Qualla: Magdeburg Cathedral

Magdeburg Cathedral: Introduction

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Olaf2, CC BY-SA 3.0. On Good Friday in 1207, a fire burning through the streets of Magdeburg reached the old church of St. Maurice and consumed it. The cloister wall on the south side was the only thing left standing. Two years later, Archbishop Albert I of Kafernburg, fresh from travels in France, decided not to rebuild what had been there. He had seen the new pointed arches rising at Reims and Chartres, and he wanted them on the banks of the Elbe. The cathedral that grew out of that decision took 311 years to finish. The masons who set the first stones in 1209 had great-great-grandchildren who would never see the cross placed atop the north tower in 1520.

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Image: Olaf2 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Magdeburg Cathedral: The Emperor in the Choir

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mar Yung, CC BY 2.0. Walk into the sanctuary today and you stand a few paces from a sarcophagus that holds the remains of Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor of his line. Otto died in nearby Memleben in May of 973 and was carried here to be laid beside his English wife Eadgyth, granddaughter of Alfr...

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Image: Mar Yung | CC BY 2.0

Magdeburg Cathedral: The Sack of 1631

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Franzfoto, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 20 May 1631, after a long siege, the Catholic Imperial army under Johan t'Serclaes, Count of Tilly, broke into the city. What followed is still remembered in German as Magdeburgs Hochzeit, Magdeburg's wedding, an ironic name for one of the worst civilian massacres of the Thirt...

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Image: Franzfoto | CC BY-SA 3.0

Magdeburg Cathedral: Saint Maurice's Face

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ulamm (talk), CC BY-SA 4.0. Around 1250, an unknown sculptor working in the new cathedral carved a statue of Saint Maurice, the Theban legionary martyred for refusing to worship Roman gods. What he produced is one of the earliest realistic depictions of a Black African face in European art. The statue shows...

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Image: Ulamm (talk) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Magdeburg Cathedral: Napoleon's Stable, Schinkel's Restoration

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Webwur, CC BY-SA 4.0. When Napoleon took Magdeburg in 1806, his army used the cathedral as a warehouse, then as a stable for cavalry horses, and finally as a sheep pen. The occupation ended in 1814. A decade later, Frederick William III of Prussia handed restoration to Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the arc...

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Image: Webwur | CC BY-SA 4.0

Magdeburg Cathedral: The Monday Demonstrations

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Barnos, CC BY-SA 4.0. Inside the south transept stands Ernst Barlach's Magdeburger Ehrenmal, commissioned in 1929 as a heroic war memorial and delivered as something else entirely. Barlach, who had volunteered for the trenches and come back changed, sculpted gaunt soldiers and grieving figures instead...

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Image: Barnos | CC BY-SA 4.0