Columba Baumgartner

Columba Baumgartner (born May 5, 1912 in Rheinzabern ; † September 1, 2007 ) was a Cistercian and abbess of the Seligenthal monastery in Landshut .

Life

Columba was born in Rheinzabern ( Rhineland-Palatinate ) in 1912 , her baptismal name was Elisabeth. She was initially interested in missionary work and graduated from the Seligenthal Abbey for teachers . There she discovered the vocation to live as a Cistercian and was finally dressed on July 9, 1933 in Seligenthal with the religious name Columba . She worked as a teacher in elementary school and at the abbey's teacher training institute.

In 1958 she was elected the 41st abbess of Seligenthal Abbey and worked in this office for 29 years. Their motto was: “In domino confido” (I trust in the Lord!).

During her term of office, numerous construction works at the schools and their restructuring, including a. 1969 the opening of the day care center for 180 children, 1970 the foundation of the kindergarten and its new building and 1982 to 1985 the construction of the extension of the grammar school . It developed Seligenthal into an educational center that today includes kindergarten, elementary school, secondary schools and vocational schools.

Abbess Columba also took care of the spiritual renewal of monastic life in the course of the Second Vatican Council . From a hitherto strictly cloistered convent a contemporary, yet exemplary run religious institute with its own Constitutions was.

At the beginning of her tenure, she helped the Marienkron Abbey, founded in 1955 by the Seligenthal Abbey , to become an independent priory. In 1972, on her initiative, the Seligenthal monastery sent three sisters to La Paz in Bolivia . There they took over the Colegio Ave Maria , which had been founded by Sister Hedwig Eckert from Waldsassen . It is an educational institution run for street children and is now the largest school center in the Latin American Andean state with more than 4,500 students. It was only through this takeover that the monastery was built there and is therefore considered a subsidiary of Seligenthal.

Within the Cistercian order, Maria Columba acquired a reputation as a “pioneer of women's rights”. She headed the Commissio pro Monialibus as President and, among other things, advocated equality between the abbesses and the abbots of the order, which her successor M. Assumpta Schenkl was finally able to achieve in 2000.

After her resignation as abbess in 1987, she worked a. a. several years in the Waldsassen subsidiary monastery , including from 1992 to 1994 as administrator . She was succeeded in this office from January 1994 to August 1995 by Sister Benedikta Schedl until 1995, when Laetitia Fech was again appointed an abbess.

Awards

• Golden Ring of Honor of the City of Landshut
• Bavarian Order of Merit
• Bavarian monument protection medal

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from September 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

Web links

• Entry to Columba Baumgartner on Orden online

Predecessors	Office	Successors
Johanna Sattler	Abbess of the Cistercian Abbey of Seligenthal 1958–1987	Assumpta Schenkl
Immaculata Baumann	Administrator von Waldsassen 1992–1993	Benedikta Schedl (1994/1995) Laetitia Fech