St. James' Church () is one of the five main Evangelical Lutheran parish churches in Lübeck's old town, Germany.
It was consecrated in 1334, serving as a church for sailors and fishermen who still have their "Schütting" (originally from the Norwegian "Skotting" and now known as Schøttstuene) for meeting houses in the shipping company opposite the church. The patron saint of the church is Saint James the Elder. The church also serves as a stop on a branch of the North German Way of St. James, alongside the Holy Spirit Hospital and the neighboring Gertrudenherberge. Since September 2007, the northern tower chapel of the church has been a national memorial for civil seafaring, known as the Pamir Chapel.
Building history
The Jakobikirche is a three-aisled brick hall church. The current building on Koberg was built around 1300 and, after the great city fire of 1276, replaced a Romanesque hall church on the same site, which was already mentioned around 1227. It is assumed that round arch friezes in the area of the church tower and the aisle walls are components of this previous building. Since the new Gothic building around 1300, the church has had three naves with five bays, each of which is closed off by a choir in the east. The walls of the central nave tower over the two side aisles by five meters. The tower of the church reveals something similar to that of St. Petersomething about the building intentions changing over time. Initially planned as a central single tower and construction began, the northern and southern side chapels were so strong that initially, as with St. Petri, there must have been a plan to equip the church, like St. Mary's Church and the cathedral, with a double tower system. The plan to convert the hall church into a basilica at the end of the 13th century can also be seen from the building findings that still exist today, but the implementation that had begun was abandoned. [B 2] The main construction period of the current building is determined based on sources relating to the Gothic altars. A vicarie was built in 1287 for a new altardonated. This altar is then documented for 1312. The new altar table with the choir was consecrated in 1334 by Bishop Heinrich II Bochholt. The oldest surviving Lübeck high altar retable was donated to this altar table in 1435 as an altarpiece by the master of the Jakobialtar, presumably by the parish. It is now in the medieval collection of the Schwerin State Museum in Güstrow Castle.
The tower of this church initially only towered over the ridge of the central nave by two full floors. Above it there were pointed gables like those of St. Mary's Church. Above it was the octagonal pyramid of the spire. The tower is probably one of the more problematic of Lübeck's church towers. The reading master Detmar reports in his chronicle that in 1375 a quarter of the tower roof came off in a storm and was blown into the courtyard of the Holy Spirit Hospital. [B4]In 1628 the tower was removed “up to the bells” and, after the masonry was renewed in 1636, it was initially given a simple wooden roof. The spire was only renewed in 1657/58 and only then received the four balls at the corners of the tower that are so typical of the church today, which took up the four corner turrets of St. Petri, but did not copy them. A document scratched in copper by the Lübeck master calculator Arnold Möller, which also survived fires, reports on this renovation and everyone involved in it. The top of the tower was struck by lightning several times, most recently in 1901, and burned for about a day in 1901.