Veit Stoss originally made the winged altar with the birth of Christ for the Nuremberg Carmelite monastery.
His son Andreas presided over the convent as prior and probably designed the iconographic concept for the altar, which was built in 1523. A colored version was not made - probably on purpose.
Only two years later the monastery was dissolved during the Reformation. Andreas Stoss left Nuremberg and moved to Bamberg. In 1543 he brokered the purchase of the altar for the upper parish.
Four reliefs on the altar had already been lost before 1787. In 1864 they were replaced; In 1934 the arrangement of the figures was changed. The altar was transferred into the cathedral three years later.