Beguinage (Hanover)

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The Beguinage in Hanover was an order- like household of beguines that had lived in the city since the 13th century . The pious women owned an extensive piece of land in Hanover within the city ​​fortifications of Hanover along the cloister corridor on the Leine up to the Begin Tower built in their garden and named after them and further along the horse street along the Holzmarkt to Schuhstraße in the (today's) district of Mitte .

history

According to the monument conservator Arnold Nöldeke , the beguines were already at home in the 13th century. The "pious sisters" initially lived in different houses. The oldest known documentary mention was made according to "UB 370" (document book) in 1357, when they already lived in a common house including a tree garden. In the same year the Begin Tower was built there.

The beguinage was on the lap register as “L. 206 ”and was separated from the neighboring houses on Schuhstrasse and the Holzmarkt by a courtyard and garden . With the city ​​council , the beguines also agreed to segregate the area with a fence along the so-called guard's corridor (a defense corridor for the guards inside the city walls). The Begin tower also marked "probably the northwest corner of the property."

Under the direction of a superior in Hanover, however, the Beguines did not want to live in poverty, but rather to actively participate in the city's trade . Despite their charitable tasks for the population, the Beguines, like many other Christian organizations in the city, did not pay any taxes until the city council finally placed the women's community under the city's tax law in 1357 and the Beguines to the "normal" citizens equated.

At the same time, girls were not allowed to attend public school. The school system - for boys - was divided into "writing schools" which were attended for three years between the ages of six and seven. Afterwards, “one” could attend a Latin school. Only parents who could (and wanted to) afford it hired a private tutor for their daughters or sent them to the Beguines.

During the time of the Reformation, on July 18, 1530, the city council reorganized the internal organization of the beguinage and the conditions for admission. The maximum number of inmates was set at 20, the minimum entry age set at 12 years.

After the riots of the Reformation and laid down on 26 April 1534 the new city charter , the beguines presented to the City Council a recess on: They changed their "convent" -Gewand and left in favor of the Council their common house together with the nearest the Schuhstraße yard. In return, the now bourgeois women were exempt from the city tax for life.

After the beguines moved out of their communal house, the city council moved the council stalls there , which had previously existed in Kreuzstrasse . However, the women had also "lived in several houses on Pferdestrasse."

Opposite the Begin Tower was another building, “probably the old Beguinage”. It was used as a writing school in 1647 - in the middle of the Thirty Years War and after the school "closed" on the site of the former Minorite monastery . The later “Lyceum I” or the Hanoverian Ratsgymnasium emerged from this “Council writing and arithmetic school” .

Illustrations

The Hanoverian chronicler Johann Heinrich Redecker drew in his Historical Collectanea, begun in 1723 ... a picture of the partially still Gothic Beguinage with the passage to the cloister . Since, according to his own admission, he had drawn a house built in 1580, he described the state of the building not at the time of the Beguines, but at the time of the later writing school.

literature

  • Olaf Mußmann: Beguines - “Communards” of the Middle Ages? The "via media" in Hanover. In: Frauenwelten , ed. by Angela Dinghaus, Hildesheim: Olms 1993, ISBN 3-487-09727-3 , pp. 19-32
  • Barbara Fleischer: Women on a leash. A city walk in the footsteps of famous Hanoverian women , 3rd, expanded and newly revised edition, Berlin: Lehmanns Media, 2011, ISBN 978-3-86541-428-1
  • Arnold Nöldeke : Beguinage. In: Die Kunstdenkmäler der Provinz Hannover Vol. 1, H. 2, Teil 1, Hannover, Selbstverlag der Provinzialverwaltung, Theodor Schulzes Buchhandlung, 1932 (Neudruck Verlag Wenner, Osnabrück 1979, ISBN 3-87898-151-1 ), p. 227f .
  • H. Eckelmann: Where was the old council writing and arithmetic school in Hanover? In: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter , New Series 15 (1961), pp. 291–296
  • S. Müller: Piety in late medieval Hanover. In: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter , New Series 34 (1980), pp. 99–117
  • Klaus Mlynek : Beguines. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 53f.
  • Time travel. 900 years of life in Hanover , ed. by Michael Schwibbe, Hans Starosta, Andreas Stephainski, 2nd edition, Hannover: Verlagsgruppe Madsack, 2008, ISBN 978-3-940-308-26-9
    • Churches, monasteries and chapels: the cityscape is taking shape , p. 25f.
    • Reformation all along the line , p. 52f., Here: p. 53
    • Learning for Life: From School to University , p. 24

Web links

  • Archive of the Henriettenstiftung : Beguines - Modern Women of the Middle Ages "From the time of the Beguines in Hanover and the life of Christian sisterhoods" - on foot from the Begin Tower to the Chapel in the Friederikenstift , online text on the exhibition and guided tour by Barbara Fleischer in 2011

References and comments

  1. ↑ a b c Klaus Mlynek: Beguines (see literature)
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Arnold Nöldeke: Beguinage (see literature)
  3. ↑ Helmut Knocke : Begin Tower. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover , p. 54
  4. ^ Siegfried Müller: 1357. In: Hannover Chronik , p. 25
  5. ↑ Churches, monasteries and chapels ... (see literature)
  6. ↑ Learning for life ... (see literature)
  7. ^ Siegfried Müller: 1530. In: Hannover Chronik , p. 36f .; on-line
  8. ↑ Note: Deviating from this - and probably incorrectly dated - it literally says in the City Lexicon of Hanover:

    “In 1520 the minimum age was set at 12 y. the number to max. 20 limited. "

  9. ↑ a b Reformation across the board (see literature)