The Stellwagen organ of St Mary’s Church, Stralsund was completed in the middle of the 17th century and is the largest organ of its kind still existing in Europe. It is the only large-scale
Baroque organ that has ever been preserved in one of the brick Gothic style basilicas in Northern Germany. Its construction and sound resemble the famous, though no longer existing,
instruments of St. Mary’s Church in Lübeck and St. Catherine’s Church in Hamburg, which both had become centres of the North German art of organ-playing through the work of Franz Tunder,
Dietrich Buxtehude, Heinrich Scheidemann and Jan Adam Reinken during the 17th and early 18th centuries. Only two instruments testify today to the work of Friedrich Stellwagen: the small organ in the Church of St. Jacob in Lübeck, which is a remodelled and enlarged Gothic instrument, and the organ in St. Mary’s in
Stralsund, the largest and final instrument of his workshop. With its 51 registers on three manuals and pedals, 12 bellows and the over 20 m high case construction, it has become a masterwork of the craft and art of 17th century organ building.