Halle Cathedral is the oldest surviving church in the old part of the cityHalle, Saale. Beside it resided the Archbishop of Magdeburg, who ruled the city for a long period. Albert of Brandenburg remodelled the church's exterior from 1520 onwards and built the neighbouring Neue Residenz, aiming to make the church one of the most influential and powerful monasteries north of the Alps.
History
It was founded as a Dominican monastery in 1271 and completed in 1330, with a simple three-aisle abbey church dedicated to Sankt Paul zum heiligen Kreuz. Around 1520 the then-archbishop Albert of Brandenburg had Bastian Binder remodel the church's exterior, adding rounded gables. It was reconsecrated in 1523 as the Stiftskirche of the Archdiocese. It was probably first referred to as a 'Dom' or cathedral at that time, although it was never the seat of the archbishopric. From 1523 onwards Albert also took on artists to improve the interior, commissioning from Matthias Grünewald, altarpieces from Lucas Cranach the Elder and stone sculptures by Peter Schro. Between 1519 and 1525 Cranach and his workshop produced 16 altarpieces for the church with a total of 140 panels, though only two central panels, some wings and a few sketches survive. These alterations led to a church whose overall appearance was late Gothic and early Renaissance, an outstanding work of the Saxon Renaissance. As an opponent of Martin Luther, Albert was forced out of Halle in 1541 and took the church's portable fittings with him to Aschaffenburg, where they remain. His secular successors as rulers of the area used the church as a chapel for their court and palace. The last such ruler, Augustus, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels, added galleries and a larger altar in the mid 17th century, altering the church's style to early Baroque. In 1680 Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg made it a parish church and in 1702 a young Georg Friedrich Händel was employed there for a year's probationary period. The first abbess of the 'Freiweltliches adeliges von Jena’sches Fräuleinstift' was appointed in the church in 1703, the order having been founded by Gottfried von Jena with royal Prussian approval the previous year. The abbesses were also buried in the church. The interior was 're-Gothicised' between 1883 and 1896 and the outer walls and interior were restored by the Denkmalpflege between 1957 and 1959. The Domstiftung Sachsen-Anhalt began a full renovation of the church in 1996, with work largely completed by 2005.
