, the Heiliggeistkirche, together with two longhouses and a gallery leading to its gate, dating to 1641; constructed in the same style as the one in the town hall.
The church is a three naved Gothic hall church, a moderately sized rectangular building without choir, apses and tower, originally dating to the 14th century: Due to various repairs and alterations, the church in its present state is dominated by elements of Baroque and Neoclassicism.
Hospital of the Holy Spirit, houses on the grounds
The hospital was a place where the sick and elderly, town inhabitants as well as travelers, were cared for on a charity basis. The hospital belonged to the town and was financed by donations, often in form of land whose income would fall to the hospital; it owned land on Rugia and Usedom, for example, and in 1340, the entire island of Hiddensee was given to the hospital. But also smaller gifts like bedsheets were welcome.
Less well off inhabitants of Stralsund could also buy the right to live in one of the cells or the little houses when they got old and infirm (rich burghers would have family to care for them). The little houses on the grounds – in their present state mostly dating to the 18th/19th centuries – are still used for social housing.
The hospital and church were damaged several times as result of military actions due to the situation outside the town walls, but they were always repaired until the time after WW2 when the site came into possession of the GDR government. The hospital enclosure was restored in the 1990ies.
A whale skeleton in St.Catherine
An because that's fun, here is the image of a fin whale skeleton in the choir apse of St.Catherine, part of the exhibitons of the Maritime Museum. The 16 metres long whale beached itself at Rugia in 1825. Not something you'd expect to find in a church.
I hope you liked the little tour through Stralsund's Old Town.
Read more! ¶ January 03, 2022 2 comments
The town of Stralsund was one of the leading members of the Hanseatic League and thus one of the few German towns that still carry the denomination in official documents ‒ Hansestadt Stralsund. The historical buildings in the old town are so well preserved and/or have been painstaikingly restored that Stralsund, together with Wismar, became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002. There are lots of pretty Mediaeval and Renaissance brick buildings, so let's go for a little walk through the old town of Stralsund.
I've already posted about the harbour of Stralsund; we'll start our virtual tour the same way most merchants once did, coming in by ship.
Stralsund lies on the mainland opposite the island of Rugia (Rügen). Rugia was settled by the Slavic tribe of the Rani, still pagans at the time they were conquered by King Valdemar I of Denmark in 1168. Their princes became vassals to Valdemar and accepted the Christian faith. They extended their territory to the mainland. Fishing villages on the Dänholm Isle between the mainland and Rugia, and on the mainland itself, grew in imporance, becoming harbours for the Danish fleet and a trade hub. Settlers were invited; many of them came from Germany, bringing with them German technology and culture, soon dominating the burgeoning settlement of Stralov, later to be named Stral(e)sund.
In 1234, Prince Witzlav I of Rugia granted Stralsund the rights of town under the Lübeck law. The increasing importance of Stralsund challenged the power of Lübeck which attacked the town in 1249, burning most of it. Stralsund was rebuilt and got a massive town wall with eleven gates and 30 towers. Few of those survive today.
Stralsund became a member of the Hanseatic League in 1293 and retained a good measure of independence even when the Principality of Rugia became the Duchy of Pomerania in 1325. In the following centuries, the town survived internal troubles between the council and the burghers as well as conflicts with Denmark without any long term decline in importance and riches.
Stralsund was a major target in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). The town was Protestant, besieged by the Catholic general Albrecht von Wallenstein and relieved by Swedish forces, which led to a Swedish garrison and Stralsund becoming one of the main Swedish forts in Pomerania and Germany. After the peace, the entire Duchy of Pomerania (covering roughly what is today the county of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Germany and Polish Pomerania), and with it Stralsund, became Swedish.
The town remained under Swedish control until 1807 when Napoleon conquered Stralsund. The town fell to Prussia after Napoleon's defeat and became part of the Province of Pomerania. The town suffered bomb attacks in WW2 and was occupied by a division of the Red Army at the end of the war. Half of its population had fled westwards at that point. Stralsund then was part of the GDR. The city's old town was restored following the German Reunification in 1990, a process that is still going on.
More information about the Mediaeval history of Stralsund and its role in the Hanseatic Laegue will follow in another post.
The centre of the town was the market square with the town hall and St.Nikolai Church. The area south-west of it belonged to the Princes of Rügen who founded a monastery of the Dominicans, today the monastery St.Catherine (Katharinenkloster). The first old town soon became too small for the increasing number of inhabitants, thus a 'new town' (Neustadt) developed south-east of the centre, around a second market square in the 1260ies. Its main church became St. Mary, first mentioned in 1298.
Today, the Old Town of Stralsund encompasses both the Mediaeval old town and new town as well as the area around St.Catherine – that is, the section within the town walls.
The town at first was mostly built of timber, except for the churches. Many houses were destroyed in a great fire in 1271. Afterwards, the houses were rebuilt using bricks. The land around Stralsund is not rich in natural rocks, so bricks were the easiest method to get a material more durable than wood. In 1283, the town had tree brickworks.
