Qualla: Petersglocke

Petersglocke: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreasdziewior, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the night of 6 January 2011, the clapper of the Petersglocke broke loose at the top of Cologne Cathedral's south tower and fell. The four earthquake sensors built into the cathedral structure all registered the impact. The clapper weighed about 700 kilograms; the bell it had been striking weighs around 24 tons and measures 3.22 metres across — the second largest free-swinging bell in the world, surpassed only by the bell hung in Bucharest's People's Salvation Cathedral. Cologners call her the Dicker Pitter, "Fat Peter," with the kind of affectionate roughness reserved for things you have known your whole life. For most of 2011, Fat Peter was silent. Then in December a new clapper was installed, and on 7 December she rang again.

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Image: Andreasdziewior | CC BY-SA 3.0

Petersglocke: Cast in a Country That Could Not Pay

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elke Wetzig (Elya), CC BY-SA 3.0. The Petersglocke was cast on 5 May 1923 in the small Thuringian town of Apolda, in the foundry of Heinrich Ulrich. Weimar Germany was in the middle of its hyperinflation, and the bell-founder refused to accept payment in German marks — by the time he could deposit them they would...

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Image: Elke Wetzig (Elya) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Petersglocke: Voices She Has Marked

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. SaintOuen assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. The Petersglocke does not ring often. She is reserved for solemnities, for the death of an Archbishop of Cologne or of a Pope, and for the moments in German history that the cathedral chooses to recognise. She rang on 1 February 1926, at midnight, when the Allied occupation of th...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. SaintOuen assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Petersglocke: Cracks, Clappers, and Repairs

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elke Wetzig (Elya), CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1951 a crack 110 centimetres long appeared in the bell. The Lachenmeyer bell workshop from Nördlingen welded it in 1956 and fitted a lighter clapper of roughly 600 kilograms. They rotated the bell about 20 degrees so the new clapper would never strike the welded scar. That rep...

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Image: Elke Wetzig (Elya) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Petersglocke: The Symphony of the Cathedral Bells

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Randal J., CC BY-SA 2.5. On 5 May 2023 the Petersglocke turned 100 years old, and Cologne staged a bell concert in her honour — what the cathedral's musicians called the "Symphony of the Cologne Cathedral Bells," a six-movement programme that worked through the cathedral's history before bringing all twe...

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Image: Randal J. | CC BY-SA 2.5