St Mary's Cathedral, Fürstenwalde

Geschichte

The St. Mary's Cathedral is a United Protestant church in the town of Fürstenwalde upon Spree, Brandenburg, Germany. It was formerly the cathedral of the Bishopric of Lebus, which was a Catholic diocese before the Protestant Reformation. The building is owned and used by the United Protestant St. Mary's Cathedral Congregation which forms a parish within the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia, an umbrella comprising mostly Lutheran, but also Calvinist and united Protestant congregations.In 1373 Fürstenwalde upon Spree became the new seat of the cathedral of the see of Lebus, one of the three medieval dioceses of the March of Brandenburg. The cathedral, which is dedicated to Our Lady, was raised to cathedral of the diocese. In 1446, the cathedral was ransacked by Hussites. The attack was aimed at bishop, a strong critic of Jan Hus. After the Hussites laid the cathedral to waste, work began on building it anew. In 1517, bishop commissioned the sculptor to build a sacrament house (Sakramentshaus), a type of freestanding tabernacle that emerged from the German Gothic architecture of the late 14th to early 15th century.