Brick architecture can be found all along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea from Lübeck to Riga.
Already in 1261, both parts of the town (including the area belonging to the princes of Rügen-Pomerania) were protected by a single town wall, following the attack by the army of Lübeck. In addition to the walls, the town was surrounded by the sea (the Strela sound) and a number of ponds and canals.
The first town wall had been constructed as earthen wall with timber palisades, but that did not keep the enemy out. So it was reconstructed in brick and stone. The new walls were finished in 1320.
The wall is 3,100 metres long, with towers and battlements. In some places, the walls of houses were integrated into the town walls; in that case those house walls had but small windows. Part of the town wall still exists and has been restored at the Knieperwall and Fährwall sections.
The walls once had ten double gates with outer and inner doors, six of them leading to the waterside, four to the landside – which demonstrates the importance of the water transport for the economy of the town. Today only two gates still exist.
The town walls were well cared for until Napoléon conquered Stralsund in 1808 and ordered the walls to be razed, which never was done completely. After the war Stralsund, together with Pomerania, fell to Prussia, and the Prussian government ordered to expand the walls according to the needs of modern fortifications.
But over time, the walls got in the way of the expanding town and the increasing traffic which began to clog the gates, while at the same time the strategic role of Stralsund as fortress declined, therefore the walls were dismantled after 1873. The part that remains today has been restored by specialists in Mediaeval brick architecture from Poland in the 1990ies.
The Knieper Gate is one of two surviving gates, a land gate situated to the north of the town. Since the gate is already mentioned in sources dating to the late 13th / early 14th century, it must have already existed in the old timber town wall, likely a timber construction itself at the time. The present building dates to the 14th century, with additional changes ‒ esp. concerning the exterior decorations ‒ in the 15th century.
The gate is 11.5 metres wide, 8.6 metres deep and 20.8 metres high, built entirely of bricks. The ground floor has no windows, the two upper storeys have high windows in the Gothic style. The doorway proper is a pointed arch of seven metres width.
The gate survived several sieges, most notably the one by Wallenstein during the Thirty Years' War. The brick architecture would withstand siege engines of that time.
Now let's go the market square, the centre of the first foundation of Stralsund. The pretty Gothic facade of the town hall is one of the iconic features of the town. The town hall is one of the most important profane buildings in the lands around the Baltic Sea dating to the Middle Ages.
The oldest parts of the building date to the early 13th century; the first mention of the house is from 1271. The elegant cross ribbed vaults in the cellar and rooms were a new style of achitecture in the north, introduced by the Cistercians. Two long houses (with the smaller gabled sides facing the market square), were connected by a transept and enclosed a yard with pillared galleries. The vaulted cellar was 30x60 metres in size. After later additions (see below) the building encompassed an area of 30x70 metres.
At first, the cellar served as storage for expensice cloths from Flanders, and the building was some sort of department store before the name where merchants would display and sell various goods in stalls in the galleries (called kophus, modern German: Kaufhaus).
The building was also used as meeting place for the town council – after all, many of the rich and influential burghers were merchants. They needed a representative hall which was added in front of the building complex in 1320, together with another set of rooms on the back side. In 1444, the decorated gabled facade was added. The top of the facade is actually higher than the roofs behind it; a Mediaeval show off. The arms of other towns of the Hanseatic League like Lübeck, Hamburg, Greifswald, Rostock and Wismar were integrated into the decorative elements.
More features were added in the later 16th century when the Renaissance style became popular, like the staircase leading to the hall and the porticos. The decorative gabled wall was hidden beneath a layer of whitewash since 1750, until the original facade was brought out again in 1883. The town hall was renovated in 2001-2011.
The town administration, municipal authorities, civil registration office and others still reside in the town hall. I can imagine worse places to have a bureau. *grin*
St.Nikolai, the church at the market square, is the oldest church in Stralsund, dating to the 1230ies. But that first church no longer exists, it was replaced by a 'modern' Gothic style three naved basilica with an ambulatory choir in the 1270ies, after the model of St.Mary in Lübeck.
St. Nikolai served as council church. It may seem strange, but the church was not only a place of worship, but also of council meetings. Ambassadors were received in the church and laws were announced, the bursprake, where the burghers and town inhabitants were informed about laws and regulations and the results of legal cases.
The church once had 56 altars situated in the naves and between the buttresses of the aisles. Important families often had their own altar, as did the artisans' guilds and the groups of merchants dealing with specific other countries, so the Novgorod Travelers (Nowgordfahrer) which had this lovely carved stall and their own altar as well.
Many altars were removed during the Protestant Iconoclastic Fury in 1525, but overall St.Nikolai did not fare too badly; part of the interior remained intact. The chapels between the aisles were used as burial places for distinguished citizen afterwards.
The Gothic twin towers were destroyed by fire in 1662. The southern tower got a Baroque crest a few years later, but there was not enough money to fit the northern tower with one as well, so it has a flat roof until today. The church was damaged in WW2, but restored in bouts whenever there was some money from west Germany. Repairs are still going on – every time I've been there, there was a scaffold somewhere.
