Castle Monastery & Castle Gate in Lübeck

With the onset of the Reformation, the monastery was dissolved in 1531 and a poorhouse moved into the medieval premises. At the end of the 19th century, it was converted to a court building with adjoining remand centre. Two cells of the prison and a lay judge courtroom bear witness today to this stage in the castle monastery’s history. The castle monastery is thus at the same time a reminder of the time of National Socialism in Lübeck and the victims who were imprisoned and sentenced here.

Lübeck, the city of the famous seven spires, even used to have an eighth spire. It belonged to the former Maria Magdalena church of the Castle Monastery, but it was torn down with the church in 1818. What a pity!

When the Danish King Waldemar II and his army were rampaging at the gates of Lübeck in order to capture the town, the princes around Lübeck and Lübeck’s citizens got together and the crucial battle took place near Bornhöved on 22 July 1227, the holy Maria Magdalena’s day. For a long time, the battle raged and the alliance was slowly losing ground because its soldiers were dazzled by the sun. There was a reason for this as on the morning of the battle, Lübeck’s councillors had assembled to pray to God and the holy Mary for help. In the event of winning the battle, they promised to build a monastery in honour of God and the holy Mary with the latter to be its patron saint. Their prayers were apparently answered as the holy Mary Magdalena appeared, held her cloak in front of the sun and darkened the sky. So the Castle Monastery was named after Mary Magdalena.

The Castle Gate is indeed the only one of the four city gates to be attacked and overrun by enemy soldiers in battle over the centuries. For example, Napoleon’s French troops succeeded in entering the city in 1806 and occupying it for some years. This was the beginning of a tough time for Lübeck.

One special rarity from the time of the Napoleonic wars and the painful period of French occupation in Lübeck is a chamber pot with a picture of Napoleon at the bottom of it. When answering a call of nature, Lübeck citizens were thus able to express unmistakably what they thought of the hated occupier Napoleon, albeit in the dark.

Although the people of Lübeck definitely resented Napoleonic rule, it wasn’t all bad from today’s perspective as the French introduced new, even revolutionary methods. For example, the French prefect introduced an official death register in 1811, and in 1812 a decree was issued banning burials within the city walls. Previously the dead – apart from victims of the plague, leprosy or cholera – had usually been buried in the churches, churchyards or within the walls of a monastery. There were good reasons for doing so as people were aware of their fallibility, saw themselves as weak sinners and felt threatened by Satan and his machinations. The fear that the Devil could seize their soul on their death was very real, and in spite of prior confession and absolution, people simply felt safer on ground over which Satan had no control. This led to a considerable shortage of space at the beginning of the 19th century and to problems of hygiene. Although the new directive on burials was initially rejected by the people of Lübeck and lifted again one year later when the city was freed, reason finally prevailed with the inauguration of the Castle Gate cemetery outside the gates of the city in 1832.

If you would like to immerse yourself in the exciting story of the medieval Castle Monastery, you can visit the European Hansemuseum and explore this historical monument that has been integrated with the modern architecture of the Hansemuseum.

In 1942, the Catholic chaplains Johannes Prassek, Hermann Lange, Eduard Müller and the Protestant pastor Karl Friedrich Stellbrink were imprisoned in the Castle monastery. Together they took a firm stand in public and among the parishioners entrusted to their care against the crimes of the Nazi regime.