Former Ursuline convent Aachen
The former Ursuline monastery in Aachen was the first settlement of the Ursulines in Aachen . The monastery with daughter's school and boarding school was founded around 1690 on the area of today's Elisengarten and profaned in 1818 . After that, there was only from 1848 to 1878 and finally from 1891 to 2014 a settlement of the Ursulines in Aachen.
history
In 1651 the first Ursulines came from Dinant to Aachen and, as a forerunner of a planned monastery, acquired two small houses in what was then Aldegundisstrasse, which was named after the Aldegundis chapel there. In accordance with the guidelines of their order to give upbringing and education to young girls, they began giving lessons in their new Aachen houses. The great fire of Aachen on May 2nd, 1656 destroyed these houses and the Ursulines had them rebuilt and looked around for further possibilities. First, they planned to acquire a larger neighboring property in the city center with the Aldegundis Chapel located there, either to restore it and convert it into a monastery church or to build a new church in its place. At that time, this chapel was owned by the Imperial Abbey of Stablo-Malmedy , but the abbots there refused to transfer the Aldegundis chapel to the Ursulines. They merely offered the prospect that the chaplain of the planned Ursuline Church would be allowed to co-manage the chapel. The takeover talks, which lasted from 1663 to 1670, ultimately led to no result. Instead, they acquired the Colynshof estate in the Aachener Heide in 1672 , which they owned until 1768.
At the same time, the Aachen Ursulines tried to gain a foothold in Düsseldorf in 1677 and to found a monastery there. Again they began by first renting a house and looking for more properties. When difficulties arose in Düsseldorf three years later, the Aachen parent company could no longer help and the founding of the Düsseldorf Ursuline Monastery was transferred to the Ursuline Monastery in Cologne in 1681 .
Despite the broken negotiations in Aachen, the order finally got a piece of land between Aldegundisstraße and Harduinstraße (today Hartmannstraße) and the inner Grabenring (today Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz), where from 1690 they built a new monastery with a daughter's school, boarding school, educational institution and realize their own church. The public city school run by the Ursulines in the monastery, at which two sisters taught more than 100 children, was popularly known as the “Mark School” because each child had to pay one “ Aachen mark ” per month . In the meantime, the city had also renamed Aldegundisstrasse to Ursulinenstrasse, as the chapel had become unattractive as the namesake and only existed as a ruin and finally collapsed in 1768.
After the French invaded in 1792, the Ursulines had to leave their monastery and move into two neighboring rental houses that were part of the monastery and in which a higher elementary school with two teachers was temporarily set up in 1819. The pensions of the sisters who were still alive were paid from the rental income from the two houses. The property of the monastery itself was converted into a fund for a female educational institution of Catholic denomination.
In 1813 the French city administration transferred the former Ursuline monastery to the new diocese of Aachen , founded in 1802 , which set up its episcopal palace there. Finally, in 1817, after the French withdrew, the Prussian state took over the former monastery complex and had it profaned a year later. Next he had the chapel torn down in order to build a new presidential building on this area according to plans by Adam Franz Friedrich Leydel and to redesign parts of the old monastery for the main customs office. After it was relocated to the newly built Aachen Central Station , the old monastery complex was finally demolished in 1852 and the Elisengarten was designed in its place according to plans by Peter Joseph Lenné .
Finally, in 1848 , Ursulines came to Aachen from the Kalvarienberg monastery in Ahrweiler , who took over the former Sepulchrine monastery until they were expelled as a result of the Kulturkampf in 1878 and ran a secondary school for daughters there with a “poor preservation school” and a factory school, which later became St. Leonhard High School . A third attempt to establish a branch was made in 1891, when they took over the girls' secondary school on Bergdriesch Street and set up the "New Ursuline Monastery Aachen" there, from which the St. Ursula Gymnasium emerged , which was managed by the Order.
Building description
The four-wing building complex around a stone inner courtyard with the monastery cloister had its reception side facing Aldegundisstrasse to the north, which was shaped in the middle by the small four-axis church running parallel to the street. While four further axes of the side wing of the monastery were connected to the left (east) of the church, the rapid gate with the additions for the reception rooms also extended over four axes to the right (west) of the church. Again to the right of it was the access road to the rear wing of the monastery, which the Ursulines had to share with the neighboring property of the von Drimborn / Dremborn family, who had had their property there since Hermann von Dremborn . Behind the south wing with the refectory was the large garden that reached as far as the moat ring and on which there was still a brewery.
One of the most valuable objects in the church was an altarpiece by Gerard de Lairesse , which the Ursulines had apparently received to move in and which tells the story of the martyrs of St. Ursula represents. After the dissolution of the monastery, the picture of the minster church was transferred, but its whereabouts are unclear. There is a floor plan of the Ursuline monastery itself by the Aachen city architect Laurenz Mefferdatis , to whom it is attributed that he was involved in later additions or renovation measures. As some sources claim, he could not have been involved in the planning and construction of the monastery itself, as he was born in 1677 and was younger than 20 at the time.
literature
- Christian Quix : The former Ursuline monastery in Aachen. In: Contributions to the history of the city of Aachen and its surroundings . JA Mayer Verlag, Aachen 1838. pp. 118–121 ( digitalized )
- Paul Clemen : Aachen city monasteries and their history , In: Karl Faimonville, among other things: The monuments of the city of Aachen . Bd. II .: The churches of the city of Aachen Düsseldorf 1922
- Ernst Moese: The first Ursuline monastery in Aachen 1651-1818 . In: Martin Evertz: Ursulines in Aachen 1848–1998 , Festschrift for the 150th anniversary, self-published, Aachen 1998, pp. 24–26
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Ursulines in Düsseldorf , in: Wolfgang Kaps: Neuburg an der Donau: From the Ursuline monastery to the study seminar and grammar school . Chapter A III, p. 19 pdf
Coordinates: 50 ° 46 ′ 27.95 " N , 6 ° 5 ′ 9.71" E