[1] The cathedral was situated in the section of the earliest settlement of Hamburg on a geest hill between the rivers Alster and Elbe near Speersort [de] street.

In different struggles on competences and privileges plenty of documents have been completely forged or counterfeited or backdated, in order to corroborate arguments.

However, starting in 1245 Adalbrand's structure was replaced by a new early Gothic three-naved hall church erected by chapter and Prince-Archbishop Gebhard of Lippe [de], one of the few incumbents of the united see looking for a balanced performance in Bremen and Hamburg, preferring the title Bishop of Hamburg when staying in the diocesan territory right of the Elbe, as is known from seals and documents.

In the early 16th century an additional hall, first mentioned as the Nige Gebuwte (Low Saxon for new building) in 1520, was erected closing the adjacent cloister towards the north.

Starting in 1522 Lutheranism spread among the burghers of Hamburg, gaining their vast majority by 1526, while most canons of the cathedral chapter rather clung to Catholicism, enjoying their extraterritorial status.

So when in October 1529, the senate – wielding its advowson – appointed Johannes Aepinus (d. 1553) as Lutheran pastor at the neighbouring St. Peter's Church, in order to introduce Johannes Bugenhagen's Lutheran Church Order in the city, Aepinus contested with the prevailingly Catholic cathedral chapter.

[7] The extraterritorial status and the denominational opposition strengthened the perception of cathedral, chapter, and immunity district as alien element within the city.

Between the Feast of the Assumption of Mary and December 1529 the city's militia barred churchgoers from access to the cathedral, given up after imperial protests.

[8] Furthermore, the capitular estates in Hamburg and spread all over the North Elbian diocesan area, forming the endowment to maintain canons and cathedral, were increasingly withheld by the respective territorial rulers.

The stones were sold off or used to reinforce the sea defenses along the Elbe; the funerary sculptures and monuments were broken up and used in the reconstruction of the city's rudimentary sewage system.

The Senate was partly motivated by the desire to rid the city of an extraterritorial institution, but it is more than possible that the rise in rents and the high demand for housing at the time also played a role.

The more than 370 slabs of sandstone have mostly been built in hydraulic structures along the many waterways in Hamburg, broken stones and rubble were used for dikes in Ochsenwerder and Spadenland.

[12] The rescue of some furnishings we owe to Philipp Otto Runge, prevailing in the merchant republic of Hamburg with the argument, that they could be sold as well.

So the Late Gothic cathedral altarpiece, created by Hamburg's famous artists Absolon Stumme and his stepson Hinrik Bornemann, however, only finished, after their deaths in 1499, by Wilm Dedeke were rescued and sold to East Prussia.

The Celsa, founded by the bell founder Gerhard van Wou in his workshop on Glockengießerwall in 1487, was bought in 1804 by the Lutheran congregation of St. Nicholas Church [de] in Altengamme, now a part of Hamburg.

After its demolition the cathedral site remained empty until Carl Ludwig Wimmel and Franz Gustav Forsmann [de] erected a new building between 1838 and 1840 for Hamburg's most renowned Gymnasium, the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums.

This building was later given to Hamburg's State and University Library [de], but destroyed in the Allied Bombing Operation Gomorrah in summer 1943.

The cathedral chapter was founded in 834 and its members, the canons (Domherr[en]) enjoyed personal immunity from jurisdiction of the secular local rulers.

The chapter wielded the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the North Elbian part of the archdiocese, to wit Hamburg, Ditmarsh, Holstein, and Stormarn.

Cathedral, chapter and canonry were maintained by numerous prebends comprising urban real estate and feudal dues and soccage collected from dependent farmers in many so-called capitular villages in the afore-mentioned areas.

[17] With the archdiocese gaining princely sovereignty as an imperial estate of the Holy Roman Empire in 1180, the compounds of the Hamburg and Bremen cathedrals with chapterhouses and capitular residential courts (German: Curien) turned into Cathedral Immunity Districts (German: Domfreiheiten), forming exclaves of the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen of imperial immediacy.

Lacking papal support King Valdemar II himself invested him as Archbishop Burchard I, however, only accepted in North Elbia.

[18] In 1219 the Bremen Chapter again ignored the Hamburg capitulars, fearing their Danish partisanship and elected Gebhard of Lippe [de] archbishop.

[21] The known historian Albert Krantz, also serving the city of Hamburg as diplomat, gained a canonicate of the lector primarius in 1493.

[22] Krantz applied himself with zeal to the reform of ecclesiastical abuses, but, though opposed to various corruptions connected with Catholic church discipline, he had little sympathy with the drastic measures of John Wycliffe or Jan Hus.

After the breakthrough of the Reformation canonicates were not necessarily bound to ecclesiastical offices any more, but often served to maintain educators, musicians or scientists.

In 1513 the Ditmarsians founded a Franciscan Friary in Lunden to thank their then national saint patron Mary of Nazareth, fulfilling a vow taken before the Battle of Hemmingstedt in case they could defeat the Dano-Holsatian invaders, however, the Hamburg chapter demanded its say in appointing the prebendaries.

He first aimed at seizing the revenues of concathedral and chapter in favour of the common chest of the urban parishes, financing pastors and teachers.

A lawsuit in the matter was still pendent at the Imperial Chamber Court when after the Smalkaldic War and the subsequent Peace of Augsburg Emperor Ferdinand I brokered the Bremen Settlement in 1561.

On 18 October 1576 Adolf, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp seized a number of capitular endowments against a recurrent annuity paid until 1803.