Commanderie van Sint Jan

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Commanderie van Sint Jan
(state 1986)
Commanderie as seen from Nonnenstraat
(status 2014)

The Commanderie van Sint Jan ( German  "Kommandantur vom Saint John" ) is the oldest preserved stone building in the city of Nijmegen in the Dutch province of Gelderland . Its origins can be traced back to 1196, when it is listed as a Rijksmonument . Over the centuries it served a wide variety of purposes.

history

The building was first mentioned in 1196 and was operated as a hospital by Count Alardus and his wife Uda at that time . In 1214 it came to the Order of St. John . The Johanniter were an order of military monks who participated in crusades and took care of pilgrims. Therefore, they converted the building into a monastery with a pilgrim house and gave it the name of Saint John ( Sint Jan ). The name Commanderie comes from the fact that at the head of the Johannite monasteries there was always a Commander (Middle Latin commendator = "Commander").

In 1495 there were only eleven beds left in the monastery, nine of which were intended for monks and employees. The hospital was hardly used anymore. However, there was a large amount of hops in the attic , so it can be assumed that the building was primarily used as a monk's brewery during this period.

In 1530, the Order of St. John took over the island of Malta as its headquarters and was therefore also known as the Order of Malta. Since the Commanderie was extraterritorial Maltese territory, it initially remained largely unmolested by the up-and-coming Protestants on the condition that an evangelical preacher could enter the monastery. However, when the Protestants wanted to carry out an iconoclasm in Nijmegen too , the Catholic population opposed this, with the preacher's chair being dragged out of the church, symbolically whipped and burned. In 1576 Spanish soldiers were billeted in the Commanderie. In 1578 the town joined the rebellious Dutch and the house became Protestant again. During the Eighty Years' War it was used alternately as quarters for Catholic Spanish and Protestant Dutch troops. Due to the effects of the Thirty Years' War , the building fell into disrepair. When the last commandant of the order died in 1636, the Commanderie was the last Catholic building to be confiscated by the evangelical city council. The chapel was demolished.

In 1655 Johannes Smetius the Younger and Lambert Goris housed the Illustere school in the Commanderie , an academic high school from which in 1656 the Kwartierlijke Academie van Nijmegen ("Academy of the Quarter of Nijmegen"), a university, developed. In 1672, as a result of the French occupation, the building was again occupied by soldiers. When large numbers of French Huguenots fled to the Netherlands from 1686 , they were allowed to build a Walloon church in the Commanderie .

The southern part of the west wing during restoration work in 1970

The end of the Walloon Church came in 1944 when Nijmegen was bombed. The building was badly damaged but could have been restored if local residents hadn't used it as a quarry. As a result, the Commanderie became more and more a ruin. In 1952 an antique dealer bought this ruin and designed a romanticizing vaulted cellar in it, which was run by students of the SSN Roland association under the name Het Wijnhuis ("The Wine House ") and became a popular place for urban nightlife. The city council wanted to tear down the building, but protests failed. In 1969 the Stichting Monumentenzorg ("Stiftung Denkmalpflege ") took over the building. The romanticizing style elements were removed again. According to an original plan, the building should then function as a clubhouse for the student association. In the meantime, however, cultural needs had changed and student life in particular had undergone considerable changes, so that this intention was dashed. Instead, a city museum and a city brewery occupied the building. In 1999 the holdings of the museum were merged with those of the Kam Museum and housed in the new Museum Het Valkhof .

Today the building is a lively center for handicrafts, gastronomy and culture. The Commanderie now houses a chocolaterie, a coffee roastery and the De Hemel brewery with restaurant and brewery café. As a registered Rijksmonument with the number 31123 it is placed under monument protection.

literature

  • GT Lemmens: Geschiedenis van de Commanderie. Numaga 21 (1974) No. 4, Nijmegen 1974, pp. 131-176.
  • JL Volders: De restauratie van de Commanderie. Numaga 21 (1974) No. 4, Nijmegen 1974, pp. 177-204.

Web links

Commons : Commanderie van Sint Jan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andreas Daams: The Commanderie van St. Jan is the oldest building in Nijmegen . On the NRZ's online presence on May 26, 2018, accessed on November 12, 2018.
  2. ^ Regesta Imperii, IV, 3.1
  3. ↑ Erich Meuthen : To the late medieval coming being . In: Lotte Kéry, Dietrich Lohrmann and Harald Müller (eds.): Licet preter solitum. Ludwig Falkenstein on his 65th birthday . Shaker, Aachen 1998, ISBN 3-8265-3636-3 , pp. 241-264.
  4. ↑ a b c d G.T. Lemmens: Geschiedenis van de Commanderie . Numaga 21 (1974) No. 4, Nijmegen 1974, pp. 131-176.
  5. ↑ a b c d e History of Commanderie van Sint Jan in Nijmegen on the De Hemel Brewery website (Dutch), accessed on November 12, 2018.
  6. ↑ a b History of the Commanderie van Sint Jan on the website of the Commanderie van Sint Jan (Dutch), accessed on November 12, 2018.
  7. ↑ The Kwartier (quarter) was an administrative unit in the Netherlands in modern times.
  8. ^ JL Volders: De restauratie van de Commanderie. Numaga 21 (1974) No. 4, Nijmegen 1974, pp. 177-204.
  9. ↑ Official website of Chocolaterie Chokobreak (Dutch), accessed on November 12, 2018.
  10. ↑ Official website of the restaurant and brewery café De Hemel (Dutch, English), accessed on November 12, 2018.
  11. ↑ Rijksmonument 31123: Commanderie van Sint January in Nijmegen in Rijksmonumentenverzeichnis of the Netherlands, accessed on 12 November 2018th

Coordinates: 51 ° 50 ′ 56 "  N , 5 ° 51 ′ 51.8"  E