The Spire of the Freiburg Minster

Red Baron loves the old beauty. When he walks downtown on one particular street, he has the most beautiful spire on earth always in view.

 

©MBV

For ten years, the spire was shrouded in scaffolding for repair, and its intricate filigree structure was hidden from view. It was a sad sight.

Not only was I particularly interested in Professor Hubert's lecture. The lecture hall was so crowded that the head of the Studium Generale, Professor Frick, had to ask those present to keep the emergency aisle clear.

Professor Hubert explained the structure of a tracery composed of rods and their crowning.

 

This is the method used to stabilize high glass windows in cathedrals, as seen in the choir chapel of Reims Cathedral. At the same time, traceries are load-bearing structural elements due to their design.

A cathedral master builder at Freiburg had the ingenious idea of not using the traceries vertically (90°) in the window construction, but to build a spire. 

He tilted the traceries slightly (83°) and arranged them in an octagon. Thus, the inclined construction elements support each other, while the whole structure is held together by a ring anchor. The eight ends of its iron struts are fixed in place in the individual corner stones of the octagon by casting them in lead.

©Benedikt Schaufelberger

This shows the state of construction of the Freiburg Minster around 1300. The choir of the old church, dedicated to St. Nicholas, is still preserved. An octagonal wooden structure is visible at the base of the tower, designed to support the inclined traceries.

To get the octagon symmetrical was a tricky job. In the slide above, the deformations that are not noticeable to the observer from a distance are mapped.

The sight of this spire, sometimes described as a spiritual stone, is simply stunning. Professor Hubert showed breathtaking slides.

       

Converging the filigree construction of the spire into a tip was a delicate and complicated task. Everything had to be held together somehow with iron clamps. Is this medieval botched construction work?

 
This epoch-making construction soon found imitators, and continues to do so today.

Freiburg gave it to the world.

Professor Hubbert showed a non-exhaustive list of churches and profane buildings using the Freiburg model.

Burgos Cathedral has two towers with octagonal spires, whose construction began in 1442. Here is an example of the 19th century:

          

Karl Friedrich Schinkel's plan of 1814/15 for the Cathedral of Freedom in Berlin. A memorial to the wars of liberation against Napoleon on Potsdamer Platz.

     

In a verse, the Gothic tower from 1516 of the Theobalduskirche in the small former Habsburg town of Thann in Alsace challenges Freiburg for the title of most beautiful octagonal spire:

Le clocher de Strasbourg est le plus haut, Celui de Freiburg est le plus gros, Mais le clocher de Thann est le plus beau.

The bell tower in Strasbourg is the tallest, The one in Freiburg is the fattest, But the bell tower in Thann is the most beautiful.

The great Jakob Burghardt protects us from Thann's claim when he states: And Freiburg will probably remain the most beautiful spire on earth.

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