Saint Mary Church, Lutheran church in Schönkirchen, Germany

Saint Mary Church is a single-nave fieldstone church built at the end of the 13th century, with a flat beamed ceiling inside. Its square tower of rough brown stone dates from 1838 and carries a clock and a small roof cross. The nave has arched windows and a pointed doorway reached by a stone staircase and a concrete ramp.

The church was built at the end of the 13th century under the support of a local noble and first mentioned in written records in 1294. The tower was added in the 1830s, giving it the shape we see today.

The altar is by Hans Gudewerdt the Younger, a woodcarver from Eckernförde; the church also keeps a late-Gothic window with late-Gothic painting on its inner reveal, now hidden behind the 1619 burial-chamber addition on the north side. The parish name Sconekerke appears in the 1294 Codex Cismariensis.

The church stands in Schönkirchen east of Kiel, in the Altholstein church district of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany. The nave is entered through the tower, since the north door was walled up in 1860 and a new entrance was cut through the tower. The south side has a separate entrance into the chancel with a wooden wind porch.

The north wall was hidden in 1619 when a burial chamber was added, blocking a Gothic window whose inner reveal still shows late-Gothic painting. The wall anchors on the east gable carry the year 1594, recalling the renovation in which the crumbling fieldstone walls were rebuilt in brick.