Stralsund has a number of surviving Dielenhäuser (hall houses) which we will now visit. The house in the Mühlenstrasse number 3, near the market square, is even called 'The Dielenhaus' since it is such a fine surviving example of this sort of building, with the Gothic interior still intact. It dates to the 14th century and was renovated in the 1970ies.
Hall Houses can be found in many northern German towns, but in most cases, the interior has been altered and only the gabled facades remain. The defining feature of that type of town house is the hall (Diele) occupying the entire length of the building and usually two storeys in heigth. It has large windows to the side of the yard and an ornate gate on the street side that was large enough to allow a waggon to drive it. (A variant of this type can be found in the countryside as well.)
Wares would be stored in the floors above the hall; they could be transported from the hall to the cellar and the storage rooms by a derrick. The derrick in the Dielenhaus in Stralsund is still intact.
The hall (Diele) was a room where wares would be processed and repacked and then stored in the upper floors. Often the hall included a beer brewery for private use. The hall was also used to present wares to prospective buyers and do business transactions. For the latter, a separate room was closed off, the Kontor.
Not only merchants built hall houses; they were common for well situated craftsmen as well; they would use the hall als work space.
Linguistic fun fact: Kontor was also the word for the branch offices the Hanseatic towns had in other towns of the league.
Another good example of a Medieaval hall house is the house in the Frankenstrasse number 28, also dating to the 14th century. It is privately owned but sometimes open for visitors. I was lucky to get a peek inside.
In 1687, a Baroque gallery, situated above the Kontor, had been added to the hall.
The family did not live in the hall house itself, but in a house built at its backside, usually including a yard between the hall house and the family home., the Kemladen. A staircase leading to the cellar and a fireplace / chimney were usually situated at the wall between the hall and the Kemladen.
The cellar often had a well or a connection to the town's water supply (timber water pipes dating to the Middle Ages have been excavated in Stralsund, and there seems to have been a sewage system as well – no dirty 'dark ages' at all).
The house in the Frankenstrasse also allows for a view of the backside of the hall house with the small windows of the storage floors. That side is more practical than the decorative side facing the street; just windows and no pillars and glazed bricks.
The decorations with multi coloured glazed bricks set in patterns, with pillars and point-arched windows of the street side facades served not only as demonstration of a wealth that could buy the best brick artisans and masons, but also served as a sort of house numbers, since the decorations included personal features. Not all hall houses of the time were decorated with glazed bricks and pillared gables, though, some were painted in bright colours instead; colours often being expensive as well.
Another pretty example of a hall house with decorated gables is the Wulflam House at the market square. It is another house dating to the 14th century, commissioned by the town major Bertram Wulflam in 1358, a member of one of the most influential families in Stralsund. The house is conveniently situated opposite the town hall and a smaller mirror of it. The pillared gables are higher than the roof, the same as in the town hall. In 1405, the storage floors above the Diele were converted into a second hall, with a fireplace and painted walls, again mirroring the town hall.
The house and the facade have been altered several times during history, mostly due to decay (the unsupported upper part of the steeped gable threatened to collapse and was broken down); the original facade was restored in 1988-1991, but the interior is no longer a typical hall house.
The Scheele House in the Fährstrasse is an example of a painted house. The house started out as two hall houses which were connected in the 17th century and the facades adapted to the Baroque taste of that time (which was pretty low style in northern Germany, with less decorations that you may find in the south). The house had been in bad shape until its restoration 2010-12; today it is a hotel. The house is named for the chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele who was born there in 1742.
St. Catherine is one of the oldest monasteries in the Baltic Sea area and one of the few whose Gothic substance remains pretty much intact. Prince Jaromar II of Rugia founded the monastery and invited Dominican monks to Stralsund. His successor Witzlav II gifted them the land at the town wall in 1261 The church – a three naved hall church of 70 metres length – was finished in 1317.
The monastery was expanded in the 14th and 15th century; the chapter room has some pretty fresco paintings dating to the 15th century. Due to its size and importance, the monastery was the site of several meetings of the Dominican Order from the 14th to the 16th century.
Most of the portable interior decorations were lost during the Reformation in 1525; the monastery was secularised, the buildings came into possession of the town. In the following centuries, the monastery provided rooms for a high school and an orphanage, later the church itself was confiscated and used as arsenal by the Swedish (1678) and Prussians (1815). During that time, additional floors were added in the church naves.
In 1902, the Prussian government sold the buildings to the town. The arsenal was abandoned, the orphanage moved to another place and the monastery was restored in 1919-1924. The additional floors in the church were removed and the walled-in windows laid free again. The church was fitted with a steel construction for the Maritime Museum that yet left the original impression of the hall intact (1973).
Besides the Maritime Museum, the monastery also houses the Stralsund Museum of Cultural History. A 'Provincial Museum for New Pomerania and Rügen' existed since 1859, first housed in the town hall. Its foundation were the collections of the Swedish governor Axel Count of Löwen. The growing collection was moved into the convent building of the monastery in the 1920ies, now called 'Museum of Cultural History'. The museum had been further expanded in 1936, and was recently modernised. One of its most important displays is the gold treasure of Hiddensee.
