Pope Gregory IX granted the church the authority to issue indulgences in a letter dated 30 May 1235, and the cornerstone was laid on 14 August of the same year.

In the context of the Reformation, Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse had Elizabeth's remains removed, in order to deter pilgrims from the Protestant city of Marburg.

[4][5] The Skull Reliquary of St. Elizabeth was looted from Marienberg Fortress in Würzburg and is now in the Swedish History Museum, Stockholm.

For the duration of the Second World War, the five gothic altarpieces and medieval stained glass windows were moved to Haina Abbey for safekeeping.

The sarcophagi of Frederick the Great and Frederick William I, originally in the Garrison Church in Potsdam, and those of Paul von Hindenburg and his wife Gertrud, originally in the Tannenberg Memorial in East Prussia, were moved to St. Elizabeth's by American Monuments Men in Summer 1945, after the sarcophagi were found, hidden from Soviet capture, in a Thuringian salt mine.

The bodies of the Prussian kings were moved to Hohenzollern Castle on the initiative of Louis Ferdinand of Prussia in 1951, however, the Hindenburg couple was permanently interred in the northern tower chapel of St.

[8] In 1954, the church was made an independent parish, and in 1969, ownership of the building was transferred from the Hessian state to the Evangelical Congregation of Marburg.

Several archeological excavations since have yielded rich insights into the church's status as a medieval center of the Teutonic Order and pilgrimage site, including hundreds of pilgrims' graves below the nave.

The representative west portal of the church, completed in 1270, shows the Virgin Mary flanked by angels in a floral setting.

Most of the stained glass windows in the church were heavily damaged in the Seven Years War, and remnants were put together haphazardly.

At the corner of the northern (Elisabeth) choir, there is a large mausoleum dating to 1280, which is situated above the spot where Elizabeth was originally laid to rest in St. Francis' Hospital Chapel, before her shrine was moved to the sacristy.

[12] The Altar of the Cross, situated in front of the choir screen, is topped with a crucifix by Ernst Barlach, commissioned in 1931 to commemorate the 700th anniversary of Elizabeth's death.

This crucifix was removed from the church in 1936 as an example of Degenerate Art, however, it was spared from destruction and placed back on the altar following the fall of the Nazis.

St. Elizabeth's church also contains a wealth of other treasures, including the original choir screen and pulpit, misericords, sacrament niche and piscina.