The St.-Aegidien-Kirche or Aegidienkirche is a church building in the north German city of

Lübeck Lübeck (; Low German also ), officially the Hanseatic City of Lübeck (german: Hansestadt Lübeck), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 217,000 inhabitants, Lübeck is the second-largest city on the German Baltic coast and in the stat ...

, dedicated to saint Giles. It is the smallest and westernmost church in the city centre. It is first mentioned as dedicated to St Giles in 1227 - this is unusual for a north German and may link it to an earlier 1172-1182 wooden church built under bishop Henry I, formerly the abbot of the abbey dedicated to the same saint in

Braunschweig Braunschweig () or Brunswick ( , from Low German ''Brunswiek'' , Braunschweig dialect: ''Bronswiek'') is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, north of the Harz Mountains at the farthest navigable point of the river Oker, which connects it to the Nor ...

. The church's coat of arms includes a "T", short for "Tilgenkark", the

Low German : : : : : (70,000) (30,000) (8,000) , familycolor = Indo-European , fam2 = Germanic , fam3 = West Germanic , fam4 = North Sea Germanic , ancestor = Old Saxon , ancestor2 = Middle L ...

form of the church's name, and "St Tilgen" or "St. Illigen", the Low German forms of the saint's name. It remained in the nearby cathedral chapter's control until the

Protestant Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...

, when shortly after Easter 1530 it hosted the town's first eucharist in which both elements were distributed to the people. Its pastor "Johann by der Erde" was also the city's first clergyman to marry, also in 1530. The church roof was hit by a shell during the 1806

Battle of Lübeck The Battle of Lübeck took place on 6 November 1806 in Lübeck, Germany between soldiers of the Kingdom of Prussia led by Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, who were retreating from defeat at the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt, and troops of the ...

but it did not ignite, whilst a cannonball from the same engagement is still lodged in the wall near the north door. The area around the church was heavily damaged during the March 1942 air-raid on the city and an

aerial mine A naval mine is a self-contained explosive device placed in water to damage or destroy surface ships or submarines. Unlike depth charges, mines are deposited and left to wait until they are triggered by the approach of, or contact with, any ve ...

destroyed historic stained glass and work by

Curt Stoermer Curt Stoermer (born Kurt Karl August Störmer, 26 April 189129 January 1976) was a German painter, a representative of the Worpswede branch of expressionist art. Biography Born in Hagen in 1891, Stoermer was influenced in his youth by the open ...

inside the church but left the exterior unaffected.

Sources

Parish website

Bachchor Lübeck
{{Coord, 53.8639, N, 10.6898, E, source:wikidata, display=title, format=dms Lutheran churches in Schleswig-Holstein Churches in Lübeck Brick Gothic Gothic architecture in Germany 12th-century churches in Germany