Antonite Monastery Grünberg
The Antoniterkloster in Grünberg , a town in the district of Gießen in Hesse , was founded in 1193 and existed until the Reformation in the Landgraviate of Hesse in 1526. From 1577 the complex was converted into a landgrave's castle (widow's seat).
history
The Antonites , a hospital order from France, founded in 1095 as a lay brotherhood and converted into an order of canons in 1298, had made it their business to care for and heal those afflicted by the tingling disease ( Antonius fire ), which was widespread in the Middle Ages . The brotherhood quickly spread across Europe. Were responsible for most of the many pilgrims who from all over Europe to the Spanish Santiago de Compostela traveled and on their way back faith in the healing powers of Sts. Antony and his brotherhood spread.
The branch in Grünberg was initially a simple monastery with an attached hospital. Its convenient location not far from two main traffic routes, however, soon meant that it developed into a general preseption whose catchment area, with its subsidiary establishments and branch monasteries, extends from Friedberg in Hesse to the Norwegian Nonnesetter near Bergen and from Wetzlar to Lennewarden im today's Latvia was enough. The first of these branch monasteries founded by Grunberg made was that in the wake of the June 7, 1222 Christianization of Mecklenburg by Prince Henry Borwin I. donated Tempzin at Wismar .
The last preceptor (head of the monastery ) of Grünberg died in 1526.
After Landgrave Philipp (1504–1567) had introduced the Reformation in the Landgraviate of Hesse by resolution of the Homberg Synod of October 1526, he dissolved the monasteries. He transferred the lands of the Antoniterkloster Grünberg to the University of Marburg , which he founded ; In 1625 they came to the University of Giessen, founded in 1607 . Philip's son Ludwig IV of Hesse-Marburg , who had inherited the partial Landgraviate of Hesse-Marburg after his father's death , had the monastery built into a palace from 1577 as a widow's residence for his wife Hedwig of Württemberg (1547–1590) .
The complex was later used as a hunting lodge .
investment
The former monastery district as a trapezoidal area includes the former church building in the west, the so-called monk's building in the north, the so-called university building in the east, the so-called castle in the south and a separate building on the opposite side of the Rosengasse.
The transverse building on the west side, with the buttresses and the Gothic sacristy window, used to be the roughly north-south-facing church, a hall with a long rectangular floor plan, which was probably significantly renewed after the great city fire in 1391.
In the north, on the city wall, is the former monk's building, a two-story half-timbered building from around 1500, which originally extended beyond the outer walls. Its extension to the city wall, the refectory, has disappeared except for a polygonal bay window around 1500 on the field side.
The building opposite on the south side on Rosengasse has been the core of the “castle” since the renovation from 1577 onwards. In 1569, Landgrave Ludwig IV had designated the former monastery as the widow's seat of his wife Hedwig . From 1577 to 1582, the three-storey residential building was built on older remains under the supervision of the landgrave's master builder Ebert Baldewein . After Hedwig's death in 1590, it became the widow's seat of Ludwig's second wife, Maria von Mansfeld . A second renovation took place in 1594. A wooden spiral staircase was created in an extension with two protruding half-timbered upper floors on the narrow eastern side. Likewise the two two-story half-timbered bay windows facing the street. These are crowned by volute gables. The eastern bay window bears the inscription in its threshold: "1594 MASTER HANS KRAVSKOPF VON KIRCHFERS MADE IN THE GERIT LORA DISEN BAV". The figure of a monk with the Antonite cross on his chest stands in a deepened area on the inside of the courtyard; he holds two coats of arms, the Hessian and the Mecklenburg one. On the inside of the courtyard is the gravestone of the Preceptor Conrad von Angersbach from 1477.
The courtyard of the monastery is completed on the east side by the monumental storage building from around 1500, the so-called university building after its later use. The two-storey half-timbering on the stone ground floor of the 29 m long and 9.75 m wide building comes from two construction phases: the north gable, the part of the west side of the city wall and the east side still have half-timbering from the construction period around 1500. Here is a special form of Wall struts can be seen, where the foot and head struts result in standing St. Andrew's crosses. On the courtyard side, this stock is supplemented by younger half-timbering.
On the opposite side of the Rosengasse there is another building from around 1500, which is a former stables or a hospital.
literature
- Georg Ulrich Großmann : Central and South Hesse: Lahntal, Taunus, Rheingau, Wetterau, Frankfurt and Maintal, Kinzig, Vogelsberg, Rhön, Bergstrasse and Odenwald. DuMont, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-7701-2957-1 (= DuMont art travel guide ), p. 142f.
- Adalbert Mischlewski: The Antoniterorder in Germany . Reprint from the "Archive for Middle Rhine Church History", Volume 10, 1958.
- Herbert Vossberg: Luther advises Reißenbusch to marry - the rise and fall of the Antonites in Germany , Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Berlin 1968.
- Adalbert Mischlewski: Basics of the history of the Antonite order up to the end of the 15th century , Bonn contributions to church history 8, Cologne / Vienna 1976.
Individual evidence
- ^ Waldemar Küther (arrangement): Grünberg. History and face of a city in eight centuries . Published by the municipal authorities of the city of Grünberg. Giessen 1972, p. 101.
- ^ Entry on the Antoniterkloster in the database of cultural monuments in Hesse of the Hesse Monument Preservation
- ^ Entry on the Antoniterkloster in the database of cultural monuments in Hesse of the Hesse Monument Preservation
Web links
- State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen (Ed.): Former. Antoniterkloster In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hessen
- Photo of a Gothic tracery window on panoramio
- Historical city tour
Coordinates: 50 ° 35 ′ 33 ″ N , 8 ° 57 ′ 36 ″ E