Brüderkirche

The Alte Brüderkirche stands in Kassel’s old town beside the Fulda, its high-gothic walls rising from simple sandstone blocks. Founded by Carmelite friars after disputes with local nuns, the church took shape from 1294 onward and was finished in stages, the nave vault completed only in 1376. Landgrave Heinrich I settled the order, though their poverty kept the building modest and the friars restricted in their work. The church is worth the journey for its rare asymmetrical two-aisled hall, a design borrowed from Thuringian Dominican churches rather than the usual Hessian models. Its polygonal choir, ribbed vaults on slender octagonal piers, and surviving bosses with lion crests show skilled craftsmanship despite limited funds. The north portal shelters a late-gothic porch with a carved Lamentation over the door, a rare piece of medieval sculpture in the region. Inside, visitors find the plain whitewashed walls and renewed ribbed ceilings that replaced wartime destruction. On the south wall two damaged tombstones remain, one showing Otto Georg von Scholley kneeling in full armour beneath a painted oval. In the polygonal apse the original tabernacle survives, its tracery and faded colour still visible. Outside, the north side bears the bronze ‘Mahnender Engel’, a memorial to the 1943 bombing victims cast by Kurt Lehmann.