Hieronymushaus Magdeburg

The Hieronymushaus in Magdeburg was a house of the Brothers of the Common Life, a religious community that settled there from 1482 to 1541. It stood in the old town near the cathedral, on the west side of a narrow lane called Diebeshorn, now Fürstenwallstraße. The brothers’ buildings formed a rectangular block around a central courtyard, bounded on the south by a 10-metre-wide path that ran past today’s numbers 17 and 19 Fürstenwallstraße. The house is worth remembering for the part it played in early printing and education. In 1483 and 1484 the brothers Albert Ravenstein and Joachim Westval printed the first known incunabula in Magdeburg inside the house. They also ran a school and supported themselves by handwork. The community grew from twelve brothers under its first rector, Johann von Bocholt, to twenty by 1496, when Archbishop Ernst granted them formal permission to expand. Visitors today find no standing remains, but the site lies between the cathedral and the Motel One on Domplatz. The lane that once formed the southern boundary still runs past the numbered plots, and the route of the old path can be traced northwards along the archbishop’s garden wall. The name Hieronymustal recalls the house’s patron saint, Hieronymus, and marks a small but important chapter in the city’s intellectual and religious life.