Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/74

58 countries are far superior, Germany alone possesses one pre-eminent example in which all the beauties of its style are united.

Generally speaking, it is assumed that the building we now see is that commenced by Conrad de Hochsteden in the year 1248, but more recent researches have proved that what he did was to rebuild or restore the old double-apse cathedral of earlier

date. The examples just quoted, however, were no other proof available, are sufficient to show that the Gothic style was hardly then introduced into Germany, and but very little understood when practised. It seems that the present building was begun about the year 1270-1275, and that the choir was completed in all essentials as we now find it by the year 1322. Had the nave been completed at the same rate of progress, it would have shown a wide deviation of style, and the western front, instead of being erected according to the beautiful design preserved to us, would have been covered with stump tracery, and other vagaries of the late German school, all of which are even now observable in the part of the northwest tower actually erected. As the body of the church is complete according to the original design, one of its principal beauties is