Zeitspender

The weekend before Red Baron started on his trip to Halberstadt, Quedlinburg, and Goslar in the Harz region, an event took place in the framework of the 125th anniversary of Freiburg's Münsterbauverein (MBV): Der Tag der offenen Baustelle (Day of the open building site).

A couple of members and active supporters of the Society for the Preservation of the Minster not only contribute their yearly membership fee but offer their time, becoming Zeitspender in supporting MBV's scheduled events in 2015.

Corporate design: Red Baron's Zeitspender polo shirt

During Freiburg's Minster market crowded on a Saturday as usual, the organizers offered a lift with a construction elevator to a platform running around the Minster's high choir at the height of 50 meters. The choir needs urgent repairs, but experts estimate that the scaffolding will remain in place for the next 30 (!) years.

Scaffolded high choir

The fare for going up to the platform was 8 euros and for members of the MBV reduced to 5 euros. Most people standing in line for a ride were already members; others were tourists from France, Switzerland, and from all over Germany. They were not the Freiburgers Red Baron was looking for. 

Anyway, I was busy talking to all those fascinating people trying to convince them to become members of the MBV. We need to push the number of active supporters to preserve the building, now numbering 5114, beyond the 6000 mark. Many visitors I talked to just took the flyer that informed them about membership, but at least three people signed the form in my presence. As new members of the MBV, they were offered a free ticket to an upcoming Minster concert.

A romantic view of the high choir in the 19th century.
Note that not all of the buttresses carry pinnacles.
The sacristan building on the right was destroyed during the war.

At the end of my duty, I took the lift up myself and was rewarded with some fantastic views of the Minster and its surroundings that a regular visitor would not experience. 

In an old engraving of the church, you may notice that some of the buttresses (Strebepfeiler) of the high choir are not crowned with pinnacles (Fialen). In fact, Gothic cathedrals' builders had to compensate for the lateral forces of the vaults and roof by placing flying buttresses (Strebebögen) to support the side walls. The external supporting buttresses were usually ballasted with an additional weight of structural pinnacles. 

However, these additional weights were no longer necessary in the high Gothic era, so the Minster's high choir initially had no pinnacles. Nevertheless, to embellish the church, ornamental pinnacles were added to most of the pillars in neo-Gothic style at the end of the 18th and, in particular, during the 19th century when Freiburg had become an archiepiscopal see.

Buttresses, their supports, and damaged pinnacles. The Schlossberg is visible in the back.

One of the Hahnentürme (cock towers) is seen through a buttress.
These towers were started in the Romanesque style and later heightened in the Gothic style.

A graffiti of a tambour Hagenbuch, one of  Napoleon's German-speaking Alsatian soldiers
(-bur instead of -bour), on the high choir's outer wall at the ground floor level.
I had photographed this graffito earlier that apparently will no longer be accessible
for the coming 30 years.

Now I discovered the graffiti of Dominic Kaltenbach
and Xaver Disch at the height of the platform dated 1809.

View of the north side of the Minster market with Altes Kaufhaus
and the spire of Saint Martin's Gate in the back

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