Gothenburg Cathedral - The Second Cathedral

The Second Cathedral

On the night of 15 April 1721 the cathedral, high school and 211 nearby residential buildings in the area of the cathedral burned down. As the walls of the church still remained, it was possible to restore the building relatively quickly. Barely a month after the fire, as mandated by City Manager (politieborgmästare) Hans von Gerdes (1637–1723), the architect Paul Ludvig Leyonsparre presented three options for rebuilding the church, the third of which was recommended by County Governor (landshövding") Nils Posse.

On 25 May 1722, only 13 months after the fire, the cathedral reopened, having the same dimensions as the old cathedral, but with a tower capital instead of the former spire.

The roof proved to be so leaky that County Governor Axel Gyllenkrok complained in October 1724 of rain and snow infiltration. In December 1725, therefore, the city engineer was instructed to draw up proposals for a new copper roof covering, and work began in June 1726.

The tower, however, took another ten years to complete and city engineer Johan Eberhard Carlberg — an uncle of Carl Wilhelm Carlberg, the architect of the current cathedral — designed a temporary belfry for the churchyard. It could not be put into service until 1726 because the bell had to be cast in a foundry, but it was in use for six years, until 1732, when the new tower was finally brought into service.

The new tower was designed by the builder of the German Christinenkirche tower, the naval master builder Nicolaus Müller.

The new tower of the Swedish church resembled closely that of the German church and, judging by the pictures of the city at that time, even had a similar cap. The tower was octagonal and its top was 26.7 metres above the tower wall. The largest of the three church bells weighed 1,700 kg, while the other two weighed 1,020 kg. each. They had been cast in 1726 by Erik Näsman, who had moved from Jönköping to Stockholm and who cast a bell for Skara Cathedral the following year.

The ceiling came into place during the years 1734 through 1739. The south-side lectern was finished in 1739. The church floor was finally completed in April 1740 with 1,400 tiles of Öland limestone, 2 Swedish ells (59.4 cm) square and 2.25 Swedish inches (5.57 cm) thick.

In October 1731, Carlberg received approval for his architectural drawing of a (provisional) pulpit. An organ was built in 1733–1734 by the organ builder Johan Niclas Cahman. A contract signed January 11, 1733 specified that the organ was to be completed "in a good and perfect state, equal to the organ works now to be found in Uppsala." The organ cost 8,500 silver riksdaler, and was equipped with 32 stops and 5 bellows.

In January 1750, superintendent Carl Hårleman proposed a sculpted altarpiece to portray Christ, a cross and two kneeling angels. The cost of the artwork was donated by pharmacist Franz Martin Luth (1679–1763). The contract was let on 1 March 1751, the altar was completed on 1 February 1754, and the inauguration took place 1 December 1754. This altar is still used as the altar of the cathedral.

In 1769 a charnel house (benhus) was built on the northwestern part of the cathedral block, on the corner of Kyrkogatan and Västra Hamngatan, with space for forty coffins. To avoid a bad smell in the church, the mayor and council (magistrat ) of Gothenburg decided that all corpses buried during the six warmer months from April 1 to October 1 would first be stored in the benhus.

In the same year as the charnel house was added, the churchyard wall was also finished. It was a 469-ells (approximately 279 metres) wall around Domkyrkoplanen, with a granite footing; the wall itself was of brick and covered by large blocks of chiselled Öland limestone. Set into the walls were five spacious gates, built of hard-fired clinker brick and covered with sheet lead. The materials from three of these gates were moved after the 1802 fire in 1802 to the new cemetery at the poorhouse meadow in the Stampen ward (primärområde) of Gothenburg.

In 1775, French sculptor Pierre Hubert Larchevesque (1721–1778) sculpted a cathedral monument to Colin Campbell (1686–1757), the co-founder of the Swedish East India Company.