From the Holstentor to the numerous old town houses with the typical stepped gables – the Hanseatic city of Lübeck is famous for its brick architecture. Now archaeologists have uncovered the oldest known remains of a brick house in Lübeck. Apparently the tower-like building on the banks of the Trave was built in the 1170s – at the same time as the nearby St. Peter’s Church. Traces of decorations suggest that it was the representative office of a rich merchant or a church building.
As the city of Lübeck explains in a communication, the archaeological finds were made during construction work on the Kolk. This is a 110-meter-long street that runs along the western edge of the old town island. In the area below the St. Petri Church, a new Lübeck cultural institution is being created from the former TheaterFigurenMuseum and the puppet theater. During the archaeological investigations accompanying the construction work, experts have now gained new insights into the historical development of the city: Under the basement of the former TheaterFigurenMuseum, they came across the remains of a massive building from the Middle Ages.
A tower-like house on boulders
The preserved structures of the small-format brickwork, which is only seven centimeters high, shows that it had a floor plan of 10.5 by 9 meters with a wall thickness of one and a half meters. Originally, what is now the basement of the TheaterFigurenMuseum corresponded to the ground floor of this building, as the street level has recently been increased significantly. The investigations show that the building could be entered from the Trave side through a large archway at ground level. In the Middle Ages, where the Kolks Street runs today, people went out of the building onto a wooden-paved street, which today was almost two meters below the current cobblestone pavement. The current height of the Kolk 14 house may have been the same as that of the original building. So the house looked like a big massive tower at the time, it says in the message.
The time the brick building came from was evident from elements of the fortification in the area of the foundation: by determining the age of wooden posts and planks, it could be dated to the same time as the construction of the nearby St. Petrikirche, i.e. the 1170s. It is the oldest known massive brick house in the Hanseatic city and one of the oldest in Northern Europe, writes the city of Lübeck. So that the building did not slip into the Trave so close to the hill on which St. Petrikirche was built, it was built on layers of large boulders. However, the archaeologists were able to prove that this, too, could not prevent the entire structure from sinking in the direction of the Trave.
An early office or a priest’s house?
But what was this building about? The great care that the extensive and very high-quality stone setting work shows, as well as the use of decorative elements such as a formerly circumferential base made of beveled shaped stones: It was obviously a representative building. Possibly it was an early office of a nobleman or a wealthy merchant of the trading town directly on the Trave, according to the announcement.
However, it could also have been connected to the church under construction above from the beginning. At least for a later time there are indications in written sources in the city archives that it could have been a “priestly house”: In 1287 a Gerhard de Kolke is named, who was possibly the priest of St. Petri in the late 13th century and lived there. A little later, the building assigned to him was sold and was then referred to around 1334 as the “Tu deme Kolke” house. The further exploration of the walls will perhaps shed more light on the history of the building, writes the administration of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck in conclusion.
Source: Hanseatic City of Lübeck