Charterhouse Freiburg

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View from the Dreisam on the entire complex

The Freiburg Charterhouse is a former monastery of the Carthusian Order in the Waldsee district of the city of Freiburg im Breisgau . The Freiburg Charterhouse was named "Sankt Johannis des Täufers Berg" in memory of the founding of the first Charterhouse Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble on St. John's Day , June 24th, and in honor of the founder Johannes Snewlin, known as the Gresser .

Charterhouse in Freiburg, inner courtyard

history

Entrance to the Charterhouse
Garden of the Charterhouse

Founded by a private citizen, the Freiburg mayor and knight Johannes Snewlin , known as the Gresser, probably in 1345, the Charterhouse near Freiburg was initially only of modest dimensions with initially only two monk cells . Snewlin's foundation comprised a plot of land on the Mußbach below Sankt Ottilien, which the city council transferred to the monks in 1346. After the founder's death in 1347, the monks expanded the facility to five cells. According to the rules of the order, these cells were individual buildings separated by walls or high hedges. Additional foundations increased the number of cells to twelve. In the early 16th century the complex was expanded to include a refectory and a church. The church building, built in the late Gothic style with ribbed vaults and buttresses , had magnificent windows designed by the Swabian painter Hans Baldung Grien . During its heyday, the Charterhouse maintained close contacts with the University of Freiburg. From 1502 to 1525 Gregor Reisch , one of the most important representatives of late scholasticism and professor at Freiburg University, was prior of the monastery. The monastery supported needy students and at the same time received financial donations and an increasing number of novices from the university environment.

In the course of time, above all due to the close ties between the Charterhouse and the University of Freiburg, an extensive monastery library was created, which was mainly made up of donations from members who joined the monastery, as well as testamentary bequests from university professors and the clergy from the wider vicinity of the monastery composed; For example, in 1537 the monastery inherited the extensive library (around 390 books) and the property of the minster preacher Otmar Nachtgall , who was also buried in the monastery cemetery.

In 1569 the aristocratic Speyer canon Caspar Schliederer von Lachen († 1585) entered the Carthusian Order, renouncing his previous canonicals; He was elected here in 1574, prior to the Buxheim Charterhouse in 1575 , and later became a provincial order . In 1581, on the recommendation of the papal nuncio , his brother Wilhelm Schliederer von Lachen took over the position of court master of the eight-year-old Prince Maximilian of Bavaria, later Elector Maximilian I.

Coat of arms on the back of the church

The devastation caused by the Swedish armies during the Thirty Years' War marked a turning point . Like many other Carthusians, the monks found refuge in the Swiss Carthusian Monastery of Ittingen . After that, the Charterhouse was expanded from 1753 to 1756 by adding a baroque three-winged court of honor to accommodate the prelature and guest wing in front of the medieval cloister wing . The prior's attempt to attain the status of prelate led to a revolt within the monastery, which was settled in 1781. With the reason: Those orders cannot please God which are not concerned with nursing the sick and the education of young people, i.e. are completely useless to the neighbor, ordered Emperor Joseph II in a decree of January 12, 1782 the abolition of all Carthusian monasteries. On February 13, 1782, the Freiburg Carthusian monastery was requested to give up their monastery within five months. The building and property fell to the state and were sold to Franz Anton Freiherrn von Baden - the last president of the Breisgau estates - in 1783 . The library was dissolved and dispersed, only a few incunabula can still be found in the Freiburg University Library today .

Engraving of the Charterhouse by Peter Mayer , 1771

After the abolition, the charterhouse was converted into an aristocratic country residence, the castle-like priory served as a residential building, the cloister with the cells was demolished in favor of a park, the church was preserved. The precious glass windows were sold to different communities. After the acquisition by the Freiburg Foundation Administration in 1894, the facility was maintained in its new function as a retirement home. After the renovation, the facility offered space for 200 beneficiaries . In 1897 the parish priest of Sankt Martin, Heinrich Hansjakob , moved into three rooms through the mediation of the mayor and chairman of the foundation council, Otto Winterer . These rooms were preserved as a memorial until 2012.

After the conversion into a nursing home - a new old people's home was built right next to the old monastery buildings in the second half of the 20th century - renovation would have been urgently required after 2000. Since this was not economically justifiable, a new home was built for the residents in the Waldsee district. The last residents moved out in December 2008. Since then, until the completion of the central art depot in Freiburg in May 2012 , the premises have been used as an intermediate depot for the Freiburg Municipal Museums.

After extensive renovations and expansions - among other things, some student and teacher residences were built on a slope east of the existing buildings - the buildings are available for use by the first and only German of the 14 United World Colleges . The Robert Bosch Foundation and Robert Bosch GmbH made around 40 million euros available for this purpose on the occasion of Robert Bosch's 150th birthday. Robert Bosch was friends with Kurt Hahn , the initiator of the UWC. In September 2014, the UWC Robert Bosch College started operations with 100 students from around 70 nations. Another year with 100 students followed in 2015. After attending school for two years, the pupils, who come from all walks of life and around a quarter of whom come from Germany, can obtain an international school leaving certificate.

