About this place
Built for Erfurt's Dominican friars from the 13th century onward and rebuilt on a grand scale between 1340 and 1350, the Predigerkirche is one of the largest surviving mendicant-order churches in Germany, its 76-metre nave held up by thirty octagonal pillars with no buttressing at all. It was here that Meister Eckhart, the most influential German mystic of the Middle Ages, trained as a novice and later governed the Dominican province of Saxony, before his teachings were posthumously condemned by the Pope. The church survived a stint as a Napoleonic prisoner-of-war camp and heavy wartime damage; its windows today are pieced together from shards salvaged after 1945.
Key facts
- 1229 year — The first Dominican friars are recorded arriving in Erfurt
- 76 m — Length of the nave, one of the largest mendicant-order churches in Germany
- 4302 organ pipes — The 1977 Schuke organ, once played by Johann Pachelbel's predecessors in the post
📍 Predigerstraße 5, 99084, Erfurt