Frankenberg - Liebfrauenkirche

In medieval times the area around was fought for by different parties. In 1232 Konrad of Thuringia, brother in law of Saint Elisabeth, had a fortified complex built here, that dominated the entire middle valley of the Eder river. There were a castle and an ecclesiastical area. Immediately the city was built with a large marketplace. It was obviously planned to have a strong bastion and to take advantage of the favourable traffic conditions.

The inhabitants of the new town were composed of the inhabitants of the surrounding villages and hamlets, who were resettled or voluntarily left their old homes. Frankenberg was soon surrounded by a mighty wall. Of the 25 towers and gates of the old town, only one still exists, the five city gates have disappeared.

The Liebfrauenkirche was built in 1286 according to the model of St. Elizabeth's Church in Marburg, one of the very first churches erected in Germany in Gothic style. It is believed that the entire "Bauhütte" moved from Marburg to Frankenberg to work here at the request of Landgrave Henry I , the grandson of St. Elizabeth.

In 1476, when a fire destroyed the entire town, the Liebfrauenkirche also burned out completely, which led to the loss of the precious original equipment. The church got rebuilt.

After the Reformation, the church became a Protestant church.

An iconoclasm started, under Landgrave Moritz (aka "Moritz der Gelehrte", "Maurice the Learned"), who, due to his Reformed confession, rigorously enforced the biblical prohibition of images. During this fury statues of saints and other Christian representations and artistic treasures were irretrievably lost in 1606.

When the Liebfrauenkirche had been completed, Johannes von Cassel donated his fortune for the construction of a pilgrimage chapel in honor of the Virgin Mary.

This chapel was designed master builder Tyle von Fankenberg built 1370 to 1380 on the floor plan of an irregular octagon. The chapel was added on to the southern transept the church.

The Marienkapelle is an early testimony of the high gothic and a unique construction. The altar got mutilated during the iconoclasm in 1605. The angels of the altar´s long frieze, making music, were not spared out.

The iconoclasm was a mob action by Calvinist crowds. In German it was (and still ist) called "Bildersturm" ("image/statue storm"). The "pious vandals" will have been as furious as the Taliban crowds who destroyed the giant Buddhas of Bamyan in 2001 in Afghanistan.