Holsten Gate, Lübeck

A gate built for the age of cannon

In 1478 Lübeck finished a new gate on the road west into Holstein. Work had begun in 1464 under the city's master builder, Hinrich Helmstede, and what he built was closer to a fortress than a doorway.

It stands on an artificial mound about seven metres high, raised in marshy ground west of the river Trave. Two round towers of red brick flank a gabled central block with an arched passage.

The design shows where danger was expected. On the field side the walls are up to 3.5 metres thick and pierced by gun ports on three levels. On the city side they are less than a metre thick. Two bands of terracotta plaques run round the building, patterned with lilies, thistle leaves and shields bearing Lübeck's eagle.

The marsh had its say. The south tower sank during construction, and the gate still leans.

The leading city of the Hanse

Behind the gate lay the leading city of the Hanseatic League, the alliance of merchant towns whose ships and salt trade dominated the Baltic.

From the road the skyline was already Lübeck's own. Across the Trave, on the hill of the old town, the twin brick spires of St Mary's rose about 125 metres.

Much of what now surrounds the gate was not there. For about a century the Holstentor was the outermost gate on this road, until a Renaissance outer gate was added in 1585. The brick salt warehouses beside it came later too, the first of them in 1579.

Saved by a single vote

By the nineteenth century the gate was in a dangerous state. In 1863 Lübeck's citizens voted to restore it rather than pull it down, by a majority of one vote.

The restoration ran from 1865 to 1871. It rebuilt the gables and roofs, whose original shape is not known, and added the inscriptions. On the field side a Latin motto reads CONCORDIA DOMI FORIS PAX, harmony within, peace outside. On the city side stand the letters S.P.Q.L., for the Senate and People of Lübeck, between the years 1477 and 1871.

Why Germans carried it in their wallets

From 1960 to 1991 the Holstentor was on the 50-mark note. In 2006 it appeared on the first of Germany's two-euro coins honouring the federal states, the one for Schleswig-Holstein.

Today the gate houses a museum of the city's history, and Lübeck's old town has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.

For Germans the squat, leaning gate stands for the Hanse itself, the medieval trading power every pupil meets in school, and for the city that led it. Few buildings in the country are so instantly recognised, and few came so close to being lost.

Sources

• Wikipedia (de): Holstentor
• museum-holstentor.de
• Wikipedia (de): Salzspeicher
• Wikipedia (en): Holsten Gate