Shuttles seem to be flying, the slender wooden parts of the looms clatter slightly.
Thread to thread quickly joins to form radiantly glowing woolen blankets.
You just have to touch them, want to stroke them.
In the shadow of St. Marien, in a workshop of the Vorwerker Diakonie with large windows facing the alley called the Schüsselbuden, you can experience the tremendous amount of work, creative power and knowledge required to produce what people in most regions of the world need in the first place that ensures survival: the stuff from which clothing is made.
It is worth visiting this manufactory before going into the latest exhibition of the European Hansemuseum.
It's called "good stuff", long lengths of textile structure the difficult hall space above the remains of the former Dominican monastery at the castle gate, strong colors here too - the Middle Ages preferred radiant fabrics.
And for this, as one quickly learns, a trade network was spun that encompassed the entire Western world at the time, in the west mainly to Flanders and England, where traders in Bruges and London piled up the valuable goods from the Mediterranean region and sold them to the north-east.
Even then, the textile industry was big business, England's role as a great power was based essentially on its sheep, and the wealth of Flanders on the weaving workshops.
And Lübeck, as the head of the Hanseatic League, benefited from brokering these products north and east, via Novgorod to the Mongol Empire and China.
But in contrast to today's mass production, which has allowed the global textile trade to grow to a volume of 1.87 trillion euros a year, back then it was all about trading in luxury fabrics;
only they promised great profit.
Brutal exploitation as early as the Middle Ages
For reasons of conservation and space, only a few old samples can be shown in the Hansemuseum alongside the rewoven copies.
Among the originals, however, are such spectacular exhibits as the sixteenth-century fabric catalog that was enclosed with a letter.
In addition, you don't have to go far in Lübeck, just to the St. Annen Museum at the other end of the old town, to experience the original material splendor of the Middle Ages in large format, painted on the large old Dutch and North German altars or actually in the hall with the incredibly dazzling priest's robes from the Marienkirche in Gdańsk, which have been preserved on the Trave since the Second World War.
Such splendor was reserved for only a few.
Silk was almost unthinkable for everyday use until the late twentieth century, and the proverbial silk ribbon was a treasure.
As a result, the rewoven samples in Good Cloth appear dull compared to these magnificent robes, and they are often surprisingly coarse to the touch.
It quickly becomes understandable why, up until the nineteenth century, people preferred to wear smooth linen clothing, which became softer with increasing use, under tightly felted and combed, warm but scratchy woolen clothing.