Building began around 1250 as a three-aisled high-Gothic basilica; the west front with its rose window is of the mid-14th century; and the vast late-Gothic hall choir was added between 1439 and 1477, doubling the church eastwards. It has been Lutheran since the Reformation, which is why its pre-Reformation furnishings were kept rather than swept out.
The Sakramentshaus stands against a pier at the north side of the choir. Adam Kraft carved it in 1493–96 for the patrician Imhoff family: about 20 m high and 3.40 m wide, a sandstone tower of tracery that curls over at the top because it ran out of vault. It is carried on three kneeling figures, and the one at the front, a bearded man in a mason’s apron with his tools, is Kraft himself. Look at that figure before anything else — a craftsman putting his own body under the weight of his work, in the middle of a church, in 1496. The tabernacle was bricked up in place during the war and came through unharmed.
The Engelsgruß — the Annunciation, also called the English Greeting — hangs above the choir on chains. Anton Tucher commissioned it from Veit Stoss in 1517–18: over-lifesize figures of Mary and the archangel Gabriel in limewood, coloured and largely gilded, inside a ring of 55 golden roses representing the beads of the rosary. It was taken down and hidden in the city’s art bunker under the castle hill for the duration of the war.
The church itself did not get off so lightly: it was badly damaged in two nights of bombing and was rededicated on 10 August 1952. Much of what you see overhead — vaults, glass surrounds, roof — is post-war repair around the surviving stone.
Entry is free and a donation is asked for. Guided tours are offered daily.
