Anger
About This Site
The Anger is Erfurt's main shopping street, and in the Middle Ages it was the city's chief trading place for woad, wine, wool and wheat.[1] About 600 metres long and as broad as a square, it runs through the south-eastern old town, 500 metres from the main station along Bahnhofstraße and 300 metres east of the Krämerbrücke — a pedestrian zone where all six of the city's tram lines meet, lined with grand commercial houses of the Gründerzeit in historicist and Jugendstil dress, and with cafés and restaurants where the people of Erfurt themselves sit.[2] A walk from end to end passes the church where Luther preached and Bach's parents married, the Renaissance house where Goethe and Schiller were guests, the baroque weigh house that holds the city's art museum, a medieval tower with a carillon of sixty bells, the neo-Gothic main post office and a monumental fountain to the flower city.
A meadow and a woad market, 1196–1600s
The name Anger means a long meadow or pasture, and the street has kept the broad, open shape the word describes; a document of 1196 is the first to call Erfurt's central square by it.[2] In 1351 the Erfurter Zuchtbrief, the city's charter, confirmed that woad could be bought and sold in Erfurt only on the woad market, the Anger: trading ran every week from Trinity Sunday to Michaelmas on 29 September, opened by a stroke of the woad bell.[3] From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century the eastern Anger was given over to woad alone, the blue dye to which Erfurt owed its great wealth, and people called the place the Waydanger.[2]
Luther's sermon and the Bach wedding at the Kaufmannskirche, 1248–1917
The Kaufmannskirche, the merchants' church, is one of Erfurt's oldest parish churches: first recorded in 1248, largely destroyed in the city fire of 1291, its Gothic rebuilding consecrated in 1368. After its parish had adopted the Reformation in 1521, Martin Luther preached here on 22 October 1522 on the cross and suffering of a true Christian; since 1917 a stone cross in the outer wall facing the Anger records the sermon, and Fritz Schaper's Luther monument stands directly beside the church.[4] The church closes the Anger to the north-east, and almost the whole Bach family lived in its parish: 61 Bach children were baptised and 12 Bach couples married here, among them Johann Ambrosius Bach and Elisabeth Lämmerhirt, the parents of Johann Sebastian Bach, in 1668.[5]
Goethe, Schiller and a Humboldt wedding at Haus Dacheröden, 1557–1791
Haus Dacheröden, the double house at Anger 37 and 38, holds walls from around 1300 and counts as the oldest known building on the Anger. The councillor and woad merchant Heinrich Vasold gave it its present form in 1557, with the richly carved Renaissance portal, and in the late eighteenth century Karl Friedrich von Dacheröden, friend and adviser of the governor Dalberg, lived here with his daughter Caroline. Goethe and Schiller came and went in the house in those years, and on 29 June 1791 Caroline married Wilhelm von Humboldt here, with Dalberg and Alexander von Humboldt present.[6] The house was a meeting place for Goethe, Schiller, Hufeland and both Humboldts, and it was said that no visitor of rank and learning left Erfurt without calling at it.[7]
From weigh house to art museum, 1706–1920s
Where Bahnhofstraße meets the Anger stands the Angermuseum, a baroque palace built between 1706 and 1712 as the Pack- und Waagehof, the packing and weighing house of the Electorate of Mainz, under the governor Philipp Wilhelm von Boineburg and Archbishop Lothar Franz von Schönborn — one of the key new buildings for Erfurt's revived trade.[8] St. Martin, the city's patron saint, stands in its gable, and the ground floor still has the hall where the wagons were cleared.[2] The museum began here in 1886, when Friedrich Nerly's son gave his father's artistic estate to the city and a picture gallery opened; its collections grew so fast that they later seeded the city museum, the Thuringian folklore museum and the natural history museum, and the palace today is the art museum of the state capital.[9]
Heckel's murals, 1922–1924
On the suggestion of the museum's director Walter Kaesbach, and paid for by the Erfurt shoe manufacturer Alfred Hess, Erich Heckel painted the small, high-vaulted ground-floor room of the Angermuseum between 1922 and 1924. The cycle, later titled Lebensstufen, sets the world of man against the world of woman in a great panorama of life; it counts as the most important surviving mural of German Expressionism and is the only one by Heckel, co-founder of the Dresden Brücke group, to survive.[10]
The Bartholomäusturm and its carillon, 1182–1992
At Anger 51 rises the tower of the Bartholomäuskirche, named in 1182 among Erfurt's first parishes and also the court church of the Counts of Gleichen. The church was closed in 1571, burned in 1660 and cleared in 1715; the tower, begun in 1412 according to its inscription and given a six-sided spire in 1468, survived. In 1979 a carillon of 60 bronze bells was installed in its upper storey — more than 13 tonnes, the largest bell 2,393 kilograms, the smallest 10, across five octaves — and in 1992 the bells were reworked and the spire lost in 1945 was rebuilt. The carillon plays short melodies after the hour, changing every month, and carillonneurs give concerts on it; the tower belongs to the city museum and can be visited by prior arrangement.[11]
St. Lorenz and the Wigbertikirche, 954–1878