Another monastery founded by Prince Jaromar is St.John's Monastery, a Franciscan house. Prince Jaromar and several other noble familes from Rugia, including Margarete von Putbus (an ancestress of Prince Wilhelm Malte of Putbus), donated money and land at the Strela sound in 1254. Together with St.Catherine, St.John is one of the oldest buildings in Stralsund, though it has not survived as unscathed as the former. The construction of the monastery and the Gothic hall church were finished in the early 14th century.
The mendicant order of the Franciscans with its ideal of poverty, the monks' care for the sick and poor and their easily understandable sermons made them popular not only with the Rugian nobility but even more so with the burghers of Stralsund. The monastery received a fair amount of donations.
It is only fitting then that the monastery was converted into an almshouse after the Reformation.
The church and the roof of the convent unfortunately burned down at Christmas Eve 1624. There was no money to rebuild the church at the time. A few years later, the choir – the walls of which were still mostly intact ‒ was repaired and a smaller church created, Little St.John. But it was destroyed again in WW2.
The convent buildings of the monastery have been repaired in the 1960ies, though the church itself remains a ruin. Today, the chapter hall with its cross rib vault and Gothic frescoes is used for concerts (it was closed when I visited, so no photos, alas) and some of the other rooms house the town archive, including the library of Count Löwen who collected not only ancient artefacts, but also 2,500 books.
The pretty little half-timbered houses on the monastery ground, once the quarters of lay brothers, craftsmen working for the monks, and visitors, are rented out as appartments.
St.Mary's Church is the main church of the 'new town' that developed to the south-east of the old town around the market square (see above). The church is the largest in Stralsund, 100 metres long and 33 metres high in the main nave. The building, representing the late Gothic style, is a three naved basilica with a transept – which has three naves as well, a rare architectural feature – a choir with ambulatory, and a single tower. The buttresses are hidden beneath the roofs of the side naves and the windows are unusually large.
The church is first mentioned in 1298, but the present building dates to the early 15th century. The first tower collapsed in 1382, destroying the main nave. It turned out that the ground had been too soft to carry its weight. The new westwork with its tower was based on a set of pillars and cross beams that were driven into the ground.
The new tower, finished later than the church (it took until 1475), was supposedly 151 metres high, with a soaring Gothic spire. It served as landmark for the ships, being visible at a far distance. If that is true – unfortunately it can't be proven – St.Mary would have been the highest building in the world at the time. The spire was destroyed by lightning in 1647: Today, the tower measures 104 metres.
Of the interior, not much is left due to the Iconoclastic Fury (1525) and the fire caused by the lightning that destroyed the tower. The church was used as parish church, but during the French occupation, it was misused as barracks and granary. St.Mary was also damaged during WW2. The church was renovated in 2000.
We return to the sites near the harbour with our last stop: The Hospital of the Holy Spirit (Heiliggeisthospital) was founded in 1256, then still situated within the town walls, but it was moved to the site outside the walls in 1320. A reason may have been the possible spread of infectious diseases like leprosy or dysentery, another the 'outsiders' of Medieaval society living there. The hospital grounds included an almshouse, a guest house, an infirmary, a hospital proper and a church, the Heiliggeistkirche, together with two longhouses and a gallery leading to its gate, dating to 1641; constructed in the same style as the one in the town hall.
The church is a three naved Gothic hall church, a moderately sized rectangular building without choir, apses and tower, originally dating to the 14th century: Due to various repairs and alterations, the church in its present state is dominated by elements of Baroque and Neoclassicism.
The hospital was a place where the sick and elderly, town inhabitants as well as travelers, were cared for on a charity basis. The hospital belonged to the town and was financed by donations, often in form of land whose income would fall to the hospital; it owned land on Rugia and Usedom, for example, and in 1340, the entire island of Hiddensee was given to the hospital. But also smaller gifts like bedsheets were welcome.
Less well off inhabitants of Stralsund could also buy the right to live in one of the cells or the little houses when they got old and infirm (rich burghers would have family to care for them). The little houses on the grounds – in their present state mostly dating to the 18th/19th centuries – are still used for social housing.
The hospital and church were damaged several times as result of military actions due to the situation outside the town walls, but they were always repaired until the time after WW2 when the site came into possession of the GDR government. The hospital enclosure was restored in the 1990ies.
An because that's fun, here is the image of a fin whale skeleton in the choir apse of St.Catherine, part of the exhibitons of the Maritime Museum. The 16 metres long whale beached itself at Rugia in 1825. Not something you'd expect to find in a church.
I hope you liked the little tour through Stralsund's Old Town.
Read more! ¶ January 03, 2022 2 comments
28 Nov 2021
It's NaNovember Again
The reason I didn't post anything in November is the usual one: National Novel Writing Month
And here's the winner certificate, meaning I managed to write 50K again, the 8th year in a row..
