Ulm Minster

The original parish church in Ulm was built at the gate of the city outside the walls, and this caused much trouble for the citizens of the city in the 14th century's conflicts that involved Ulm, as demonstrated by Emperor Charles IV's siege of the city. This parish church had also been subordinated to Reichenau Monastery by Charlemagne in 813, and the denizens of Ulm wanted a new, independent church inside the city's walls. To this end, the city's near 10,000 inhabitants decided to finance construction themselves. On 30 June 1377, Mayor Ludwig Krafft laid the first stone, the foundation stone, of the new church. This church, whose design would be given to Heinrich Parler, the architect of Holy Cross Minster in Schwäbisch Gmünd. The first plan was to build a stepped hall church with aisles as wide and almost as high as the central nave, with a main spire on the west and two steeples above the choir (29 meters (95 ft) long, 15 meters (49 ft) wide). The women of the Ulmer Assemblage would also make their contributions to the foundation works, something memorialized by 17th and 18th century composer Barbara Kluntz.[5]

Michael Parler, who had experience from working at the Dombauhütte in Prague, assumed construction of the church in 1381 and continued work on the nave, which had originally been conceived as a triple-aisled hall church with approximately equal height and width. From 1387 to 1391, Heinrich III Parler managed construction as head of the Bauhütte. Then in 1392 Ulrich Ensingen, associated with Strasbourg Cathedral, was appointed master builder. It was Parler's plan to construct the Ulm Minster's 150 meters (490 ft) spire, the highest of any church. In order to balance its proportions, the nave was now to be much taller than the Parlers had intended, making a noticeable difference in height between the chancel and nave. The church was consecrated on 25 July 1405. In 1446, Ulrich's son Matthäus took over construction and finished the choir vault in 1449 and the vault over the northern nave in 1452. When he died in 1463, his own son, Moritz, took over construction. Himself dying in 1471, he completed the vaulting over the nave and constructed the sacrament house, finally making the church a basilica according to Ulrich's plan.

In 1477, Matthäus Böblinger took over and made changes to the plans of the church but especially to the main tower and in doing so caused the church's first major structural threat: the heavy vaults of the wide aisles and high nave burdened the columns with too much lateral force at different heights. A new master builder, Burkhart Engelberg of Augsburg, tackled the structural damage by reinforcing the foundation of the west tower and demolishing the heavy aisle vaults and replacing them with vaults of half widths, which afforded rows of additional columns dividing each of the aisles in two. Although catastrophe had been avoided, the walls were left without their buttresses for 350 years and the northern wall of the nave bulges outward by 27 centimeters (11 in) even today.

In a referendum in 1530/31, the citizens of Ulm converted to Protestantism during the Reformation. Ulm Minster became a Lutheran church. Despite its vast size, it is not a cathedral, as the responsible bishop of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg – member of the Evangelical Church in Germany – resides in Stuttgart.

In 1543, construction work ceased at a time when the steeple had reached a height of some 100 metres (330 ft). The suspension of the building process was due to a variety of factors which were political and religious, like the Reformation, as well as economic, since the discovery of the Americas during the voyages of Christopher Columbus 1492–1504, the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India in 1497–99, and Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe led to an epochal shift in trade routes and commodities. One result was economic stagnation and a steady decline, preventing major public expenditure.

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  Center aisle, looking east to the sanctuary
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  Due to the changed plans, the nave is much higher than the choir and aisles.
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  Northern aisle, divided in two by an additional arcade. The base of one arch covers an imperial eagle painted before modification of the vaulting.
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  Ulm Minster in 1643, depicted by Matthaeus Merian
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  Photo of 1854, before completion of much of the second phase
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  Photo of 1887, with new flying buttresses and lateral towers
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  Ulm Minster, aerial view (2014)
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  Church bells of the Ulm Minster seen from above (2019)

In 1817, the interior frescos were covered by painting the walls grey. In 1844, construction work resumed. After a phase of repairs lasting until 1856, the central nave was stabilized by the addition of flying buttresses. Then the small steeples beside the choir were built – without medieval plans. At last, the main steeple was completed, changing the available medieval plan in making it about ten metres taller. Finally, on 31 May 1890 the building was completed.

A devastating air raid hit Ulm on 17 December 1944, which destroyed virtually the entire town west of the church to the railway station and north of the church to the outskirts. The church itself was barely damaged. However, almost all the other buildings of the town square (Münsterplatz) were severely hit and some 80% of the medieval centre of Ulm was destroyed.

Due to renovation work, the Minster Tower is currently only accessible up to the first platform (70m)[6] and parts of the nave have been closed to visitors since March 2023.[7]

• The height of the steeple is 161.53 metres (530.0 ft). Ulm Minster is the world's tallest church.
• The church has a length of 123.56 metres (405.4 ft) and a width of 48.8 metres (160 ft).
• The building area is approximately 8,260 square metres (88,900 sq ft).
• The height of the central nave is 41.6 metres (136 ft), whilst the lateral naves are 20.55 metres (67.4 ft) high.
• The volume of the edifice is some 190,000 cubic metres (6,700,000 cu ft).
• The weight of the main steeple is estimated at 51,500 tonnes (50,700 long tons; 56,800 short tons).
• The church seats a congregation of 2,000.
• In the Middle Ages, before pews were introduced, it could accommodate 20,000 people, when the population of the town was about 5,000.