Two more churches stand on the Anger. St. Lorenz keeps its 40-metre tower, which survived the city fire of 1413, and inside a high altar of 1448 and a sandstone Man of Sorrows of 1440. The Wigbertikirche at the western fork stands on ground first recorded in 954 as a trading court of Hersfeld Abbey; its tower dates from 1409, the single-nave late Gothic hall with its star vault from 1434 and the choir from 1473–1475, and until 1878 the top of the tower was one of the city's manned fire-watch posts.[2]
The main post office and the Angereck, 1882–2007
The Hauptpost at Anger 66–73, built between 1882 and 1886 as the Imperial main post office, follows designs from the Reichspostamt's building department under August Kind and Julius Carl Raschdorff in neo-Gothic forms, with its tower on the corner; the tower's spire, destroyed by artillery in April 1945, was rebuilt in simpler form by 1949, and since a modernisation of 2006–2007 the building holds shops and offices.[12] Its façade mixes sandstone, clinker brick and terracotta. Opposite, on the corner with Schlösserstraße, the glass-fronted Angereck of 2000, home of the Hugendubel bookshop, fills a site bombed on 20 July 1944.[2]
The Angerbrunnen, 1876–2013
At the western end of the Anger stands the Angerbrunnen, which the city council and the local beautification society decided on in 1876 to celebrate the new central water supply. The Berlin architect Heinrich Stöckhardt won the competition, and his fountain shows the two pillars of the city's rise: the flower goddess Flora among ears of grain and roses for horticulture, and a man with hammer and vice for industry and crafts. It was unveiled on 6 September 1890 before a huge crowd, a tribute to the market gardening that made Erfurt's name as the flower city. After a full restoration of its stone, bronzes and water works, the fountain was rededicated in 2013.[13]
Department stores and a boulevard for strolling, 1906–1979
The Gründerzeit turned the Anger into a boulevard of grand commercial houses. Anger 1, at the eastern end, was built in 1906–1908 by Albert and Ernst Giese as the Kaufhaus Römischer Kaiser and is today the Anger 1 shopping arcade. From 1974 the Anger became a pedestrian zone and shopping boulevard with the trams kept running, and 110 façades were restored or newly designed; the Weimar artist Horst Jährling, born in Erfurt, received the commission for the colour scheme in 1976, aiming, in his words, at a promenade rather than an architecture museum.[2]
Questions visitors ask
- Where is the Anger in Erfurt?
- In the south-eastern old town, 500 metres from the main station along Bahnhofstraße and 300 metres east of the Krämerbrücke. All six of Erfurt's tram lines meet there.[2]
- Why was the Anger important in the Middle Ages?
- It was Erfurt's woad market: from 1351 the city charter allowed woad to be traded in Erfurt only on the Anger, and the blue dye made the city rich.[3]
- What connects the Anger with Luther and Bach?
- Martin Luther preached in the Kaufmannskirche on the Anger on 22 October 1522,[4] and Johann Sebastian Bach's parents were married there in 1668.[5]
- Were Goethe and Schiller on the Anger?
- Yes. Both were guests at Haus Dacheröden, Anger 37–38, in the late eighteenth century, the house where Caroline von Dacheröden married Wilhelm von Humboldt on 29 June 1791.[6]
- What is the Angermuseum?
- Erfurt's art museum, housed since 1886 in the baroque packing and weighing house built for the Electorate of Mainz in 1706–1712; its ground floor holds Erich Heckel's murals of 1922–1924.[8]
- What is the carillon in the Bartholomäusturm?
- A carillon of 60 bronze bells, installed in 1979 in the medieval tower at Anger 51; it plays short melodies after the hour, and the tower can be visited by prior arrangement.[11]
Connected Historical Figures
reformer • theologian • preacher
He preached in the Kaufmannskirche on the Anger on 22 October 1522; his monument stands beside the church.
writer • statesman • naturalist
He was a guest at Haus Dacheröden on the Anger, the house of Karl Friedrich von Dacheröden.
writer • poet • historian
He was a guest at Haus Dacheröden on the Anger in the years when Caroline von Dacheröden kept house there.
Sources (13)
- Der Anger - Das lebendige Zentrum der Stadt — Erfurt Tourismus & Marketing GmbH, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Anger (Erfurt) — Wikipedia, retrieved 13 September 2026
- 1315 – 1472 | Auf dem Höhepunkt der Machtentfaltung — Stadt Erfurt, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Vom rechten Christenmenschen: Luthers Predigt in der Erfurter Kaufmannskirche — Stadt Erfurt, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Die Kaufmannskirche — Evangelische Kaufmannsgemeinde Erfurt, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Haus Dacheröden: Bau- und Nutzungsgeschichte — Stadt Erfurt, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Haus Dacheröden: Persönlichkeiten — Stadt Erfurt, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Angermuseum: Haus und Außenstellen — Kunstmuseen Erfurt, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Angermuseum Erfurt — Stadt Erfurt, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Der Heckelraum im Angermuseum — Kunstmuseen Erfurt, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Bartholomäusturm — Stadt Erfurt, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Hauptpostamt Erfurt — Wikipedia, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Wieder eingeweiht: Monumentalbrunnen auf dem Anger wurde umfassend saniert — Stadt Erfurt, retrieved 13 September 2026
Visit Information
Anger, 99084 Erfurt
50.9761, 11.0342
In the history of Erfurt
Historic sites
Pilse 30, 99084 Erfurt
St. Lorenz is one of the churches on the Anger, its 40-metre tower a survivor of the city fire of 1413.
Around Weimar
20 km West
Erfurt's main shopping street and former woad market, where the trams meet and the city's art museum stands.