Rostock - Kulturhistorisches Museum

With more than 200.000 inhabitants Rostock is the largest city in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Small Slavic settlements existed already in the 8th century. A settlement named Roztok was founded in the 11th century by Polabian Slavs. This town was burnt down by troops of the Danish king Valdemar I in 1161. Afterwards the place was settled by German traders.

After 1226 Rostock became the seat of the Lordship of Rostock.

In the 1250s the city became a member of the Hanseatic League. In the 14th century it was a powerful seaport town with 12,000 inhabitants and the largest city in Mecklenburg. Ships for cruising the Baltic Sea were constructed in Rostock. Until the last Hansa Convention in 1669, Rostock took a leading role in the Baltic Sea behind Lübeck.
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The museum, founded mid 19th century, is hosted in the "Kloster zum Heiligen Kreuz", that got finally dissolved in 1920. The conversion into a museum began already in 1976, but the restoration of the buildings remained incomplete until 1997.

The "Dreikönigsaltar" (Magis´ Altar) is the former high altar of
of the church of the Rostock´s "St. Johanneskloster", a monastery of the Dominicans.

The winged altar dates from around 1425 and was donated to the Dominicans by the "Fraternitas Trium Regum", the "Brotherhood of the Three Kings".

It originally had two pairs of wings. Two of them are in a Berlin museum, while two are still here.

The wings depict different scenes from the Magi legend.

I have never before seen the

Baptism of the Magi

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There are two medieval authors who knew, that the Magi got baptized. Dominican preacher Giselher von Slatheim (~ 1320) and Carmelite friar Johannes von Hildesheim (~1350), author of "Historia Trium Regum", the "History of the Three Kings".