The two panels to the left and right of the main entrance with the history of the Charterhouse
Sketch of the Charterhouse from Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's diary , which happened in Freiburg on his honeymoon in 1837
Boards at the main entrance
  • Left panel: As the Carthusian monastery “St. John the Baptist Mountain “1346 BC. Ritter J. Snewlin Gresser Mayor v. Freiburg founded, burned down on January 13, 1780, and poorly built up, abolished on May 14, 1782 by Emperor Josef II. Ant. Freiherrn v.Baden acquired, in 1830 through inheritance to Bruno Freiherrn v. Türkheim 1879, d. Purchase a. Private citizen h. W. Lüps passed over.
  • Right panel: On April 30, 1894, this former monastery with all buildings fields a. Forest by the city council u. Board of Trustees of the City of Freiburg i. Breisgau, under Lord Mayor Dr. O. Winterer acquired for sale, and after distribution under Stadt, Verification, etc. The hospital was converted into a second home for the inmates of the Heiliggeist hospital in 1895–1897.

Meierhof

The Meierhof of the Charterhouse in Freiburg

The Meierhof , built from 1745 onwards, is part of the ensemble that has been declared a “cultural monument of special importance”. It was to be converted into a teacher's apartment. An appraisal from 2015 showed, however, that the damage is so great that hardly any historical substance would remain after the renovation and the courtyard would no longer be a monument. The monument protection released it for demolition. That called protests and a. from the Oberwiehre-Waldsee citizens' association. Old building renovator Willi Sutter presented a concept that the Robert Bosch Foundation examined. She bought the Kartaus-Ensemble in 2011 from the Freiburg Heiliggeistspitalstiftung and converted it into the United World College for 44 million euros. She received the property only with heritable building rights. “This project cost calculation has shown that a central challenge lies in the economic feasibility of the renovation,” says Julia Rommel, spokeswoman for the Robert Bosch Foundation at the beginning of 2017. In the meantime, the city administration had also expressed an interest in maintaining the building. In autumn 2017, the parties involved agreed to maintain and renovate the farm. The renovation work began in 2019.

literature

  • Paul Horster: On the history of the Charterhouse in Freiburg i. Br. Freiburg i. Br .: Press Association Freiburg, 1920
  • Hans Georg Wehrens: Freiburg in the "Margarita Philosophica" by Gregor Reisch (1504) . In: Freiburg im Breisgau 1504–1803, woodcuts and copper engravings. Herder, Freiburg 2004, pp. 8–33. ISBN 3-451-20633-1 .
  • Peter Kalchthaler : Charterhouse with an eventful history, monastery, estate and retirement home. In: Badische Zeitung. June 17, 2005.
  • Dieter Mertens : On the book ownership of the Mons Sancti Johannis Charterhouse near Freiburg im Breisgau . In: Books, Libraries and Writings of the Carthusians. Tübingen 2001.
  • Diester Mertens: Freiburg / Br. , in: Monasticon Cartusiense , ed. by Gerhard Schlegel, James Hogg, Volume 2, Salzburg 2004, 597–604.
  • Rüdiger Becksmann : The medieval glass paintings in Freiburg i. Br. Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-87157-226-5 ( Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi Germany II, 2), pp. 563-598
  • Judith Kirchhofer, Bertram Jenisch (Eds.): Together.einsam. New insights into the preservation of monuments to the Freiburg Charterhouse . In: Archaeological information from Baden-Württemberg 70 , State Office for Monument Preservation, Esslingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-942227-19-3
  • Saskia Hunsicker: An excerpt from the menu - archaeobotanical studies. In: Together, lonely. New insights into the preservation of monuments to the Freiburg Charterhouse. J. Kirchhofer / B. Jenisch (Ed.), Esslingen 2014, pp. 58–60.

Web links

Commons : Charterhouse Freiburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hermann Nehlsen: The Freiburg family Snewlin. Freiburg im Breisgau 1967. (Publications from the archive of the city of Freiburg im Breisgau) page 58
  2. ↑ H. Haumann, H. Schadek (ed.), Geschichte der Stadt Freiburg, Vol. 1, Stuttgart 1996, p. 440
  3. ↑ Siegfried cracks:  NACHTGALL, Otmar. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 23, Bautz, Nordhausen 2004, ISBN 3-88309-155-3 , Sp. 997-1012.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  4. ↑ Kurt Andermann : The Schliederer von Lachen, an atypical family of the Palatinate knight nobility , in: Mitteilungen des Historisches Verein der Pfalz , Speyer, Volume 108, 2010, pp. 440–442 (PDF view of the entire article) ( Memento des original from June 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hist-verein-pfalz.de
  5. ^ Inge Zelinka, The authoritarian welfare state: Gaining power through compassion in the genesis of state welfare, LIT Verlag Münster, 2005
  6. ↑ Simone Höhl: Freiburg: The first 100 college students learn in the Kartaus. Badische Zeitung, September 5, 2014, accessed on June 16, 2017 .
  7. ^ Simone Höhl: Freiburg: Education: 40 million project: United World College in the Kartaus. Badische Zeitung, April 27, 2011, accessed on June 16, 2017 .
  8. ^ Simone Höhl: Freiburg: Meierhof: Citizens' association wants the Kartaus farm to be renovated. Badische Zeitung, January 30, 2017, accessed June 16, 2017 .
  9. ^ Simone Höhl: The Meierhof is saved - Freiburg - Badische Zeitung. Badische Zeitung, October 5, 2017, accessed on October 5, 2017 .
  10. ↑ BZ editorial team: Photos: The renovation of the Meierhof in Freiburg is ongoing - instead of being demolished. Badische Zeitung, April 24, 2019, accessed on September 2, 2019 .

Coordinates: 47 ° 59 ′ 40.1 ″  N , 7 ° 52 ′ 57.9 ″  E