include the fortress-like westwork of the cathedral and the armarium dictum sychter, an annex to the south nave. The sculpture has been known by its current name Golden Madonna only since the 19th century. A liturgical manuscript dating from around 1370 simply describes it as "dat gulden bild onser vrouwen" (literally “the golden image of Our Lady”). The 1626 treasure inventory of Essen Abbey lists Noch ein gross Marienbelt, sitzend uff einen sthuell mit lauteren golt uberzogen ("[A]nother image of Mary, sitting on a chair and covered with pure gold"). Evacuations in early modern times The Thirty Years' War necessitated the first evacuation of the sculpture. In 1634 the then abbess of Essen, Maria Clara von Spaur, Pflaum und Valör, sought shelter in Cologne and took the cathedral treasure with her. It would remain there until the end of the war in 1648. In these years the Madonna and the now lost Marsus shrine of the Essen treasure were paraded in processions, outshining the treasures of Cologne's cathedral, as the annals of Essen Abbey proudly claim. The second evacuation was in 1794 before the advance of the French revolutionary army. It was hidden in the orphanage of the nearby town of Steele. Essen Abbey ceased to exist in 1803 following the secularization of ecclesiastical principalities under the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss. Ownership of the Madonna passed to the Roman Catholic parish of St. Johannes, which used the former abbey church as its parish church. Throughout the 19th century the sculpture mostly remained locked away in the treasury and was hardly ever examined by art historians. 20th century The Madonna remained in Essen throughout World War I but was again evacuated in its aftermath. After the communist revolt in the Ruhr area in the spring of 1920, the authorities of St. Johannes parish, fearing another uprising, decided to hide the statue in a safe place that would be unknown even to its own priest so as to prevent discovery by treason or extortion. A goldsmith from Aachen was assigned to find a hiding place, and he finally negotiated with another German diocese that the Madonna and the rest of the Essen treasure was to be concealed in a place that only the goldsmith and a designated guardian would know about: even the bishop was only informed about the general plan, but not about the exact location of the sanctuary. A document detailing the whereabouts