Read more! ¶ November 28, 2021 1 comments
The reason I didn't post anything in November is the usual one: National Novel Writing Month
And here's the winner certificate, meaning I managed to write 50K again, the 8th year in a row..
Read more! ¶ November 28, 2021 1 comments
24 Oct 2021
A Neolithic Necropolis – The Totenstatt near Oldendorf/Luhe
Neolithic Tombs can be found in various locations in northern Germany. I've already posted about the historical context and some finds here. Another group of tombs can be found in the 'Burial Site' (Totenstatt) near Oldendorf/Luhe (not far from Amelinghausen) in the Lüneburg Heath. Of course, I couldn't resist adding more big ol' stones to my collection.
Heath landcape with boulders belonging to old tombs
The most visible feature of the Burial Town are the late Neolithic stone tombs (known as hunebeds or dolmen), but there are more burials from other times still mostly hidden under the layer of earth, heather and trees. A number of Bronze Age tumuli (1600 – 1200 BCE) spread between the large tombs have not yet been researched – some of them are visible as flat stone circles hidden in the heather – and there are also several urn grave fields from the Iron Age and Migration Period, as well as burials from the Mesolithic. Overall, the site has been in use for 4,000 years.
Forested part of the Oldendorf Burial Town
The site has been turned into a little open air museum and landscape park thanks to financial support by the County of Lüneburg and the Development Funds Hamburg / Lower Saxony. There is a little museum displaying the finds in the tombs in Oldendorf, which unfortunately was closed. Corona has thrown a wench into the opening times of some museums; the small ones suffering especially.
View towards tomb III
The first to research the tombs was Ernst Sprockhoff (1892 – 1967) who made a career during the Nazi regime and studied and numbered several hundred burials in northern Germany. The Sprockhoff numbers are still used in classification of Neolithic burial sites.
The second was the praehistorian Friedrich Laux (born 1938) who excavated the site in the 1970ies. He established a chronology of the burials according to the finds within the grave chambers – mostly flint tools and ceramics – and the different ways of building the tombs, and drew a numbered plan which is used in most sources about the site.
View to tomb IV
The people who built the first tomb (tomb III, see below) belonged to the Funnelbeaker culture and migrated into the area about 3,700 BCE. They were not the first to travel there – remains of fireplaces and flint tools of the Mesolithic have been found – but the first to settle on the plateau at the shores where the Lopau brook confluences into the Luhe river. They came from settlements a few day marches in the east and had to stop here, since the ground further west was too sandy and nutrient-poor for agriculture.
Tomb III (Sprockhoff 685)
Tomb III (numbered after Laux; Sprockhoff 685) is the oldest burial on the site. It once had been 60 metres long and 7 metres wide; about 43 metres are still visible as embankment above ground, together with several of the 88 glacial erratics that once framed the tomb. Many stones have been lost, though, either taken away for repurpose, or tumbled; some can be spotted overgrown by heath.
Tomb III, closeup of some wall stones
The tomb still rises to 1.5 metres, but it must have been higher. The direction is north-east to south-west. Another tomb (IV) follows that alignment, but a third one (tomb I) follows an a south-east to north-west layout, so it is not clear whether those have been set up on purpose. It is not impossible, considering the fact that the Neolithic society had some knowledge of sun and moon patterns that obviously played a role in the cultural context.
A way on top of tomb III
At first, it was assumed the tomb was one without a chamber, but later excavations have shown that it had timbered chamber, visible by discolorations of the earth. The chamber, located in the south-eastern corner, had a size of 2 x 3.2 metres and was covered by flat stones. Friedrich Laux discovered remains of fires that once burned around the grave chamber.
Remains of tomb III, south-western end
West of the chamber was a tumulus of 4 metres in diameter covering a pit made of stones which contained another burial. A third was laid out on a 11 x 3 metres rectangular platform of flat granite stones, together with a flint hatchet and an arrowhead. More grave goods have not been found in this hunebed, though some may have gone missing over time.
Tomb III, a remaining capstone
It is interesting to note that those three different burials were afterwards covered with earth and the whole long tomb surrounded by glacial erratic boulders in typical Neolithic style. Likely, the three burials took place in comparably close temporal proximity, despite their different styles. The stone wall may have been set up first, even before the burials, but the filling up of the enclosure with earth happened in one step, as far as we can tell.
Wall of tomb III from a different angle
The next burial in chronologial order is tomb I (Sprockhoff 683). This one had a chamber made of large stones, like any good hunebed should. *grin* It is the odd one out with its south-east to north-west alignment. The chamber has been partly destroyed (see below).
Tomb I (Sprockhoff 683), remains of the surrounding wall
The tomb is 45 metres long and 6,5 to 7 metres wide and today still 1.5 to 2 metres high. Of the 76 glacial erratics that formed the framing wall only few remain in situ, some have tumbled and others were taken away in later times. There once had been 33 on both long sides and 5 each on the narrow edges. The tomb still makes quite an impression when you come walking around a bend in the path and suddenly stand in front of it.
