Lübeck City Hall: A Medieval Hanseatic Civic Centre in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- German, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Civic
- Remains
- Town Hall
On this page19 sections
History
Lübeck City Hall is a medieval civic complex in Germany, erected around 1240 as a late-Romanesque group of three gabled houses. Its scale and later brick-Gothic architecture reflect Lübeck’s position as a principal city of the Hanseatic League, the medieval and early-modern network of trading towns and merchant communities in northern Europe. The building also expressed the political confidence of the city’s wealthy patrician elite.
The earliest city hall and the imperial city
The oldest city hall was recorded in the reconstructed 1225 or 1226 version of the Urkodex V, an early text of Lübeck law. It stood at the northwest corner of the market. After Lübeck received imperial immediacy in 1226, placing the city directly under the emperor within the Holy Roman Empire, the earlier building was transferred to the tanners in 1250. It then became known as the Lohhaus. Altered several times, it was demolished in 1872.
The main-building complex was erected around 1240. The fire of 1251 damaged the new structure and prompted major changes to its arrangement. The council rooms moved into the former cloth hall, while textile trading took place in the vaulted cellars. The civic court met in the vaulted arcade or forecourt, initially under the supervision of the bailiff. The city council also exercised judicial functions, and the Oberhof, Lübeck’s higher court, served until 1820 as an appellate reference for towns governed by Lübeck law.
Expansion in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
Before or around 1260, a two-storey vaulted arcade with a flat roof was built against the complex’s shield wall, a prominent gabled wall that concealed and visually terminated the roof. Around 1290, the middle building was converted into a courtyard with niches for merchants. It was later roofed and used for storage. Shortly before the end of the thirteenth century, the Grawanthus was added toward the churchyard of St. Mary for the sale of inexpensive grey cloth. Only its cellars survive.
After 1298, the Long House was built between the market and the Haymarket, now part of Breite Straße. Its upper-storey Lion Hall first served as a council chamber and later as a festival or dance hall. The main building was demolished apart from its shield wall around 1340 and replaced by a new structure by 1350. From about that time, the Hanseatic Hall served as a meeting place associated with the Hanseatic League.
The great fire of 1358 severely damaged the newer building. Its roof structure and other wooden elements had to be rebuilt. The arcade before the main entrance also became the Senate Balcony, from which laws and other Senate decisions were proclaimed to the public until the middle of the twentieth century.
Late Gothic and Renaissance transformation
Several years before 1434, the arcade received a lean-to roof. Around 1435, the master builder Peck gave the old shield wall its present three-towered form. He later constructed the New Chambers south of the Long House in a richly detailed Late Gothic style. The Chancellery building began in 1483 with five of its present twenty-two bays.
Between 1570 and 1572, the exposed Gothic section of the arcade on the north side of the market was replaced by the present Renaissance structure. In 1594, the New Chambers received a Dutch-style Renaissance staircase leading to the War Room. That chamber became the city hall’s most splendid room and reflected the Hanseatic League’s involvement in decisions concerning commerce, war, and peace.
A stock-exchange hall was established in the western part of the main building around 1750 and extended across two storeys. At approximately the same time, the Gothic council chamber was transformed into a Rococo audience chamber, an eighteenth-century room for formal hearings or receptions, by lowering its ground-floor windows.
Modern alterations and civic use
The Hanseatic Hall was replaced by offices in 1818. The Oberhof ceased to serve as an appellate court in 1820, and the Lion Hall was converted in 1829. Its market-side windows were substantially reduced. The stock-exchange hall later disappeared when the Bürgerschaft Hall was built.
Historicist renovations in the 1880s revived and recombined earlier architectural styles, reversing some alterations while also destroying original medieval fabric. The Renaissance staircase was replaced by a replica, the hall beneath the Long House was opened toward Breite Straße as an arcade, and parts of the façades were refaced with new brick or completely rebuilt. The Bürgerschaft Hall was constructed in the western wing in 1891 in the Neo-Gothic style, with further historicist interior work continuing from 1891 to 1894. The Bürgerschaft is Lübeck’s civic representative assembly.
The War Room was destroyed during the heavy air raid on Lübeck in March 1942 and is no longer used as a representative room. Restoration in 1953 included the removal of the Long House’s Neo-Gothic gables facing Breite Straße. Lübeck City Hall remains the seat of the mayor and the meeting place of the city council. The complex forms part of Lübeck’s World Heritage historic centre. A bronze plaque at the entrance to the Bürgerschaft Hall commemorates Erich Klann, Julius Leber, Moritz Neumark, Egon Nickel, Karl Ross, Paul Steen, and Johannes Stelling, civic representatives who were victims of National Socialism.
