Qualla: Münster Cathedral

Münster Cathedral: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Flo Beck, Public domain. The astronomical clock in the south transept has been running since 1542. It survived an iconoclasm that destroyed its predecessor of 1408, two world wars, an Allied bombing raid that collapsed most of the cathedral around it, and the temptation, in every restoration since, to modernize a machine that nobody fully understood anymore. Its main dial is an astrolabe. Its lower dial is a perpetual calendar. A ten-bell carillon, playable from the cathedral organ, chimes the hours, and tiny automata move at the quarter. It is, at the moment, the oldest still-functioning astronomical clock in this part of Europe, and it is reason enough to come.

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Image: Flo Beck | Public domain

Münster Cathedral: The Third Cathedral on the Horsteberg

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ziko, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl. St. Paulus Dom is the third cathedral to stand on this small hill at the centre of Münster, and you can read the previous two in its walls. The first cathedral, the Ludgerus Dom, was built by Bishop Liudger around 805, the founder of the city itself. The second, an Ottonian basil...

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Image: Ziko | CC BY-SA 3.0 nl

Münster Cathedral: 1534-35: The Year Heaven Came to Münster

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rüdiger Wölk, CC BY-SA 2.0 de. For sixteen months in 1534 and 1535, Anabaptist radicals seized Münster and declared it the New Jerusalem. They expelled or rebaptized everyone who refused, abolished private property, instituted communal marriage, and waited for Christ to return. In the iconoclasm of 1534, the c...

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Image: Rüdiger Wölk | CC BY-SA 2.0 de

Münster Cathedral: The Clock That Knows Where the Planets Are

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NordhornerII, CC BY-SA 3.0. The 1542 astronomical clock sits in the south arm of the east transept and rewards patience. The main face is an astrolabe: it tracks the positions of the sun, moon, and visible planets against the zodiac, with a single hand that moves backward against the dial as the heavens app...

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Image: NordhornerII | CC BY-SA 3.0

Münster Cathedral: The Bishop Who Said No

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MyName (Jodocus), CC BY-SA 3.0. In the summer of 1941, the cathedral was still intact and the Nazi state was killing disabled Germans by the thousands in the secret program known as Aktion T4. Clemens August Graf von Galen, Bishop of Münster, climbed the cathedral pulpit on 13 July and 20 July and the pulpit of...

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Image: MyName (Jodocus) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Münster Cathedral: 1945 and What Came Back

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ziko van Dijk, CC BY-SA 3.0. In March 1945, Allied bombing collapsed parts of the vaulting and walls, destroyed Hermann tom Ring's mid-16th-century interior paintings, finished off the Late Gothic west portal, and burned out the south tower with its ring of medieval bells. Between 1946 and 1956 the cathedral...

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Image: Ziko van Dijk | CC BY-SA 3.0