Tomb 1, seen from a different angle
The burial chamber lies crossways to the alignment of the tomb, with the entrance to the south. The chamber consisted of three bays of two carrier stones (glacier erratics) and one capstone each, as well as a threshold stone. Only two of the carrier stones remain, as well as the threshold stone. The chamber has a size of 5.4 x 3.6 metres. The ground was made of packed loam with flint and granite splinters on a bed of field stones.
On the tomb hill
The chamber has been excavated by Laux in 1973. He found the remains of two bodies, together with two funnel beakers and two cups, another cup with a high handle, several flint arrowheads and a hatchet. I could not find any information about the gender of the bodies; likely there was no way to tell from the remains.
Tomb I, closing boulder on the narrow side of the chamber
Tomb II (Sprockhoff 684) is somewhat younger and different from the other burials on the site. It is not a hunebed, but an oval tumulus of about 20 metres in diameter and 2 metres in height. The burial was – contrary to the others on the site – not framed by a wall of glacial erratic boulders.
Tomb II (Sprockhoff 684)
Remains of the chamber are visible today. The chamber – of the passage grave type with an entrance tunnel ‒ is located in the middle of the tumulus. The chamber measures 5.2 x 1.6 metres and has four bays. The entrance was to the south-west where a stone is missing in the pattern. Two support stones each on the long sides are still in situ. On its south-eastern narrow end, the chamber has two support stones instead of the more customary single stone.
Tomb II, different angle with the entrance in the foreground
The earth covering the chamber was sandy and poor in nutrients, different to the two earlier burials where the earth was darker and fertile. The soil must have been leached over several generations of agriculture. Maybe the settlers had moved to a better place and the site was only used for burials at the time.
Tomb II, interior
Bone remains show that the dead were a man aged about 50 years and a woman of about 30 years. But most interesting is one of the grave goods, a ceramic cup with a high handle and a foot in the omphalos style, a fashion that can be found in metal vessels from the Aegean. Even the outline of the rivet that connect the handle to the body has been recreated in clay. There must have been trade contacts and cultural exchanges between this remote area in the Lüneburg Heath, still a Neolithic culture, and the Mediterranean where the Bronze Age had already begun.
Some remaining stones of tomb IV (Sprockhoff 686)
Tomb IV (Sprockhoff 686) is the youngest and also the most spectacular of the four burials. It once had 108 external stones, a number of which are still in situ; many have been taken away and some were dislocated over time (some have been relocated during the reconstruction). The dolmen is 80 metres long and abut 6 metres wide; the height is about 1.5 metres – it was likely a good deal higher when it was erected.
Spaces between boulders filled with drystone
The surrounding wall once had been a complete enclosure. There was not only a set of glacial erratic boulders; the spaces between them had been filled with ashlar. This feature has been reconstructed in some spots.
Tomb IV, the burial chamber
The burial chamber is still pretty much intact except for the roof, and is presented to the public. It is quite a looker, too. *grin* The chamber, located at the western end of the tomb, was excavated by the Dutch archaeologist Albert Egges van Giffen (1884 – 1973) in 1970. Chambers in the western end, with the entrance leading outside the dolmen (and not crosswise to the alignment of the hunebed, with an entrance 'inside' the earthenwall like in tomb I and III) is called a Holstein Chamber (Holsteiner Kammer).
Tomb IV, entrance to the chamber
The chamber is 8 metres long and 2 metres wide and consists of five bays. There are 12 supporting stones – five each for the long sides and one each for the narrow ends – and another two for the passage on the south-west side of the chamber. Originally, the chamber had 5 capstones and the passage another one; those are missing. The threshold stone survives. The boulders are leaning slightly inwards, the spaces between them are filled with drystones.
Tomb IV, interior
There have been two burials; the older one with the traditional grave goods of flint tools and ceramic, including models following Bronze Age patterns, as well as several drums. That older burial was partly removed and the remains covered by sand before the new bodies were placed. The ceramic that goes with those marks the change from the Funnelbeaker to the late Neolithic Globular Amphora culture that had moved in from the east.
Tomb IV, interior other side
As mentioned above, after the Neolithic, the site was also used by Bronze Age people (who left behind tumuli that are now mostly flattened) and later for urn field burials of the Iron Age and Migration time – the Langobards settled there for a time, for example. The tombs II and IV were still accessible at the time; a body belonging to the Iron Age has been buried at the entrance of tomb II.
The work of stone thieves on the boulder in the foreground (tomb IV)
Unfortunately, those big stones were quite popular with people about to build churches, house foundations and walls to separate fields. Many of the boulders have been dragged away and often chopped into smaller bits. Traces of an unsuccessful stone theft can be seen in the photo above.
The grave goods, as far as they were accessible, also attracted some interest – I would not be surprised if some real Bronze Age goods were pilfered (they're worth more than ceramics, after all) and have disappeared for good.
The remains of tomb III in the landscape
In 1853, the burial site was bought by request of King Georg of Hannover to prevent further stone pilfering and illegal digging.