Remains
Early complex and shield walls
Early Romanesque buildings
The earliest main complex consisted of three late-Romanesque gabled houses. The eastern section probably had the form of a tall gabled house when the complex burned in 1251 and initially served as a cloth hall. Parts of its south gable, including the recognizable outline of the former roof structure, remain visible in the eastern part of the shield wall behind the arcade, north of the market and the Long House. Traces in the shield wall show that the upper storey was lower in the other sections of the original group. Their vaulted cellars survive and now form part of the Ratskeller, the town hall cellar traditionally associated with storage or public dining.
Gothic shield walls
The early Gothic alterations combined the south and north gables into monumental shield walls. The southern wall retains Early Gothic tracery panels, while the northern wall contains tracery in its air windows. Much of the northern wall is a nineteenth-century reconstruction, with large blind windows whose brick patterning drew on French and Flemish models. Circular openings in the market-facing ornamental walls reduce wind pressure on the façade. Smaller circular openings toward St. Mary’s churchyard are decorative.
Arcades and the Long House
Market arcade
The two eastern bays of the pre-1260 vaulted arcade now connect the main wing with the Long House. The arcade originally rose through two storeys and had a flat roof. Its section facing the market was later replaced by the Renaissance arcade, whose granite columns support sandstone gables made by the Flemish sculptors Hans Fleminck and Hercules Midow between 1570 and 1572. The upper storeys to the west use brick masonry. Beneath the Long House, the middle and market-side rows of columns were replaced with granite columns, having originally been built of brick.
Long House
The Long House contained an open, vaulted ground-floor hall originally supported by brick columns, with stalls for goldsmiths. Its cellars first accommodated textile trading and later wine storage. The Lion Hall occupied the upper storey and changed from a council chamber to a festival or dance hall. The market-side windows were substantially reduced in 1829, and the Neo-Gothic gables facing Breite Straße were removed during the 1953 restoration.
New Chambers and Renaissance wing
New Chambers
The New Chambers have display façades toward both the market and Breite Straße. Their ground floor was an open market hall containing stalls and the council’s official weighing facility. The Renaissance staircase on Breite Straße was designed by the Flemish sculptor Robert Coppens in 1594. The original staircase was replaced by a replica during the nineteenth-century renovation. It led toward the War Room, whose late-Renaissance fittings were destroyed in 1942.
Renaissance arcade and Chancellery
The Chancellery stands on the north side of Breite Straße as a Renaissance-brick element of the complex. The Renaissance arcade forms part of the market-facing structure, with granite columns supporting sandstone gables. Its western upper storeys are brick-built, while the arcade below the Long House incorporates replacement granite columns. The main façade toward Breite Straße is organized by broad horizontal friezes and few vertical accents. Its ground-floor windows were lowered in the eighteenth century, and the wall bricks were replaced after 1880.
Interiors and commemorative features
Council and audience chamber
The 1574 Renaissance portal by Tönnies Evers the Elder leads to the council and audience chamber. Its two doors are unequal in height, with the higher door on the right and the lower on the left. The portal’s carved panel above the doorway depicts the Judgment of Solomon, the biblical story in which Solomon resolves a dispute over a child, an image associated with wise judgment. Inscriptions inside and outside the chamber concern judicial conduct, wisdom, love, justice, and good counsel.
The chamber has furnishings that bridge the Late Baroque and Rococo styles. Ten allegorical paintings by Stefano Torelli, made between 1754 and 1761, represent virtues of good government in stucco frames. The virtues appear as female figures except discretion, represented as a Roman soldier because a female personification was considered unsuitable at the time.
Bürgerschaft Hall
The Bürgerschaft Hall occupies the western wing and was built in 1891 in the Neo-Gothic style. Its corridors contain portraits of former mayors and councillors. The portraits of Thomas von Wickede and Gotthard von Höveln are attributed to the Lübeck Renaissance painter Hans Kemmer. Max Friedrich Koch, a painter from Berlin, made the historicist wall paintings during the renovations of 1891 to 1894.
War Room and Gustav Vasa statue
The War Room had elaborate late-Renaissance wood panelling by Tönnies Evers the Younger. A richly ornamented portal opened into the room, whose panelling ran around all four walls above a continuous bench decorated with inlaid panels. These fittings were the oldest furnishings remaining from the city hall’s former state rooms and halls, although the room itself was destroyed in 1942.
A statue of Gustav I Vasa stands in a niche on the upper floor of the Renaissance wing. Anders Zorn created it as a miniature version of his statue at Mora in Sweden. The Swedish government presented the statue, which was installed on 16 June 1920, to commemorate Gustav Vasa’s stay in Lübeck in 1519. Gustav Vasa became king of Sweden in 1523 and established the Vasa dynasty.
