Marienkirche, Prenzlau
The predecessor building was built from 1235 to 1250 as a three-nave fieldstone hall church with a two-bay nave, a little wider transept and an indented straight choir.
On the north side, a porch crowned by a tracery gable in the style of Hinrich Brunsberg was built.
The magnificent eastern façade is considered "unique" in brick Gothic style because of its sophisticated construction; its individual forms are modelled on the Fassadenrisse F of the Cologne Cathedral.
A window-like design with bar and traceries made of red and black glazed stones, with gables and friezes.
Protruding over the eaves above a tracery frieze and between fial pilars is a transparent wreath of openwork lashings.
The lower floors of the west building, made of fieldstone, are articulated with corner pilasters and flat fascias.
In the spacious, austerely kept interior, the cross ribbed vault with intervening separating arch was supported by the twelve richly designed, cruciform piers; the four frontal pier projections have strong Three-quarter round services (templates).
From 1581 to 1918, on the basis of a bequest, the bell was rung daily in the hour of her death at about two o'clock in the afternoon, until her endowment lapsed in the course of inflation; thus her memory remained alive in the parish.
[3] The circular window in the west, designed by Johannes Schreiter in 1995, combines the motif of the cross with colours and abstract forms that are intended to recall suffering, destruction, war and reconstruction.
The later court and cathedral preacher in Berlin, Johannes Fleck (1559–1628), worked as inspector (superintendent) at St Mary's Church in Prenzlau from 1596 to 1601.
At the liberation of Prenzlau at the end of World War II by the Red Army on 27/28 April 1945,[4] the church burnt out with the massive roof truss of the nave and the vault collapsed; the enclosing walls and pillared arcades remained.
The modern rose window with the theme Destruction and Reconstruction was realised by the glass artist Johannes Schreiter and handed over in 1995.
In 2014, the budget of the State Minister for Culture of Brandenburg provided additional funds of 3.24 million euros for this purpose.
In 1847, after the remodelling of the church, the new organ with 2 manuals and 33 stops by Carl August Buchholz from Berlin could be inaugurated.
After the restoration of the vaults by 2020, the installation of a historic organ by William Hill & Son from 1904 is also planned by 2021, which will be transported here as a donation from the former West Parish Church Kilbarchan in Scotland.
The central gate tower and Marienkirche on the Marktberg together form Prenzlau's best-known town view.
[15] In front of the church, on the south-west side, is the Luther monument, modelled on the Original in Worms by Ernst Rietschel, which was created in 1903.
