The church tower
A tower from the Romanesque period
"You only see what you know," to quote Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. With this in mind, we will look at some of the details that give the structures their unmistakable appearance and tell the onlooker a lot about the time in which they were built.
Apart from the baptismal font, the tower is the last architectural remnant from the Romanesque period. It is easily recognisable by its round arches, arched windows and walls of thick stone.
The lower three storeys with four-metre-thick walls are square, while the fourth – with walls of only two metres thick – tapers to an octagonal storey with four Romanesque arched windows as sound outlets for the bells. This culminates in a pyramid form with an octagonal, tapered helm roof, on top of which is a sphere with a weathercock as a symbol of vigilance.
The many holes, conspicuous because of their horizontal orientation at equal height, about one and a half meters apart, are the remnants of moving scaffolding, a working platform for the masons and stonemasons who erected the tower. In the Middle Ages, the walls would be built up from the ground as high as the masons’ arms could reach. Holes would then be left at the top and beams inserted into the masonry for the scaffolding boards to rest on.
Once a mason’s armlength no longer sufficed, the beams would be inserted further up after being pulled out of the lower holes. Since there was no way of getting to them anymore, the holes would remain open, as you can still see on the Romanesque tower of the church in Altmünster. The most important advantage of moving scaffolding compared to scaffolding over the entire height of a building was the economical use of lumber, which was extremely precious in the Middle Ages.
Not all scaffolding is as solidly constructed as Viollet-le-Duc portrays in his "Encyclopédie médiévale", since serious accidents occur time after time. In 1178, the master builder of Canterbury Cathedral, William of Sens, falls off the scaffolding where he is directing construction work from.
A similar fate is met by the master builder of the tower in Altmünster. Legend has it that the supposedly pagan master builder is dissatisfied with the masonry and, at night, dismantles what has been built during the day. During a thunderstorm, lightning strikes him and his head is severed when he falls. In memory of their master builder, the workers create a head of stone and place it on the south side of the tower, where it can still be seen today.
The construction of countless churches devours entire forests. Wood is needed not only for scaffolding and ladders, but also for the huge roof trusses. The cessation of cathedral construction in the late Middle Ages is not only due to the unrest of the Reformation and economic decline, but a serious shortage of wood following the ruthless felling of forests.
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