Dominican monastery Cologne

Arnold Mercator - Dominican Monastery Cologne (1571)

Memorial plaque from 1937 at the former location

The Dominican monastery in Cologne was, along with the Dominican monastery in Friesach ( Carinthia ), the oldest of all German-speaking Dominican monasteries and the main convent of the Rhine Province.

Development in the Middle Ages

On May 30, 1221, the General Chapter of the Dominicans in Bologna - which was still chaired by St. Dominic as the founder of the order - appointed eight order provinces , including "Teutonia" for Germany. As a result, a delegation led by Frater Salomon ( Prior von Friesach) was sent to Cologne to establish a convent . The canons of St. Andreas made the hospital of the Church of St. Maria Magdalena available to him. In the medieval Cologne district of Niederich , on the former Breite Straße (since 1215 “latam plateam”) No. 4 / corner of Stolkgasse (“vicus stolcorum”) - today Unter Sachsenhausen No. 4 - the Dominican monastery “Heilig Kreuz” was probably built in 1221. The formal establishment of the Cologne Convention lies between Whitsun 1221 and 1224. Frater Salomon drove on to Denmark via Cologne, where he “received” a house (a religious establishment) in Cologne. Further details about its founding phase are not known; In any case, the first mention of the “conventus Sanctae Crucis” was made in 1224. One of the founders was the Blessed Brother Heinrich of Cologne , who was born in Cologne and who had been back in Cologne since August 1221 and became Cologne's first prior. After his death on October 23, 1229, he was succeeded by his college friend Brother Leo.

On the decision of the General Chapter of the Dominicans in June 1248, St. Albertus Magnus came to Cologne from Paris in the summer of 1248 . He had already completed his novitiate in the Holy Cross Monastery . Now he took over the management of the Dominicans' newly founded “ Studium generale et sollemne” in the monastery and led it to a high academic rank. Albertus laid out a botanical monastery garden in the monastery. After his death in 1280 he was buried in the monastery church. In 1483 his bones were raised and a high grave was created for him, which was replaced by a baroque shrine in 1671 . Before the Dominican church was demolished, the relics were transferred to St. Andreas in 1802 .

In 1250, the Dominicans also acquired the adjoining palace-like residence of the late Duke Walrams IV of Limburg for 150 Cologne marks . Further acquisitions and donations gradually resulted in a large monastery complex with a church, farm buildings and nave. Around 1250, a three-aisled late Romanesque hall church of 35 m length with a flat ceiling was built west of the Stolkgasse. The main choir with two secondary choirs formed the straight end of the nave. In 1271 the church was given a horseshoe-shaped high choir in Gothic style.

The Dominican Monastery in Cologne was the organizational center in Germany until 1303, after which the North and Central German convents were separated. Since then Cologne has led the province of "Teutonia", Magdeburg "Saxonia". On September 13, 1346 Pope Clement VI ordered. the Archbishop of Cologne Walram von Jülich to limit the immunity of the Dominicans. Since the Dominicans defended themselves against this, they had to leave Cologne for the time being in 1347 and their houses were confiscated. They returned after the arbitration award of July 23, 1351, but were no longer allowed to acquire real estate; the confiscated property was not returned to them. Historically significant personalities of that time were in particular Jakob Sprenger and Jakob van Hoogstraten. Jakob Sprenger was prior between 1472 and 1488. During his tenure, the Cologne Rosary Brotherhood , founded on September 8, 1475 , whose first prominent members Emperor Friedrich III. , his wife Eleonora and his son Maximilian I were. Jakob van Hoogstraten from Brabant was ordained a priest in Cologne in 1496 and finished his studies in the monastery in 1504 with a doctorate. From 1508 he was prior and at the same time papal judge for the archbishopric of Cologne , Mainz and Trier . He died in Cologne on January 21, 1527.

The entire monastery complex can be recognized by Arnold Mercator in his Cologne cityscape from 1570 as "Predikercloister" from a bird's eye view. It is therefore on "Under XVI huiseren" / corner of "Stolckgaß". The Dominican monastery, its farm buildings and the nave of the monastery church were largely destroyed by fire on March 2, 1659. Prior Michael Gumpertz succeeded in a provisional reconstruction, more beautiful and more regular than the previous building.

Modern times

When French troops marched into Cologne on October 6, 1794, they used churches and monasteries as military hospitals or barracks. At that time there were still 31 Dominicans in the monastery. On June 17, 1799, the French garrison ordered the monks to leave the area within two hours. In 1802 the monastery was secularized , the church closed on September 28 and demolished in 1804. The structurally stabilized fragment of the convent building served as barracks for 1,500 French soldiers between 1799 and 1814, and as a Prussian artillery barracks from 1814. In 1828 the military authorities removed the last medieval remnant of the monastery, the Gothic gatehouse . Before 1841 the part of Unter Sachsenhausen between Marzellenstrasse and Stolkgasse was renamed to An den Dominikanern in memory of the medieval monastery . In 1889 the monastery grounds were rounded off. In its place, the Reich Main Post Office was built at Heinrich von Stephan’s instigation and opened on November 15, 1893.

New beginning

Modern Dominican monastery on St. Andreas

When the first Dominicans from the Dominican province of Teutonia returned to Cologne in 1898, they lived provisionally in a tenement house at Melchiorstrasse 35. On October 2, 1902, the foundation stone for the new monastery church was laid at Lindenstrasse 45 (built according to plans by Caspar Clemens Pickel ). Otto Linnemann created glass windows for the church, namely 3 middle choir windows with the Adoration of the Lamb, 1 west window above the organ with music-making angels, David and Ezekiel and 10 ornamental windows in the nave. It was consecrated on May 10, 1904. The historically significant chronicle of the Dominicans was brought to safety from the Nazis in April 1941 in a cellar in Gottesweg 83 in Cologne. This turned out to be foresighted, because the Gestapo confiscated the monastery on July 16, 1941; the property was confiscated on the basis of a letter from the district president dated February 26, 1942. The church and monastery were badly damaged by bombs on May 31, 1942, and largely destroyed on March 2, 1945. The reconstruction of a three-aisled hall church with roof turret began in 1947 under Hans Joachim Lohmeyer , the consecration took place on October 11, 1952. In 1957 St. Andreas , the Holy Sepulcher Church of St. Albertus Magnus, handed over to the Dominicans, who set up another monastery there - a branch convent since 2004.

Individual evidence

↑ Explanation board under the memorial plaque
↑ not to be confused with today's Breite Straße
^ Karl Langosch, Middle Latin Yearbook , Volumes 22/23, 1989, p. 207.
↑ Jan Aertzen, Albert the Great in Cologne , 1999, p. 15.
^ Chronological table of the Archdiocese of Cologne
↑ Jan Aertzen, Albert the Great in Cologne , 1999, p. 17.
↑ Their “younger Bible window” from around 1280 can be viewed today in Cologne Cathedral , St. Stephen's Chapel.
↑ Peter Fuchs (ed.), Chronik zur Geschichte der Stadt Köln , Volume 1, 1990, p. 287.
^ Yearbook , Cologne History Association, volumes 27–28, 1953, p. 110.
↑ and dug up from the rubble again in February 1945