Augustinian monastery Eschwege
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The Augustinian monastery Eschwege was a monastery of the Augustinian hermits in Eschwege . Its origins are in the 13th century.
history
According to a document dated September 1278, the abbess Kunegund and the convent of the Cyriaci nunnery in Eschwege, at the request of the citizens and the council of Eschwege, gave the brothers of the Order of St. Augustine a piece of land within the city walls to build a prayer house and other necessary buildings . The property in the south-eastern corner of the old town was part of the later monastery district, which before the new town was added to the old town, the city wall or wall along the street behind the town wall and the later Wallgasse delimited. Not far from there the Leimentor led out of the city (today Goldbachstrasse / Humboldtstrasse roundabout). In the course of the next few years, the monastery property was expanded to include more adjacent buildings and properties. On May 1, 1366, Landgrave Heinrich zu Spangenberg announced that he would allow the Augustinians to rebuild "secret chambers" (toilets) on their courtyard opposite the monastery (today next to the car park / tin figure museum) and to use a bridge across the street to join the monastery. "Furthermore, nobody should be allowed to divert the stream flowing through the monastery that they want to use as before to clean the chambers."
According to a document, the Augustinian monks began brewing beer in the monastery in 1369. In July 1500 the monks signed a contract for the use of their source and the expansion of the waterway through the monastery to the market. The Augustinian monastery had a library at that time, which was also used by the inmates.
In 1527 the monastery was dissolved after the introduction of the Reformation in the Landgraviate of Hesse . During the secularization , the remaining 20 fathers and 6 lay brothers were “miserably” resigned. In 1559 part of the monastery was separated and given to the St. Elisabeth Hospital. This converted the church into a residential building. In 1629 Jesuits tried to restore the monastery
The monastery buildings were destroyed in the great city fire in the "Croatian Year" in 1637. The structural remains were rebuilt in 1648–1654 into the Renthof, which served as the rent office of the Landgraves of Hesse-Rheinfels and Rotenburg from 1654–1834.
In 1872 the Landgrave Hessian Renthof was sold by the Prussian state for 12,400 thalers to the city of Eschwege, which wanted to set up a secondary school here. In 1875 the city sold the area to the brewer Jacob Andreas.
During construction work in the Breiten Straße / Hospitalplatz in 1989, the foundations of the old monastery church were exposed. With a width of approx. 9 m and a length of 45 m, the church corresponded to the elongated structure reproduced by Landgrave Moritz before the destruction in 1637.
Current condition
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To this day, the cellars are used by the Eschweger monastery brewery as a storage cellar, filter cellar and fermentation cellar. Only part of the basement is preserved, four mighty square pillars with edges support a groin vault. According to rumors, an underground connection to the women's monastery on the Schulberg (Cyriacus pen) led from this room via the market square.
The late Gothic monastery chapel, renovated in 1976, can be visited and has been a branch of the registry office since 2016. There is a guest room on the ground floor.
The keystones in the vault of the ground floor show the symbols of the evangelists John = eagle, Luke = bull, Mark = lion, Matthew = angel, as well as the lamb as a symbol of Christ and the church father Jerome.
Of the large stone building in the southwest corner, only the basement and the first floor were spared during the great city fire in 1637. The old 120 cm thick walls still exist there. The building shows the small windows of the first building towards Klosterstrasse. From the courtyard, two mostly walled-up door arches can be seen. The construction that was common before the Thirty Years' War can be seen on the sturdy oak beams on the lower ground floor. Above the entrance to the monastery courtyard there is a Latin inscription carved into the stone, which says: “The renovation of this house, which was built in 1278, began on the 4th of March in the year of the Lord 1501” (i.e. on February 26th 1501).
A door, which is now locked, led into the house from Klosterstrasse. In the upper part it bears the name of the brewery founder Andreas in wood carving and the house number 541 at that time. On the southern monastery wall, opposite the house at Wallgasse 29, a walled-up main entrance can still be seen fairly clearly.
literature
- Ernst Wenzel: "Hessenland", edition 1939 "The buildings of the Augustinian monastery in Eschwege and their history" .
- Kurt Holzapfel, Bernhard Horn, Rainer Nickel, Thomas Wiegand: Werra-Rundschau.
swell
- City history works by JC Hochhuth and Schmincke / Stendel
- State Archives Marburg (documents)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Documents of the Marburg State Archives. Source of the annual report of Sparkasse WMK, texts by Herbert Fritsche, bound booklet, p. 47: “In fact, a first brewery in our town is mentioned in a monastery charter from 1342, and the news comes from 1369 that the monks of the Augustinian monastery had beer brewed and were allowed to serve it to the citizens of the city. "
- ^ Rainer Nickel, historian and building researcher, Werra-Rundschau, February 17, 1989.
- ^ JC Hochhuth and Schmincke / Stendell: Stadtgeschichtliche Werke .
Coordinates: 51 ° 11 ′ 7.3 " N , 10 ° 3 ′ 22.2" E