Sternberg - city wall and historic half-timbered houses

Thursday, 07 November 2024 00:00
Written by Portal Editor

During our stay at Lake Garder near Lohmen, we came across the place name Sternberg several times, which lies within the Schwerin-Wismar-Güstrow triangle in the Sternberger Seenland nature park.

Here, too, the lake district was formed from a hilly terminal moraine on the Great Sternberger Lake, through which the Mildenitz flows.

On the way to Wismar - a stopover in Sternberg

On the way to Wismar, we finally wanted to visit the town of Sternberg, whose inviting parking lot on the wall directly below the striking city wall on the road through the town indicates an interesting old town from afar. No sooner said than done, and we were already on our way to the old town, and the passage through the city wall/city gate into Mühlenstraße already aroused great expectations, as we came across the first, well-restored and flower-decorated half-timbered houses right on the street. Directly after this on the left side of the street is the Sternberg local history museum with 14 exhibition rooms on the prehistory and early history of the town with a collection of examples of the “Sternberg cake”.

Speaking of cakes: unfortunately, there was a bitter disappointment here, because even the café at the museum was closed, so there was no option to drink at least a coffee anywhere in the old town!

We pass the town church of St. Mary and St. Nicholas, an early Gothic five-bay hall church with three naves, built from bricks, typical for the region, construction began at the end of the 13th century. The square west tower, the width of the central nave, was started in 1322. The tower was restored after a fire in 1750. On the south-west side, the Heiligenblut Chapel and a vestibule were added in 1496 after the first Jewish pogrom in 1492 as an enrichment for commemoration and pilgrimage purposes. We will come back to this a little later.

Inside: a large altar from 1747, a small carved altar in the sacristy from around 1500, a pulpit from the 18th century, a gravestone and an epitaph by Plessen (around 1580), a Walcker organ and a fresco depicting the introduction of the Reformation in 1549, to name at least a few details.

Impressive a little later is the tourist office with its Sternberger book box (unfortunately both closed) and in particular the town hall on the "market square", originally a two-storey half-timbered building from the middle of the 18th century, which received the market front with its Tudor Gothic plaster architecture in 1850 and was completely renovated around 1994. We hadn't expected this. The historic town centre with its grid-shaped street network is interesting in general, typical of which are the half-timbered houses (e.g. Kütiner Straße 7 and Luckower Straße 25), which were built after the great fire of 1741. Decorations on the crossbeam on the first floor are the characteristic ornament. The market square was renovated in 2009.

We stroll a little through the streets in search of a café and then decide to take a walk along the Sternberg city wall, which still almost completely surrounds the city. This is how we come across the Mühlentor, which is the remains of a larger city gate. It was destroyed in 1629 during the Thirty Years' War, partially rebuilt in 1839 and extensively renovated in 1998.

(Almost) repeating history about the Jews

On October 24, 1492, after a public trial, 27 Jews from all over Mecklenburg who were accused of sacrilegious hosts were burned outside the city gates. The remaining 247 Jews were expelled from the country. The hill on which the pyre stood is still called Judenberg today.

The trial was conducted according to canon law at the instigation of secular and spiritual dignitaries. The priest Peter Däne - vicar at the Altar of All Saints in Sternberg - had reported the Jews. He claimed that the wife of the Jew Eleasar had given him desecrated and blood-stained hosts, which he had then buried. The hosts, apparently stained red with blood, were found at the place he had indicated. All Mecklenburg Jews were then arrested, interrogated and, if they could be linked to the alleged host desecration, charged after painful questioning.

In a final interrogation, Peter Däne confessed to having procured the hosts for the Jew Eleasar himself. He was taken to Rostock, sentenced to death by fire and burned at the stake there in 1493. The original gout, the confession extracted through torture from the Jews and the priest Peter Däne, was incorporated as an inscription into a wooden plaque. The Plaque was displayed in the Sternberg town hall - the assembly room of the Mecklenburg State Parliament - until a fire destroyed it in 1659.

A memorial stone from 1958 is located at the former Jewish cemetery for the community's dead, which has been a memorial since 1992 for the "Good Place" desecrated by the Nazis in 1937.

At the end of our visit to Sternberg, we want to at least visit the Sternberger See, which is directly adjacent to an allotment garden settlement.