Halle Cathedral

Halle Cathedral is the oldest surviving church building in the old town of Halle. Although the city was never the seat of a bishopric, the church has been called a cathedral since its construction, because the Archbishops of Magdeburg resided here for a long time as the city's rulers, and the church, together with the New Residence built next door, was intended by Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg to become part of the most influential, powerful, and representative collegiate church north of the Alps, including all the Cranach paintings now located in the Collegiate Church of St. Peter and Alexander in Aschaffenburg.

The church was originally a monastery church of St. Paul to the Holy Cross, founded by the mendicant order of the Dominicans in 1271 and completed around 1330. According to their rules, the monks dispensed with a tower and transept in their simple, three-aisled hall church.

From about 1520, the Archbishop of Magdeburg, Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, had the church externally redesigned by the Bastian Binder workshop (gable crown in front of the roof) and finally rededicated in 1523 as the collegiate church of the Archdiocese of Magdeburg. Probably since then, the church has been called "Dom" (cathedral), initially only colloquially. Albrecht, who feared for his peace of mind in heaven, collected up to 20,000 relics. This precious treasure (no longer extant today) became known as the "Hallesches Heilthum" (Halle Sanctuary), and the indulgence trade indirectly associated with it effectively triggered the Reformation. A magnificent interior, almost unimaginable today, was created from 1523 onwards by, among others, Matthias Grünewald (Erasmus-Mauritius panel), Lucas Cranach the Elder (the altars), and Peter Schro (stone sculptures). All these changes to the old monastery church resulted in a total work of art in the style of late Gothic and early Renaissance. The round-gabled cathedral was then one of the most important sacred buildings in Central Germany. As an opponent of Luther, Cardinal Albrecht was forced to leave Halle and the heartland of the Reformation in 1541. He had the movable furnishings transported to Aschaffenburg, where they remain to this day.

His secular successors in the government of the former bishopric used the church as a court and castle church. The last of these administrators, Duke August of Saxe-Weissenfels, gave the cathedral an early Baroque appearance from the mid-17th century with galleries and a large show altar. After 1680, the Great Elector, Frederick William of Brandenburg, assigned the now-owned house of God to the Evangelical Reformed for an unlimited period as a parish church. The young Georg Friedrich Händel was employed there as an organist "for a trial year" in 1702/1703.

In 1851, the congregation replaced the Baroque organ with a new instrument from the firm Friedrich Wilhelm and August Ferdinand Wäldner. From 1883 to 1896, the interior was renovated in the then-common style of a Regothification. From 1957 to 1959, the Institute for Monument Preservation undertook a renovation of the exterior walls and interior, marked by great material scarcity. In 1996, the Domstiftung Sachsen-Anhalt (Cathedral Foundation of Saxony-Anhalt), on behalf of the state, began to thoroughly renovate the church and adjacent buildings. These structural works were largely completed in 2005.