My favourite devil in Lübeck
Written by Amanda Kendle
My standard (and preferred) method of discovering a European city is to stumble around a bit and just see what I come across. When I was in Lübeck, northern Germany, my stumbling led me to this cheerful-looking devil statue. He made my trip!
This devil can be found outside the Marienkirche (St Mary’s church) in the centre of Lübeck. The story goes that when construction of the church began, the devil mistakenly thought they were building a wine bar and helped out; when he discovered it was a church, he wanted to destroy the building with a huge boulder. But the townspeople promised to build him a wine bar nearby so he dropped the boulder – it’s next to the church, and they say you can see scratches on the church which were the work of the devil too.
Most importantly, perhaps, there is a wine bar nearby so you can indulge as the devil might have liked. Lübeck is such a pretty little city and there’s plenty of other stuff to indulge in too – it’s famous as being (possibly) the inventor of marzipan and the famous Niederegger marzipan producer is there. And I found out all of this just by stumbling around!
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Lübeck is indeed a great little city to wander. Ryanair fly to the airport at Lübeck, which is just a few kilometres from the city. Ryanair advertise it as Hamburg though, which is about 80km away. I think that Lübeck is a destination in itself that deserves airport billing.
I enjoy folktales, especially one that produces such a cute little devil. He looks rather benign, no?
James – I really like Lubeck and think it’s a great short break destination using Ryanair.
Rooi – yes it is an intersting folktale but it sound as though you don’t think that the statue is devilsh enough.
It’s a cute statue, c’est tout ;)