The tumuli and urn graves that are sprinkled between the impressive dolmen and beyond – today barely visible – did not attract much interest for a long time. But modern methods of geophysical survey have shown that the necropolis was spread much farther than the extent of the Neolithic stone settings. A research project is going on right now.
Another view of tomb I
Sources
Angelika Franz: Wandern zwischen Leben und Tod – Die Oldenburger Totenstatt, in: Archäologie in Deutschland 01/2021, p.67-71
Johannes Müller: Großsteingräber, Grabenwerke, Langhügel – Frühe Monumentalbauten Mitteleuropas. Darmstadt, 2017
The Megalith-Seiten by Thomas Witzke.
Read more! ¶ October 24, 2021 3 comments
Neolithic Tombs can be found in various locations in northern Germany. I've already posted about the historical context and some finds here. Another group of tombs can be found in the 'Burial Site' (Totenstatt) near Oldendorf/Luhe (not far from Amelinghausen) in the Lüneburg Heath. Of course, I couldn't resist adding more big ol' stones to my collection.
The most visible feature of the Burial Town are the late Neolithic stone tombs (known as hunebeds or dolmen), but there are more burials from other times still mostly hidden under the layer of earth, heather and trees. A number of Bronze Age tumuli (1600 – 1200 BCE) spread between the large tombs have not yet been researched – some of them are visible as flat stone circles hidden in the heather – and there are also several urn grave fields from the Iron Age and Migration Period, as well as burials from the Mesolithic. Overall, the site has been in use for 4,000 years.
The site has been turned into a little open air museum and landscape park thanks to financial support by the County of Lüneburg and the Development Funds Hamburg / Lower Saxony. There is a little museum displaying the finds in the tombs in Oldendorf, which unfortunately was closed. Corona has thrown a wench into the opening times of some museums; the small ones suffering especially.
The first to research the tombs was Ernst Sprockhoff (1892 – 1967) who made a career during the Nazi regime and studied and numbered several hundred burials in northern Germany. The Sprockhoff numbers are still used in classification of Neolithic burial sites.
The second was the praehistorian Friedrich Laux (born 1938) who excavated the site in the 1970ies. He established a chronology of the burials according to the finds within the grave chambers – mostly flint tools and ceramics – and the different ways of building the tombs, and drew a numbered plan which is used in most sources about the site.
The people who built the first tomb (tomb III, see below) belonged to the Funnelbeaker culture and migrated into the area about 3,700 BCE. They were not the first to travel there – remains of fireplaces and flint tools of the Mesolithic have been found – but the first to settle on the plateau at the shores where the Lopau brook confluences into the Luhe river. They came from settlements a few day marches in the east and had to stop here, since the ground further west was too sandy and nutrient-poor for agriculture.
Tomb III (numbered after Laux; Sprockhoff 685) is the oldest burial on the site. It once had been 60 metres long and 7 metres wide; about 43 metres are still visible as embankment above ground, together with several of the 88 glacial erratics that once framed the tomb. Many stones have been lost, though, either taken away for repurpose, or tumbled; some can be spotted overgrown by heath.
The tomb still rises to 1.5 metres, but it must have been higher. The direction is north-east to south-west. Another tomb (IV) follows that alignment, but a third one (tomb I) follows an a south-east to north-west layout, so it is not clear whether those have been set up on purpose. It is not impossible, considering the fact that the Neolithic society had some knowledge of sun and moon patterns that obviously played a role in the cultural context.
At first, it was assumed the tomb was one without a chamber, but later excavations have shown that it had timbered chamber, visible by discolorations of the earth. The chamber, located in the south-eastern corner, had a size of 2 x 3.2 metres and was covered by flat stones. Friedrich Laux discovered remains of fires that once burned around the grave chamber.
West of the chamber was a tumulus of 4 metres in diameter covering a pit made of stones which contained another burial. A third was laid out on a 11 x 3 metres rectangular platform of flat granite stones, together with a flint hatchet and an arrowhead. More grave goods have not been found in this hunebed, though some may have gone missing over time.
It is interesting to note that those three different burials were afterwards covered with earth and the whole long tomb surrounded by glacial erratic boulders in typical Neolithic style. Likely, the three burials took place in comparably close temporal proximity, despite their different styles. The stone wall may have been set up first, even before the burials, but the filling up of the enclosure with earth happened in one step, as far as we can tell.
The next burial in chronologial order is tomb I (Sprockhoff 683). This one had a chamber made of large stones, like any good hunebed should. *grin* It is the odd one out with its south-east to north-west alignment. The chamber has been partly destroyed (see below).
The tomb is 45 metres long and 6,5 to 7 metres wide and today still 1.5 to 2 metres high. Of the 76 glacial erratics that formed the framing wall only few remain in situ, some have tumbled and others were taken away in later times. There once had been 33 on both long sides and 5 each on the narrow edges. The tomb still makes quite an impression when you come walking around a bend in the path and suddenly stand in front of it.
