The Gothic parish church of St. Johannis in Werben, in the Middle Ages also the church of the Commandery (Commandery) of the Order of St. John, founded here in 1160, is the most important architectural monument in the Hanseatic city on the Elbe. The commandery also included the Lamberti Chapel to the south-west, which is now secularized.
The building and its history
The brick tower and the steep roof of the predominantly Gothic building rise mightily from the flat Elbe valley. Only the basement floors of the transverse rectangular west tower, which are closed in blocks and not opened by a portal, still belong to the late Romanesque original building begun in the 12th century, a basilica, the remaining parts of which were replaced in the Gothic period by the construction of a spacious three-aisled hall church. The walls of the side aisles in the fourth and fifth yoke (counting from the west) with their walled-up windows and the closed portal come from a first, not far advanced renovation in the first half of the 14th century.
Around 1414 (an indulgence from that year is probably related to it) to around 1440, the five western bays were built, probably instead of the Romanesque predecessor building in the lengthwise extension. A change in the yoke section was either only considered or carried out, which can be recognized by the cusp of a portal, which would have been in the position of a present-day wall pillar. The late Gothic side walls are elaborately designed with glazed bricks and tracery friezes, windows with profiled walls and stepped portals in the second southern and third northern yoke. The pillars are correspondingly multi-parted. Before the middle of the 15th century, the portal vestibule between the tower and the front wall of the north aisle and the Ottilien chapel, donated in 1443, were added to the third south aisle yoke.
Source: Wikipedia