North West Germany

We found out about the legend of the St. Mary's devil Pete is sitting beside: As the people of Lübeck were building St. Mary's, along came the devil and asked what they were building. "A large tavern", they lied so as not to anger him. A tavern? A place of vice and drunkenness?" This pleased the devil and he gave a hand so that the building quickly grew. Only when the church was nearly finished did the devil see that the people of Lübeck had tricked him. Furious, he picked up a huge boulder to destroy the building again. Then they said to him that they wanted to really build a large tavern right next door, the Ratskeller. The devil dropped the boulder so that it fell close to the church. And there it lies today with a bronze devil created by the sculptor Rolf Goerler in 1999.