The burial chamber lies crossways to the alignment of the tomb, with the entrance to the south. The chamber consisted of three bays of two carrier stones (glacier erratics) and one capstone each, as well as a threshold stone. Only two of the carrier stones remain, as well as the threshold stone. The chamber has a size of 5.4 x 3.6 metres. The ground was made of packed loam with flint and granite splinters on a bed of field stones.
The chamber has been excavated by Laux in 1973. He found the remains of two bodies, together with two funnel beakers and two cups, another cup with a high handle, several flint arrowheads and a hatchet. I could not find any information about the gender of the bodies; likely there was no way to tell from the remains.
Tomb II (Sprockhoff 684) is somewhat younger and different from the other burials on the site. It is not a hunebed, but an oval tumulus of about 20 metres in diameter and 2 metres in height. The burial was – contrary to the others on the site – not framed by a wall of glacial erratic boulders.
Remains of the chamber are visible today. The chamber – of the passage grave type with an entrance tunnel ‒ is located in the middle of the tumulus. The chamber measures 5.2 x 1.6 metres and has four bays. The entrance was to the south-west where a stone is missing in the pattern. Two support stones each on the long sides are still in situ. On its south-eastern narrow end, the chamber has two support stones instead of the more customary single stone.
The earth covering the chamber was sandy and poor in nutrients, different to the two earlier burials where the earth was darker and fertile. The soil must have been leached over several generations of agriculture. Maybe the settlers had moved to a better place and the site was only used for burials at the time.
Bone remains show that the dead were a man aged about 50 years and a woman of about 30 years. But most interesting is one of the grave goods, a ceramic cup with a high handle and a foot in the omphalos style, a fashion that can be found in metal vessels from the Aegean. Even the outline of the rivet that connect the handle to the body has been recreated in clay. There must have been trade contacts and cultural exchanges between this remote area in the Lüneburg Heath, still a Neolithic culture, and the Mediterranean where the Bronze Age had already begun.
Tomb IV (Sprockhoff 686) is the youngest and also the most spectacular of the four burials. It once had 108 external stones, a number of which are still in situ; many have been taken away and some were dislocated over time (some have been relocated during the reconstruction). The dolmen is 80 metres long and abut 6 metres wide; the height is about 1.5 metres – it was likely a good deal higher when it was erected.
The surrounding wall once had been a complete enclosure. There was not only a set of glacial erratic boulders; the spaces between them had been filled with ashlar. This feature has been reconstructed in some spots.
The burial chamber is still pretty much intact except for the roof, and is presented to the public. It is quite a looker, too. *grin* The chamber, located at the western end of the tomb, was excavated by the Dutch archaeologist Albert Egges van Giffen (1884 – 1973) in 1970. Chambers in the western end, with the entrance leading outside the dolmen (and not crosswise to the alignment of the hunebed, with an entrance 'inside' the earthenwall like in tomb I and III) is called a Holstein Chamber (Holsteiner Kammer).
The chamber is 8 metres long and 2 metres wide and consists of five bays. There are 12 supporting stones – five each for the long sides and one each for the narrow ends – and another two for the passage on the south-west side of the chamber. Originally, the chamber had 5 capstones and the passage another one; those are missing. The threshold stone survives. The boulders are leaning slightly inwards, the spaces between them are filled with drystones.
There have been two burials; the older one with the traditional grave goods of flint tools and ceramic, including models following Bronze Age patterns, as well as several drums. That older burial was partly removed and the remains covered by sand before the new bodies were placed. The ceramic that goes with those marks the change from the Funnelbeaker to the late Neolithic Globular Amphora culture that had moved in from the east.
As mentioned above, after the Neolithic, the site was also used by Bronze Age people (who left behind tumuli that are now mostly flattened) and later for urn field burials of the Iron Age and Migration time – the Langobards settled there for a time, for example. The tombs II and IV were still accessible at the time; a body belonging to the Iron Age has been buried at the entrance of tomb II.
Unfortunately, those big stones were quite popular with people about to build churches, house foundations and walls to separate fields. Many of the boulders have been dragged away and often chopped into smaller bits. Traces of an unsuccessful stone theft can be seen in the photo above.
The grave goods, as far as they were accessible, also attracted some interest – I would not be surprised if some real Bronze Age goods were pilfered (they're worth more than ceramics, after all) and have disappeared for good.
In 1853, the burial site was bought by request of King Georg of Hannover to prevent further stone pilfering and illegal digging.
The tumuli and urn graves that are sprinkled between the impressive dolmen and beyond – today barely visible – did not attract much interest for a long time. But modern methods of geophysical survey have shown that the necropolis was spread much farther than the extent of the Neolithic stone settings. A research project is going on right now.
Sources
Angelika Franz: Wandern zwischen Leben und Tod – Die Oldenburger Totenstatt, in: Archäologie in Deutschland 01/2021, p.67-71
Johannes Müller: Großsteingräber, Grabenwerke, Langhügel – Frühe Monumentalbauten Mitteleuropas. Darmstadt, 2017
The Megalith-Seiten by Thomas Witzke.
Read more! ¶ October 24, 2021 3 comments
