St. Annen-Museum

Description

In the southeastern part of Lübeck’s old town lies the St.-Annen-Kloster; today it forms the Museumsquartier St. Annen and belongs to the Lübecker Museum für Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte. The ensemble is located close to the Aegidienkirche and adjoins the synagogue there.

Between 1502 and 1515 a late Gothic convent complex was erected here, its compact form responding to the particular urban conditions. The foundation stone was laid on 20 August 1502; even before completion, services were held on the building site in a provisional wooden chapel. The choir, cloister and bells were already consecrated in 1508, and by 1515 the buildings were ready for occupation. The house was dedicated to Saint Anne and established as a foundation of Augustinian canonesses; numerous donations from Lübeck families secured construction and upkeep. During the Reformation donations declined; after the decision to adopt the Reformation the convent was soon closed, parts of the community returned to their mother house, the city assumed the property in 1538, and the last nuns left the house in 1542.

After secularization the complex underwent several changes: initially the church served as storage, and from 1601 rooms were used as a poorhouse and workhouse modeled on the English example. The choir and the front bays were restored for worship, while the northern side aisle and the western church area accommodated workshops and storage. On the St.-Annen-Kirchhof the needy received anonymous, free burials. Later penal functions were added; in 1778 an additional wing, the Spinnhaus, was built, so that poor relief and penal detention were united under one roof. The house provided for and cared for orphans and the needy; the numbers supported rose from several hundred in the 17th century to over a thousand in the 19th century. Fires damaged parts of the complex in the 19th century, and the church was largely demolished in 1875. Until 1908 parts continued to serve as a house of correction; thereafter the property was taken over by a charitable society that brought together the medieval art treasures, supplemented among other things by the collections of Carl Julius Milde. The St.-Annen-Museum opened in 1915.

The ground-floor rooms largely retain their historic fabric: the cloister, refectories, the great Remter, the chapter house and the sacristy still date from the period of origin; in the southwest corner lies the calefactorium. Of the three-aisled convent church the lower façade facing St.-Annen-Straße with its portal, as well as the stair tower with a two-flight spiral staircase, have been preserved; the choir and side aisles survive in part as single-storey. The modern museum entrance deliberately echoes the forms of the former church.