Lübeck Cathedral

Lübeck Cathedral is a large brick-built Lutheran cathedral in Lübeck, Germany, and part of the Lübeck World Heritage Site. It was started in 1173 by Henry the Lion as a cathedral for the Bishop of Lübeck. It was partly destroyed in a bombing raid in World War II (1942), when the Arp Schnitger organ was destroyed by fire, but was subsequently reconstructed. It is also famous for works of Bernt Notke and Thomas Quellinus, which survived the bombing raid in 1942. The famous altar by Hans Memling is now in Lübeck's St. Annen Museum. The current church was finished in 1982. In 1873 the cathedral celebrated its 700th anniversary, when an offshoot of the Lutheran Memorial Beech Tree, in Steinbach near Bad Liebenstein in Thuringia, was planted in the churchyard.