Revival structure is the largest
cathedral in northern Europe
and boasts a giant (422-foot-
long) nave (FIG. 18-46) with
two aisles on each side.
The 150-foot-high 14th-
century choir is a skillful variation of the Amiens Cathedral choir
(FIGS. 18-19and 18-20) design, with double lancets in the triforium
and tall, slender single windows in the clerestory above and choir ar-
cade below. Completed four decades after Gerhard’s death but ac-
cording to his plans, the choir expresses the Gothic quest for height
even more emphatically than many French Gothic buildings. De-
spite the cathedral’s seeming lack of substance, proof of its stability
came during World War II, when the city of Cologne sustained ex-
tremely heavy aerial bombardments. The church survived the war by
virtue of its Gothic skeletal design. Once the first few bomb blasts
blew out all of its windows, subsequent explosions had no adverse
effects, and the skeleton remained intact and structurally sound.
SAINT ELIZABETH, MARBURG A different type of de-
sign, also probably of French origin (FIG. 17-16, left) but developed
especially in Germany, is the Hallenkirche,in which the aisles are the
same height as the nave. Hall churches, consequently, have no tri-
bune, triforium, or clerestory. An early German example of this type
is the church of Saint Elizabeth (FIG. 18-47) at Marburg, built be-
tween 1235 and 1283. It incorporates French-inspired rib vaults with
pointed arches and tall lancet windows. The facade has two spire-
capped towers in the French manner but no tracery arcades or por-
tal sculpture. Because the aisles provide much of the bracing for the
nave vaults, the exterior of Saint Elizabeth is without the dramatic
parade of flying buttresses that typically circles French Gothic
churches. But the German interior, lighted by double rows of tall
windows in the aisle walls, is more unified and free flowing, less nar-
row and divided, and more brightly illuminated than the interiors of
French and English Gothic churches.
STRASBOURG CATHEDRAL In the German Rhineland,
which the successors of the Carolingian and Ottonian emperors still
ruled, work began in 1176 on a new cathedral for Strasbourg, today
a French city. The apse, choir, and transepts were in place by around- Stylistically, these sections of the new church are Romanesque.
But the reliefs of the two south-transept portals are fully Gothic and
reveal the impact of contemporary French sculpture, especially that
of Reims.
490 Chapter 18 GOTHIC EUROPE18-46Gerhard of
Cologne,interior of Cologne
Cathedral (looking east),
Cologne, Germany, choir
completed 1322.
The nave of Cologne Cathedral
is 422 feet long. The 150-foot-
high choir, a taller variation on
the Amiens Cathedral choir
(FIG. 18-20), is a prime example
of Gothic architects’ quest for
height.The subject of the left tympanum (FIG. 18-48) is the death of
the Virgin Mary. A comparison of the Strasbourg Mary on her
deathbed with the Mary of the Reims Visitationgroup (FIG. 18-24,
right) suggests that the German master had studied the recently
installed French jamb statues. The 12 apostles gather around the18-47Interior of Saint Elizabeth (looking west), Marburg, Germany,
1235–1283.
This German church is an early example of a Hallenkirche, in which the
aisles are the same height as the nave. Because of the tall windows in
the aisle walls, sunlight brightly illuminates the interior.18-47A
Heiligkreuz-
kirche,
Schwäbisch
Gmünd, begun
1351.