Bernhard Bierbaum

. Bernhard II Bierbaum OSB (* 1. July 1730 in Dorsten as Josef Lorenz Bierbaum , † 6. March 1798 in Helmstedt ) was abbot of the Benedictine - imperial abbey of Werden in Essen and past president of the Bursfeld Benedictine Congregation .

Vita

The son of the Dorsten innkeeper Josef Bierbaum and his wife Elisabeth née Funcken and, according to the Dorsten church book, was baptized on July 7th, 1730 with the name Josef Lorenz.

On October 22, 1747 he entered the Werden monastery , made his profession on November 3, 1748 and was ordained a priest in December 1753. On October 17, 1757 he was sent to the sister monastery of Werden St. Ludgeri in Helmstedt , where he was in 1760 received the post of waiter . On November 18, 1763, he was also pastor in Herzfeld.

On March 19, 1775, he was appointed provost of St. Ludgeri in Helmstedt and finally on April 16, 1780, he was elected abbot of Werden Abbey. In the same year he was elected president of the Bursfeld congregation at the general chapter of the Bursfeld congregation , an office which he held until the congregation was dissolved in 1785.

During his reign he was able to realize numerous construction projects: For example the bridge over the Mühlengraben (1786), then Mühlstrangh in Kettwig. It made it easier to access the ferry to Kettwig in front of the bridge - especially for wagons . It also represented a permanent improvement of the Düsseldorf - Essen axis . The abbot's coat of arms was embedded in the middle arch of the bridge. Another building measure was the line of houses opposite the Abbey Church of St. Ludgerus (1787). The departmental rectorate school, a rectory and a chapter building were located there. In 1794 he had the gatehouse of Werden Abbey built, which has an amusing detail: Bernhard II had the head of a faun carved on the gable of the house , who stuck out his tongue, probably as an allusion to the Prussians who occupied the country. He also built the back building with a cloister and built the Schuir house as a summer residence for the Werden abbots . In addition to his construction work, he was also interested in bibliophile culture, as shown by the purchase of around 3,000 volumes by the judge Weise (the so-called Weise library) from Moers for the abbey.

Because of the French occupation of the Left Bank of the Rhine , the French pillage of the monastery and the foreseeable consequences for the Werden Abbey by the Rastatt Congress , Abbot Bernhard II fled to Helmstedt . He died there on March 6, 1798 and is buried in St. Peter's Chapel.

literature

• Wilhelm Stüwer: The imperial abbey in the Ruhr (= Germania Sacra . New episode 12: The dioceses of the church province of Cologne. The archbishopric of Cologne. 3). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1980, ISBN 3-11-007877-5 , pp. 365-366, ( digitized version ).

predecessor	Office	successor
Johannes Hellersberg	Abbot of Werden and Helmstedt 1780–1798	Beda Savels